Skin Deep (Part One)

Just how do those apparently ageless Hollywood stars, such as Robert Wagner, Kim Basinger and William Shatner, keep their amazingly youthful good looks? Whilst many claim that it is simply down to healthy eating and regular exercise, and some will admit to cosmetic surgery, there is a long history of various celebrities opting for far more bizarre, and often downright sinister, rejuvenation techniques. Rock Hudson, for instance, always kept a jar of his own jism in his fridge, and would regularly smear it all over his body, in the belief that it would keep his skin soft and supple. He would, apparently, sometimes eat it spread on toast as a breakfast snack. His contemporary, popular screen idol Cary Grant swore by regular injections of monkey hormones to preserve his boyish good looks. Unfortunately, this treatment proved to have long-term side-effects, with Grant regularly being seen swinging through the trees in the grounds of his Beverley Hills mansion. Worse was to come. During the making of North By Northwest, he reportedly once climbed the studio lighting rig and urinated on director Alfred Hitchcock’s head.

A few years later, in 1963, he was arrested by for public indecency after he was caught publicly masturbating in front of a party of schoolgirls in a Los Angeles park. Two nurses who witnessed the incident claimed that he had been abusing himself for at least three hours before this incident, flicking his jism at passing women. Luckily, studio chiefs were able to secure his release and hush up the incident with a generous donation to the LAPD widows and orphans fund. Finally, in 1966, the debonair leading man’s bizarre behaviour became too much when, at the premiere of Walk Don’t Run, he climbed a lamppost outside of the cinema and defecated over several leading tinsletown dignitaries, including movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn. Escaping police, he proceeded to break into the LA Zoo and attempted to make love to two female chimps and an orang-utan. Grant never made another film, instead retiring to his luxury monkey house in Switzerland.