Guests leaving the hotel were stunned to see a group of around 60 impersonators, dressed in wigs and full rhinestone costume, gathered in the car park.

“I was in a bit of a state getting out of my room,” one guest told the Daily Mirror. “But I was more confused when I got outside to see all these people dressed as Elvis.

“There were people in full Elvis jumpsuits and wigs standing by a roundabout, looking a bit worse for the wear.”

About 250 people attended the event. Link -via Arbroath

(Unrelated image credit: Flickr user adm)

Neatorama presents

It was August 27, 1965. The greatest summit meeting in show business history was about to take place.

The Beatles had arrived in America in February of 1964. They had already met many singers, celebrities, and movie stars. Basically, all they had to do was request it, snap their fingers, and almost literally, anyone could be brought in for them to meet. But according to John Lennon, the leader of the band, there was only one person they had to meet. It was the King himself, Elvis Presley.

The meeting has been documented by several witnesses present, but as we all know, human memory can be fallible. But the following is, in general, what occurred that incredible evening. The first question, after the meeting was agreed to, was who would come to whom? It was quickly agreed upon that the Beatles -the “new kids on the block”- would go to Elvis’ house in Bel Air and pay homage to the King.

After smoking a joint in their limo to calm their nerves, the Beatles pulled up to Perugia Way and were greeted at the door. It was Elvis Presley, their supreme idol, in the flesh! Elvis, dressed and acting super-casual, escorted the boys in. He was watching TV without the sound on (something the Beatles liked doing themselves). The Beatles were amazed -a color TV! And even more incredible, according to Paul, he had one of those weird contraptions, a remote control! They had never seen one before (remember, it was 1965).

The Fab Four sat staring, literally gaping, at their hero. After a few minutes, Elvis broke the quiet ice and said, “Hell, if you’re just going to sit around staring at me, I’m going up to bed.” Everyone laughed and the remark calmed the tense atmosphere.

According to witnesses, all the Beatles were in awe of Elvis, but John and Paul were really transfixed. Elvis soon brought out several guitars, and the greatest jam session in music history took place. Elvis apologized to Ringo for not having any drums available for him to play on. John, Paul, and Elvis started playing various songs, their favorites. Accounts vary, but it seems definite that they jammed on the Beatles song “I Feel Fine.”

Elvis picked up a bass guitar and played it, as Paul made a typical McCartney quip like, “You’re getting pretty good on that bass, El.”

After a few minutes, George joined in, as Ringo had to content himself tapping his hands on a chair to keep time. George soon wandered out back and smoked another joint with a few of Elvis’ boys. Ringo went in and shot pool with some others.

The Colonel, Elvis’ manager, had a roulette wheel, and roulette was played that evening, too. The Colonel and the Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein, chatted and compared notes.

John and Paul chatted with Elvis. Elvis records and Beatles records played on Elvis’ jukebox in the background.  John, ever the blunt one, asked Elvis: “Why don’t you make some records like you used to? I’d buy them.” (Everyone well knew that Elvis’ records were lame and watered down at this time, compared to his classic songs of the fifties.)

Elvis sadly answered how he was stuck making those B-movies and he had to record soundtracks for all of them. Elvis was also unhappily aware that The Beatles’ two movies, A Hard Day’s Night and Help! were fresh and creative, while he was stuck in the horrible “formula films,” singing to girls in bikinis, which he hated with a passion.

Details of the actual conversation between John, Paul, and Elvis are sketchy at best. A big disappointment: The Colonel allowed no photos to be taken of this historic event, and the legendary jam session was not recorded for posterity, either. (One can only wonder at how many millions a tape or a film of this meeting would fetch today on the market.)

As they chatted, John and Elvis realized they shared a common love for comedian Peter Sellers. Lennon broke Elvis up with his Sellers imitation. Priscilla, Elvis’ wife, was brought down and Elvis introduced her. To the Beatles, she seemed like a trophy wife, and she exited fairly fast after saying hi.

Finally, it was time to go, and the Beatles said their goodbyes. They invited Elvis to visit them at their place the next day. Elvis gave the answer we’ve all given to salesmen we wish to get rid of: “I’ll think about it.” (meaning “no way.”)

