Buck Jones #15

Buck%20Jones-15, a photo by bucklesw1 on Flickr. Late in the 1942, Buck left on a tour to help sell war bonds and promote his Rough Riders films. On November 28, 1942 he appeared in the Boston Garden before an audience of mostly children. It would be his last public appearance. That night, he attended a theater owners’ testimonial party in his honor at Boston’s famed Cocoanut Grove nightclub. That night, the club, which had a normal seating capacity of 720, was jammed with some 1,000 customers. At about 10:00 p.m., a fire of undetermined origin broke out. The club’s fake palm trees flared up, igniting the overhead decorations. Within minutes, the club was an inferno, eventually claiming 492 victims. Some sources say that Buck made it outside to safety and then went back in to look for other members of his party. He was later discovered inside by rescuers and taken to Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital. Badly burned, he died on November 30th.