Baby Chicks For Sale.

Wolfman Jack
January 21, 1938 - July 01, 1995

Wolfman Jack (Robert Weston Smith), who died on this day in 1995 at the age of 57, was arguably the greatest radio DJ who ever lived.

He was such a legend that most people had never even heard his radio show but still knew who he was. That's largely due to his role in the 1973 George Lucas film American Graffiti. Lucas gave the Wolfman a portion of a point of profits in the film for his participation, and the movie was an enormous hit. It also contributed to the 1950s-mania that spawned Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley. Ironically, the Wolfman is probably better known to my generation as the narrator of the early-1980s ABC cartoon series Fonz and the Happy Days Gang. Perhaps it's just my desperate intent to blame George Lucas for Happy Days, or Mork and Mindy, or anything else I can pin on him. I'm not a huge Lucas fan.

Wolfman Jack had his greatest success working for XERF, a radio station on the Mexico/California border, in the early 1960s. It was unregulated by the FCC and therefore would blast 250,000 watts to North America, where it could be heard as far as New York. There he acted as DJ and pitchman, selling mail-order items such as diet pills, sex pills, rose bushes, and live baby chicks. Or at least they were alive when sent out. I would assume there's a reason you can't mail baby chicks any more.

If you want a true testament to the man, consider the number of songs he inspired. What DJ has songs written about him? "Clap for the Wolfman" by the Guess Who, "Wolfman Jack" by Todd Rundgren, and he was featured on the Stampeders' cover of "Hit the Road, Jack", Sugarloaf's "Don't Call Us, We'll Call You", and Flash Cadillac and the Continental Kids' "Did You Boogie (With Your Baby at the Movie Show)?" Great songs, all. No, seriously...all great.

On June 30, 1995, he did the last live broadcast of his radio show. He mentioned that he wanted to get back to his wife and give her a hug. He got home on July 1, parked his car, walked into his house, and died of a massive heart attack.

More than a decade after his death, XM Radio took a lot of his old bits and airchecks and began airing them on their '60s station. They started with a Halloween special with a coffin openining and the Wolfman announcing "I'm back!" Tasteless? Not if you know what Wolfman Jack was all about.

But the best thing I ever heard about Wolfman Jack was this:

Later in his career he'd travel around and do one-time spots at radio stations. He'd carry a briefcase and in it he would have all of the CDs he wanted to play, all of his liners, all of his sound effects, everything. He'd do anything he wanted for a few hours, then he'd pack it up and move on to the next gig, like he'd never even been there. Fantastic.

Thanks for the Watery Beer.

Pat McCormick
June 30, 1927 - July 29, 2005

Before the microbrew revolution, people did what they had to do to get good beer, or what they thought was good beer. Sometimes they'd have no choice but to employ a country trucker, his moustachioed, Firebird-driving accomplice, and a future Oscar winner to help bring that shipment of Coors to Georgia. Or was it Alabama? Same thing, really...shoeless, toothless people on porches playing banjos. That kind of thing.

One thing's for certain: Big Enos and Little Enos loved beer. But not good beer. Things were different, way back when.

Pat McCormick, who played Big Enos, was born on this day in 1927. He was best known by most for his portrayal of Big Enos in Smokey and the Bandit and its two inferior sequels. But to people like me he'll always be the Professor reading from The Big Book of Vampires at the beginning of 1989's Beverly Hills Vamp. Because people like me are weirdos, that's why.

But he spent most of his career as a top gag writer, working on The Tonight Show for twelve years. He once streaked completely naked across the stage behind Johnny during a 1974 monologue. That's comedy. McCormick also had an identical twin brother who became a police sergeant in Chicago.

He also apparently became involved with busty show regular Carol Wayne. They both served as judges in the 1984 straight-to-video Best Chest in the West, where he jokingly stated "This lady will never drown". On January 13, 1985, she drowned while on vacation in Mexico. Oops. He served as host for Best Chest in the West 2 when Dick Shawn, the host of the first one, dropped dead of a massive heart attack on stage in 1986. These are important things to know, and only I seem to know them.