Many girls (of course) were surrounding the front of the house to catch a glimpse. Two off-balance pictures (taken by girl fans) of the Beatles exiting the house do survive. But sadly, none of the famous five together.

The next day, John Lennon told one of Elvis’ boys to deliver a message to Elvis. “Tell him,” said Lennon, “that if it weren’t for Elvis, there’d be no Beatles.” When he relayed the message, he remembered, Elvis smiled and seemed pleased.

____________________________________

(YouTube link)

A new museum exhibit opens today in Liverpool that recalls this event. Elvis and Us will begin its run today at The Beatles Story Museum in Liverpool in cooperation with Graceland. Artifacts on display will include the Fender bass guitar from the historic meeting and the pool table that Ringo used to amuse himself at Elvis’ home. The exhibit will run for two years.

Got Potter-mania yet? Next Movie Blog came up with this clever post of 9 classic album covers re-imagined with the characters from Harry Potter. Snape as the King? We’re all shook up.

Link – Thanks Andie Taylor!

Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.

It all happened over 50 years ago: January 6, 1957. The most famous act of “censorship” in television history. Elvis Presley was actually photographed, deliberately, from the waist up only.

Why all the fuss over a then 22-year-old?

Well, It is almost impossible to overexaggerate the effect Elvis Presley had on America (and the whole world) 50 years ago. It is a bit hard for our generation to comprehend all the stir the young Elvis created. We live in the “I’ve seen it all” generation -nothing shocks us anymore. Female mud wrestling, the O.J. trial, the countless sex scandals, snuff films, serial murders, etc. etc. etc. We are all at the almost “impossible to shock” level on this crazy planet.

But in the very staid, conservative 1950s, where the world’s top singers were Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, and Perry Como, Elvis came on the scene like a tornado. The hip-shaking, gyrating kid from Mississippi shook up the show biz world in a way no one else ever has, before or since.

The Ed Sullivan Show was America’s #1 favorite family variety show in 1956. A strange marriage of two colossal forces were soon to meet and become show business legend. Ed had previously declared he would never have Elvis on the show, but Elvis just got too big and Sullivan had no choice but to recant.

Elvis appeared on the September 9, 1956 Ed Sullivan Show, hosted by Charles Laughton, who referred to Elvis as “Elvin” Presley. A record audience of 60 million (an 82.5% rating) watched the show, the biggest TV audience of all time at that point. Elvis also appeared a a second time on October 28, 1956. This time his sandy-blondish natural hair was dyed to his “bad boy jet black” shade, the Elvis look we’re all so familiar with. Both appearances were huge, but the “historic” one was yet to come.

Elvis’ swiveling hips and gyrating body movements had caused a massive stir from these first two appearances, not to mention his concerts and other TV guest shots. TV critics, public school teachers, priests, ministers, and terrified parents all railed against this menace to the world’s youth.

And so, for Elvis’ third and final appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, it was agreed: he would only be photographed from the waist up!

Incredibly, the people in charge of the Sullivan Show must have thought this would make the legions of worried adults feel safer and more secure with “Elvis the Pelvis,” while the kids of America could still enjoy watching even “half” of their sworn idol.

And so, on that fabled night, the King sang his songs and was indeed only shot from the waist up.

Interestingly, and ironically, Elvis’ last chosen song that night was a Gospel number. Yes, Elvis, the king of rock ‘n’ roll, was a deeply, devoutly religious man, and Gospel was always his favorite musical form. He read the Bible on a regular basis. He did not drink, Pepsi being his drink of choice. And he always addressed his elders as “Sir” and “Ma’am.”

Hmmm …some menace.

After the legendary show, Sullivan came out and told the TV audience, “This is a real fine boy,” as if trying to reassure the nation’s adults.

As we watch the black and white film clips of the early 1950s Elvis, we are almost amused. Is this what the fuss was all about? Elvis’ performance was definitely great, but “shocking?” Amusing, interesting, electric- yes, but shocking  —ho hum.

I guess it makes us wonder about something else, though. What the heck will future generations, fifty years from now, think when they watch films of us and the world we’ve become so accustomed to? And the way things are going, what will the world be like at that time?

(YouTube link)

At the age of two, little Elvis Presley cried for two days when his pet rooster died. Elvis always had a fondness for animals, even stuffed ones, including his beloved teddy bear, which he named “Mabel.” Elvis had a huge collection of teddy bears in the early days of his career; they were sent to him by swooning girls by the score.

