Chamblee54

There is a nifty article about Cary Grant and LSD on the web now. It seems Mr. Grant, the onetime Archibald Leach, had a few issues. Duh. Married five times. Widely rumored to the the bf of Randolph Scott. A talented actor, but a mess in the real world.
In 1956, Mr. Grant was with third wife Betsy Drake, who had a tough summer. “It was an open secret between cast and crew alike that the married Cary Grant was sleeping with Sophia Loren during their filming of The Pride and The Passion. Drake had flown to Italy to be by her husband’s side during the shoot only to find Grant ignoring her. Distraught, she fled on what was to be a quiet voyage on the SS Andrea Doria. On July 25, 1956 her quiescent journey turned into a nightmare. The ship collided with a Swedish ocean liner off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts, sinking to the bottom of the Sea and claiming fifty-one lives.2 Betsy survived but was traumatized. The incident, coupled with the estrangement of her husband, haunted her in her sleep.”
Betsy Drake had a friend named Sally Brophy, an actress. Miss Brophy also received help from a psychiatrist, which included taking LSD. Eventually, Cary Grant started to go see this doctor.
Taking a legal trip, in a Hollywood doctor’s office, is not like going to a rave. It was seen as therapy, a way of learning how to deal with your problems. According to Cary Grant, it worked very well. He talked about it to a reporter, and then confirmed that he wanted this to go out to the public.
“The shock of each revelation brings with it an anguish of sadness for what was not known before in the wasted years of ignorance and, at the same time, an ecstasy of joy at being freed from the shackles of such ignorance … I learned many things in the quiet of that room … I learned that everything is or becomes its own opposite … it releases inhibition. You know, we are all unconsciously holding our anus. 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 … As a philosopher once said, you cannot judge the day until the night ..”
The only problem was, Mr. Grant had a movie coming out, “Operation Petticoat”. The studio “tripped out” when it heard the star of the show was praising LSD in the press. Mr. Grant had a share in the profits of the film, and was persuaded to call the reporter and recant on the interview.
Not everyone was impressed by the doctors that Mr. Grant used. “Aldous Huxley had encountered the clinic prior to his death, but had sought his LSD experiences from the parallel practice of Dr. Oscar Janiger, the other acid doctor to the stars. Huxley witnessed Chandler and Hartman’s work and was unnerved by their approach. “We met two Beverly Hills psychiatrists the other day,” he wrote, “who specialise in LSD therapy at $100 a shot – and, really, I have seldom met people of lower sensitivity, more vulgar mind! To think of people made vulnerable by LSD being exposed to such people is profoundly disturbing.”
In any event, LSD became criminalized, Doctors Chandler and Hartman got in trouble, and Cary Grant got married two more times. While Grant never renounced LSD, he refused to use any other illegal drug, even marijuana. He was a conservative old fogey.
Maureen Donaldson was the lover of Cary Grant in the seventies, and was a friend of Alice Cooper. She finally persuaded Mr. Grant to go to an Alice Cooper concert with her. He wore sunglasses, gold chains, and dressed like a “seedy agent”. He sat through the entire show, wearing earplugs, hating every minute of it.
As Miss Donaldson recalled the evening “Driving back to Los Angeles, I congratulated Cary for being such a good sport … He’d made an extraordinary effort to please me … [I asked him] ‘You really hated it, didn’t you?’ ‘It’s…’ he said, struggling for words, ‘you know what it’s like? Remember I told you about the time I took LSD in my doctor’s office and shat all over his rug and floor?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Well now I know how that poor doctor felt.”
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.

A blogger named gartalker has a list of words that are becoming extinct. Maybe it is a southern thing, but PG still hears supper used. The rest of the list is amusing, and can make you feel old…even if your age is not an interstate speed limit.
