Lana Turner starred in Peyton Place as the mother of a troubled teen daughter and involved in a licentious affair with a man. At the time the film was released, Lana Turner’s real-life daughter shot & killed the man whom Turner was having a licentious affair with. (It sure helped the box office for the film.)
Along these lines, there is a Doris Day / Rock Hudson film (don’t know the name) in which Day has snuck into a ‘men’s only’ hotel disguised with a fake beard. As she exits the hotel accompanied by Hudson, Day catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror and gasps. Hudson assures her she looks beautiful and kisses her on the lips - while aghast onlookers (who think it is a same-sex kiss) gape in shock. (This one might have been an intentional wink at the audience though.)
Well perhaps I assumed it was Doris Day (seeing as whoever it was had the beard on) but it was definitely Rock Hudson. I remember seeing it the same week (if not the exact night) that Hudson died.
I think “suspected” is just a slight understatement. In 1974 he did have a heart attack and open heart surgery. In fact, the ending scenes on that movie were at least inspired by his own hallucinations during his hospital stay.
If a “Saratoga moment” is an unintentional prefiguring of a death, I don’t think All That Jazz qualifies. But it’s still a bizarrely fascinating film.
They also used a CGI double for a few shots of Brandon Lee in The Crow, which was mentioned earlier due to the weirdness in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story.
On Passions a character named Timmy (played by Josh Evans) died while on the operating table. Coincidentally, Josh Evans had heart surgery on the same day the episode aired, and also died during the operation.
Ah, Omega Glory reminded me about Charles Hallahan, character actor who suffers a “heart attack” in John Carpenter’s The Thing, only to have his chest burst open into a teethy maw that bites both hands off the doctor applying the shock paddles to his chest–easily one of the most memorable scenes from any 80s horror movies.
In real life, Chares Hallahan died of a heart attack. I often wonder what it might’ve been like if a movie-savvy EMT broke out the crash cart only to see who it was he was going to have to revive…
John Spencer died of a heart attack, a few years after his character on The West Wing, Leo McGarry, suffered a near-fatal heart attack
On a related note, Keisha Castle-Hughes, currently starring in The Nativity Story as a pregnant teenager, is in fact a pregnant teenager.
I’ve got one. It doesn’t necessarily fit the exact definition of a “Saratoga moment”, but it’s one of the most bizarre coincidences I’ve ever seen on TV.
And it involved 9/11.
In the summer of 2001, FOX ran a Tuesday-night replacement series called Murder in Small Town X. Essentially, this was a quasi-mystery, quasi-game show where you watched the contestants try to figure out a series of murders, one of the contestants getting “killed” at the end of each episode.
It was a disaster, both programatically and commercially - possibly the lowest rated show of the summer. And it was dumb as all hell too (anybody remember the “sweepers”? WTF was that all about?) Anyway, my wife and I gamely stuck it out.
The final episode was scheduled to end on Tuesday, September 11th, but the ratings were so bad that FOX decided to air the final two episodes the week prior.
The winner was one Angel Juarbe. A NYC firefighter, he died when the first tower collapsed upon him, on the very day he was originally scheduled to receive his quarter-million in winnings. His body was eventually found, November 28th, 2001.
Not a “Saratoga moment” precisely, but the original version of The Manchurian Candidate (featuring a hit on the President orchestrated by foreign powers) was held back from release for years in the wake of the Kennedy assassination.
In “The Outlaw Josie Wales,” a young man lies mortally wounded and tells Josie “I’m pert as a ruttin’ buck,” meaning “I’m fine, I’ll recover.” I use that phrase when people ask me how I’m doing.