Intriguing meetings of famous or historical figures you don't usually associate together

In My Humble Opinion
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I remember reading about a meeting about between Ford and Hearst. Ford lived very well but was frugal, Hearst was famous for having an income of more than $1 million per month but always being broke. Ford advised him, seriously, to “get yourself about thirty or forty million dollars, put it in savings and just kind of forget it’s there.”

1921 picture of Ford, Edison, W.G. Harding, and Firestone. Edison also met Sarah Bernhardt during her tour.

When James Garfield was shot one of the men brought in to treat him was Alexander Graham Bell. Though not a physician, he attempted to find the bullet using an ancestor of the metal detector. Bell also was friends with Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan; he was highly active in deaf-mute research as his wife and mother (two different women) were deaf-mutes, and the telephone began in part as research for what we would call a hearing aid.

82

David Bowie and Bing Crosby, with the “Little Drummer Boy” single. Bowie went along with it because his mother liked Crosby, Crosby had never heard of Bowie but did it because his children asked him to. He later said Bowie was “a clean cut kid and a real fine asset to the show”, obviously unaware of Bowie’s slight cocaine habit at the time.

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I’ve heard that this pairing was considered so weird at the time that some viewers couldn’t believe it was real. They thought it must have been faked using special effects! Crosby died between the time the Christmas special was shot and the time it actually aired, so I guess it seemed plausible to some that the Crosby/Bowie segment could have been put together after his death to round out the show.

84

In the 1970s miniseries, “Dickens of London,” there is an episode giving a fictionalized account of their meeting in Baltimore, wherein Poe takes Dickens to see a real-life M. Valdemort (A man hypnotized at the point of death and kept in a sort of suspended animation). From the way it’s presented, it’s unclear if Dickens is telling a tall tale about Poe, or if Poe has played an elaborate prank on the more successful author.

85

Please tell me there’s footage!

86

Well, here’s Cosell & Lennon at least…

http://www.mmbolding.com/Monday/MNFlennoncosell.wmv

87

Roger Ebert and Oprah Winfrey went on a couple of [/url=“http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051116/COMMENTARY/511160301”]dates, and Ebert was the one that recommended that she syndicate her local show.

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IIRC Winfrey introduced him to his wifeas well, though I forget how. (I find it strangely disturbing to conceive of Ebert as anybody’s love interest.)

89

Thanks for this – I did know that Twain died in 1910 (famous going out with Halley’s comet), so I did the math. I had no idea Keller lived into the late 1960s :eek: She’s popularly thought of as a 19th-century figure, AFAIK.

90

A meeting that really only involves one famous person, but I’ll mention it because of the Old South meets TV Land: Lucille Ball & Desi Arnaz met Helen Dortch Longstreet, widow of General James Longstreet (Confederate general who served at Gettysburg, Chickamauga, and other major battles). Helen was 42 years younger than her husband, who was something of a pariah in Georgia in spite of his CSA credentials 1st) for having suggested in his writings that Gettysburg failed because of Lee making major blunders and 2nd) joining and running for office on the Republican ticket, so marrying a woman younger than most of his (pissed-off) children was par for the course.
The Golden Gate Exposition was a mini world’s fair type event to inaugurate the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge. Mrs. Longstreet was a VIP there as one of if not the last surviving widow of a major Civil War general. Lucy and Desi, newlyweds at the time, performed there. I cannot google it but I have seen the picture where they and other dignitaries are standing around Mrs. Longstreet. I have no idea if they had the remotest clue who she was- if Lucy or Desi were history buffs I’ve never read it [or that they weren’t]- but they were with her under the Longstreet Pavilion sign.
Speaking of military widows, Elizabeth Bacon “Libby” Custer outlived her husband by 57 years and gave constant lectures and attended benefits of all kind and met pretty much everybody. I’ve seen photographs of her with a pre-presidential FDR and Eleanor and TR (who was a major ‘fan’ of her husband) and members of the Hollywood community who made silent films about her husband. She died only a few years shy of seeing They Died With Their Boots On and Santa Fe Trail and other major talkies about him.
I have read- I cannot verify the accuracy- that one reason Custer was looked upon as such a hero when in fact he killed women/babies/old people/children as well as warriors and often attacked unprovoked, was deference to Libby. She was a major guardian of his legacy and basically his high priestess. It was not until decades after he died that public opinion of him began to really shift (Little Big Man being probably the biggest shifter, though it’s no more historically accurate than many of the pro-Custer westerns).
It may have been mentioned upthread, but Wilford “Quaker Oats and Diabeetus” Brimly was a member of “The Mormon Mafia”. That’s not an organized crime family but the group of Mormons who served as anti-tobacco/anti-alcohol Howard Hughes’ bodyguards in his nekkid and crazy years.

