Dead Naked Playboy Sex Kittens

Yeah the title of this blog is a little off colored but when else does a podcast/ blog about dead people get to use such ‘keyword” that the sex surfers will pick up on.

Ok—so now that we found out that Anne Nicole Smith died of a drug OD ( was there a doubt?) maybe we will not see any more news about her for a while. After thinking about Smith, I said what about the other Playboy pinups that have died tragically in the years?

How any other Playmates suffered an unfortunate fate?

I was surprised to see that there have been several who have had tragic ends.

One of the most famous would be the December 1953 Playboy Playmate, Marilyn Monroe. Playboy’s first cover girl and 1950s actress died when she was only 36 on Aug. 5, 1962, of an overdose of sedatives used for insomnia. Her housekeeper discovered her lying nude and face down on her bed at her home in Los Angeles, with the phone in her hand. She was already dead.

Monroe, nicknamed the “Blonde Bombshell,” was a leading lady in films including “Some Like It Hot,” “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” and “How to Marry a Millionaire.” Among her three ex-husbands were baseball great
Joe DiMaggio and playwright Arthur Miller. She was also romantically linked to Frank Sinatra. I keep hearing conspiracy theories that she was murdered over rumored relationships she was having with President John F. Kennedy and/or his brother, Sen. Robert Kennedy, or because of alleged ties to the mafia and the Communist Party. In the end, her cause of death was deemed “probable suicide.”

The next famous death of a Playmate would be Sharon Tate. I loved her in “The Fearless Vampire Killers” and “Valley of he Dolls.” Her film director husband, Roman Polanski, did the Playboy shoot on the set of one of her films. The tragic death happened when she stabbed to death in the couple’s house in August 1969 by members of mass murderer Charles Manson’s family. Four friends were also killed in the spree. The details were told in the best selling book, Helter Skelter. Manson was convicted of murder for those five victims and two others in 1971 and remains in prison, though he has bragged of killing dozens.

The next Taxi rider is Dorothy Stratten, Playmate of the Year in 1980. She was just taking off in the movie and TV industry. She had appeared in Skatetown USA and Autumn Born in 1979. I loved her in Ameicathon, where she played the John Ritter’s wife ( the First lady?). The film also starred Harvery Korman and Fred Willard. Her starring role was in the Sci-fi comedy Galaxina in 1980. She did very well. She also appeared in Fantasy Island and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. In 1980, she was found shot to death in Los Angeles in what police believed was a murder-suicide involving her estranged husband and ex-manager Paul Snider. Stratten was only 20. ( For more on her rent the film Star 80 starring Mariel Hemingway and Eric Roberts. )

Miss February 1977, Star Stowe, dated Kiss band member Gene Simmons and then was known for tattooing a bright blue star on a private part. Stowe slipped from the spotlight and into erotic pole dancing, prostitution, alcoholism and drug abuse after moving to Ft. Lauderdale. Only days before her 41st birthday, in 1997, Stowe was found murdered in Coral Springs, Fla.

A drug overdose also apparently took the life of Elisa Bridges, the magazine’s Miss December 1994. She was found with a massive amount of Heroin in her system.

Willy Rey, a Vancouver woman featured as Playboy’s 1971 centerfold, took her own life at age 23 by consuming a large quantity of barbiturates in August 1973.

Others who took off their clothes in the magazine died young in car crashes. Claudia Jennings, the Playmate of the Year in 1970 and also Miss November 1969, was killed in an accident in 1979 at the age of 29 when she fell asleep at the wheel of her VW convertible in southern California.

Famous actress Jayne Mansfield was Playboy’s February 1955 Playmate. She died in 1967 at age 34 when the car she was traveling in slammed into the back of a truck in Louisiana.

Anne Nicole Smith, born Vickie Lynn Hogan, was on the cover of Playboy four times. She not only wanted to live like Marilyn Monroe but she died like her too. Over dose on ‘legal drugs’ and naked make a bad combination it seems.

