The things you learn wandering the web. Perhaps this is common knowledge, but it had escaped me before this week. Herewith some excerpts from an interesting post at WFMU's Beware of the Blog:
"I knew Cary Grant very well and he loved ... what did they call it? Acid! LSD. He said he liked to take the trip." - Debbie Reynolds
He convinced wholesome movie starlets like Esther Williams and Dyan Cannon to blow their minds. When Ladies Home Journal and Good Housekeeping interviewed him, the topic of conversation wasn't Cary's favorite recipe or "the problem with youth today." Instead, Cary Grant was telling happy homemakers that LSD was the greatest thing in the world...
In one LSD dream I shit all over the rug and shit all over the floor. Another time I imagined myself as a giant penis launching off from earth like a spaceship ... I seemed to be in a world of healthy, chubby little babies' legs and diapers, smeared blood, a sort of general menstrual activity taking place... I used it about one hundred times before it became illegal. Each session lasted about six hours ... My intention in taking LSD was to make myself happy. A man would be a fool to take something that didn't make him happy ... He had one regret. "Oh, those wasted years; why didn't I do this sooner?"
Look magazine followed in September with The Curious Story Behind the New Cary Grant. Even Good Housekeeping weighed in on the manner in 1960. A banner on their cover (above a photo of a child hugging a puppy) advertised CARY GRANT - The Secrets of His "Second Youth," the secret being LSD...
Cary Grant was a voice of reason. "I've heard that a man here and there died during LSD25 sessions; but then I've heard that men died during poker games and while watching horse racing; but that didn't seem to stop such occupations. Those men might have died anywhere while doing anything. Men have also died testing airplanes and parachutes, vaccines and common cold cures..."
Cary Grant's drug indulgences were reserved exclusively for acid. He never had a bad word to say about psychedelics. At the same time, he had nothing but contempt for marijuana and its habitual users...
MUCH more at the
link, which unfortunately is written with a headache-inducing white font on black background, but the content is excellent.
Many old school stars dabbled with drugs... its the war on drugs that stopped them being so public about it
ReplyDeleteAlthough they don't work properly on the page you linked, I can recommend the Zap-bookmarklets for CSS and HTML (just drag to the bookmark toolbar) that will transform (almost) any web page into black text on a white background, and blue links.
ReplyDelete