Read an Excerpt
Movie Stars Do the Dumbest Things
By Margaret Moser, Michael Bertin, Bill Crawford Global Books Ltd
Copyright © 1999 Margaret Moser and Bill Crawford
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-7837-8
CHAPTER 1
Part 1
The Movie Stars
Extra Special Superdeluxe Bonus Section: Hit List of the Dumbest of Dumb Things Movie Stars Have Done
We have chosen the dumbest of the dumb items from the book and listed them below. Look for the full details of the dumbest incidents — marked with a dumbest icon — in the appropriate chapters of this book. Think you know something dumber? Contact us at www.dumbest.com.
Movie Stars Do the Dumbest Things with Animals
1. Johnny Depp and his love for animals
2. Jim Carrey and his doggy massage
3. Errol Flynn and his pooch
4. Brigitte Bardot and her mynah defense
5. Drew Barrymore's kitty ashes
6. Burt Reynolds and deer hunting
7. Marilyn Monroe and pooch poo
8. Marlon Brando's electric eels
9. Joan Collins and the fur-loving tiger
10. Bruce Willis and the smashed chickens
Movie Stars Do the Dumbest Things with Drugs
1. Robert Downey Jr. and the Goldilocks incident
2. Liza Minnelli and Skylab
3. Oliver Stone and "smart drugs"
4. Dennis Hopper and the Mexican film set
5. Sharon Stone and the spoon
6. Marlene Dietrich's Las Vegas act
7. Peter Lawford at the Betty Ford Clinic
8. Bette Midler's New Year's party favors
9. Jack Nicholson and the campfire scene
10. Elizabeth Taylor's doctor's orders
Movie Stars Do the Dumbest Things with Food
1. Marlon Brando's pants
2. Divine's doo doo
3. Mae West's cleansing diet
4. Jane Fonda's first diet
5. Keanu Reeves's Buddha diet
6. Leonardo DiCaprio's food fight
7. Bette Midler's food fight
8. Marilyn Monroe's spaghetti bra
9. River Phoenix's crab consciousness
10. Arnold Schwarzenegger's muscle builder
Movie Stars Do the Dumbest Things with Words
1. Jim Carrey and his butt talk
2. Burt Reynolds on morality
3. Mia Farrow in the courtroom
4. Joan Crawford's privates
5. Errol Flynn and dot dot dot
6. Elvis and the yoga ballad
7. Brigitte Bardot and the Russians
8. Charlie Chaplin and his member
9. Marlon Brando and his shoe cues
10. Liza Minnelli and the sound of silence
Movie Stars Do the Dumbest Things to Each Other
1. Pamela Anderson Lee and Tommy's home videos
2. Mia Farrow and Woody Allen's Polaroids
3. Cher and Gregg Allman's last meal
4. Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor and Eddie Fisher and ...
