These stars of classic films were actually really weird people.
If you give certain folks enough money and influence, they'll let their quirks show.
Let's dig deeper into some famous Hollywood weirdos.
James Stewart may have had a mild-mannered screen persona, but in real life he was a
certified tough guy.
He flew a bomber over Europe in World War II when he was already famous, doing so spectacularly
well that he was awarded with multiple military distinctions.
And class act that he was, he even had it written into his Hollywood contracts that
his war record could never be used to promote a movie.
But perhaps the craziest chapter in his life was when he became an international smuggler.
The story gets even weirder when you hear what Stewart was smuggling.
He was tasked with transporting the mummified hand of a yeti from Nepal to the United Kingdom,
which he did by hiding it in his wife's lingerie.
This was in the 1950s, at a time when it still seemed possible that there was an abominable
snowman hiding out in the Himalayas somewhere.
A group of Nepalese monks was known to have a supposed yeti hand in their possession,
and Stewart, who was in India at the time, was considered the best person to smuggle
it out for testing.
As you might suspect, the hand turned out to be fake.
"I don't know, uh...I shoulda known better."
Alec Guinness was one of Britain's biggest screen icons.
Classy and understated, he was the quintessential Englishman.
At least, on screen he was.
Off screen, he was a bizarre control freak who wouldn't let anyone make their own decisions
and spent his every waking hour seeking to undermine his long-suffering wife.
In his definitive biography on the star, author Piers Paul Read revealed that nearly every
meeting he'd had with Guinness over the years had been remarkably odd.
The actor apparently loved to meet for meals where he'd ask everyone at the table what
they wanted.
The moment they replied, he would declare,
"No, no, you wouldn't like that!"
And then he would call the waiter over and order them the exact opposite.
Guinness' home life was also odd and apparently quite unpleasant.
He'd grown up with an absent father and a mother who was a drunken thief, and his hatred
of her turned into a kind of reflexive misogyny.
As an adult, this expressed itself in open resentment and belittling of his wife, whom
he considered stupid.
Tippi Hedren is best known for fleeing from flocks in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.
But in real life, she wasn't particularly scared of wild animals, as she shared her
Hollywood home with a fully grown, 400-pound male lion.
This unlikely setup developed from Hedren's conservation work.
She's been active in the field of saving big cats for decades and has won hosts of awards
for her efforts.
Hedren's lion, Neil, had the run of the house and would saunter through the living room
when guests were visiting.
At the time, the actress was living with her daughter, Melanie Griffith.
Every now and then, she'd let Griffith and Neil share a bed, which is exactly as terrible
an idea as it sounds.
Thankfully, Neil didn't maul Hedren, eat Griffith, or kill any guests.
However, they later got other lions, and each family member was attacked at one time or
another, including on the set of the 1981 film Roar, which led to Griffith needing 50
stitches on her face.
Hedren has since admitted that keeping a lion in her house was, quote, "stupid beyond belief."
"Teeth that are huge with claws that are so strong you will never be on an equal with
them."
Bette Davis was one of the last screen goddesses.
But if you got on her wrong side, she was liable to detonate with the force of a thousand
A-bombs.
One time, she and producer William Frye were meeting director Herschel Daugherty for a
meal when Daugherty made the mistake of wagging his finger in Davis' face.
As Frye recalls it, Davis unleashed such a tirade that she managed to clear out half
the restaurant.
Immediately afterward, she snapped back to being her usual self, as if nothing had happened.
"Fasten your seatbelts.
It's going to be a bumpy night."
Legendary as Davis' temper was, her obsessive attention to detail was almost equally notorious.
When the film A Stolen Life needed to cast a dog, Davis didn't allow a pet casting director
to get involved, as she instead personally auditioned every mutt in Los Angeles.
The dog didn't even have a huge role, as it was only in one key scene.
According to director Curtis Bernhardt, Davis' efforts were wasted anyway, as the dog was
too scared of her to do any canine acting.
Greta Garbo was so obsessed with the health benefits of fad diets that she subjected herself
to meals that the United Nations would class as biological weapons.
The actress was a total recluse who hated venturing out so much she once managed to
miss her own wedding.
Just about the only person she allowed into her life was Gayelord Hauser, who just happened
to be a nutritionist with a side gig in crazy.
He convinced Garbo to spend decades following his dietary plans.
One involved eating nothing but raw yeast, with occasional treats of buttermilk.
Another involved Garbo dining only on spinach for a full three weeks.
Luckily, she abandoned that diet before she had to choose between going to the hospital
and trading blows with Bluto down at the dockyards.
Hauser liked to claim that following his bonkers eating plans would allow anyone to live to
the age of 100.
In fairness, both he and Garbo actually came close, with Hauser dying at 89 and Garbo at
84.
No word, though, as to whether they actually thought their dieting was remotely worth it.
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