He even had a model of “Nipper,” the RCA dog, which he kept in his bedroom in later years. In 1957 in L.A., Elvis simulated a sexual act onstage with a stuffed version of “Nipper,” which got him plenty of severe criticism.

Elvis had several pet dogs over the years. As a boy, he looked after two small dogs that he named “Woodlawn” and “Muffy Dee.” When he was serving in the army and was stationed out in Germany, he kept a poodle named “Champagne.” (Image credit: Flickr member ilovememphis)

He liked giving dogs as gifts to the women in his life he loved. He gave his beloved mother, Gladys, a dog called “Sweet Pea;” he gave a toy poodle named “Little Bit” to his early girlfriend, Anita Wood; he gave a poodle named “Honey” to his wife Priscilla; and he gave “Foxhugh,” a Maltese, to one of his last girlfriends, Linda Thompson.

By the end of 1960, Elvis’ pet collection at Graceland included a monkey, spider monkeys, peacocks, chickens, pigs, poodles, and a Great Pyrenees dog called “Muffin.” Elvis had a chow called “Get Low” in the seventies who outlived his master by a year.

Elvis wasn’t so fond of cats, although stray that turned up on the Graceland grounds would be found new homes. He did reputedly have a pet cat called “Wendell,” named after his co-star in his movie Loving You, Wendell Corey.

When Elvis and his family moved to Graceland mansion in 1957, the barns were stocked with pigs and chickens. That year, Elvis drove out to the country, filled the back seat of his Cadillac with geese and brought them back to Graceland to keep the lawn trim.

Elvis also kept a few donkeys he had been given in the drained Graceland swimming pool when he first moved in, until work was finished on the fence around the property. Thought the larger farm animals were gradually pensioned off, Elvis retained a hen house at Graceland for a supply of fresh eggs. At one time or another, Elvis also had goats and turkeys (one called “Bow Tie”).

Elvis donated a wallaby to the Memphis Zoo after receiving it as a gift from Australian fans in 1957. He became a serial wallaby donator by repeating the gift in 1962.

Horses at Graceland

Elvis was briefly a cattle rancher when he bought the Circle G Ranch in 1967. He bought horses for all his entourage and his wife Priscilla. Elvis loved riding his horse “Rising Sun.” He often went out riding with Priscilla, he on “Rising Sun” and she on “Domino,” the horse Elvis bought for her. Once “Rising Sun” got upset and started running amok with Elvis on him. Elvis couldn’t so anything to stop him. Finally, after a wild, uncontrolled ride, “Rising Sun” came to a stop. Most people would have been scared in such a situation, but Elvis was furious. According to a witness, Elvis jumped off the horse and -literally- punched him in the face (much like the famous scene in the Mel Brooks movie Blazing Saddles a few years later). (Image credit: Flickr member Geir Arne Hjelle)

For a while, he had a peacock on the Graceland grounds, but the bird started damaging the cars, after which it was given away. He also owned myna birds, one of which could say, “Elvis! Go to hell.”

The Graceland menagerie included mules at one time.

Snakes that happened to venture onto Graceland had a rough time. A maid remembers Elvis blazing away with a rifle at a tree after a snake was seen slithering up the trunk.

Scatter and Elvis

He acquired his first monkey, a spider monkey called “Jayhew” back in 1956, to liven up his home. His pet known pet was a very fresh, mischievous chimpanzee called “Scatter.” Elvis loved this crazy monkey, but hardly anyone else shared the King’s affinity. Elvis enjoyed walking around and carrying “Scatter” on his shoulder and often brought him out to Hollywood when he was filming movies in the ’60s. “Scatter” liked to wear clothes, drink whiskey, and tear up rooms. Elvis bought him a wardrobe of suits and ties. “Scatter” had the annoying (at least to the women involved) habit and penchant for pulling up women’s dresses. When drunk, he had no qualms about about engaging in public masturbation. “Scatter” was reputedly poisoned in revenge by a maid he had bitten. Other sources pin his demise on alcohol-related liver problems.

Although the ETA world is primarily a boy’s club, both Gately and Feilich insisted they’re not intimidated by their male Elvis counterparts.

