Carl Erickson

The body of twenty-eight year old screenwriter Carl Erickson was found in the Hollywood Hills along Mulholland Drive in an area commonly called "Lovers Lane". The Los Angeles Police Department later determined he died from a self-inflicted gun shot wound after receiving a letter from his estranged wife asking for a divorce. Erickson was the son of Swedish immigrants, Albert and Ellen Erickson. He was raised in New Haven, Connecticut where his father was an employee of the New Haven Wire Mill company. Though neither writer appears in the final credits, it had been widely reported in April of 1935 that Erickson and Abem Finkel were working on the script for the new Paul Muni film Dr. Socrates (1935).