themselves to death"), and died in a similar manner. They drank Veronal, injected morphine and slashed their wrists. Peters died first, while Linder was unconscious throughout 31 October, with doctors fighting to keep him alive. He died after midnight on 1 November. 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 that, "He will kill me." The article also claims that "no one believes she herself opened her veins." 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." 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. Linder was buried at the Catholique cimetière de Saint-Loubès. His wife is buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Legacy Upon receiving the news of Linder's death, Chaplin is reported to have closed his studio for one day out of respect. In the ensuing years, Linder was relegated to little more than a footnote in film history until 1963 when a Max Linder compilation film titled Laugh with Max Linder premiered at the Venice Film Festival and was theatrically released. The film was a compilation of Linder's last three films made in Hollywood and its release was supervised by his daughter, Maud Linder. In 1983, Maud Linder made a documentary film, The Man in the Silk Hat, about Linder's life and career. It was screened out of competition at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival. In 1992, Maud Linder published a book about Linder in France, Max Linder was my father and in 2008 she received the Prix Henri Langlois for her work to promote her father's legacy. In his honor, Lycée Max Linder, a public school in the city of Libourne in the Gironde département near his birthplace was given his name in 1981. Linder's influence on film comedy and particularly on slapstick films is that the genre shifted