In fact, both women said they’ve built a strong camaraderie with fellow Elvis performers who are nothing but supportive of their ladylike depictions.

If anything, Gately said, guys in the ETA industry actually love a gender-bending lady in a form-fitting, sequined Elvis costume because it’s nice to see a queen among so many kings.

Monica Garske of AOL NEws explains: Link (Photo: Laura Herbert)

Since his death in 1977, Elvis’s popularity has grown. Once he was just a singer. Now he’s an icon with his own church (The Church of Elvis), and his own holy site (Graceland), It’s an amazing phenomenon-but it hasn’t been entirely accidental. Behind the scenes, a handful of people have orchestrated Elvis’s return from the dead for their own benefit. Here’s part of the inside story. For a more complete story, we recommend Elvis, Inc. by Sean O’Neal. It’s entertaining bathroom reading.

BACK FROM THE DEAD

Ironically, the tale of Elvis’s resurrection begins with the story of a vampire.

In 1960 Universal Studios dusted off a number of its classic horror films and released them for TV broadcast. It was the first time baby boom kids had ever seen the original Frankenstein (starring Boris Karloff), The Wolfman (starring Lon Chaney), or Dracula (starring Bela Lugosi)-and the films were phenomenally popular. In fact, a huge “monster” fad swept America… and Universal cashed in by licensing its characters for t-shirts, posters, lunch boxes, etc. One of the most popular images was Bela Lugosi in his Count Dracula costume.

Courting Universal

When Lugosi’s widow and son found out about the merchandising deals, they filed suit to block them. Their argument: Lugosi’s name and likeness should be passed on to his family, as his worldly assets had been. At the very least, they had a right to share in the profits.

The Lugosis won their lawsuit. But Universal appealed the decision.The second time around, the appellate judges reasoned that if the name and likeness of famous people could be inherited, the relative of all public figures-past and present-could sue for royalties. Even George Washington’s descendants could charge the federal government for the right to use his image on the $1 bill. The judges ruled in favor of Universal.

Laurel and Hardy

In 1975, after Laurel and Hardy’s old films became popular on TV, the heirs of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy filed a similar lawsuit against Hal Roach Studios. This time, the heirs won, throwing the entire issue of posthumous “intellectual property” into chaos.

Based on legal decisions, it was impossible to tell who owned the rights to a dead celebrity’s image-the public… or the celebrity’s family.

ELVIS PRESLEY

That was the situation when Elvis died from a drug overdose on August 16, 1977. His death was announced at 3:30 that afternoon; within a few hours, newspapers were speculating about his estate’s value.

(Image credit: Flickr user Travis Nep Smith)

The media figured the King had to be worth a bundle: in his more than 20 years as a performer, he’d recorded 144 Top 40 songs, starred in more than 30 films, (at one point he was the highest-paid actor in Hollywood), performed in hundreds of sold-out concerts, and sold more than 600 million records. No other recording artist had ever even come close to his accomplishments.

Estimates of Elvis Presley’s fortune were as high as $150 million. (When John Lennon was assassinated three years later, he left an estate valued at more than $200 million). But they were way off.

The Awful Truth

What the media failed to take into account was that  Elvis was one of the most poorly managed and morbidly self-indulgent superstars in entertainment history. True, he had generated more than $4 billion in revenues during his career. But surprisingly little of that money found its way into his pockets-and even less stayed there.

Bad management and bad financial advice ate up about 60 cents of every dollar Elvis earned; letting the IRS fill out his tax forms (he really did-Elvis hated audits) took an extra 20 cents on the dollar. And the King had no trouble finding ways to blow the rest.

BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE…

Unfortunately, that turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg. It turned out that his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, had made a deal that cost Elvis more than $500 million in potential earning-including $320 million in lost royalties from records sold after Elvis’s death alone. In March 1973, he’d sold RCA the royalty rights to all of Elvis’s songs up to that point for $5.4 million. After Parker extracted his usual 50% commission, Elvis was left with $2.7 million-$1.35 million after taxes-for virtually his entire life’s work. (Nearly all of that went to pay off his ex-wife Priscilla Presley, who divorced him in October of 1973.)

