Feast your eyes upon a true local hero! He achieved a personal best, nigh-terminal DUI rating of .489, as you can read here.
As the authorities reveal: “'He is in a very small class of people because most people — even heavy drinkers — would be unconscious or approaching death to get up to .5. The danger with this guy is that with that kind of tolerance, you may appear to be fine one moment and unconscious the next.'
"Dasgupta said that for a man to reach a level of .491, he would have had to be drinking whiskey, rum or tequila — 6 to 10 shots — within two or three hours."
But Mr. Stanley Kobierowski also attained the honor of notching up the highest such rating ever recorded in my humble state of Little Rhody.
Nowadays, Hollywood actors and actresses indulge in as much bad behavior as they ever did, if not more, frequently involving intoxicants of various stripes. But here's a difference from the Golden Age. As drunk or stoned as they get offscreen, they seldom seem to report for work in that condition, and if they do, the resulting footage is never seen by the public. Professionalism on the set is the rule, and the infrequency of live broadcasts adds to the censorship.
And then we had the case of Lon Chaney Jr., a fine actor with an alcoholism problem.
When he acted the part of Frankenstein's monster on TV in 1952, he was totally plastered--so much so that he thought the live broadcast was a rehearsal! That's why, when he picks up furniture to smash, he instead gently sets it down, thinking he has to preserve it for the real performance!
Watch the three parts of this show now, if you wish. The first is below, and the other two after the jump.
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.