The ONE Celebrity (Living or Dead) You'd Give a Body Part to Have Dinner With?

[Frunobulax]

I figure this is as good a place to put this as any. After reading this, I want to have dinner with these guys.

https://www.theguardian.com/global/...share-the-secrets-of-their-70-year-friendship

 

[belfastboy]

I figure this is as good a place to put this as any. After reading this, I want to have dinner with these guys.

https://www.theguardian.com/global/...share-the-secrets-of-their-70-year-friendship

Thank you for posting this!

 

[belfastboy]

I feel badly categorizing him as a celebrity but for want of a more apt term.....I would have loved to share a dinner with Sir Roger Scruton. An amazing man of so many talents that had a profound impact on my thinking.

 

[Frunobulax]

Thank you for posting this!

Welcome. Both of those men have provided so many belly laughs.

 

[Bugguy]

I'll offer a kidney - they're paired organs - to have dinner with T.E. Lawrence. I'm sure I could listen to him for hours. Across the table... Dame Diana Rigg. What a truly classy lady!

 

[MichaelRhB]

My former CinC, Ronald Reagan.

 

[1961MJS]

Yeah, I'd give a toe to have a long dinner with Mel Brooks, it would be great to see his reaction to the whole cancel craze. We can't discuss Blazing Saddles at work anymore. Sigh. I saw both Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein at the theaters.

WRT genocidal dictators, I found that Hitler actually DID kill more Russians than Stalin, but Stalin got dang near half as many. Mao got a lot gone as did the Cambodians. I've always felt that Stalin was the worst of the bunch because NO ONE liked him. NO ONE. He died because everyone was scared to open his door to see what happened, maybe they could have saved him (like that would happen). At least Hitler's secretaries LIKED him according to the various histories. I think Hitler hated people as a whole, but liked individuals. Stalin (In my opinion) was meaner, while Hitler was weirder (but had "better help").

Wouldn't want to sacrifice a pimple to eat lunch with any of them though.

later

 

[Blackthorn]

Jimmy Stewart, who gave up his Hollywood celebrity to go become a bomber pilot against the Nazis. I can't picture many modern Hollywood elites doing that today.

 

[Edward]

Jimmy Stewart, who gave up his Hollywood celebrity to go become a bomber pilot against the Nazis. I can't picture many modern Hollywood elites doing that today.

How many - who weren't conscripted - did the same back then? I seem to recall Stewart was one of the few among his contemporaries. Later on, there were several of the cast of M*A*S*H who had actually fought in Korea - Jamie Farr being one such. Very different "war" of course.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Clark Gable enlisted in the Air Corps as a private in 1942 -- eventually earning a commission as a pilot -- and those who knew him said that he did so not out of patriotism but because he was suicidal over the death of his wife Carole Lombard. Although the Army wanted to use him for publicity, he did fly five combat missions.

Glenn Miller was too old for the draft, but he volunteered in 1942 to go into the Army as a bandleader, and spent two years touring European camps before his plane went down over the English Channel in late 1944. He was the highest-profile American celebrity to die in the war.

Baseball star Ted Williams is often mentioned as another celebrity who went to do his bit, but the truth is that Williams fought conscription quite bitterly thruout 1942, and only joined up as a Marine because he realized that if he did get drafted he'd be taken into the Army, about which he'd said some very unkind things. He also bitterly complained when he was reactivated off the reserve list for Korea. To the end of his life he had nothing but contempt for the Selective Service system, and spoke kindly of draft evaders during the Vietnam War.

There were a number of famous American athletes, however, who did step right up to do their bit. Hank Greenberg of the Detroit Tigers was drafted in late 1940, and served his year as a peacetime selectee. He was released from the service on December 5, 1941. Two months later he re-enlisted and spent the rest of the war in the Air Corps, serving longer than any other professional athlete.

Bob Feller, famous pitcher of the Cleveland Indians, enlisted in the Navy on December 9, 1941, and insisted that he not be assigned to play ball on a military team -- he asked for combat duty, and spent two years in the thick of the Pacific Theatre.

