*Ø* Blogmanac September 7, 1923 | Peter Lawford

1923 Peter Lawford (Peter Sydney Ernest Aylen), English-born actor, member of the Rat Pack (comprising Lawford, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr, and Joey Bishop) and Kennedy clansman (Hollywood movies: The White Cliffs of Dover, 1944; The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1945; Royal Wedding, 1951).

In 1972, Lawford had surgery to remove a pancreatic tumor. By that time, he was in ill health as a result of long-time alcoholism, and he died on December 24, 1984 of cardiac arrest complicated by kidney and liver failure.

Peter Lawford died a pariah in Hollwood, to whom restaurants refused to deliver food as he was a bad bill-payer. He died penniless, without even enough money for a cemetery plot, and it has been alleged that his last wife, Patricia Seaton Lawford, made a deal with the seedy National Enquirer magazine that it could photograph the ashes-scattering ceremony, in exchange for the cost of the funeral.

Lawford was uncle of Maria Shriver and brother-In-Law to President John F Kennedy. He visited Marilyn Monroe with brother-in-law Robert Kennedy the evening she died.