As Sean O’Neal writes  in Elvis, Inc.,”The final agreement signed by Colonel Parker…may have been the single most damaging contract in the history of the music industry…Elvis sold the rights to the greatest master catalog in music history and was left with virtually nothing to show for it. Thereafter, his estate received no royalties at all for any songs Elvis recorded prior to March 1973.”

ALL THE KING’S WEALTH

When the probate court tallied up the King’s assets, all they found was Graceland, two airplanes, eight cars, two trucks, seven motorcycles, guns, jewelry, and miscellaneous other personal property. Total value: about $7 million. Elvis left everything to his 9-year-old daughter, Lisa Marie, who would inherit when she turned 25. Elvis’s father Vernon Presley, a man with a seventh-grade education, was charged with keeping the estate solvent until then.

Going, Going…

What little was left of the King’s estate dwindled fast: in February 1978 the National  Bank of Commerce sued the estate to collect $1.4 million in unpaid loans to the King. A short time later, the IRS upgraded its estimate of the estate’s value and slapped it with millions in new inheritance taxes-payable immediately. Security and upkeep on Graceland ate up $500,000 a year.

(Image credit: Flickr user  Tulio Bertorini)

Vernon Presley sold off the airplanes, jewelry, and Cadillacs, and even the house that Elvis had bought him, in a desperate scramble to keep the estate off the auction block. But the Presley estate was edging closer and closer to bankruptcy.

ENTER PRISCILLA

The effort to keep Elvis’s estate out of bankruptcy was exhausting and probably contributed to his father Vernon Presley’s death from heart disease in June 1979.

In his will, Vernon named three co-executors to take over his responsibilities: Elvis’s accountant Joseph Hanks, the National Bank of Commerce, and Priscilla Presley-Elvis’s ex-wife and the mother of his daughter Lisa Marie. Priscilla had no business experience and had known nothing about the King’s financial affairs during the marriage… but to everyone’s surprise, she and her advisors took a leading role in rescuing the Presley estate for Lisa Marie.

FORCED INTO ACTION

With the bulk of Elvis’s fortune gone forever, Priscilla was forced to make the best of what remained, namely 1) Graceland, and 2) Elvis’s name and likeness.

She immediately put both to work for the estate. First she opened Graceland to the public, charging $5 a head to the hundreds of thousands who visited each year. Then she took over the Elvis merchandising operations. Her strategy was simple but brilliant. “Since…the estate would have to rely on Elvis’s memory to generate revenue,” write Sean O’Neal in Elvis, Inc., “Elvis would be transformed into a symbol, a character that could be licensed to merchandisers. The estate would turn Elvis Presley into its own version of Mickey Mouse.”

The problem with this idea was that, during the last eight years of his life, Elvis’s image was not very Disneyesque. His weight had ballooned and he had been addicted to prescription medication.  By the time of his death, Elvis had become a grotesque caricature of the performer he once was. This Elvis would never do as a symbol of the new empire.

Pricilla’s solution to this problem was also simple and brilliant: she would act as though the 1977 Elvis never existed. Only the young Elvis, the King in his prime, would be acknowledged. It was this Elvis that would adorn the t-shirts, plates, shot glasses, Billboards, and promotional literature of Priscilla’s new empire. In her sanitized version of his life, he died after his 1968 Comeback Special, an idol in his prime, like James Dean.

COPYCATS

The only problem with this approach was that it had no teeth. After the King’s death, hundreds of companies had come out with Elvis posters, t-shirts, videos, calendars, velvet paintings, whiskey decanters, and just about anything else imaginable. The knockoffs were cheap and tacky; even worse, they competed against “official” Elvis memorabilia licensed by the Presley estate.

Obviously, without control of the Elvis image, Priscilla’s strategy would never work…and Lisa Marie would inherit nothing. So the estate was force to fight for control of Elvis in court.

The heirs to Bela Lugosi and Laurel and Hardy had put up strong fights, but those battles were nothing compared the the efforts of the Presley clan. They fought lawsuit after lawsuit, in state after state. They put up millions of dollars. But they still couldn’t get the issue resolved.

The outcome in every state was different: In New York, for example, the estate won-Presley’s name and likeness were considered their exclusive property; but in California and Tennessee, Presley’s likeness was judged to be public domain. The upshot: Merchandisers who were chased out of one state could set up business in another. Then the Presley estate would have to start all over again and fight them there, too.

