"Jim Beaver" <***@prodigy.spam> wrote in message
Does anyone know if she
Post by Jim Beaveris still alive and why her career ended almost as it
began? She's really rather adorable in SCSN.
A mystery solved! Her real name is or was Patricia Knox.
Let the newspaper article reveal all. You have to go down a
whole of paras to find her.
The Toronto Star
May 19, 1998, Tuesday, METRO EDITION
Life, pro football far from golden for former Argo Ronnie
Knox
BYLINE: By George Gamester Toronto Star
Even after all these years, you hear that name . . .
Ronnie Knox. Ronn-eeee!
And the images suffuse your brain.
Images of the golden boy from California. Ridiculously
handsome. Wonderfully gifted. Delightfully weird.
Ronnie. We will never forget you, Ronn-eeee! For in all the
tangled annals of the Toronto Argonauts, we cannot think of
a more intriguing or tragic character than the long-haired
messiah who was supposed to lead us to the promised land of
Grey Cupsville.
Remember? The year was 1958, and Ronnie seemed the perfect
guy for the job - a rifle-armed jump-passer coming off a
sensational collegiate career at UCLA and a stint with the
Chicago Bears.
Argo coach Hamp Pool declared Knox the most gifted
quarterback in all of football. Why, even Jim Trimble of the
hated Tiger-Cats suggested he could be the second coming of
Otto Graham.
But though he played well, setting several team passing
records during his 13-game tenure with the double blue,
Ronnie will always be remembered (like so many would-be Argo
saviours) as a hero with a tragic flaw. Er, make that
several flaws. First there was Harvey, the insufferable
stepfather who insisted on masterminding Ronnie's career.
Quite a character, that Harvey - haberdasher to the stars,
costumer for Hollywood movies, and meddler supreme who never
met a football executive he couldn't offend.
Then there was Ronnie himself - the sensitive artiste who
declared himself far more interested in Marcel Proust than
Hamp Pool. Halfway through the 1959 CFL season, he announced
"Football is for animals," and went off to write poetry. He
was 24.
Then what happened?
Depends on whom you ask. When last heard from, in 1982,
Ronnie was living in a fleabag hotel in San Francisco's
tenderloin district, still struggling to write a publishable
novel.
Stepfather Harvey was traced to Eureka, Calif., where he'd
made and lost a fortune in real estate. Estranged from his
three children, he died in a nursing home there just last
month. No one from his family attended the funeral.
And Ronnie? One report had him meditating in the Far East.
Several individuals told us he'd been murdered in San
Francisco. The owner of the nursing home hadn't heard of
him. "Ronnie? Harvey never mentioned a son named Ronnie."
We finally got the answer from Ronnie's sister, Patricia
Knox. A former actress who'd been pals with Marilyn Monroe
and appeared in five Hollywood films as Eleanor Todd, she
was found in Florida by The Star's Kate Jennison.
"I hadn't seen Ronnie for a long time. A few years ago, I
received a letter from a cousin, telling me Ronnie had died
in San Francisco on May 4, 1992 of natural causes. He had
heart trouble."
He left a watch, his driver's licence and an unfinished
manuscript. His ashes were scattered in the ocean.
The Golden Boy was 57 years old.
TALK TO ME: Is there a vanished sports hero, character or
villain you'd like to find? (Ronnie Knox was suggested by
Don Shebib of Toronto, George Lloyd of Cornwall and many
others). Send your ideas to After the Cheering, George
Gamester, Toronto Star, One Yonge St., Toronto, Ont. M5E
1E6. Fax: 869-4322. Phone: 869-4874. E-mail: ggamest @
thestar.ca
GRAPHIC: STAR FILE PHOTO: TROUBLED TIMES: Ronnie Knox, with
sister Patricia, was one of the more intriguing, and tragic,
characters in the tangled annals of Toronto Argonaut
history.