Freddy

Having a late lunch and watching Diagnosis Murder with Dick Van Dyke ( Dr. Mark Sloan) one of the opening scenes has a women coming in painted in gold, (fancy dress ball) fighting for breath. The good doctor's cure was to clean the paint off the skin above the ribcage first, declaring that it was a fallacy that the paint suffocates but that in fact when the paint drys the skin contracts and crushes the respiratory organs.

IMDb mention the improbability of suffocation but give no other reason for Shirley Eaton's death.

Is Doctor Mark Sloan correct?

regards

Freddy

DB7

Iirc it's an urban myth and you can't suffocate due to having your body painted all over. If you wish to send Charlize Theron to my house I volunteer to put this theory to the test...:

Steve Crook

No, of course not
If your body can't stand the small amount of tightening due to paint drying then you'd better stay away from lycra.

There is no reason given for Shirley Eaton's death on the set of Goldfinger - because she didn't die there. See the Urban Legends Reference Page for more info.

Steve

ChristineCB

One of the American TV-Rerun Channels has its own series called TV Legends, and Shirley was on just a few months ago, talking about 'her death'.

She said she got better.

She said that she was considering having her body painted gold and buried when she did finally expire (and NOT getting better, I suppose she means) but she was thinking of being cremated "and why waste all that spray paint and causing damage to the ozone layer?"