Ever read or hear of a story or fact about a celebrity that you find intriguing? It could be for no reason at all, but some fact that you remember anytime you see or hear of that celebrity?
For me it’s about Richard Burton. One is that he claimed that he wore at least one article of red clothing every single day of his life. Red being the color of the dragon on the Welsh flag. I’m sure most of the time in movies it was red underwear, but even so anytime I see him in a movie I try and see if he’s wearing any visible red clothing like socks. I think I also read that he was buried in a red suit, but I’d have to go back and look that up.
The second thing about him I found interesting was his huge collection of books. He claimed he tried to read at least one book a day, and had to build a whole new room in one of his houses to hold his collection. He also traveled with a huge trunk full of books.
Robert Rodriguez leaves the “Sealed For Your Safety” sticker on all his CD cases. He just cracks open the bottom of the case, oulls the cd out, then discards the empty case in his car.
And his car is full of clothes. Changes and changes of clothes.
My great-aunt, Mary McDougal Axelson, was a scriptwriter in Hollywood in the 1930s and '40s. She told me many interesting things about the stars. One of the strangest stories was this:
The lovely and gracious actress Loretta Young adopted a little girl named Judy. It was common knowledge in Hollywood that Judy was actually Loretta Young’s own natural child, and that Judy’s father was Clark Gable. The pretense of the “adoption” was a ruse to avert scandal.
Another little-known fact about Loretta Young is that she had a colostomy. When she appeared in form-fitting gowns, the gowns were specially designed to conceal the outline of the colostomy appliance.
This one is about Elvis.
My father was v.p. of aviation services for Holiday Inns during the 70s in Memphis. The oil shortage put a real dent in travel and hotel occupancy so my dad was in a position of freelancing as a pilot. Enter Elvis who has just purchased a Lear Jet. Hot plane! My father was one of the few who had certification on the Lear in the southeast so he was asked to come and fly the Big E.
I think we all know that Elvis liked to ‘indulge’ occasionally so it was no surprise that he was a bit tanked up for the first ride in his new jet. Lear jets are very fast. They tend to be flown straight up and straight down instead of leveling off like regulation commercial jets. Elvis’ stomach was not prepared for this flight. I believe the phrase they used was, ‘throwing up in the aisle’. So the plane made an emergency landing somewhere in Kansas and the Big Man got off the plane and never looked back. He gave it to the Colonel and bought a much more luxurious Gulfstream (Executive model).
I once read that Jerry Lewis wears a new pair of socks every day. He never wears them a second time.
Benito Mussolini spoke several languages fluently. He got a good deal for Italy at the Munich Conference because he could speak to Hitler, Chamberlain, and Daladier in their native languages but none of them could talk directly to each other.
More random than interesting, but I just found out today that Michael McKean is married to Annette O’Toole. Apparently they’ve been married for years. But somehow even though I’ve heard of both of them I never knew they were a couple.