(Image credit: Flicker user Thomas Hawk)

THE ELVIS LOBBY

As the legal battle continued, Priscilla and Co. adopted a new tactic. They began lobbying the Tennessee state legislature to create a “Personal Rights Protection Act.” This act was finally passed in 1984, and though it only officially applied in the state of Tennessee, its passage was quickly felt all over the country. Reason: In the American legal system, the laws of the state in which a person dies are the ones that apply in federal court. If someone in Missouri began selling an unlicensed Elvis poster, the Presley estate could now go into Missouri federal court and force the person to comply with Tennessee law. For the first time, the Presley estate had teeth all over the country.

Not long after the Tennessee law passed, California enacted a similar law, the Celebrity Rights Act, thanks in large part to a lawsuit filed by the heirs of comedian W.C. Fields (they had been trying to block a centerfold-style poster of Field’s head superimposed over another fat man’s body).

Several other states, including Virginia, Florida, Utah, and Kentucky, passed their own versions of the law. As more and more states followed, courts began recognizing that control of a celebrity’s name and likeness were as “inheritable” as any other piece of property.

ELVIS PRESLEY ENTERPRISES

These laws changed the face of celebrity merchandising in America. Suddenly, officially licensed products featuring icons such as Marilyn Monroe and James Dean started popping up. And in Memphis, Elvis Presley Enterprises, the merchandising arm of the estate run jointly by Priscilla and Jack Soden, became the “Elvis police”. They controlled every aspect of the Elvis image, from t-shirts to TV documentaries to random snapshots that had been taken by private photographers.

(Image credit: Flickr user Annie Berman)

Priscilla’s original strategy was implemented-and today there are no fat Elvis photos floating around, ruining the King’s memory. Licensees only use “approved” pictures of the early Elvis; if they don’t have one, they can pick from the estate’s library of several thousand acceptable photos. And woe to anyone who tries to use Elvis’s name or likeness-no matter how innocent the motivation-without the consent of Presley Enterprises. Charities, cities, artists, and even school teachers have received lawyers letters.

The result of this effort has been impressive. In 1981, the Presley estate was on the verge of bankruptcy. By the 20th anniversary of Elvis’s death, in 1997, it was worth nearly $200 million. And it just keeps growing.

_____________________________

Reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader, which comes packed with 504 pages of great stories.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – check ‘em out!

Rapleaf, a company that specializes in analyzing trends in social media, has an interesting study on the popularity of four artists, namely The Beatles, Elvis, Madonna, and Michael Jackson, across major social networks. They randomly sampled 1.1 million fans, and found some surprising results (the study was done 2 weeks before Michael Jackson’s death, which explains some things):

* The Beatles’ dominating popularity online — The Beatles’ online celebrity may be bolstered by both their music’s enduring appeal and the success of their recent compilation album 1 released in 2000, which has become one of the best-selling albums of this decade with over 31 million in worldwide sales. While all the artists in this study are period icons, The Beatles’ prominence on social media may suggest their ability to better transcend generations, which is in part evidenced by them having the second-youngest fans.

* Michael Jackson’s lack of internet prominence — This is particularly bewildering given Michael Jackson’s younger – and presumably more tech- and social media-savvy – fans and his status as one of the most influential entertainers and musicians to ever take center stage. His 1982 album Thriller remains the best-selling album of all time with over 100 million sales worldwide (more than twice the second best-selling album).

Link – Thanks Michael Hsu!

Grace Kelly

Grace Kelly’s death in 1982 was a big surprise. The Princess of Monaco, who was only 52 and seemingly in perfect health, suffered a stroke while driving with her daughter Princess Stephanie. The timing couldn’t have been worse – it was just as she was driving on the edge of a mountainside, and the stroke left her incapacitated and unable to control the car. It careened off the edge of the mountain and rolled down, flipping over multiple times. Stephanie suffered a cervical fracture and some bruising, but Princess Grace didn’t recover from her injuries. The world was stunned because the reports from Monaco originally said that she had broken her collarbone, a leg and some ribs, but was in stable condition.

Photo from CoverBrowser.com.

