Murder of Don Solovich
1928 murder of a wealthy queer person in central Utah
Don L. Solovich (6 April 1892 – 6 January 1928) was a gay man formerly from Austria-Hungary employed by famed actor Charlie Chaplin who was murdered by Sheldon Clark in 1928. The murder trial made international headlines.
Perpetrator
Sheldon Reid Clark was 22 in 1927, making his birth year c. 1905. He was from Manti, Utah, was raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and was baptized on July 20, 1915. He aspired to be an actor in Hollywood.
Victim
Don Solovich was born Dusan Ljubo Sabovic in Topla, a village near Herceg Novi, Austria-Hungary (modern-day Montenegro) to a Serbian-speaking family. When he was 16, he moved to the United States in order to avoid fighting in World War I. Later, in Los Angeles, he adopted the Americanized stage name Don Solovich, which he went by for the rest of his life. While in Los Angeles, he worked as a waiter, sometimes dressed in drag, and possessed hundreds of letters from a Tom Harrington, the letters expressing a "more than ordinary affection" to him. Solovich was also employed at Charlie Chaplin's film studio, where he performed as an opera ballet dancer and an extra in twelve films, and he worked as a butler for Chaplin and his wife Lita Grey.
In 1923, Solovich was attacked and robbed of $80 ($1,500 in 2025) by Macon Irby.
“Murder of Don Solovich” enters the record as 1928 murder of a wealthy queer person in central Utah. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Murder, Solovich and murder can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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