Sadly, McCormick had a stroke in 1998 and was forced to retire. He spent the last seven years of his life at a Hollywood retirement home and could barely speak. Guys like Pat McCormick fall through the cracks in Hollywood and never get the recognition they deserve. But from me, they get all the love.

This is your day, Big Enos...let's have a beer. No, not that bat's piss Coors you like so much...let's have a Summit Pale Ale.

The Other White Meat.

Jayne Mansfield
April 19, 1933 - June 29, 1967

Supposedly Jayne Mansfield, like her contemporary Marilyn Monroe, was a very smart, deeply introspective, serious actress. She spoke five languages and had a genius IQ. She was a classically trained violinist and pianist, and she turned down the iconic role of Ginger Grant on Gilligan's Island because she didn't like being stereotyped as shallow or dumb. By all accounts she was a good mother, a dynamic entertainer, and a hard worker.

Also, did you get a look at those jugs!?!

Look, I'm just saying.

You know, when I started Dead Person of the Day back in 2008, I began it on the first anniversary of the death of one of America's hottest blonde bombshells, Anna Nicole Smith. I compared her death to Marilyn Monroe's at the time, but in truth Anna has more in common with Jayne Mansfield. While all had seen their careers come and go, Monroe's life never became the traveling three-ring circus/freak show that the others slipped into. She simply overdosed and became legend. There was even a beautiful song, Candle in the Wind, written for her. Any songs written for Anna Nicole Smith? None that I can recall (Siouxie and the Banshees apparently wrote Kiss Them For Me about Mansfield's death, though). Smith had the bizarre reality show and court battles, Mansfield had indecency arrests and the $25,000-a-week Vegas show. Their lives became public spectacle, they were held up for ridicule, and then they died.

Even the details of their deaths are freakish. Did Anna only have one nipple, owing to a plastic surgery snafu? Was that Jayne's severed head on the road in that photo, next to her dead dog?* Marilyn's overdose death seems pretty tame when you compare it to hitting a mosquito-spraying truck in a convertible in the middle of the night on a Louisiana highway with three of your kids in the back seat (the kids lived, by the way...one of them is Mariska Hargitay of Law and Order).

Call me shallow and single-minded, but if I had a time machine I'd make four stops. Only Four. One to visit Marilyn Monroe, one to solve the JFK assassination, a stop at Anna Nicole Smith's place, and then on to visit Jayne Mansfield (I guess there would technically be a fifth stop, to return to the present). I'd try to get them when they were at their hottest, and not pregnant or dead yet. I'd say the right things and hit on them, maybe get them drunk (apparently they all enjoyed a pill or a drink or two, so it would be fairly easy). When I got back to the present I'd destroy the machine. Or maybe go visit Russ Meyer starlet Kitten Natividad, circa 1970. Something like that. Maybe I'd just travel through time, hitting on big-boobed starlets and solving mysteries, kind of like an R-rated version of Quantum Leap.

Yep. Time travel, boobs and conspiracies, that's what makes life worth it.



*Answer: no. Apparently it was a wig that Jayne was wearing. The truck that the '66 Buick Electra hit also killed her driver and her boyfriend/manager. She may have been scalped, but she wasn't completely beheaded. The decapitation speculation came from Kenneth Anger's book Hollywood Babylon, but it doesn't appear to be true at all. Facts take all the fun out of life.

Thank You, Tiny Old Woman, For Being a Friend.

Estelle Getty
July 25, 1923 - July 22, 2008
I wasn't really a fan of The Golden Girls.

No, to be completely honest, to say that I wasn't a fan of The Golden Girls is putting it mildly. I hated it. It was a complete waste of time and had no reason to exist, save to give people stuck at home on Saturday night something to watch while their lives passed them by.

But I did pay to see Estelle Getty and Sylvester Stallone in Stop...Or My Mom Will Shoot! in a theater, so who am I kidding?

When Estelle Getty died a year ago today, people felt bad. They were completely shocked...because she was, in reality, only slightly younger than Bea Arthur, the actress who played her daughter on the show. Her Golden Girls co-stars Betty White and Rue McLanahan had very nice things to say about her.

But when Bea Arthur died a few months back, people just made jokes that she was a transexual and slammed her. Nobody had much good to say about her.

I think there's an important lesson to be learned from this. But I don't know what it is.