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Clip. Amazing stuff.

92

Read a bio of Janis once (sorry, no cite) that claimed that Joplin once was being swooned over by the patrons of a bar in NYC (possibly Max’s Kansas Factory?) and was asked to name all her famous lovers and appraise their abilities in bed. Two names mentioned were Joe Namath (whom she rated as not especially memorable) and…Dick Cavett!!! (whom she claimed was “absolutely fantastic in the sack!”)

93

Hitler and Lenin meeting and allegedly playing chess in a boarding house in Vienna prior to WW1.

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Bump for one I just learned about.

It’s no surprise that Louis Armstrong met everybody-who-was-anybody during his decades long heyday, but it was the details of two of his big meetings that I thought worth bumping the thread for. The sources come from documentaries on Armstrong and on Davis.

Louis Armstrong- for those not familiar with his childhood he was the illegitimate son of a New Orleans prostitute but was raised by his Roman Catholic grandmother, though as a child he developed such a deep bond with a Russian Jewish family he worked for that until the end of his life he wore the Star of David necklace that they gave him. Two other things you could guarantee finding close to him at any time (not including his clothes and instruments) were marijuana (several varieties) and laxative. He was a huge advocate of laxative use in general, but he L-O-V-E-D a brand called Swiss Kriss so much that he posed for an advertisement for them free of charge, his only compensation being a lifetime supply. The ad even featured him- as tastefully as you could feature him in such a way- on the toilet, with the name of the laxative and “Say goodbye to it all” as the caption.
Armstrong was of course a musical genius but he was a genius when not playing the horn as well. He read and did crossword puzzles constantly (if you wonder why that’s odd considering he grew up in some of the worst slums in the south with only piece-meal education and much of that in all-black underfunded turn of the century reform schools where education wasn’t that much a priority) and could speak with informed style on a huge array of topics, plus he had manners, but he was also eccentric and loved to joke.

The reason the above is relevant to his meetings:

Shortly after WW2 he had a command performance for King George VI and the royal family (Queen Elizabeth and the two princesses). After the performance he met with them, and gave them Swiss Kriss laxatives telling them it changed his life and improved his health. (I wonder if he slipped the king some herb as well; couldn’t have hurt in getting rid of that WW2 stress.) I wonder if the box of Swiss Kriss is still in the royal archives somewhere.

Later he performed for Pope Pius XII. During their talk Pius commented on Louis’s necklace asking if he (like Sammy Davis) was Jewish, and Louis responded that no, he was a Catholic, albeit considerably lax (no pun intended). Pius was also introduced to (the fourth and favorite) Mrs. Armstrong and asked if they had children, to which Armstrong responded- surrounded by diplomatic courtiers and guards and the press- “No your holiness… but we sure have a lot of fun trying!”

The diplomats (U.S. and Vatican) were astonished and horrified and the Pope looked a bit shocked. When it sank in what Louis had said however (remember the language barrier) he burst out laughing, and as in the movies that’s when everybody else followed suit. Nobody was ever that jocular with His Holiness and he is said to have appreciated being treated as “one of the guys” if only for a couple of seconds. (I wonder if Louis gave His Holiness some Swiss Kriss [for the Swiss Guard] and weed.)

Another story I thought was interesting: Armstrong and Sinatra were friends or at least acquaintances, which is not surprising. Sammy Davis Jr. however was one of Frank’s closest friends, though on-again/off-again like most of Sinatra’s friends due to Frank’s infamous temper (and his prudishness where drugs were concerned). Davis said that like everyone else who knew him he endured Frank’s wrath several times, but that the most furious Sinatra ever got with him was when he and another black entertainer (I don’t remember which- I don’t think it was one anywhere near the fame of Armstrong and Davis) referred, shortly after Armstrong’s death, to him and his band as Uncle Toms shuffling for whitey.
Sinatra had immense respect for Louis and launched into a furious lecture, telling them that long before Davis Louis Armstrong was the first black headliner at many venues and was integrating them, and that while Davis might occasionally mention politics Armstrong had in fact refused to play Arkansas and denounced it’s government as an ignorant whitetrash dictator (pretty much in those words) over the integration struggles there and had even reneged on a tour of the Soviet Union that the State Dept. had specifically asked him to make (a goodwill gesture) because he wasn’t in the mood to spread goodwill for the U.S. due to race relations; J.Edgar of course had a two ton file on Armstrong due to such things. Sinatra asked Davis “That ‘uncle Tom’ has put his money where his mouth is and risked fame and fortune and reputation many times for what he believes in, he just didn’t do it with his press agent standing at his side. What exactly have you done?” Davis dropped the issue.