3/2/2024 0 Comments Slack jawed gawkers mr burnsIt has been told that he passed out in a hotel lobby after drinking 119 beers. “And walked straighter than hell,” Bernard said.Īnother time, Andre did not get up. Frenchy Bernard, Andre’s closest friend at the time of his death, testifies he saw The Giant drink 72 double shots of vodka at one sitting. “I swear he drank 100 beers one night in Amarillo, Texas,” Funk said. Once, in the 1970s, Funk pulled up a bar-stool next to The Giant. Except that when Andre stepped to the bar, reality never stood a chance. His fate sealed, it was speculated, Andre drank to numb the reality. To some, it explained The Giant’s unfathomable ability to consume alcohol. Because of his disease, doctors estimated Andre would not live to age 50. A 13-year old daughter he fathered was never discussed. “I mean chunks.”Īndre, a man of moods, was at times a loner, especially near the end. “They had taken out huge chunks of bone,” Funk said. “He was in a great deal of pain by then,” Funk remembered.Īndre had shown Funk the X-rays of his recent knee surgeries. Terry Funk, a pro wrestling great, toured Japan with Andre last November. To perform the procedure, surgeons in England had to construct oversized instruments. He had undergone surgery in 1986 to relieve pressure to his weakened spine. Andre the Giant, who towered above most at nearly 7 feet, walked with a stoop near the end. He suffered from acromegaly, or “giantism,” a disease in which the body secretes large amounts of the growth hormone, causing continual growth to the head, hands and feet. In the final months, The Giant moved with great difficulty, having buckled under his own weight. “It’s a good thing he didn’t have a temper,” Valois says, “or there would have been a lot of accidents.” Lucky for us, Andre was always a patient man. 11, more than two weeks after he had requested. The last time.Īndre the Giant was cremated in North Carolina on Feb. “Most of the time they didn’t even want to take him,” Valois recalls. Frank Valois, Andre’s caretaker during The Giant’s barnstorming days as the world’s most famous professional wrestler in the 1970s, remembers that chartered flights were often grounded when Andre stepped on the Tarmac. There were no complications at the airport, although there was a time when even the planes were afraid of Andre. Jackie Bernard, a longtime friend who lived at the ranch with her husband, Frenchy, flew overseas to arrange transport of Andre’s body back home to North Carolina. The voice insisted there was not a crematorium large enough to handle The Giant, who was 6 feet 10 and 555 pounds when he died. The phone call, from France, rang at the Ellerbe ranch. He washed it all down with vats of expensive Burgundy but, in the end, his own country could not accommodate him. The Giant instructed in his will that his body be cremated within 48 hours, the ashes to be sprinkled over his 200-acre ranch in Ellerbe, N.C.Īndre was born in Grenoble, France, spoke fluent French and wolfed down seven-course gourmet meals as though they were appetizers. When they finally busted down his hotel door in Paris to discover Andre dead, at age 46 of an apparent heart attack, the next thought was what to do with him. Yet, Andre would pose problems even in death. No more business trips to undersized Japan, of all places, to pick up his oversized tailor-made clothes. No more stooping through doorways, no more slack-jawed gapes at the sight of his huge head and hands, no more children running in fear. 27 in Paris, 12 days after he buried his father, Andre might have thought his burden over. When he laid his head down for the last time Jan. He was Andre The Giant in life and thereafter, a wonder of the world and sometimes an imposition on the rest of us down below. Imagine that, a muscle taking Andre Rousimoff down. In the modern fable, the giant is felled not by a slingshot or a squadron of fighter planes, but by his heart.
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