Also, at least in my opinion, the joke didn’t really work because Linda McCartney was not unattractive.
Did you hear Superman drowned?
They found him face-down in Veronica Lake.
That he was a rapist and murderer is factual. That he was a cannibal is apparently somewhat in question. It was hyped up—it all came out when Silence of the Lambs was making a big splash—but it might not have been the case that he was routinely eating people.
I suspect it depended on the movie and on the audience: It was common among kids who were going to the movies to see the latest generic Western or monster movie or whatever, less common among adults who were going out to see a specific, highly regarded cinematic feature.
I think of it as sort of analogous to turning on the TV and watching whatever’s on, even if it’s in the middle of a program.
But this is mostly speculation on my part. This sort of thing is mostly before my time. But I do remember a time or two when I was a kid (in the 70s) arriving late to a movie and sticking around afterward for the next showing to see the bit at the beginning that we had missed the first time around, and then leaving when it got to the part where we came in.
The first time I saw Star Wars (July 1977), my friends and I sat through two complete showings. The next time I tried this was with 101 Dalmatians in 1985, and the usher stood in the aisle waiting for me to leave after the first showing.
In 1978 or '79, I was allowed to sit through two complete showings of The Lion in Winter and A Man for All Seasons, but that was a special weekend event at an “art house” cinema, not a summer blockbuster.
I feel like just nibbling on someone that one time is enough to earn the cannibal moniker.
I should think keeping human body parts in his fridge is too.
Still, that was his reputation in the public mind. You know the old joke, “but ye shag one sheep.” And one of his nicknames was the “Milwaukee Cannibal.” Besides, the joke doesn’t work otherwise.
Yes, they did accept it. I grew up in the 1960s, and nobody thought it was a big deal to see the end of a movie before the beginning.
Nobody except me, apparently. My parents (who were both born in the 1930s) thought that looking up movie times in the newspaper, and arriving on time so you could watch a movie from the beginning, was the lamest, stupidest thing imaginable. I begged and pleaded for them to let us see a movie from the beginning, just once, but they wouldn’t budge. Sometimes I think I spent half my childhood groping and stumbling around in dark movie theaters, looking for an empty seat.
This is a good point. I may have whined about seeing movies this way, but it didn’t really matter that much. Movies with twist endings or big surprises were rare, and 60s movies in general weren’t all that “plotty.” Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is another example of a film that wouldn’t be affected much if you rearranged the scenes. It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World doesn’t have much of a plot beyond “crazy stuff happens.”
The broader evidence was that he wasn’t doing this for purposes of cannibalism.
50s-60’s joke from my Montreal schooldays:
Q: If the Secret Service guards the President, and the Mounties guard the Canadian Prime Minister, who guards de Gaulle?
A: Jacques Plante. (the goalie (“de Gaulle” = “da goal”) for the Montreal Canadiens at the time)
You mean he was the model for The Collector? 
https://ifanboy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/simpsons-collector.jpg
So Mike Tyson is a cannibal?
That’s exactly what I was trying to say and I’m glad you picked up that.
Did he ingest the ear?
Not sure what the connection between the two is though I heard the 90s version of that:
Did you hear that Mellissa Etherege drowned?
They found her face down in Ricki Lake.
Years ago at a Ren Faire I heard a Spoonerism master suggest Tyson could start a new sports team: the Fightin’ Buccaneers. Medieval topical, that guy.
Same joke. The one I posted was before my time, but it was explained to me that George Reeves and Veronica Lake had something going on.
What he was doing was far more disgusting than the Collector–he was likely a necrophile, and to top it off, he wasn’t an expert in disposing of bodies. He mostly likely put them in the fridge to keep them around and also because he didn’t know what else to do with them.
So, nobody ever watched stage plays that way, did they? I wonder how it came to be that the tradition was different for movies than for plays.