6 Famous People Whose Last Words Were About Getting Drunk
New Year’s Eve is a special day, and it’s a time when we must consider our words carefully. Two years ago, we considered some Depressing Last Words From Five Famous People, and last year, we considered Eight Foreign Words for Describing How You’re Drunk. There is only one place to go from here. Let’s now look at famous people whose last words describe how they’re getting drunk.
Pablo Picasso
Picasso lived to the age of 91, which is remarkable for an artist. Most die young, either because they are poor or (equally dangerously) because they get rich, which opens them up to a whole new world of dangers. Years of substance abuse do little for their life expectancy. Many also die deaths of despair, since so many of them are depressed — if they weren’t depressed, they never would have devoted their life to art.
But Picasso lived long. He became an adult in the 19th century, and he was still around (and still painting) in the early 1970s. On April 7, 1973, he hosted a party, and as he bid goodbye to his guests, he said, “Drink to me. Drink to my health. You know I can’t drink any more.”
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Either he said “any more” or “anymore.” Both turned out to be true, because he was found dead the next morning. The words that the friends shared with the world became so famous that Paul McCartney turned them into a song:
The British Killer
On his last day alive, someone offered Neville Heath a whiskey. “While you’re about it, sir,” replied Heath, “you might make that a double.” That sounds nice enough, unless you know exactly who Neville Heath was.
Heath’s claim to fame was his habit of taking women to hotel rooms and murdering them. The first victim was Margery Gardner. Hotel staff found her tied up, whipped and having had been further tortured by some mysterious instrument before being suffocated to death. The second victim, Doreen Marshall, was wise enough to leave the hotel before he could finish his plans with her. But he then just followed her and tortured and killed her anyway.
He was hanged in London on October 16, 1946. The hangman offered him a last drink, as was tradition. Heath’s reply, asking for a double, referred to how he had committed double murder. This is that dry British wit we’ve all heard so much about.
Carl Jung
You’ll sometimes hear the followers of psychologist Carl Jung referred to as a cult. He was a charismatic guy, and anytime someone talking about archetypes like “the sage” and “the shadow,” you need to make sure they aren’t dropping hints about how they’re a supervillain and plan to kill us all.
Those cult accusations appear to be wholly untrue, one of several ways people tried to undermine him. For example, people had a special name for the women in his inner circle: maenads, after the followers of Dionysus. Critics also called these women valkyries. Both names were meant as insults, while both unintentionally sounded really cool.
It was to these maenads that Jung said his last words: “Let’s have a really good red wine tonight.” It was an appropriate request to the disciples of Dionysus.
Jack Daniel
Jack Daniel, the ultimate whiskey man, died from an infected toe. Some say the founder of Jack Daniel’s distillery injured this toe by kicking a safe that he was unable to open. Either that, or his toe became infected through some unrelated random means, which isn’t much better.
When blood poisoning killed him in 1911, those around him reported his last words as, “One last drink, please.” To which they probably replied, “Oh, come ON. You planned that, didn’t you? You had that line all stored up, and you used your dying breath to advertise your company more. Give it a rest!”
He did so.
The Founder of Alcoholics Anonymous
Anonymity is a crucial pillar of AA. “Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions,” they say, “ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.” This may be confusing to those of you who know that meetings begin by introducing yourself (then saying “and I’m an alcoholic”), but there’s a big difference between sharing your first name and sharing your identity. For this reason, the founder of AA usually didn’t use his full name professionally. He simply called himself “Bill W.”
The last words of Bill W. were recorded by the nurse who attended to him during his last days. These last words were requests for whiskey. She didn’t give him want he wanted, so he died sober.
If that doesn’t sound like much fun, know that during his years of abstaining from alcohol, Bill did try LSD, and he loved it.
The Mayor of Chicago
Early in 1933, a man in Miami fired five shots at the newly elected Franklin D. Roosevelt. His name was Giuseppe Zangara, and his motive wasn’t exactly coherent. He said he was angry with capitalism, though he left unclear exactly how he would end or fix capitalism by murdering FDR. Another contributing factor appeared to be chronic pain that he suffered his whole life. He was initially sentenced to 80 years in prison, prompting him to say, “Oh, judge, don’t be stingy. Give me a hundred years.”
Then came a complication: His victim died. No, not FDR, who escaped all five of those bullets, but Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, whom Zangara had hit accidentally. Florida now executed Zangara just 10 days after Cermak’s death.
Some people like to say that Cermak’s last words were to FDR, saying, “I’m glad it was me, not you.” He did not say that, and those are words better suited to a fake story about dying for Kim Jung-Il than a fake story about dying for FDR.
His real last words were to doctors. “Take that tent thing off me, and give me something to drink,” he said. “Quit shooting that stuff into my arm and leave me alone. I’m going to get well.”
He did not get well. But let’s hope someone listened to him anyway and got him that drink.
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