In the realm of entertainment, truth can often be stranger than fiction. From mistaken identities to unexpected talents, the stories behind the stars never cease to amaze. Take a journey through the bewildering world of Hollywood oddities.
Neil Diamond was offered and auditioned for the role of Lenny Bruce, the acid tongued, vulgar comic from the 60’s, in the movie ‘Lenny’. Neil Diamond = Lenny Bruce; I just don’t see that…….but then again I wouldn't have imagined Dustin Hoffman portraying Lenny either, but he did.
Werner Klemperer, the actor who starred as Colonel Klink so memorably in the comedy series Hogan’s Heroes, was really a soldier in the U.S. Army in World War Two and was actually part Jewish! Klemperer only agreed to play the part of the POW camp Commandant if Klink was written in as a fool and not as a serious Nazi. He got his wish.
He also appeared on the TV show The Dating Game vying for a date against two other bachelors who the female contestant was not able to see (he lost).
On the other hand, British actor Donald Pleasence, a major actor in the historic movie The Great Escape portrayed a British POW escaping from his confinement in a Nazi camp. The movie was a fairly accurate filming of one of the most famous real breakouts from a WWII camp. In real life he had been a wireless operator on bombers doing sorties over Germany He was shot down and spent time in a real POW camp- Stalag Luft 1. While imprisoned there he kept true to his acting passion by producing and acting in plays for his fellow prisoners.
John Denver and his two co-writers had never been to West Virginia when they wrote the very popular and expressive “Take Me Home, Country Roads” that brought Denver to fame as both a writer and performer. Married co-writers Taffy Nivert and Bill Danoff actually conceived of the song while driving through New England. They used an encyclopedia section on West Virginia to help get the ideas to put it to paper.
Hitler and Himmler were vegetarians.
James Earl Jones, the overpowering voice behind the Lord of the Dark Side in the first few Star Wars movies, had a stuttering problem as a young man yet went on to become a renowned actor and one of the first black men to regularly appear in films in the 1960’s.
Hedy Lamar, the very lovely Austrian actress who was one of the first to appear in the buff in a full-length Czech film (leave to the Czechs to set that record!) also helped develop a radio guidance system for torpedos, an instrument that helped turn the tide of WWII against the Nazi’s.
Josephine Baker, a very talented and energetic young black woman from St. Louis was born into a hard life. Having a difficult childhood she had to make money washing clothes at age 8 and quit school at 13. For a while she survived as a street kid by scavenging trash cans for food and street dancing for money. She was determined to become an artist and joined a street performance group. Finding minimal success in America and Broadway she moved to France at the age of 19 where she became a huge international sensation as a singer and dancer. Ernest Hemingway called her “the most sensational woman anyone ever saw!” She eventually adopted 12 children of different races and bought a French Chalet.
During WWII she continued to perform, but also worked clandestinely as a spy against the Germans. She was personally awarded the Resistance Medal by President Charles de Gaulle himself.
After the death of Martin Luther King his wife Coretta Scott King asked her to take over her husband's work on civil rights which she thought over, then refused because she said her children “were too young to lose their mother.”
Josephine Baker passed away peacefully in her sleep from a brain hemorrhage. She was buried with full military honors in a French cemetery, the first American female to do so.
