July 07, 2003

Jed's Dead, Baby... Jed's Dead

Well, now it's time to say goodbye to Buddy Ebsen and all his cells. He's the first celebrity death worthy enough to form a third for the triumvirate begun by Katharine and Gregory (Buddy Hackett was just not happenin', and I can't imagine Katharine and Barry White getting along).
I remember once at a Socialist Frottagists Anonymous meeting, a heavily bearded young lady (who later turned out to be Ted Kennedy) said "Buddy Ebsen never did anything watchable other than HILLBILLIES", and I said what about Breakfast at Tiffany's? I don't know which was odder: his love scene with Audrey Hepburn or Burl Ives' with Sophia Loren in Desire Under the Elms. Buddy's was definitely the more moving of the two.

Everybody knows about his "original Tin Man" status, but some trivia you may not have known about Buddy:

-in addition to singing and dancing he was a novelist and folk artist

-an avid numismatist, he sold most of his coin collection at auction for almost $8 million during the 1980s, largely to finance his divorce from his wife of 40+ years in order to marry a woman less than half his age

-a conservative back before it was neo, he p.o.d many of his more liberal fans (not that it mattered, since he was retired by then) when he campaigned for the opponent of his very liberal former co-star Nancy Kulp. (In fairness, she started it: she stated in a radio spot that all of her former co-stars were behind her, in spite of the fact that in addition to being untrue it was totally irrelevant since they were all dead or living in California and she was running for a Pennsylvania seat; Buddy did a radio spot for her Republican opponent; bitter, she later insinuated that his acts were in part motivated by the fact she was openly gay, but evidently they made peace before she expired)

-Had he lived just 29 more years, he'd have held the record for Oldest Living Human