With a few clicks of their ruby slippers, MGM made 16-year-old Judy Garland a box office giant, but their strict rules nearly killed the budding starlet in the process. The studio’s strict diet of chicken soup, uppers, and downers set up teenage Judy for a life fraught with addiction, malnutrition, extreme health complications, and regular visits to rehab. Even years after Judy severed ties with the MGM, the effects of her highly-regulated adolescence creeped into her career, literally poisoning her life — and her liver. A star was born when Judy filmed The Wizard of Oz, but by her late forties, that same star was in rapid decline.

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Glenn Danzig named his punk band after one of the most cursed Hollywood films of all time. The Misfits was where actor Montgomery Clift, permanently disfigured from a car accident, tried in vain to restart his stalled career. The director, John Huston, lost the film’s entire production budget at a craps table. The lead actor, Clark Gable, suffered a heart attack the day after shooting ended and died ten days later. But was there any truth to the rumor that Gable was driven to an early grave not because of a grueling shoot or poor health, but by his demanding co-star, Marilyn Monroe?

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On the surface, the star of one of the most popular television series of the 1960s was a squeaky-clean symbol of America’s innocence. But Hogan’s Heroes’ Bob Crane lived a secret double life that very few people knew about. His custom-built pornographic paradises were hidden behind the closed doors of his dressing room and apartment. He was obsessed with extra-marital sexual exploits, and he documented them with cutting-edge technology. The joy he received from making people smile was matched only by his need to fulfill his darkest desires…a need that would end in murder.

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Andy Warhol was the first artist to achieve rock star status. He was a Beatle with a silkscreen printer. His work and play space, the Factory, attracted people of all ages; rich and poor, straight and gay, sane and…not so sane. It was in the Factory that he was shot by a would-be assassin. He was rushed to a hospital and pronounced clinically dead. But Andy Warhol's second life began the moment he was resurrected on an operating table. As soon as his heart began to beat again, he became a true cultural icon – bigger than his paintings or his Polaroids or his experimental films, bigger than life itself. Andy Warhol became the future.

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Hustling on the streets of New York. Wagering with a U.S. president over who could sleep with more women. Knocking back beers with Elvis. Waving his gun around at the funeral of Jay Sebring, one of the victims of Charles Manson’s murderous family. The same family that had their sights now set on the King of Cool, Steve McQueen, who needed the speed of a Mustang or the power of a Magnum to keep Charlie’s crazy cult at bay.

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Heath Ledger’s preparation for and disappearance into his movie roles is legendary, and it’s what helped him play repressed cowboys, junkies, and maniacal clowns equally well. His research led him to junkies who taught him how to properly shoot up using a stolen prosthetic arm and fake blood, and to a personal diary full of cut-and-paste madness. The paparazzi, however, mocked Heath’s method, and took their public quarrel with him to duplicitous lengths.

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William S. Burroughs was a literary icon whose novel Naked Lunch, one of the signature works of the Beat Generation, was banned and went on trial for obscenity. His writing inspired generations of musicians, from the Rolling Stones and Patti Smith to Nirvana and Sonic Youth. But long before all that, in 1951, when he was an unknown and mostly failed writer, William S. Burroughs made the most fateful decision of his life when he pointed a gun at a highball glass balanced on top of his wife’s head…and pulled the trigger.

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Gianni Versace was a runway iconoclast who outfitted the likes of Madonna, Demi Moore, Prince, Sylvester Stallone, and Don Johnson. He lived like Louis XIV and counted Princess Di and Elton John among his friends. He was plagued by rumors of ties to the Calabrian mafia and a secret health diagnosis. Those rumors continued to persist long after he was gunned down by a serial killer who had been on the lam after murdering four other men in three states.

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The death of a neighborhood friend, an attempted robbery that almost went horribly wrong, good vs. evil, and the road not taken: this is the Al Pacino origin story. It all culminates in the role of a lifetime. Not Michael Corleone. Not a role on stage or screen. The most important role of Al Pacino’s young life played out in front of a couple of detectives and a district attorney.

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The only thing more shocking than Brittany Murphy’s untimely death at the age of 32 was what happened next: more unexpected deaths, rumors of poisoning, and even murder.

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