In this thread we talk about, and list people who were drunk, incedentally, or deliberately (needed for the part) on TV, film, stage, whatever.
I remember oliver reed staggering, rat-arsed onto Parkinson. And I just watched des-oconnor make and drink egg-nogg (which I understand is alcoholic?) on ‘live’ (what they paradoxically call “recorded live”) tv.
So what other notable occurences of intoxication on screen (or radio even) can you list?
There’s always Howard Cosell and Don Merideth on Monday Night Football. Don’t know if Gifford was drunk too, but I figure somebody had to keep track of what was happening on the field!
He wasn’t an actor, but the late Sir John Kerr, a previous Governor-General of Australia (i.e. the Queen’s vice-regal representative) made a notorious and widely-criticised official appearance at the 1977 Melbourne Cup while drunk.
Jessica Savitch was a national news anchor who gave a news update while clearly sloshed in the late '70’s. She died in a car accident a few weeks later.
…whereas when he fired Whitlam he was merely drunk with power.
Craig Charles and Robert Llewellyn helped out with a subscription drive/Red Dwarf marathon on PBS in the early nineties.
They were a few hours late showing up, and when they did show up it was clear that the hold up was an extended pub crawl. They were positively paralytic, but still managed to be hilarious, somehow.
There were a number of alcohol-fueled performances on SNL, especially in its earlier seasons. Broderick Crawford was quite stewed. John Belushi was frequently drunk, most notably on the first Kate Jackson-hosted ep.
There was a notorious Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, where a very drunk Doc Severinson got a few things off his chest, to his eventual chagrin.
According to the official documentary about Apocalypse Now, Martin Sheen was seriously tanked for his character’s meltdown scene in the Saigon hotel room.
The late great Harry Carey, Cubs baseball announcer, was regularly sloshed quite early on in the game. In later years, when it got too hard on him, he cut back so he sometimes wouldn’t start slurring until the 7th inning. His son Skip (Atlanta Braves) also had an on-air drinking problem for many years but appears to have been clean for a while. Anyone know what the status of grandson Chip (also Cubs) is?
One would have to assume that just being on a super-station doesn’t make one a drunk, so the number of lesser known problem announcers is generally high. It might be easier to list ones that have never appeared on-air drunk.
The Yankees trio from the 80s: Phil Rizzuto, Frank Messer and Bill White, generally didn’t seem drunk to me. Rizzuto is just that way all the time.
Also, Tim McGarver isn’t a drunk, just a clueless twit.
The late Sam Phillips (the music producer who first recorded Elvis Presley) appeared on Late Night with David Letterman sometime in the mid-late 1980s many sheets to the wind. Dave gradually realized how incoherent he was. Paul Shaffer came and sat next to him. It was pretty funny.
I was going to say that one.
What struck me about Hearts of Darkness was the fact that everything that was happening to the characters on a metaphorical level in the movie seemed to be happening on a literal level to the cast and crew involved in its production. Weird.
This perhaps doesn’t fit exactly the OP’s intention, but the cast of “Cheers” was very drunk when they appeared on The Tonight Show the night of the series finale.
There was Joe Namath’s impressive on-the-field commentary a few months back. I also remember an episode of Letterman where they were doing the show from a college campus in Boston. Dana Carvey was one of the guests and was very clearly blitzed. Dave did not look happy.
There was also a late-night talk show in Japan where the studio setting was a bar (“XXXXX’s Bar” was the name, but I can’t remember now what the name of the host was). A bunch of celebrities would come on and just shoot the breeze, but the host/bartender would be serving them actual drinks as they talked. By the end of the show, most of them would be pretty well ripped.
Uh, no. Jessica infamously did an NBC newsbreak while under the influence of cocaine (her intoxicant of choice) in summer of 1982. She was ousted from all of her anchor time on the network shortly thereafter (replaced mainly by Connie Chung) and died in October of 1983 – as per the very site you linked to.
I understand that during the initiation scene in Animal House (where they’re all singing “Louie Louie”) everybody was sloshed due to a combination of real beer and multiple takes.
This one’s before my time, but my husband tells me that Dean Martin was always drunk during his variety show. He certainly looks it in those ads they’ve been running for the Dean Martin DVDs.
And “rat-arsed” is my new favorite word.
James Dean retired to his trailer and got ahold of some wine, then went to the set and filmed his big scene in the police station. He’s supposed to have cracked a bone in his hand from slamming hsi fist on the desk.
Let us not forget Robert Shaw from Jaws. His problem with alcohol was almost as big a problem on set as the mechanical shark.
The former Russian president Boris Yeltsin made numerous televised appearances bolstered by his penchant for vodka.
Found on http://www.dechter.com/april299.html
Dorothy Kilgallen was rumored to be intoxicated on What’s my Line. The episode which aired the night of her death shows a very incoherent Kilgallen.
I saw a documentary about The Mamas and the Papas. Toward the end was footage of the group together again on what I believe was Denny Doherty’s TV show. John Phillips was an incoherent gibbering fool and no-one seemed to know what to do. Michelle, his long estranged wife who had documented his ill treatment of her, put her hand on his arm and said a few words to him and calmed him down. She stayed in close physical contact so that he shut up.
I thought it was a very cool act.