Today in 1948, the birthday of Vincent Furnier, who rock music fans know better as Alice Cooper.
Onstage he was wild, provocative, shocking.
Offstage, he spent a lot of time helping a certain comedy legend get some sleep.
Cooper was born in Detroit; eventually he and his band moved to the Los Angeles area, which was fitting because the Alice Cooper character was very heavily inspired by old monster and science fiction movies.
Once in LA, Cooper became a part of the Hollywood celebrity social scene, and he didn’t just hang out with fellow musicians.
He became an avid golfer, showed up on TV talk shows, and started to hang out with some of the movie stars he grew up watching in Detroit.
At a birthday party for Frank Sinatra, he ended up singing with one of those stars; it was an impromptu duet on “Lidia the Tattooed Lady” with Cooper and Groucho Marx.
The most prominent of the Marx Brothers was almost sixty years older than Alice Cooper, but he recognized the humor in the rocker’s stage act.
He said it wasn’t that different from performances in the vaudeville era, and so as Groucho started to come to more and more Alice Cooper shows, he started to bring other famous former vaudevillians with him: George Burns, Jack Benny, Mae West, Fred Astaire.
Over time, this odd couple of entertainers became really good friends, though Cooper says there was also a practical side to their relationship.
Groucho Marx was a notorious insomniac, so many nights around 1am, he’d call Alice Cooper and say something like “Hey Coop, can’t sleep, come on over.”
At which point Cooper would come to Groucho’s house in Beverly Hills and sit with him, drinking beers and watching old movies until the older man finally fell asleep.
After Groucho’s death in 1977, Alice Cooper helped his friend out one more time.
There was an effort among Hollywood celebs to preserve and renovate the Hollywood sign, which was in rough shape.
Cooper found out the renovation work would cost something like $27,000 per letter, so he offered that amount, saying “Well, I’m gonna buy the first ‘O’ for Groucho.’ I said, ‘At least when people look at the first ‘O’ up there, they’ll think of Groucho.’”
Today is National Thank A Mail Carrier Day.
A few years ago, someone posted on social media that it was impossible to fill the post office’s small pre-paid mailing box and also break the 70 pound weight limit.
So of course a bunch of science geeks on social media said, what about osmium, the densest metal on Earth?
And then someone else said, why not fill the box with a neutron star?
How Alice Cooper and Groucho Marx got to be midnight buds (Las Vegas Review-Journal)
What Could You Stuff in a Post Office Mailer to Exceed the Weight Limit? (Popular Mechanics)
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Images via Wikicommons and Wikicommons