Elvis

We know now that Elvis was on more drugs than Anna Nicole Smith, but at the time, it wasn’t widely known that he had a veritable pharmacy in his system. In fact, he had gone to Richard Nixon to complain about the prevalence of drugs in the entertainment industry. Despite a series of kind of crappy concerts – he was out of shape and self-conscious about his appearance, and it showed – he was getting ready to embark on a new tour on August 17, 1977. He didn’t make it. The day before, his fiancee Ginger Alden found him dead on the floor of his bathroom at Graceland.

At first the public was told his death was due to cardiac arrhythmia, which wouldn’t have been too unbelievable giving the amount of weight he had gained; he had also been having some obvious breathing troubles onstage. But it didn’t take long before the truth emerged: his very own Dr. Feelgood, Dr. Nick, had been prescribing massive amounts of pills for a very long time. His autopsy revealed that he had 14 drugs in his system when he died; 10 were in large quantities. They included Morphine, Demerol, the antihistamine Chloropheniramine, Valium, Placidyl, Codeine, Ethinamate, Quaaludes and an unidentified barbituate. It’s rumored that he also had Diazepam, Amytal, Nembutal, Carbrital, Sinutab, Elavil, Avental, and Valmid in his system. It’s a wonder that he didn’t die sooner, really.

Photo from FrancesEllenSpeaks.

John Lennon

When Mark David Chapman killed John Lennon by shooting him four times at close range, the entire world immediately went into mourning. On December 8, 1980, John and Yoko were coming back to their apartment at the Dakota in New York after an evening recording session. Waiting in the shadows of the building’s archway was Chapman, an obsessed fan who had approached Lennon earlier in the day for an autograph and a photo. Of the five hollow-point bullets Chapman fired, four of them hit Lennon and inflicted severe injuries. At least one of them punctured his aorta.

Lennon managed to get six stairs up to the doorman before he collapsed; the doorman took the gun from Chapman’s hand and covered Lennon with his jacket. Police loaded Lennon in the backseat of the police car and drove him to the hospital immediately and said that acknowledged that he knew who he was and fell unconscious shortly after. He was pronounced dead upon arrival at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center where the cause was determined to be hypovolemic shock caused by more then 80 percent blood loss.

Crowds gathered in Central Park outside of the Dakota singing and chanting and apparently keeping Yoko Ono awake. She asked them to give her a little peace, but please come back the following Sunday to help her observe 10 minutes of silence for her slain husband. Not only did they come back, the whole world decided to get in on the tribute. More than 100,000 people gathered in Central Park on Sunday, December 14, and 30,000 people in Liverpool followed suit.

Photo from the BBC.

Princess Diana

Princess Diana is the first shocking death I really remember. On August 31, 1997, the Princess and her boyfriend Dodi Al Fayed were being driven in Paris just after midnight. Their driver was trying to evade paparazzi and was driving at speeds much higher than the recommended 30 mph – some reports estimate that he was going at least 65 and others say 90. He lost control of the car in the tunnel and plunged into a support pillar. Al Fayed died at the scene, as did the driver. The other passenger survived.

Diana died of her internal injuries a few hours later at the hospital – the crash had jolted her body so severely that her heart reportedly was displaced to the right side of her chest. Her death was announced at 5:30 a.m. People worldwide were horrified and saddened and more than three million people showed up to mourn her during her Westminster Abbey funeral on September 6. So many flowers and gifts were left outside of Kensington Palace that the public was asked to refrain from bringing any more items because they were becoming safety hazards.

Photo from BiographyAndBiographies.

Dale Earnhardt

While not exactly in the same vein as Princess Diana or Elvis, Dale Earnhardt’s death certainly stunned the sports world. He was just completing the last lap of the Daytona 500 on February 18, 2001, when the left rear corner of his car hit driver Sterling Marlin’s front bumper. This made Earnhardt veer sharply left, then sharply right toward the concrete retaining wall. Just as his car was hitting the wall, Ken Schrader’s car ran into the #3 black Goodwrench car.

To most people, this didn’t seem like such a huge deal – for NASCAR, this was a relatively common accident and they had seen Dale come out unscathed after much worse crashes. The two cars slid down toward the infield grass and Schrader got out of his car, appearing to be completely fine. He walked to the #3 car and looked inside to check on Dale, then immediately signaled for help.

