5 People Who Died During Sex: And 100 Other Terribly Tasteless Lists Paperback (10 page)

“An upstart now beautified with our feathers.”

8

CHARLES DARWIN “I have tried lately to read Shakespeare and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.”

94

[Ten Thoughts on Shakespeare]

9

SAMUEL PEPYS “. . . and then to the King’s Theatre, where we saw Midsummer Night’s Dream, which I had never seen before, nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life.”

10

KING GEORGE III “Is this not sad stuff, what what?”

95

10

Ten Hollywood

Suicide Shootings

1

BOBBY HARRON The twenty-seven-year-old silent-movie star shot himself while depressed after being overlooked for the lead in
Way Down East
in 1920.

2

KARL DANE The silent-movie star, overlooked when

“talkies” arrived and no one could understand his heavy Danish accent, went home and shot himself in 1932.

3

HERMAN BING The comic actor, six years after providing the voice-over for the Ringmaster in
Dumbo
, despondent over his fading career, shot himself in 1948.

4

GEORGE REEVES In 1959, the original TV

Superman, typecast and depressed over his inability to land another role, shot himself in the head in the upstairs bedroom of his Beverly Hills home while a party was in progress in the living room below. It was widely rumored that he believed he had acquired super powers and accidentally killed himself trying to fly.

5

PEDRO ARMENDÁRIZ In 1963, the actor shot

himself two weeks after working on
From Russia with
Love
.

6

GIG YOUNG Two years after receiving an Oscar for his supporting role in
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
, he shot his wife and himself in a suicide pact three weeks after their wedding day in 1971.

7

FREDDIE PRINZE The comedian and star of
Chico
and the Man
shot himself in front of his manager after a messy divorce in 1977. The verdict of suicide was later altered to reflect an “accidental shooting due to influence
96

[Ten Hollywood Suicide Shootings]

of Quaaludes,” despite his suicide note: “I must end it.

There’s no hope left. I’ll be at peace. No one had anything to do with this. My decision totally.”

8

DONALD “RED” BARRY B-Western cowboy star

who, despite a role in
Little House on the Prairie,
shot himself in 1980 because his fans had deserted him.

9

JON-ERIK HEXUM Committed accidental suicide in 1984 when he shot himself with a pistol loaded with blanks on the set of the TV spy show
Cover Up
, noting,

“Let’s see if this will do it.” The concussion forced a chunk of his skull into his brain; he died six days later.

10

HERVÉ VILLECHAIZE The diminutive
Fantasy
Island
star brought his life to an end by shooting himself in the stomach in 1993. He muffled the gun under two pillows so as not to disturb his sleeping girlfriend.

97

Ten

10

Literary Drug Abusers

1

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE Hashish and opium addict.

2

W. B. YEATS Addicted to mescaline, a hallucinogenic derived from Mexican cactus.

3

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE Opium and

laudanum addict.

4

THOMAS DE QUINCEY Opium and laudanum

addict. The author of
Confessions of an Opium Eater
quaffed up to eight thousand drops of opium and six or seven glasses of laudanum a day. He started taking drugs for a toothache he suffered while at Oxford University.

The remedy worked—eventually, all his teeth fell out and he had to live on liquids.

5

SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE Cocaine user. He also had his most famous character, Sherlock Holmes, use it in
The Sign of Four
.

6

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON Cocaine addict.
Dr.

Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
was created entirely under the influence of cocaine, which helped him write and twice revise the 60,000-word manuscript in six days.

7

CHARLES DICKENS Opium user.

8

ARTHUR RIMBAUD Absinthe addict.

9

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI Morphine addict and alcoholic.

10

HUNTER S. THOMPSON, THE CREATOR OF

“GONZO JOURNALISM” Renowned for excessive alcohol, heroin, and cocaine abuse.

98

P

10

ennies from Heaven:

The World’s Ten Highest-

Earning Dead Artists

1

Elvis Presley, the King of Royalties—$45 million per year

2

Charles Shulz—$28 million per year

3

John Lennon—$20 million per year

4

Andy Warhol—$16 million per year

5

Theodor S. Geisel (Dr. Seuss)—$10 million per year 6

Marlon Brando—$11.3 million per year

7

Marilyn Monroe—$8 million per year

8

J. R. R. Tolkien—$8 million per year

9

George Harrison—$7 million per year

10

Johnny Cash—$7 million per year

99

Health & Beauty

Ten Pr 10

esidential Illnesses

1

GEORGE WASHINGTON During his first year in office, he developed a huge, pus-filled carbuncle that made him seriously ill. Shortly afterward he caught a cold in Boston, the start of a minor epidemic of what his enemies called “Washington Influenza.” In May 1790 he almost died from pneumonia, causing him to reflect that one more serious illness would surely “put me to sleep with my fathers.” Despite his pessimism, death did not come until 1799, two years after his retirement from the presidency. He rode around his plantation in the rain, complained of a sore throat, and by the following evening had suffocated to death, his airway blocked by a swollen epiglottis. Washington, who had a morbid fear of premature burial, had left instructions that he was to be laid out for three days just to be on the safe side.

2

WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON He caught a severe cold while giving his two-hour inaugural speech on a wet day in 1841, and within days of taking office was seriously ill with pneumonia and “congestion of the liver,” finally expiring four weeks later. Most people blamed it on poor White House heating; however,
Globe
editor Francis Preston Blair, not allowing the death of a president to interrupt his assault on the administration, blamed it on the Whigs, who had never before held the presidency.

