I remember a band, I think it was Guns & Roses accepting a Grammy award in the mid 80’s and they were hammered beyond words.
Also, what’s the award show that comes with a “dinner” for the attendees during the show? Is it the Golden Globes? Whatever it is, anyone who comes up to make a speech after the mid-way point is pretty loaded too. I remember various people tripping on the stairs, rambling at the mic, making highly inappropriate comments, and other various drunken behaviour.
“When I played drunks I had to remain sober because I didn’t know how to play them when I was drunk.”----Richard Burton
Really? Because I heard he was coked up. And something about a heart attack.
I heard about Hunter S. Thompson’s appearence on…was it Conan O’brian? Where he was so fucked up he was wandering around behind the set…yes…I know…I’m just a shocked as you are 
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I remember a Johnny Carson ep where he & Burt Reynolds & (I think) Red Buttons seemed quite toasted & were spraying each other with whipped cream canisters.
A few years ago, on The Nashville Network, I happened on a talk show with Harry Dean Stanton, Burt Reynolds & I think Charlie Rich were totally blitzed. I wish to this day I had a blank videotape handy at the time.
I remember a Johnny Carson ep where he & Burt Reynolds & (I think) Red Buttons seemed quite toasted & were spraying each other with whipped cream canisters.
A few years ago, on The Nashville Network, I happened on a talk show with Harry Dean Stanton, Burt Reynolds & I think Charlie Rich were totally blitzed. I wish to this day I had a blank videotape handy at the time.
Oh- and in the 60s & 70s, Channel 12 out of Cincinnati had a late Saturday night movie show called Past Prime Playhouse. The host Bob Shreeves definitely got goofier as the night would go on. Then he’d disappear about once a year for a month & come back. Dad thought (and I concur) that month was his drying-out time.
Crispin Glover (River’s Edge and Back to the Future) appeared on Letterman in 1987 clearly whacked on something, as he tried to kick Dave in the head.
Richard Burton had a long career as an actor. Toward the end of it, some of his parts had to be rewritten to show his character as sloshed. On the other hand, I saw his film of Ol’ Will’s The Taming Of The Shrew the other day, and he was seemingly in complete, brilliant control. He played Petruccio as a lush, but he was right on target every second.
On a related tangent, I watched Magical Mystery Tour a few years ago and there is a scene on the bus where McCartney is so clearly baked he can hardly keep his eyelids up.
Probably the whole production was heavily fueled by various substances, though.
Kris Kristofferson was evidently drunk during his guest hosting stint at Saturday Night Live in their first season. I seemed to recall that the same was said of Louise Lasser when she hosted (or that she was high on something); that particular show was so bad that it’s never been rerun.
Arthur Treacher* often was drunk during tapings of the Merv Griffin Show. Treacher would just zone out and say very little.
*Yes, Treacher was an actor and Griffin’s sidekick before lending his name to the restaurant.
Gig Young had been signed to portray the drunkard former Waco Kid in Blazing Saddles. His first scene was him hanging upside down in the jail and everyone thought he was acting drunk but when he wouldn’t stop shaking it was discovered that he wasn’t acting. He was clearly too inebriated to continue so they replaced him.
W.C. Fields was known for always having a drink in his hand but it seems that nobody who worked with him remembers him being drunk. Toward the end of his life, Fields remarked that he wondered how he would have done without the booze.
Babe Ruth reportedly played many games drunk toward the end of his career.
Was this the incident that was discussed last night on Top Gear, during the “Start in a reasonably priced car” segment? Pretty funny stuff. 
All of the above. I believe in the Saigon Hotel scene, he was on a combination of coke and booze. Apparently his body couldn’t handle the drugs on top of the rigors of filming, because he had a heart attack. IIRC, he was found on the side of the road by a local peasant and taken to a hospital.
Almost forgot to mention- if you can get your hands on a copy of Hearts of Darkness- I believe it is available in a package with Apocalypse Now, by all means, see it. The documentary about the making of the movie is almost as intensely weird as the movie itself.
Martin wasn’t teetotal, but usually when he appeared onstage with a drink in his hand, it was apple juice or ginger ale; the lush routine was largely a put-on.
Shane MacGowan, lead singer and arguably the motive force behind The Pogues, is pretty infamous for drinking an entire of bottle of scotch before appearing (or, often as not, failing to appear) on stage. A documentary about him came out about a year or two ago, called If I Should Fall from Grace with God. I don’t think there’s a single frame of the doc where MacGowan isn’t clearly falling-down-drunk.
On the subject of baseball players, Ty Cobb was probably drunk more often then not. Which could also explan some of his sociopathic behavior.
Nah. He was just plain psychotic. :eek:
He faked it well, but he was never drunk for any of his shows. Read any bio.
He drank apple juice on stage.
Jeez, if we’re going to include guests on late night TV show, we’ll never end. John Goodman regularly appears on Letterman smashed.
Miller’s post reminds me of the time The Pogues appeared on SNL on St. Patrick’s Day. Ooooh-aaaaw. Dennis Miller later gave a line sorta-like “Having an Irish band on the show on St. Patrick’s Day, who knew there’d be a problem?”