It turned out that Earnhardt died instantly, but wasn’t officially pronounced dead until he was examined at Halifax Medical Center. His injuries included a fatal skull fracture, eight broken ribs, a broken ankle, a fractured breast bone, and collarbone and hip injuries that indicated his seat belts did not fail. Sterling Marlin started receiving hate mail and death threats, Earnhardt’s #3 car was retired, and fans paid tribute to Earnhardt by holding up three fingers for the third lap of every Winston Cup race for the next year (I’m sure some people still do it). Even television announcers stopped commentating for the third lap.

Photo from USA Today.

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Elvis, of course, loved his mama Gladys. In fact, his love for his mom may be the reason he first set foot in a recording studio – the story goes that he wanted to record a very belated birthday present for Gladys and went to Sun Records’ Memphis Recording Service to lay down a couple of songs for her – “My Happiness” and “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin.” Gladys was obsessed with her son, probably with good reason – as most people know, his twin brother was stillborn and Gladys was unable to have children after that, so Elvis was all she had. She walked him to school and he rubbed her feet; she later lived with him at Graceland until her death in 1958. Rumor even has it that they slept in the same bed until he was in his teens, which really would be no surprise – Elvis grew up in a two-room shack.
Photo from Random House

Douglas MacArthur

Douglas MacArthur was the youngest of three sons and apparently his mom didn’t want to deal with empty nest syndrome when he left for the United States Military Academy at West Point: she camped out in a hotel room overlooking the Academy grounds for two years. Supposedly she even bought a telescope so she could make sure he was studying instead of getting up to shenanigans, but that smells like an urban legend to me. But one book does say that he met with his mother for at least half an hour every night after dinner, and if he couldn’t get away, she would meet him so they could walk and talk on school grounds instead.
Photo from the Smithsonian

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

You’d have to be a pretty formidable women to intimidate Eleanor Roosevelt, and FDR’s mom Sara was just that. Franklin was her only child (I’m sensing a trend here) and she was quite protective of him. She even homeschooled him until he went to boarding school, and when he was admitted to Harvard she followed him there. She was upset when Franklin got engaged to Eleanor, but when he got married against her wishes, she committed herself to controlling both of them. Sara picked out the newly-married couple’s first house, had it decorated, and bought herself a house just three blocks away. In 1908 she gave them a townhouse in Manhattan which conveniently connected to her own townhouse – it had adjoining doors on every single floor. Franklin later admitted he had been terrified of his mother his whole life.
Photo from the National Park Service

Liberace

Liberace, like Elvis, had a twin who died at birth. He was devoted to his mother, and it showed: one newspaper described him as “a deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavored, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love.” He talked about her so much in his act that she became “Mother” to his fans as well; when she had a heart attack his fans flooded her hospital room and house with flowers and cards and well wishes. But like Franklin, it turns out that Liberace was actually quite scared of mommy dearest: when she died in 1980, he confessed, “I’m finally free.” He was well into his 60s at the time.
Photo from the Sacramento Bee

Sigmund Freud

Surprise, surprise. As his mother’s firstborn, he was her “Golden Siggie” and she very obviously played favorites, even giving him his own room and making her other children share. She doted on him to the point that he started to experience sexual desire for her (hey, he documented it!) and wished he could get rid of his father and have his mother entirely to himself. According to Freud, a wise old woman had told his mother that her firstborn son was going to do great things, so her adoration of him may have had something to do with that.

Robert E. Howard

Perhaps the biggest mama’s boy of all, for quite disturbing reasons. Robert Howard was a playwright and an author who created the character of Conan the Barbarian. His mother, Hester, was a particularly selfless woman who was passionate about instilling a love for literature and the arts in her children. She was known for caring for sick friends and relatives to fault – it was because of this compassion that she caught tuberculosis and fell extremely ill. She was in poor health for the rest of his life. Howard himself suffered from bouts of extreme depression; he was talking about suicide as early as his teens. He told friends the only thing keeping him from killing himself was his obligation to his poor mother, who wouldn’t be able to cope with such an ending. Despite his writing success, when his mother slipped into a coma in 1936 and her nurse told him she would never open her eyes again, he saw his chance. He went immediately to his car, took a gun from the glove compartment and shot himself in the head. He died eight hours later and his mother died the next day.