Editing Max Linder (section)

==Marriage and death==
As a consequence of his war service, Linder had continuing health problems, including bouts of severe [[clinical depression|depression]] and several mental breakdowns. It has been said that he made "tantrum-like appearances at the studio". Director Édouard-Émile Violet recalled that Linder seemed invariably "unstable, worried..."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_qtuDwAAQBAJ&q=mental&pg=PA1892|title = Max Linder: Father of Film Comedy|last1 = Mathiesen|first1 = Snorre Smári|year = 2018}}</ref> Linder also became a heavy user of [[opium]] in the 1920s, which could have further harrowed his mind.<ref name="ReferenceA">{{Cite web|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_qtuDwAAQBAJ&q=married&pg=PA1892|title=Max Linder: Father of Film Comedy|last1=Mathiesen|first1=Snorre Smári|year=2018}}</ref>

During his war service, Linder was involved in a car accident; he was thrown out of the vehicle and badly injured.<ref name="Max Linder: Father of Film Comedy">{{Cite web|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_qtuDwAAQBAJ&q=car+accident&pg=PA1892|title = Max Linder: Father of Film Comedy|last1 = Mathiesen|first1 = Snorre Smári|year = 2018}}</ref>

In early April 1923, Linder was involved in a second near fatal car accident in [[Nice, France|Nice]], which resulted in a head injury. He was arrested in Nice later that month for "kidnapping a minor", who happened to be his future wife, the seventeen-year-old Hélène "Ninette" Peters. They had planned to run away to [[Monte Carlo]].

Upon Linder and Peters' first encounter at a hotel in [[Chamonix]], Linder was entranced by her, exclaiming to a friend, "I spent the whole night in a hotel lounge talking to the most extraordinary girl I could ever imagine. Instantly I knew this to be the woman in my life."<ref name="Max Linder: Father of Film Comedy"/> They married on 2 August 1923 at the Parisian church of St. Honoré d'Eylau. The two lived in an apartment at 11 Bis Avenue Émile Deschanel.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>

Linder is said to have been a fiercely jealous and mentally abusive husband. He would often accuse his young wife of being unfaithful and threaten to "end her". Whenever he went to town alone in the evenings, he would call her to make sure that she had not gone out without his consent.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>

Linder and his wife may have made a [[suicide pact]]. On 24 February 1924, they were both found unconscious at a hotel in Vienna, though this was explained as an accidental overdose of "sleeping powder."<ref>{{cite news|title=Max Linder and Wife in Double Suicide. They Drink Veronal, Inject Morphine and Open Veins in Their Arms|work=The New York Times |date=November 1925 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1925/11/01/archives/max-linder-and-wife-in-a-double-suicide-they-drink-veronal-inject.html}}</ref> In late October 1925, Max and Hélène reportedly attended a Paris screening of ''[[Quo Vadis (1924 film)|Quo Vadis]]'' (in which two characters, Petronius and his slave Eunice, as a reporter put it, "bleed themselves to death"),<ref name="nytimes.com">{{cite news|title=Max Linder's Wife Could Not Quit Him. Refused to Heed Her Mother's Pleading, Though She Wrote 'He Will Kill Me.' Both Left Last Letters. "Quo Vadis" Film Is Believed to Have Pointed One Way of Suicide to Star. |work=The New York Times |date=2 November 1925 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1925/11/02/archives/max-linders-wife-would-not-quit-him-refused-to-heed-her-mothers.html}}</ref> and died in a similar manner. They drank [[Veronal]], injected morphine and slashed their wrists.<ref name=Wakeman2/><ref>{{cite news|title=Max Linder and Wife in Double Suicide. They Drink Veronal, Inject Morphine and Open Veins in Their Arms|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1925/11/01/archives/max-linder-and-wife-in-a-double-suicide-they-drink-veronal-inject.html|quote=Max Linder, one of the earliest film comedians in the world, committed suicide this morning in a death compact with his lovely wife, formerly Miss Peters, a wealthy Paris heiress.|work=[[Quo Vadis (1924 film)|New York Times]]|date=1 November 1925|access-date=12 July 2010}}</ref> Peters died first, while Linder was unconscious throughout 31 October, with doctors fighting to keep him alive. He died after midnight on 1 November.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_qtuDwAAQBAJ&q=october+31&pg=PA1892|title = Max Linder: Father of Film Comedy|last1 = Mathiesen|first1 = Snorre Smári|year = 2018}}</ref>

There is still some question, however, as to whether the deaths were really a result of a suicide pact, or whether Max murdered his much-younger wife or pressured her into killing herself. On 2 November 1925, ''The New York Times'' reported that Hélène Linder had told her mother by letter, "He will kill me." The article also claims that "no one believes she herself opened her veins."<ref name="nytimes.com"/> Critic Vincent Canby acknowledged in 1988 that "Linder died with his young wife in what has sometimes been described as a suicide pact, and sometimes as a murder-suicide."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/01/movies/review-film-homage-to-max-linder-early-french-film-comic.html|title=Homage to Max Linder, Early French Film Comic|author=Vincent Canby|author-link=Vincent Canby|work=[[New York Times]]|date=1 April 1988|access-date=13 June 2009}}</ref> In addition, Maud Linder reported in her memoir that the head of the workmen at Linder's house in Neuilly overheard Max tell a friend, probably Armand Massard, that he planned to kill his wife along with himself, as he could not bear the thought of her belonging to another after he was gone.<ref>{{cite book |last=Linder |first=Maud |date=1992 |title=Max Linder Était Mon Père |location=France |publisher=Flammarion |page=126 |isbn=2-08-066576-6 }}</ref>

Linder was buried at the Catholique cimetière de Saint-Loubès. His wife is buried at [[Père Lachaise Cemetery]] in Paris.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FOHgDAAAQBAJ&q=jo+stafford&pg=PA229|title=Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed. (2 volume set)|last1=Wilson|first1=Scott|publisher=McFarland|year=2016|page=446|isbn=978-1-4766-2599-7|access-date=January 25, 2017}}</ref>