Age 41. 1 Addington Road, Brookline, MA. Born (as Jacob Gross) on 11/25/1901, in Boston. Died 11/29/1942 (Sunday), at 2:50 a.m., at Boston City Hospital, carbon monoxide poisoning (death certificate). Salesman, Monogram Pictures, Inc., of Hollywood, CA. Known as "Gene." Also known in business circles as "E. J." Wife Helen M., age 39 (Born 11/24/1903, in Boston. Died 2/04/1945, age 41. Death certificate: "cerebral metastases from breast cancer"), was critically injured. With his wife were seated at the same table on the main dining room raised rear terrace in a film industry multi-table party of 29 as guest-of-honor and Monogram cowboy star Charles "Buck" Jones, age 50, dead. Wife (erroneously reported by the 12/03/1942 Brookline Chronicle as deceased) was the subject of Grove-related news five weeks later: "Coast guardsmen recovered a pocketbook and $45, with a check and some personal papers, missing from...Mrs. Helen Gross...and these articles were returned to the family by police" (The Boston Herald, 1/05/1943). Wife was released home from Mass General Hospital 84 days after the blaze. Was misreported in some sources that her (natural causes) 1945 death was the direct result of Grove burns (The Boston Globe, 2/05/1945: "Died Saturday...after a two year losing battle with burns suffered in the Cocoanut Grove catastrophe..." The Boston Post, 2/05/1945: "...died yesterday at her home...having never fully recovered from the burns she received"). Wife was deemed the 491st Grove victim by the United Press wire service, while the competing Associated Press left its (incorrect) victim count unchanged at 492, fueling confusion to an already misreported final Grove casualty count (actually 490). Revealed in a 1992 newspaper interview by a niece, Leslie Jacobson, of Lynn, MA, that the above Mr. Jones was to have been entertained by "an assistant," but when the wife of the latter came down ill the couple felt obliged to substitute: "They didn't even like nightclubs, but they felt they were in a spot and had to go" (Daily Evening Item, Lynn, MA, 11/27/1992). Survived by children Calvin, age 8, and Diana, age 4. Obvious physical characteristics (WWII draft registration, February '42): "somewhat bald." Parents Mr. and Mrs. Louis and Sarah (Cohen) Gross. Burial at Grove Street (Pride of Jacob) Cemetery, West Roxbury (Boston), MA. Widow (bedridden at home for two years since the disaster) was buried with her victim husband upon her February 1945 death. Middle name Jacob. Surname rhymes with "BOSS."

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