The media reported yesterday that Cliff Edwards, who had appeared in more than 100 motion pictures, died penniless and forgotten by the entertainment industry, his remains unclaimed for burial. It was a sad and touching story, but it wasn't true. The trust about the entertainer's recent life and death proved to be much more moving than the inadvertant fiction.
Walt Disney Productions, which used the Edwards recording of "When You Wish Upon a Star " as a kind of trademark for many years, made monthly payments toward the actor's support (supplementing Social Security and Medi-Cal benefits) from February, 1968, until his death. Representatives of the studio visited him frequently at the convalescent hospital where he spent his last years, and Disney offered to pay funeral and burial expenses as well.
The Motion Picture and Television Relief Fund is paying burial costs and has donated a plot at Valhalla. The Actors' Fund will underwrite the cost of a funeral at Pierce Bros. Mortuary. "We had intended to hold a private service, but because of the great public interest in Cliff there will be a public funeral," Iggy Wolfington of the Actors' Fund told the Hollywood Reporter.
"The public hasn't been told of the great generosity of the Disney stuido," Wolfington added. "They were very loyal and took a great interest in his welfare to the very end. Besides visiting him often, as people from the Actors' Fund also did, the Disney people had him out to the studios and took him on visits to Disneyland. And they saw to it that his needs were always provided for in these final years."
The Actors' Fund assisted Edwards in drafting a will in 1969. He left all his personal possessions to Addie Green, a housekeeper who cared for him when he lived in a Hollywood apartment prior to his admission to the convalescent hospital.
The mayor of Hannibal, Mo., where Edwards was born in 1895, telephoned the Actors' Fund yesterday with an offer by the city and its Chamber of Commerce to pay for the actor's funeral and burial. Wolfington thanked him, but added that all arrangements had been provided for.