Recently it occurred to me that in all my years of writing newspaper columns, I’ve never written one about the strangest life story I’ve ever come across, in terms of the wild twists and turns it took in a relatively short expanse of time. It is the story of a person I never interacted with to my knowledge, although we lived in the same city, at the same time, when we were the same age. I’ll tell you his story, but strap yourself in first.

Mark Frechette came from Fairfield, Connecticut. By the time he was 19 years old in the mid-1960s, he was a high school dropout, drifting back and forth between New York City and Boston. When he was in Boston, he made money by panhandling in Harvard Square and doing some carpentry work in the Fort Hill section of Roxbury.

One day in 1968, he was standing at a bus stop on Charles Street in Boston, arguing with a man in a third floor window of a nearby apartment building, yelling invective at the man that is not quotable in a family newspaper.

At this time, the Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni was planning to shoot an American epic about the cultural and political turbulence in the United States at that time. Antonioni did not have much respect for the art and craft of acting, having been quoted as saying, “Actors are like cows. You have to lead them through a fence.” Consistent with this lack of esteem for actors, he decided he would cast two non-actors for the lead roles in his film, thinking that would make it more authentic. He had aides out scouting the nooks and crannies of America to find a young male and a young female to star in the film. The male lead would play a student on the run from the law for a killing at a student protest.

Two of these scouts happened upon Mark Frechette having his vitriolic shouting match at the bus stop. They decided he was right for the part, because, as they told Antonioni, “He is twenty and he hates.” So, in what may be the most bizarre path ever taken to movie stardom, Mark Frechette was offered the lead role in a major motion picture with no previous acting training, experience, or intention, and without realizing he was auditioning by having a venomous verbal street fight.

But if you think his path to movie stardom is the culmination, or even the apex, of Frechette’s wild ride, think again and stay seated.

Frechette and Antonioni did not get along at all during the making of the film, perhaps because whatever else Frechette was or wasn’t, he was no cow to be led through a fence; more like a bull in the ring. ”Zabriskie Point,” as Antonioni entitled the film, was a commercial and critical flop. The film’s bombing did not prevent Frechette’s experiencing the accouterments of celebrity, however. For instance, he had his picture on the cover of the Rolling Stone and posed for a fashion layout in Vogue.

Frechette stayed in Europe after acting in Zabriskie Point to appear in two more films made by less prominent directors with smaller budgets, neither movie making much of a splash. Then he picked up stakes and returned to Boston with his Zabriskie Point co-star, Daria Halprin, and $60,000 he’d saved from his payment for the three movies, the equivalent of about $450,000 today.

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Back when he was panhandling and working odd carpentry jobs in Fort Hill, Frechette had become fascinated by a musician/writer/would-be spiritual guru named Mel Lyman. Frechette was quoted as saying that the first time he was in Lyman’s presence, “there was a ringing in my ears. I mean the whole damn room was buzzing.” Lyman was the leader of an urban commune that he named “The Fort Hill Community,” consisting of several houses and about 100 members. When Frechette got back to Boston from moviedom in Europe, he and Daria joined the commune. From what I’ve read, it is a fair assumption that Frechette turned over all or a chunk of his $60,000 to the collective kitty.

The Fort Hill Community could certainly be characterized as a personality cult. Frechette, himself, said it was “a community, but the purpose of the community is not communal living … the community is for one purpose, and that is to serve Mel Lyman.” I watched him deliver that quote on a YouTube video of his appearance on the old Dick Cavett show. If so inclined after reading this column, you might want to check out that YouTube video. It may be the most agonizing interview ever conducted by the host of a TV talk show, in terms of the noncooperation of the guest.

And now perhaps the most jolting twist of all.

On Aug. 29, 1973, three years after his movie star debut, Mark Frechette got up one morning and walked with two other men from the commune to a nearby bank. Then, with guns in hand, they attempted to rob it. Frechette later put his rationale for this rash act thusly, “There was no way to stop what was going to happen. We just reached the point where all the three of us wanted to do was hold up a bank. It would be like a direct attack on everything that is choking the country to death.”

Whatever the reasoning, or lack thereof, not only was the bank robbery thwarted by responding police, but one of Frechette’s accomplices was killed in the process. It turned out that Frechette’s gun wasn’t even loaded. He was tried, convicted and sentenced to six to 15 years in state prison.

Two years into his sentence, early on the morning of Sept. 27, 1975, Mark Frechette’s lifeless body was found in the recreation room of the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Norfolk, pinned beneath a 150-pound weight, the bar resting on his throat. No one else was in the room when the body was discovered.

The cause of his death was listed as asphyxiation, the supposition being that the weight had slipped from his hands while he was trying to bench press it, killing him instantly. Friends of Frechette reported that “he’d been deeply depressed of late, had not been eating, and had lost considerable weight.” His lawyer said, “It was reckless of him to attempt a solo workout in his weakened condition.” An unidentified source in the Norfolk County’s District Attorney’s office was quoted as saying that the circumstances of the death were “a little strange.” One element of that strangeness was that the weight left no mark on his throat, opening the door to theorizing that it could have been placed there after he died. Nothing ever came of that hypothesis.

Whatever the causality, Mark Frechette, panhandler/itinerant carpenter, bus stop gladiator, movie star, cult member, bank robber and state prisoner, was dead at the age of 27.

Amherst resident Richard McCarthy, a longtime columnist at the Springfield Republican, writes a monthly column for the Gazette.