Predictions that were way off

The following text is originally lifted from the trivia section of The Jakarta Post dated Sunday, 13 April 2008.

~Compiled from various sources~

• "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" - H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.
• "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." - Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.
• "The Beatles? They're on the wane." - The Duke of Edinburgh in Canada, 1965. They went on to produce a string of No.1 hits.
• "That rainbow song's no good. Take it out" - MGM memo after first showing of The Wizard of Oz.
• "You'd better learn secretarial skills or else get married." - Modelling agency, rejecting Marilyn Monroe in 1944.
• "You ought to go back to driving a truck." - Concert manager, firing Elvis Presley in 1954.
• "Forget it. No Civil War picture ever made a nickel." - MGM executive, advising against investing in Gone With The Wind.
• "I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper." - Gary Cooper, after turning down the lead role in Gone With The Wind.
• "Can't act. Can't sing. Slightly bald. Can dance a little." - A film company's verdict on Fred Astaire's 1928 screen test.
• "I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to." - Elvis Presley.
• It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow. - Robert Goddard (1882-1945)
• Jerome Rodale, who founded The Rodale Press publishing house, was taping an interview on the Dick Cavett Talk Show. He was bragging about how he was so healthy he'd live to be 100 when he slumped over, dead from a heart attack. The show was never broadcast to the public.
• Jim Fixx, who wrote The Complete Book of Running and lectured about how running and a healthy diet would promote longevity, dropped dead from a heart attack while running. An autopsy revealed he had three massively blocked heart arteries.
• The person who wrote the famous song Keep the Home Fires Burning burned to death when their home caught fire.
• In 1970, television newsman Chris Hubbock announced, "In keeping with Channel 40's policy of always bringing you the latest in gore and guts in living colour, you're about to see another first - an attempted suicide". Then she pulled a gun and fatally shot herself in the head.
• The French playwright Molière became sick and died while playing the role of a hypochondriac in his play The Imaginary Invalid.
• A few months before he was killed in a car accident, James Dean made a driver's safety TV ad in which he said, "Drive safely; the life you save may be mine."
• Playwright Tennessee Williams died after choking on the cap of eye drops. He was a habitual pill-taker and drunk, and in an impaired state he put the cap in his mouth, mistaking it for another pill, and choked to death.
• Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry is the first person to have their ashes put aboard a rocket and "buried" in space.
• Hugh Hefner worked as circulation manager at the Children's Activities magazine while he was raising money to launch Playboy.
• Buster Keaton was billed as "The Human Mop" when he joined his family's comic acrobatic vaudeville act at age 3.
• Cheryl Tiegs went to New York to launch her modeling career in 1966, after winning the Miss Rocket Tower beauty contest in California.
• Elvis and Charles Schultz were the no.1 and no.2 money earning dead people in 2002. Elvis made US$31 million, Schultz made US$9 million