Spade Cooley: the brutal murderer with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
The Hollywood Walk of Fame connotes different images depending on who you ask. For some, it is a celebration of those who have contributed to the cultural fabric of the USA. For others, it is a glamorisation of some deeply flawed individuals. Regardless of your personal stance on the Walk of Fame, though, you probably wouldn’t expect a convicted murderer to feature on the Californian landmark.
The Walk of Fame has a controversial history in its own right. As with any celebration of Hollywood stars, it features some incredibly controversial individuals. Serial rapist Bill Cosby, wannabe-fascist dictator Donald Trump, and Nazi Emil Jannings all hold their place on the iconic bit of pavement. Spade Cooley, meanwhile, was inaugurated as a member of the select group in 1960 for his work as an actor and big band leader, but the Oklahoma-born musician had a much darker side.
Rising to prominence in the 1940s, Cooley got his big break as a fiddle player in Jimmy Wakely’s big band before eventually becoming the band’s leader. Nowadays, breaking into Hollywood is seen as a near-impossible task, but Cooley managed to appear in nearly 40 western films as a result of sneaking onto a Gene Autry set and impressing the crew with his fiddle-playing abilities.
The big band star enjoyed a hugely successful career as a musician and actor, even being given his own television variety show, The Spade Cooley Show, in 1948. As a result of his success, he was awarded his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.
Just over a year after his Walk of Fame star was implemented, Cooley was found guilty of the murder of his wife, Ella Mae Evans. After Evans had asked her famously unfaithful husband for a divorce, he ruthlessly beat her to death with his bare hands in front of his three children. Their 14-year-old daughter was forced to tell the court how Coole had savagely beaten her mother before torturing her lifeless corpse in front of the children.
Given a maximum sentence of life in prison, as opposed to the execution by gas chamber that he was facing in court, Cooley spent the 1960s incarcerated. Many fellow Hollywood stars campaigned for his parole, including the then-Governor Ronald Reagan (himself the recipient of a controversial star on the Walk of Fame), and the murderer was granted parole in 1969. Effective from February 1970, this would have meant that Cooley served only nine years of his life sentence. However, whilst on furlough from the prison hospital in 1969, Cooley suffered a heart attack backstage at a benefit concert, where he subsequently died.
According to the organisation responsible for the Hollywood Walk of Fame, “Once a star has been added to the Walk, it is considered a part of the historic fabric of the Hollywood Walk of Fame”, which is the reason why no star has ever been removed. Hollywood has a dark history as it is, and you cannot help but feel as though now, in the wake of MeToo and the Epstein flight logs, that perhaps the organisation should change that policy. It is not ‘political correctness gone mad’ to suggest that a prominent landmark should not publicly celebrate rapists, misogynists and murderers like Cooley.