A term I haven’t heard in a long time, and thinking about ‘fender skirts’ started me thinking about other words that quietly disappear from our language with hardly a notice like curb feelers. Any body remember them. And steering knobs.’ (AKA) suicide knob, Neckers Knobs. Since I’d been thinking of cars, my mind naturally went that direction first. Any kids will probably have to find some elderly person over 50 to explain some of these terms, like fender skirts.
Continental kits They were rear bumper extenders and spare tire covers that were supposed to make any car as cool as a Lincoln Continental.
Emergency Brakes At some point ‘parking brake’ became the proper term. I miss the hint of drama that went with ‘emergency brake.’
Clutch – Foot Feed – Dimmer Switch. I’m sad, too, that almost all the old folks are gone who would call the accelerator the ‘foot feed.’ Many today do not even know what a clutch is or that the dimmer switch used to be on the floor.
Running Board Didn’t you ever wait at the street for your daddy to come home, so you could ride the ‘running board’ up to the house? You felt like a real G-man. Heck, most of you most likely don’t know what a G-man is.
Store-bought Here’s a phrase heard all the time in my youth but never anymore -’store-bought.’ Of course, just about everything is store-bought these days. However, once it was bragging material to have a store-bought dress or a store-bought bag of candy.
Coast to Coast Coast to coast’ is a phrase that once held all sorts of excitement and now means almost nothing. Now we take the term ‘world wide’ for granted. I guess that soon it will be Universal.
Wall to Wall On a smaller scale, ‘wall-to-wall’ was once a magical term in our homes. In the ’50s, everyone covered his or her hardwood floors with, wow, wall-to-wall carpeting! Today, everyone replaces their wall-to-wall carpeting with hardwood floors. Go figure.
In A Family Way – P G When’s the last time you heard the quaint phrase ‘in a family way?’ It’s hard to imagine that the word ‘pregnant’ was once considered a little too graphic, a little too clinical for use in polite company, so we had all that talk about stork visits and ‘being in a family way’ or simply ‘expecting. The more sophisticated town girls called it P G. (That is not the source of a pen name.)
Brassiere Apparently, ‘brassiere’ is a word no longer in usage. I said it once to my daughter when she was a teen and she cracked up. I guess it’s just ‘bra’ now. ‘Unmentionables’ probably wouldn’t be understood at all.
Picture Show I always loved going to the picture show. In fact, I have written about it in this very blog. I considered ‘movie’ an affectation.
Rat Fink Most of these words go back to the ’50s, but here is a pure-’60s word I came across the other day – ‘rat fink.’ Ooh, what a nasty put-down! These two words could cut like a sharp knife.
Percolator- DynaFlo – Elevtrolux – Spectra Vision Here is a word I miss – ’percolator.’ That was just a fun word to say. What was it replaced with? ‘Coffee maker.’ How dull. Mr. Coffee.
I miss those made-up marketing words that were meant to sound so modern and now sound so retro. Words like ‘DynaFlow and‘Electrolux..’ (spell check suggestion: Electrocute)Introducing the 1963 Admiral TV, now with‘SpectraVision!’ (PG has a percolator in his camping gear. It works well over a propane stove, but the coffee is way too hot.)
Lumbago- Castor Oil -Food for thought – Was there a telethon that wiped out lumbago? Nobody complains of that anymore. Maybe that’s what castor oil cured, because I never hear mothers threatening kids with castor oil anymore.
Supper Some words aren’t gone, but are definitely on the endangered list. The one that grieves me most, ’supper.’ Now everybody says ‘dinner.’ Save a great word. Invite someone to supper.
Chimney One last thing, when I was a kid we passed a neighbors house. They had a T V antenna strapped to their Chimney. It was a cold day and smoke was bellowing out the old leaning stack. My mother said, “Look there can’t afford butane to keep warm but they got a television set.” Yes, when I was kid a sure sign of poverty was smoke coming from your chimney. Now you know you are in an up scale neighborhood. A fireplace in the den is a luxury.
This is a repost. The pictures are from The Library of Congress.