Stupid Human Tricks – Larry “Bud” Melman

Well I was a little shock when I heard the news that Larry ‘Bud’ Melman had taken his Final Taxi this week. Yeah he was an older gentleman and it was his time but seeing this took me back to the early days for the David Letterman show. This was the days of Larry “Bud”, Chris Elliot, Edie McClurg , stupid pet tricks and when Paul Schaeffer had hair.

I was a fan of Letterman when he had a weekday “morning” show on NBC. So when he moved over to the late night spot I was one of the first to see the opening of his first show in which a strange looking older man came on and said in a nasal voice “Certain NBC executives feel it would be unkind to present this show without a friendly word of warning.” We would come to know and love this man as Larry ‘Bud’ Melman. His real name was Calvert DeForest. It was his loopy incomprehension and utter lack of acting skills that played well in the late night gonzo skits. Over two decades, DeForest introduced himself with a stone-faced lack of irony as Neil Diamond, Bob Dole, Barbra Streisand, and Roy Orbison, whom he really did resemble. He dressed as a chicken and as a bear. He was hurled through a foam-rubber mockup of the Berlin Wall, undertook a private goodwill tour to Mexico and covered the Winter Olympics.

Then in 1993, when Mr. Letterman moved to CBS from NBC, he was forced to leave the “Larry ‘Bud’ Melman” character behind as intellectual property. But Mr. Letterman brought DeForest along, henceforth identifying him by his given name. DeForest kicked off the very first episode of “The Late Show with David Letterman,” appearing in place of the circle in the network’s eye logo and squawking, “This is CBS!”

I remember through the years seeing DeForest in Mtv music videos and on commercials hocking cereal and pizza.

It was my pleasure at one of the World Series games running into DeForest. He was a kind and gentle man. He did have a bodyguard with him but still had to time to talk with me and was in no hurry to leave. I felt like I was talking to an old uncle that I never met before at a family reunion.

Larry “Bud” ( DeForest) had been absent from the public eye due to a long illness, but he was not forgotten by those of us who he entertained.

Calvert DeForest was 85.

~ The Final Taxi

(This weeks podcast will highlight some of Larry Bud’s comedy.)

What is it with fathers this week?

I had no sooner heard the news that a co-workers father had died during the night when I found out she was not alone.

It seem that the famous folk singer of songs like “The Night The Drove Old Dixie Down” , Joan Baez has lost her father to natural causes. Albert V. Baez was 94. Not only was he the father of Joan Baez but also of another folk singer, Mimi Farina, Joan’s younger sister who died in 2001. Albert Baez was also a noted physicist as he co-invented the X-ray reflection microscope, which is still used for medical purposes and to take X-ray pictures of galaxies.

Charles Voyde Harrelson, a hired assassin , professional gambler and father of movie star Woody Harrelson,
also died in the maximum-security cell where he was serving two life sentences. The Emmy Award-winning Academy Award-nominated American actor’s father had been prosecuted four times for three separate murders. Harrelson had reportedly claimed a dozen contract killings by 1982 when he was convicted of firing the sniper’s bullet that killed U.S. District Judge John H. Wood outside his townhome.

One wonders if this is not why Woody did such a great job of terrorizing us in his film “Natural Born Killers?” Did he study his father?

( Update: Just came in that not only famous peoples fathers but a mother as well. – Myrtle Anderson, singer Joni Mitchell’ s mother, has taken her Final Taxi at the age of 95. An nspiration and encouragement to Joni, she is immortalized in much of
Joni’s work such as “Let The Wind Carry Me”, “Dreamland”, “Song For haron” and “Facelift”. )

~ The Final Taxi

The Final Taxi- a re-intro

The Final Taxi has been blogging and podcasting almost a year now but I am moving the blog to WordPress for more exposure.

The Final Taxi is a podcast/blog that deals with the deaths of minor celebrities that have recently died. These are actors, musicians, inventors, writers or others in the entertainment field who have died and did not get the attention that they deserved. They were lost in the shuffle.

It is a bit of history, a bit of nostalgia and a lot of love.

Each of us hold a piece of this puzzle called life and with one piece the whole thing shifts into something different. Think of the movie “It a Wonderful Life.”

Everyone I blog about I am glad they were a part of this world.

The original blogs and podcast are found at http://www.wildvoice.com/Ronnasty