3

ZACHARY TAYLOR Became sick while attending Independence Day ceremonies in sweltering heat at the Washington Monument on July 4 and died suddenly a few days later. The cause of death was disputed.

103

[Ten Presidential Illnesses]

Officially listed as gastroenteritis (inflammation of the stomach and intestines), the cause is generally believed to be that Taylor ate cherries tainted with typhoid.

Conspiracy theorists maintained that the president had been assassinated, probably by arsenic poisoning. This was disproved 141 years after his death when his remains were exhumed and samples of hair and fingernail tissue showed no trace of arsenic.

4

ABRAHAM LINCOLN Lincoln probably suffered from Marfan’s syndrome, which could account for his extreme lankiness and disproportionately long limbs. He also suffered from regular bouts of serious depression, variously ascribed to a hereditary disposition (his mother and sister both suffered from “melancholia”), a bang on the head after falling from a horse, and syphilis. Shortly after delivering the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln got sick and was covered with red blotches. His doctor diagnosed a mild form of smallpox and informed him that the disease was highly contagious. Lincoln replied: “Now I have something I can give everybody.”

5

GROVER CLEVELAND A heavy smoker, he had a large cancerous growth on his upper palate—on his

“cigar-chewing side”—a condition kept so secret that even his vice president didn’t know about it. In 1893, Cleveland underwent a risky operation aboard his yacht, kept secret from the public, the press, and the Cabinet.

The evident problem with the president’s mouth was later explained as a “severe toothache.”

104

[Ten Presidential Illnesses]

6

WOODROW WILSON In the middle of a lecture tour in 1919, he suffered a major stroke, resulting in brain damage and paralysis, turning his trademark radiant smile into a frightening leer. The White House effected a massive cover-up as Wilson lay seriously ill and incapacitated for seven months, during which time twenty-eight bills were passed without the president’s signature. Wilson’s illness was kept a secret from the Cabinet and even the vice president and from the American public, who learned about it only years after his death.

7

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT He suffered a severe attack of poliomyelitis when he was thirty-nine years old, resulting in total paralysis of both legs to the hips.

His condition led to the biggest public deception in the history of presidential illnesses, pulled off with the full cooperation of the press. Newsreels never showed him being wheeled or carried, and of the 35,000 photographs of Roosevelt in the presidential library, only two show him in a wheelchair. While campaigning for his fourth term in August 1944, to dispel rumors of failing health, he gave a speech standing up with the aid of leg braces.

The effort involved made him ill, and he complained of pains in the back of his head. FDR died unexpectedly on April 12, 1945, less than six months after being elected to a fourth term in office.

8

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER He had a major heart attack that required emergency treatment just eighteen
105

[Ten Presidential Illnesses]

months into his presidency in 1955, but he broke with precedent by releasing information about his illness to the public, although most of what the public learned was carefully screened. Nine months later, a serious bowel obstruction caused him to have another tricky operation—a procedure his surgeons were reluctant to perform, given his recent heart problems. In November 1957, with three years of his second term in office remaining, he suffered a stroke that seriously affected his speech, but he returned to work after just three days.

9

JOHN F. KENNEDY Winning a presidential campaign based almost entirely on his alleged youthful vigor, he suffered from a variety of afflictions, including Addison’s disease, a deficiency of the adrenal glands. It was treated with a type of steroid associated with psychiatric side effects including depression, mania, confusion, and disorientation. He also had back problems so severe that he could not pick up his son; this was treated with highly suspect injections from Max “Dr. Feelgood” Jacobson.

Nine years after Kennedy’s death, Jacobson was barred from practicing medicine after being found guilty of forty-eight counts of professional misconduct, mostly involving the illegal prescription of amphetamines to patients.

10

LYNDON B. JOHNSON Underwent a major operation to remove his gallbladder and a stone from his ureter.

Unknown to the public and the press, Johnson had a history of heart trouble and had developed a dangerously accelerated heartbeat while undergoing anesthesia. To
106

[Ten Presidential Illnesses]

allay suspicions, the White House press secretary bluffed his way through the president’s convalescence by putting out film of Lady Bird Johnson planting a tree outside the hospital room window and the president himself watching
Hello Dolly!
on television. The recovering Johnson was eager to discuss the heroic job his doctors had done. While holding a press conference in the Bethesda Naval Hospital grounds, he suddenly whipped up his pajama top to reveal a twelve-inch scar under his right ribs, noting, “Those fellows had to go through thirty-four feet of intestine.” It wasn’t the first time Johnson chose this method to illustrate a medical point; he once dropped his trousers at a White House reception to show off a hernia repair.

107

10

Foul Play:

Ten Great Sporting Scandals

a.d. 67: Roman chariot racers doped themselves and their horses with mysterious herbal infusions, including a solution of dried boar’s dung to promote muscle growth, in the search for speed. Emperor Nero out-cheats them all when he competes in the a.d. 67

Olympic Games and bribes judges to declare him chariot champion despite the fact that he had fallen out and failed to finish the race.

1900:

Supervision of the early Olympic marathons was a trifle lax. The winner of the 1900 event in Paris, an enterprising local baker’s delivery boy named Michel Theato, used his knowledge of the city geography to take advantage of a few shortcuts down back alleys and side streets. Four years later at the St. Louis Olympics, the marathon was held on a grueling course on a hot afternoon, and only fourteen of the original thirty-two starters made it to the finish, led by an uncannily fresh-looking American, Fred Lorz. He was just about to accept his gold medal on the winner’s podium when word got around that he had hitched a lift from a passing motorist who had dropped him just outside the stadium after conveying him the last eleven miles.