5. Ted Danson roasting Whoopi Goldberg
6. Sean Penn and Madonna, his prisoner of love
7. Dean Martin awarding Sammy Davis Jr. to Old Blue Eyes
8. Oliver Stone partying with Cameron Diaz
9. Don Johnson's young romance with Melanie Griffith
10. Bruce Willis and Demi Moore sharing a family meal
Movie Stars Do the Dumbest Things to Themselves
1. Charlie Chaplin and the liquid prophylactic
2. Bette Davis and cigarettes
3. Sammy Davis Jr. and his cologne
4. Clint Eastwood's hair
5. Jean Harlow's drowning husband
6. James Dean, the ashtray
7. Marlene Dietrich's dental design
8. Errol Flynn and his cocaine application
9. Jack Nicholson and the full stinger
10. Burt Reynolds and the dummy
Movie Stars Do the Dumbest Things with Girlfriends/Boyfriends/Others
1. Marlon Brando's abortion party
2. Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson share the goods
3. Joan Crawford and her maid
4. Richard Burton and his socks
5. Peter Lawford and his Acujack
6. Eddie Murphy and the cross-dresser
7. Hugh Grant and Divine Brown
8. Producer Robert Evans and the barfing prostitute
9. Pamela Anderson Lee and her boy toys
10. Jean Harlow and her pick-up date
Movie Stars Do the Dumbest Things with Money
1. Charlie Sheen and Heidi's girls
2. Kim Basinger and Kimwood
3. Bruce Willis and his screwball ideas
4. Demi Moore's doll house
5. Judy Garland and her bag of money
6. Mickey Rooney's Weenie Whirl
7. Jayne Mansfield's pink palace
8. Dean Martin's percentages
9. Frank Sinatra's eighty-eight martinis
10. Burt Reynolds and his fire retardant hair
Move Stars Do the Dumbest Things with Politics
1. Jane Fonda smiling in North Vietnam
2. Warren Beatty on communism and boredom
3. Sammy Davis Jr. and his love for Nixon
4. Peter Lawford on board Air Force One
5. Frank Sinatra and the speaker of the house
6. Frank Sinatra and JFK
7. Marilyn Monroe and JFK
8. Brigitte Bardot in Greece
9. Barbra Streisand at President Clinton's inauguration
10. Spike Lee's spiky observations
The Dumbest Movie Stars of All Time
1. Marlon Brando
2. Elizabeth Taylor
3. Dennis Hopper
4. Frank Sinatra
5. Cher
6. Marilyn Monroe
7. Elvis Presley
8. Errol Flynn
9. Barbra Streisand
10. Burt Reynolds
CHAPTER 2
Woody Allen
Dumbest Quotes
"The biggest misconception about me is that I'm sleeping with my daughter."
"Don't knock masturbation; it's sex with someone you love."
Facts of Life
ORIGIN: Born Allen Stewart Konigsberg, December 1, 1935, Brooklyn, New York.
FORMATIVE YEARS: Suspended from New York University.
FAMILY PLANNING: Married Harlene Rosen (high school friend), March 15, 1956; divorced 1962; married Louise Lasser (actress), February 2, 1966; divorced 1969; married Soon-Yi Previn (adopted daughter of girlfriend Mia Farrow), December 23, 1997.
ROMANTIC INTERESTS: Diane Keaton (actress), and her sister Robin; Mariel Hemingway (actress), and her sister Hannah; Mia Farrow (actress), and her sister Steffi.
Selected Hits (and Misses)
FILMS:What's New, Pussycat? (1965), Casino Royale (1965), Take the Money and Run (1969), Bananas (1971), Annie Hall (Oscars for Best Director, Best Original Screenplay — 1977), Interiors (1978), Manhattan (1979), Broadway Danny Rose (1984), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), Hannah and Her Sisters (Oscar for Best Original Screenplay — 1986), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), Scenes from a Mall (1991), Husbands and Wives (1992), Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993), Zelig (1993), Bullets Over Broadway (1994), Everyone Says I Love You (1996), Celebrity (1998), The Imposters (1998), Antz (voice only, 1998).
Quickie Bio
Diminutive Woody Allen broke into show biz in New York City as a bungling and horny stand-up schlemiel, and has thrived as one ever since. Though he managed to build a career writing, directing, producing, and starring in comedies, dramas, and romances, Woody was a little too woody when it came to the adopted daughter of his long-time squeeze actress Mia Farrow. After his romance with Soon-Yi Previn became all too public, Allen cut back on his production activities and starred in an animated film (Antz, 1998) about talking insects. Observed Woody, New York's favorite neurotic, "Why am I so popular in countries where they torture people?"
Woody Allen Does The Dumbest Things
* Before Allen married his first wife (Harlene Rosen), his pals were worried about his lack of sexual experience. When they asked Woody if he was a virgin, he nervously said, "No." The buddies almost believed him, but still insisted that Allen spend time training with a hooker. When they told Allen the cost, he said, "Do you think she'll take a traveler's check?"