I guess...be nice to people, and they'll be nice to you. Be a cranky old hag and no one will want to work with you and people will make jokes on radio shows after your death that you had a penis.

Death's Day Off.

No one died today. Also no one who later died was born today. No one at all. This is a guarantee, and you don't even have to check it out. They must have done something to the water.

Check back tomorrow for guaranteed death.

Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting

Bruce Lee
Nov. 27, 1940 - July 20, 1973
Bruce Lee died on this day in 1973. He was killed by ninja assassins, the very same ninja assassins who later shot his son Brandon on the set of the movie The Crow and more recently caught up with his friend David Carradine. They dressed David up in fishnets and a wig and tied a rope around his junk to humiliate him. It's the Bruce Lee Curse, my friends. When you run with ninja assassins, you can always count on them getting you. You cannot escape.

Also, on this date in 1969, some guys stood around on a movie set at area 51 and Walter Cronkite reported that we'd walked on the moon. But he knew too much and he was killed last Friday by ninja assassins.

Oh, they will get you. You may be 92 years old and retired, but they will come for you. Beware of ninja assassins.

The Adventures of Crazy Mama Oswald

Marguerite Oswald
July 19, 1907 - Jan. 17, 1981

"Lee Harvey Oswald, my son, even after his death,
has done more for his country than
any other living human being."
As with all things, I am judging Lee Harvey's mother, Marguerite Oswald, to be crazy simply from something I saw in a movie. In this case it was a throwaway line in Oliver Stone's well-made but historically innacurate 1991 epic JFK. Stone really doesn't expand on it other than to say she was bonkers. So what was so crazy about her, anyways?

"This young man - whether he's my son or a stranger -
repeatedly declares, I didn't do it, I didn't do it. And
he's shot down. That's not the American way of life.
A man is innocent until he's proved guilty."
I read a good bit of Mama Oswald's testimony to the Warren Commission and found it unremarkable. She seems like a cranky old lady trying to get some representation for her son, but it doesn't reveal her to be any crazier than the average old lady.

Lee's father had died two months before he was born and his mother mostly raised him and his two brothers by herself. While living in New York, Young Lee was diagnosed with psychotic tendencies in 1953 and was recommended for psyhciatric help, but his mother opted to suddenly move to New Orleans instead. What could possibly go wrong?

Because his mother moved around so much, he had lived in 22 different homes by age 18. Depending on who you ask, there was or wasn't a series of "uncles" coming around, some with mafia connections. Lee therefore either did or didn't have connections to the New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello, who either did or didn't employ Jack Ruby, the man who either did or didn't shoot Oswald many years later. Allegedly.

(JFK's central character, Jim Garrison, was a gambler and apparently owed money to Marcello. As a result, he was quick to brush off any mob connection to the JFK assassination. This fact is one of many missing from Stone's film.)

"Lee was such a fine, high-class boy. If my son
killed the President he would have said so.
That's the way he was brought up."
In 1964, Marguerite released a record album on Folkways records in which she read her son's letters he'd written while living in Russia. Nothing more American than making a fast buck off your recently-dead son. Papa Joe Jackson would be so proud. It must be terrible...I'd love to hear it.

I was fascinated to find a photographic analysis of photos of Marguerite Oswald from the 1950s. Turns out there were several different Marguerite Oswalds, including fakes and doubles, and the thing was a cover-up before it was even a cover-up. God as my witness, there are some people who believe that they (whoever they are) were planning the JFK assassination while Oswald was still in grade school.

There's nothing about this case that doesn't fit. The most unbelievable nuggets of information somehow all seem to make sense in the enormous scope of it all. Maybe that's why Marguerite Oswald doesn't really seem all that crazy to me.

"Mr. Johnson should remember that I am not just anyone
and that he is only President of the United States
by the grace of my son's action."


**For the record, I am on the fence about the JFK assassination. I was once a believer in a huge conspiracy, but time has shown me that freaky things can and do happen every day. The career of Carrot Top is proof enough of this. There is simply too much money in perpetuating wild theories which can never be proven, and there's a good chance that a lot of the disinformation has come from the government itself in an effort to distract us all from more current shenanigans.**