So, I’m watching my newest MST3K DVD set from Rhino today. One of the experiments is ep#622 - Angels Revenge. In it is Jim Backus playing a white supremacist. Jim Backus. Mr. Magoo. Jim Backus. Mr. Thurston Howell the Third. A white supremacist. Let that sink in for a minute.
WTF?
He’s basically playing a combination of both of his best known works, except he’s wearing one of those generic admiral outfits, with the gold braids everywhere.
Just how desperate was he at this time (ca 1978)?
It hurts to watch. I feel really bad for him even though I know he did of his own free will (at least, I hope so).
In that same movie Mr. Blue Sky you’ll also find ex-Rat Packer and Kennedy in-law Peter Lawford (looking thoroughly sloshed), formerly immensely popular (and powerful) 1950’s radio and TV personality Arthur Godfrey, and future Oscar-winner Jack Palance (whose career was in the doldrums during the late 1970’s and early 1980’s). As I recall, Palance said his lines like he couldn’t wait for the scene to be over so he could go cash his paycheck before it bounced.
As for other “paycheck performances,” I remember Gary Oldman saying that most of the stuff he did after Dracula was for the money (especially ** Lost in Space**).
On a far more local level, back in the 70s, Burt Ward (who, by the way, looks more than a wee bit hefty in the promo pix for the “Return to the Batcave” special) was so hungry for bucks that he made a personal appearance (in Robin uniform) at a
wait for it…
car dealership in the hinterlands of Oregon (town of 11,000) and I have the pictures to prove it. BTW, he was a bit of a jerk at the time. Probably a self-image thing.
Kirk Cameron was in a video game called The Horde released in 1994. He played one of the characters in the introduction. I’m not video game expert but it seemed like a fairly crappy video game when I played it.
Embarassing in the they are at the end of the careers category
Joan Crawford (drunk as a toad) having to take a boatload of crap from Lucy because she needed the money to appear on Lucy’s '67 ILL-knock-off TV show.
But, for me, the cast of “Celeb Boxing” made me the most embarassed for them.
Embarassing in the before they were famous category:
Renée Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey in Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1994)
Tom Hanks in He Knows You’re Alone(1980)
Both,m tho embarassing now, make me glad they made it.
James Earl Jones owns this thread. His box-top fade in The Meteor Man embarrassed me so much I had to change the channel when he was on-screen. I actually winced and felt sorry for him, a multi-millionare, no doubt.
How about Jennifer Aniston and Matthew Perry hosting the “Windows 95 Video Help Guide” as their Friends characters?
(Along those lines, every “celebrity” that gets paid probably too much for the Microsoft Company Meeting each year to tell stale jokes as the funny man to BillG’s straight man makes me cringe. Victims in years past have included Dana Carvey, Jay Leno, Tom Brokaw, and Sinbad. You heard me.)
Hey, I think Schwa-chan’s cute in those ads! (especially in the one for DirecTV, where he dresses up like Mike Brady).
For really embarrassing ads in Japan, there’s Leonardo Decaprio ad for Suzuki cars where he’s looking up girls’ skirts.
The top “I needed the money” contenders, though, IMO, are the Japanese cigarette ads done by Mickey Rourke, Timothy Dalton (both for Lark) and Charlie Sheen (Parliament), surpassed only by Whitney Houston hawking a loan shark agency, where she looks like she doesn’t have the slightest clue what the product is.
It’s just the idea of Arnold Schwarzenegger–who obviously doesn’t need the money–hawking a drink that contains nicotine that I find totally surreal and rather repellant.