(Originally published by the Daily News on Jan. 29, 1977. This story was written by Theo Wilson.)
LOS ANGELES – Doctors battled for two hours yesterday in a desperate attempt to save the life of comedian Freddie Prinze and then said that they were not sure that he would completely recover even if he survives – because of brain damage suffered when he shot himself in the head in his apartment.
He remained in critical condition last night. His estranged wife, Katherine Elaine, 26, and his parents waited in an anteroom of the UCLA Medical Center as hospital authorities issued this bulletin:
“He tolerated the operative treatment well. However, because brain tissue was badly injured, it is premature at this time to offer a prediction as to whether he will survive or what disability (brain damage) will be sustained.”
FREDDIE PRINZE DIES FROM BULLET WOUND TO THE HEAD IN 1977
Prinze, 22, the light-hearted youth who came off the New York streets only two years ago to capture overnight the great American dream of fame and fortune as the star of “Chico and the Man,” shot himself about 4 a.m. yesterday after phoning his wife and his parents, telling them that he was going to take his life.
Prinze was alone in his apartment with his manager, Marvin (Dusty) Snyder, who said that Prinze suddenly pulled out a foreign-made automatic from under a pillow on his sofa and shot himself before Snyder could move. The bullet apparently penetrated the brain before emerging from the right temple.
The former Katherine Elaine Cohran sued Prinze for divorce over “irreconcilable differences” after 15 months of marriage. They had been married Sept. 13, 1975, in Las Vegas, his first and her third marriage. They have a 10-month-old son, Freddie Jr.
The shooting climaxed hours of fruitless attempts by Prinze’s psychiatrist and others to relieve the 6-foot-2 actor’s despondency. Prinze left a note, saying: “I can’t take it any more.”
At one point during the night, when Prinze was alone, he reportedly fired a shot, hitting a medicine cabinet and wall.
Lt. Dan Cook of the Los Angeles Police Department said that Prinze’s psychiatrist and personal secretary had visited the actor in his apartment at the Beverly Comstock Hotel and then left. At about 2:45 a.m., Cook continued, Prinze called Snyder, who rushed to the apartment from his home in Beverly Hills.
Snyder rode with paramedics in the ambulance to the medical center where Prinze was placed in the intensive-care unit on a life-support system. The surgery was performed a few hours later.
Last Nov. 5 a California highway patrolman arrested Prinze for allegedly driving erratically at 45 miles an hour on the San Diego Freeway and said he prescription bottle of the tranquilizer methaqualone in Prinze’s pocket. Prinze was charged with 2 misdemeanor driving under the influence of drugs, and was scheduled to go on trial Feb. 28.
Three days after the driving arrest Prinze and his wife separated and on Dec. 13 she filed for a divorce.
Prinze also was involved in litigation last year with his agent, in an attempt to break a contract he had signed when he was 19.
Although Prinze played the role of a cocky, endearing and ambitious Chicano (Mexican American) in the series, he was born of a Puerto Rican mother and Hungarian father on June 22, 1954, in the Hell’s Kitchen section of New York City.
His father, a tool and dye maker, moved the family to W. 157th St., in the Washington Heights area, and Prinze attended parochial schools before he was graduated from the New York High School for Performing Arts.
He worked in New York City Street Theater productions of “West Side Story” and “Bye Bye Birdie,” and then began a nightclub comedy act at Improvisation, a showcase for new talent in Manhattan.
Prinze appeared on the Jack Parr and Johnny Carson shows, and later credited Carson for starting him on a career that earned him $25,000 a week in clubs, and a reported $500,000 a year as “Chico” on the NBC-TV series. He was just 20 when the series became instant hit in 1974.
Lauded as “the hottest young comic in America”, Prinze used his life on the streets of New York as the basis for his jokes, referring to himself as a “Hunga-Rican” and describing “duels with switchblades on 157th St.” He said he became a comic because “I couldn’t fight and I wasn’t particularly academic.”