* One of Woody's buddies wanted to see just how little he really did know about sex. "You understand that a woman's two breasts are like a man's testicles, right?" the friend explained to Allen in mock seriousness. "That a woman's left breast hangs lower than her right, just like a man's testicles?" Woody replied, "Oh yeah, I know that." The jokester told Allen that there were four separate compartments to a woman's private parts. "Don't worry," said Allen, soaking up the fictional biology lesson. "I know. I know."
* For the title of his first screenplay, Allen borrowed one of Warren Beatty's favorite pick-up lines, What's New, Pussycat? (1965). Woody later confessed, "I want to be reincarnated as Warren Beatty's fingertips."
* While working on What's New, Pussycat? the comedian ate fillet of sole at the same restaurant every night for six months. The rest of the time he stayed in his room alone, playing the clarinet and eating "literally hundreds" of Hershey candy bars. Later the filmmaker explained, "I'm not really a recluse."
* Allen always has refused to eat anything he thought anyone else had put their hands on.
* When once called for jury duty in New York City, Woody showed up wearing a large hat which he refused to take off. He then demanded to be put in a separate room with his secretary.
* The star took dozens of cases of canned tuna with him on a trip to Europe and, generally, takes tuna everywhere he goes. He even takes his cans out to restaurants.
* Allen was paranoid about the germs in actress/girlfriend Mia Farrow's Manhattan apartment. Whenever he visited, he ate only from paper plates and drank from paper cups. He tried to take part in raising Mia's several children, but his germ phobia often got in the way. Woody admitted, "I don't have to be there when the diapers are changed or anything really awful happens."
* Woody refused to stay over at Farrow's place because she didn't have a shower. So Farrow built one for him. Allen looked at it and said he couldn't use it. Why not? The drain was in the middle of the shower floor, not on the side. Allen was afraid that if he stepped on the drain, he'd touch some germs.
* Gal pal Mia Farrow once asked Allen to change his bedsheets from polyester to cotton. This was a radical move for Woody. He discussed the matter many times with his psychiatrist before he felt ready to make the switch.
* Toward the end of their relationship, Allen, the perpetual hypochondriac, refused to have sex with Farrow. He didn't just complain of a headache. He told her he was afraid that he had Lyme disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, and even AIDS.
In January 1992, fifty-six-year-old Allen left six Polaroid snapshots on the mantelpiece in his apartment. The photos featured twenty-one-year-old Soon-Yi Previn posed in very provocative positions. Mia Farrow found the pictures and recognized her adopted daughter. Farrow knew that Woody was fond of Soon-Yi, but she didn't know he was that fond of her. Farrow went ballistic over this realization and, additionally, accused Allen of allegedly sexually molesting the child they had together. Allen raised a series of accusations on his own, and the couple split up with recriminations flying freely.
* Later on that year (1992), Soon-Yi was dismissed from a summer camp counselor job in Maine, largely because she was spending all her time on the pay phone. Others reported that she talked between six and eight times a day to a caller who identified himself as Mr. Simon. Guess what? It turns out that Simon was Woody.
* Woody and Soon-Yi once had sex in a hearse.
* Allen was very confused about the inspirations for his movies, which dealt with subjects such as neurotic men who sleep with much younger women. "The plots of my movies don't have any relationship to my life," the comic genius once explained. Later he clarified, "Almost all of my work is autobiographical."
* After marrying the adopted daughter of the mother of his children, Woody and Soon-Yi acquired a baby girl, by a means they would not divulge, and named her Bechet after a famed jazz clarinet player. Upon hearing the "good" news, Mia Farrow reportedly called Woody "an old pedophile." She went on to fume, "The notion that he has now made his natural son Satchel the uncle of this child. ... There's this incredibly twisted, sordid relationship."
CHAPTER 3
Brigitte Bardot
Dumbest Quote
"For twenty years I was hounded like an animal. I didn't want to throw myself off my balcony only because I knew people would photograph me lying dead below."
Facts of Life
Origin: Born Camille Javal, September 28, 1934, Paris, France.
Formative Years: Attended the National Conservatory of Music and Dancing, Paris, France.
