There’s also the fact while Top Gun was infamously just a Navy ad campaign, you also have stuff like Independence Day that requested Pentagon clearance, didn’t get it because of script changes they wanted but we’re denied, and the movie still wound up being a smash hit with excellent special effects replacing what would have been “real” aircraft.
I heard a lot of stories through my dad from my grandmother, who did extra work, bit parts on stage, nightclub, etc.
One I remember was how Louis B. Mayer had everyone gather into a soundstage to sing “Happy Birthday” to him. And so they did, but as hundreds of people were singing “…dear L. B.,” one voice sang “…and fuck you.” It was noticed nonetheless, and that’s why Perry Como’s movie career was extraordinary brief.
Yeah, I grew up watching Phil on Bilko. That movie made me cry. Fertilized my growing hatred of Steve Martin.
Same thing. My Dad, a top sgt also though Phil Silvers/Bilkp was hilarious.
The film is 30% Rotten on Rotten Tomatoes. IMHO- they were being nice.
I think your hatred of Martin is unwarranted. That said, he was not the right actor to play Bilko. Michael Keaton would’ve been a much better fit.
Apparently they used to say back then that Wallis Simpson was male.
supposedly garbo and Marlene Dietrich had a few months-long affair in the 1920s when they were in a movie together in Europe and it was broken off due to Marlene being emotionally abusive which led to a decades-long feud in Hollywood lesbian circles …
noodling around on my phone, I read thru one of those chatbot stories about her. It said she was ‘born intersexed’, unable to copulate, and learned ‘exotic oral sex techniques’ to make up for it. Rather absurd but I guess it’s possible. I had a married friend who was intersexed (brought up as a female) …(never thought to ask her such an intrusive question though.)
There was a similar story about why comedian Jackie Mason disappeared. According to him, he was playing around and accidentally gave Ed Sullivan the Finger.
Some weirdos have speculated the same thing about Michelle Obama.
In some roles he was fine. Not this for and some others - he wasn’t the best choice. Martin’s “King Tut” on SNL was sheer brilliance.
The story I heard was that Reeves had gone crazy and become convinced he actually was Superman. He shot himself to show others how the bullet would just bounce off him. (Actually, come to think of it, I think in the story I heard he fell from a great height because he was convinced he could fly.)
Yeah, when I was a kid I also heard the story that he jumped off a building because he thought he could fly. That theory does a poor job of explaining why he was found in his bedroom with a bullet wound in his head.
Forgive me for this, but there’s apparently a rumor that Nancy Regan, when she was a young actress, was renowned around Hollywood for her fellatio skills.
Time or Newsweek did a story on Mason in the mid-1980s when he came back with his one man show. He claimed that the Sullivan show had been running late, and Ed was gesturing off-camera at Mason to wrap up his act. Mason ad-libbed something about “I’m getting the finger”, and gestured to underscore it. Sullivan (not known for overooking perceived slights) interpreted this as giving Sullivan the Finger. And got Mason blackballed for years.
He crashed through the roof and landed on a bullet?
I had heard the story about Mrs. Simpson’s unique talents, but not the part about her anatomy. OTOH there are also rumors that she had an abortion while she was living in China which may have left her unable to conceive. Either A or B may be true, or neither is true, but both can not be true.
The rumor behind the rumor was that the grownups came up with that story to scare us kids into not attempting to fly.
When I was a kid there was a story going around the neighborhood that one of the boys who lived in the house behind us, who was about 10 or so, had tried to jump out his second story bedroom window with a bath towel tied around his neck like a cape, pretending he was Superman. His older brother saw what he was doing and grabbed him before he could jump. Now I’m wondering if the whole story was B.S.
Was it ever a real problem that kids were jumping out of windows thinking they could fly like Superman?
Why do you think there are warnings about capes, Warning: this costume does not enable flight or super strength. (Scroll down to tenth item.)
Somebody, somewhere tried it.
A while back the actor Jim Beaver posted here. He is an expert on old Hollywood and has done a bunch of research on the subject. Here is a thread that he talked about the suicide.