On This Day in History, March 15: Old-Time Tough-Guy From Brooklyn
From the New York Post in January 1973: “DILLINGER” STAR IS STABBED. In a street row outside a bar on Ninth Avenue near the second-rate hotel where he had a room, the actor Lawrence Tierney required surgery for a ‘serious stab wound’ in the abdomen.”
The following June there was this stark news report: “Former movie actor Lawrence Tierney was questioned and then released by police in connection with the apparent suicide leap of a 24-year-old woman from the fourth floor window of a midtown apartment.” Tierney told police that he had come to visit the woman, Bonnie Jones, and “had just gotten there, and she just went out the window.”
Publicity stunts? Far from it. Lawrence Tierney’s escapades were constantly in the newspapers and tabloids during his days as a Hollywood actor, beginning with his starring role in Dillinger (1945). He was often good copy for newspapers on a light news day.