Art Linkletter

I was going to post a link to John Waters' short film "The Diane Linkletter Story". It was posted on YouTube. Now gone. Removed because John Waters made a copyright claim. He didn't mind mocking the death of a young woman, but he can't abide copyright infringement.

Waters may have wanted it taken down because he felt bad about it. He expressed regret over a movie he made about the Tate-LaBianca murders. Was it Multiple Maniacs? The matter came up because he was calling for a member of the Manson family he befriended to be paroled (and he made a pretty good case for it.)

But Waters has said that he has no sympathy for Art Linkletter.

Linkletter's 20-year-old daughter, Diane, committed suicide in 1969 by jumping out the window of her 6th floor apartment. She was deeply depressed about her life, that she was unable to achieve anything out of the shadow of her famous father. That's what she told the fellow who was with her. But Art decided it would be a good idea to blame it all on drugs. He claimed she was on LSD at the time, that she panicked and jumped out the window. When the autopsy revealed there were no drugs at all in her system, Art said she panicked because she was having an LSD flashback.

The eyewitness who had been talking with her for hours before she killed herself said no such thing. In fact, there was no evidence at all that she had ever taken any illegal drug ever, at any time in her life. The only "evidence" she did was that Art Linkletter said she did.

Art Linkletter says the darndest things

Linkletter had that show on TV. Was it actually called Kids Say The Darnedest Things?

I had only seen one episode. I was 4 or 5 years old. Linkletter asked the kids, "What do your parents hit you with?"

All I remember was a little girl saying, "A spoon." And Art Linkletter acting like this was the darnedest thing he'd ever heard.

The show was scripted. A fraud. Like Linkletter himself. The kid who went on to play Little Ricky on I Love Lucy appeared on it. He was ordered to say that Santa comes to his house in a Cadillac. It was the darnedest thing Art Linkletter could think of.

But why?

I'm not sure why I'm attacking Art Linkletter. The poor guy's dead. He was extremely old. A friend and contemporary of Ozzie Nelson. They both believed that their personality on the radio and TV should be about the same as they were in real life. Worked pretty well for them. They were the antecedents to Jerry Seinfeld, Woody Allen, Larry David...all those guys.

Since I just posted a blog about an old friend who died of a drug overdose, you'd think I'd be more sympathetic to Linkletter's anti-drug thing.

Come to think of it, David Lochary, who played Art Linkletter in Waters' movie, died of an overdose of PCP in 1977.