Family Planning: Married Roger Vadim (director), December 12, 1952; divorced 1957; married Jacques Charrier (actor), 1959; divorced 1962; married Gunter Sachs (playboy), July 14, 1966; divorced October 1969; married Bernard d'Ormale (politician), August 1992.
Romantic Interests: Mick Jagger (musician), Raf Vallone (actor), Sean Connery (actor), Jean-Paul Belmondo (actor), Louis Malle (director).
Selected Hits (and Misses)
Films:Act of Love (1954), Doctor at Sea (1955), Helen of Troy (1955), And God Created Woman (1956), Mam'zelle Pigally (1958), The Night Heaven Fell (1958), Babette Goes to War (1959), The Truth (1961), Love on a Pillow (1962), Contempt (1963), Viva Maria (1965), Dear Brigitte (1965), Les Femmes (1969), The Novices (1970), Don Juan '73 (1973).
Quickie Bio
Brigitte Bardot ... the just-rolled-out-of-bed look, the pout, the figure inspired a generation of, well, inspiration. Bardot began her career as a teenage cover girl, identified only by the initials BB. Her protective mother tried (but failed) to keep BB from the hands of French film director Roger Vadim. Vadim met Bardot when she was fifteen, married her when she was eighteen, and displayed her bare essentials to the world when she was twenty-one in And God Created Woman (1956). As she grew older, the sex kitten grew less interested in sex and more interested in kittens. She retired from film in 1974 to devote her life to animals and right-wing politicians. As the founder of La Fondation Brigitte Bardot, the aging sex symbol kept her clothes on and her mouth wide open.
Brigitte Bardot Does The Dumbest Things
* Brigitte Bardot went to see a soccer game and got confused. "They ought to give them several [balls]," she suggested. "Then they would stop fighting."
* On a family holiday, director Roger Vadim snuck into teenage Brigitte's room. When her father started banging on the door, Vadim and BB jumped naked into the snow from the second story to avoid being caught.
* Whenever her menstrual period started, teenage Bardot called Vadim to let him know that she wasn't pregnant. The code phrase she used to describe the event was "the Russians have come."
* When teenage Brigitte Bardot gave up her virginity to aspiring director Roger Vadim, she asked if she was a woman yet. "Twenty-five percent," he told her. The second time they did it, she asked again. "About fifty-five percent," he said. The third time they made love she asked again. "One hundred percent," he said. So she ran to the window stark naked and announced to the world, "I'm a real woman!"
* Brigitte and a female friend were in the kitchen when a grease fire started. As the pal was trying to extinguish the fire, BB ran out of the kitchen and slammed the door shut, trapping the other woman in the kitchen. When Vadim intervened, Brigitte cried out, "If I open the door, all my furniture will go up in flames."
* When Brigitte and Roger had a fight, she locked him out of her room. He kicked the door open, chased her down, pulled a mattress off a bed, covered her with it, and jumped up and down on her butt.
* A Vatican exhibit in 1959 at the Brussels World Fair portrayed BB as the symbol of evil. The display was removed after seven days because it was so popular the crowds were getting out of control.
* After he divorced Bardot, Roger Vadim hired hunky Irish movie actor Stephen Boyd to star with his ex-wife in The Night Heaven Fell (1958). When Vadim brought Boyd to her apartment, Brigitte greeted him — completely nude. Nonetheless, Boyd was not impressed with BB's acting technique. "When I'm trying to play serious love scenes, she's positioning her bottom for the best angle shots."
* Judy Garland, Bardot made a number of unsuccessful suicide attempts. After taking an overdose of pills twice and cutting her wrists once, all of which failed to end her misery, she tried to walk into the ocean and drown herself.
* Years later, Brigitte threatened to kill herself when her then husband, Bernard d'Ormale, tried to bar her from going to Bosnia during the Serbian conflict to save starving cats and dogs.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Movie Stars Do the Dumbest Things by Margaret Moser, Michael Bertin, Bill Crawford. Copyright © 1999 Margaret Moser and Bill Crawford. Excerpted by permission of Global Books Ltd.
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