John Buckler, aged 30, and his father, a well known British actor
'Hugh
Buckler', aged 55, were drowned
together on the night of Oct. 30, 1936 when their car skidded off the
road during a rainstorm and overturned in the waters of Malibu Lake in
California. The two men were trapped inside the car and were
undiscovered until the following morning when residents saw the wheels
of the car above the water's surface.
The younger Buckler, whose promising film career had just begun only
two years before his untimely death, had been a member of the cast of
the prestigious film,
David Copperfield (1935)
and had last appeared in
Tarzan Escapes (1936) as a greedy
explorer in the third in the series made by MGM detailing the
adventures of Edgar Rice Burroughs iconic character, played by
'Johnny
Weissmuller'. John Buckler
first gained critics and audience attention when he appeared on
Broadway in some of the most famous plays of the 1920s, including "The
Green Hat," "The Letter," and "The Barretts of Wimpole Street."