There’s a Thread going on right now about The 3 Stooges and The Marx Brothers.
The OP wonders if those comics ever socialized at all. The responses in the Thread point out why those two teams wouldn’t have socialized and goes on to explain the kinds of social circles that may lead Celebrity A to meet Celebrity B.
(oversimplification of the discussion in that Thread but good enough for the purpose of this Thread)
What are some real life celebrity friendships that strike you as bizarre?
Friendships that would not be accounted for through an analytic breakdown of expected social circles? Friendships that would defy the expectations of fans based on the disparate public personas of the two friends?
Let’s discount instances of two celebrities having an unlikely encounter then speaking fondly of one another afterward. I’m sure that happens often enough. I’m only looking for examples of lasting friendships.
My nomination: Groucho Marx and Alice Cooper
This is why I thought of this Thread. Reading the other Thread, I had to chuckle at all the explanations of why Groucho Marx and Moe Howard wouldn’t have met since there is absolutely no way in hell of positing a hypothetical friendship between Groucho and Alice Cooper- and yet it happened!
I’ve never read about how they met, but their get-togethers often happened when Groucho would call Alice up at 1:00am and tell him to come over. They’d sit and watch T.V./movies on T.V. all night. There are also stories of Groucho loudly announcing to waiters that his rock n roll friend would need some drugs.
Alice loved that Groucho described Alice’s stage show as vaudeville. It was the first description that made Alice feel that somebody truly got it.
(ETA: Alice Cooper was big in the public campaign the restore the dilapidated Hollywood Sign. When he made his donation to sponsor the “O” he donated in Groucho’s name- this was a year or so after Groucho died.)
Also: The long time friendship between Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Jackson always seemed bizarre to me, though I’ve never read much about that.
Wally Cox and Marlon Brando were college roommates. Unlike his media persona, Wally liked to ride motorcycles and party. Wally finally moved out of their dorm room because he couldn’t deal with Marlon’s pet wolverine. When he died, Wally Cox’s ashes were sprinkled over Marlon’s grave.
I remember being bewildered in the 1980s when I read a few times that Page 3 model/pop singer Samantha Fox was friends with Lemmy from Motörhead. Not the kind of pairing I’d ever have expected, and I’m inclined now to think that it was a creation of the UK music press. (Then again, perhaps my young teen mind was just knocked off kilter by the visual disparity between the two; they probably would have actually had a lot in common to talk about.)
I was looking around for an article I’d read on Mental Floss about this topic. I couldn’t find it.
But I did find this article about how the guy who plays Schmidt on New Girl and the guy who played Turtle on Entourage are best friends. I’ve watched both shows all the way through and I don’t know if it’s surprising or not but it’s interesting!
I remember hearing that Axl Rose and George Michael got on well. I thought that odd at the time.
Dennis Rodman and Kim Jong Un, if you count the latter as a celebrity.
Churchill liked Stalin better than he expected and claimed in a letter to (I think) Clementine that if he and Stalin could just dine together once a week they’d get on like a house on fire.
In an interview on Sirius Newhart told about how his wife had met Rickles once and wanted to go to his show.
Rickles saw them in the audience and introduced them as “The stammering idiot from Chicago and his hooker wife from Bayone New Jersey are here tonight”
While Rickles isn’t the guy he is on stage, most wives would have a problem with that intro.
Groucho Marx was friends with several rockers. In March 1977, he invited Queen to his house and they performed a capella for him. And of course, two of their albums, A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races, were named for Marx Brothers movies.
Groucho was also friends with Elton John. He and Elton attended a performance of Jesus Christ Superstar together and Groucho called out, “Does it have a happy ending?” And Groucho gave Elton the inspiration for an album title when he pointed his index fingers at Elton as if he were aiming pistols at him. Elton raised his hands and said, “Don’t shoot me, I’m only the piano player.”