Cecil Travis, All-Star third baseman of the Washington Senators, enlisted in the Army after Pearl Harbor, and spent three years as an infantryman in the ETO. He suffered frostbite during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944, and the permanent damage to his feet cut his career short.

 

[ChiTownScion]

And then there's Red Skelton.

He and his agents fought conscription until his marriage ended in divorce and he lost his married man status, and then he was drafted right after D- Day. Was assigned to doing entertainment productions in the ETO, but evidently he got stressed out by that, and spent most of his time on active duty in a psychiatric unit. He boasted that he was one celeb who both went in and came out a private- and I appreciate that exercise in honest self deprecation. Personally I don't fault him for any of his military experiences. Not everyone was cut out for Army life, even during that war when so many served through volunteering or being conscripted.

But when others replay his 1950's television variety show sermonette on the Pledge of Allegiance and hold it out as some grand lesson in patriotism, well, it rings a little hollow with me. My take away from bona fide combat vets of that war was that the common thread of the day was, "Keep your mouth shut, just do your job, and forgo the flag waving. Millions of others are in this, and you're nothing special." They never lectured or pontificated: they taught by example. We are so much the poorer as a nation as more and more of them have disappeared from among us.

 

[ChiTownScion]

The man whom I'd love to have dinner with is Robert E. Lee. Not that I deify him as one of the Lost Cause Trinity (along with Stuart and Jackson). Far from it. But simply because he was so guarded about his own opinions about what and who was so close to him during the Late Unpleasantness. We know so much about him, but there is so much that remains shrouded due to his own silence. And most of it pertains to Gettysburg.

For example: what did he really say to J.E.B. Stuart during their encounter on the evening of July 2, 1863 at Gettysburg? What was his opinion regarding Longstreet's performance during that battle? Was Longstreet made the scapegoat for everything through the efforts of Ewell and Early in order to save their own post war reputations? Would Jackson at Gettysburg changed a damned thing? The American Civil War is the largest single subject in the Library of Congress... and we know very little regarding Lee's opinions on any of this.

 

[Harp]

t^^^Gettysburg was the price the South paid for Robert E Lee.
Grant would later have Cold Harbor; but Lee had his own haunting with Cemetery Ridge,
something Pickett would ever hold against him and probably also blame himself for.

When I was a kid my dad took us to the Chicago Historical Society and I recall looking
at the table on which the Civil War surrender was signed-such a small table for such a costly war.

 

[Harp]

Ingrid Bergman, and she already has my heart.

 

[belfastboy]

How many - who weren't conscripted - did the same back then? I seem to recall Stewart was one of the few among his contemporaries. Later on, there were several of the cast of M*A*S*H who had actually fought in Korea - Jamie Farr being one such. Very different "war" of course.

I can't recall if Ted Williams enlisted or was called up but he was a pilot during both WW2 and Korea missing almost 4 seasons of baseball. I remember the story that his visual acuity was off the charts ...he could read the letters/numbers on a license plate before most could see the oncoming car. Likely a great attribute when trying to hit a baseball.

 

[Edward]

I can't recall if Ted Williams enlisted or was called up but he was a pilot during both WW2 and Korea missing almost 4 seasons of baseball. I remember the story that his visual acuity was off the charts ...he could read the letters/numbers on a license plate before most could see the oncoming car. Likely a great attribute when trying to hit a baseball.

Pretty useful for a sniper, too!

 

[Harp]

The man whom I'd love to have dinner with is Robert E. Lee. Not that I deify him...But simply because he was so guarded about his own opinions...We know so much about him, but there is so much that remains shrouded due to his own silence. And most of it pertains to Gettysburg..

The Marble Man would most likely remain reticent, furtive, and most gracious.
Gettysburg, I imagine cost his conscience a horrific price equivalent to actual carnage suffered.
Cemetery Ridge in particular.