A Malcolm In The Middle Stunt Put Bryan Cranston In A Scary Situation
Once upon a time, on a planet without widely accessible internet, people could spread outlandish urban legends without being instantly debunked. Actually, they can still do that, provided the recipient of said ludicrous information has been conditioned by bad-faith actors to doubt what educated people refer to as facts ... but you're here to learn why Bryan Cranston panicked over a stunt on "Malcolm in the Middle," so let's cut to the chase.
Cranston was born in 1956. This means he was eight years old when "Goldfinger" became a global phenomenon. For kids of his era, Bond movies represented the apex of cinema. It was just about all they wanted to talk about. And people found some amusingly inventive ways to talk about them.
I was born in 1973, and by the time I was old enough to get in on the Bond discourse, one of the wildest stories still making the rounds was that actor Shirley Eaton, whose character is dispatched by being plated in gold, died of asphyxiation while shooting the scene. Per the tellers of this tall tale, the gold paint sealed her pores, thus depriving her body of oxygen.
This was, obviously, not true. Such an incident would've resulted in the immediate shutdown of the production and the end of the Bond movie franchise. But kids didn't understand this. They also couldn't hit up IMDb to learn that Eaton made numerous films after shooting "Goldfinger." So, this nonsense took hold in our imagination. And yet, even when we learned it was nonsense, the notion took hold in our imaginations. Could you really suffocate if you were completely coated in paint?
That notion crept into Cranston's consciousness when he filmed a particularly wild episode of "Malcolm in the Middle."
Cranston's short-lived blue period
In the season 2 episode "Hal Quits," Cranston's unhappily employed white-collar dad has a meltdown after attending youngest son Dewey's elementary school career day. He obsessively hurls himself into a painting, which peaks with him turning his body into part of the canvas. Finally, he is covered in blue paint. And here's where everything went haywire for Cranston.
During a recent interview on "The Graham Norton Show" (pegged to the release of Matthew Vaughn's "Argylle"), Cranston discussed the incident:
"As you shoot, you're moving around. And then there was a part of me, at one point, I was, like, starting to shut down the circuits. And they went, 'boom,' and they grabbed me, and they threw me in the shower and they just [...] It was weird."
Cranston then cited the Shirley Eaton urban legend as an impetus for his distress, which prompted his "Argylle" co-star Bryce Dallas Howard to chime in that this isn't safe. "It's not safe," said Cranston. "Because your body can't regulate the heat if you're covering up all your pores."
This is true. And there is a very true Hollywood story of an actor nearly dying from being covered in paint. But it has nothing to do with "Goldfinger."
Buddy Ebsen's near-fatal Tin Man ordeal
If you're familiar with the Blue Man Group, you know there is a way to safely paint your body (they use cobalt greasepaint). I am quite certain Cranston's "Malcolm in the Middle" makeup crew knew this. But I'm also happy to hear that, regardless of their certitude, they were quick to get an actor out of a stressful situation when he began to panic.
Hollywood crews weren't so careful back in the day. Take, for instance, Buddy Ebsen's brief portrayal of the Tin Man in 1939's "The Wizard of Oz." The silver paint used by the makeup department contained aluminum dust, which triggered an allergic reaction in the actor that left him dealing with painful cramps and, ultimately, dangerously short of breath. Ebsen spent two weeks in the hospital and a month in recovery, which forced MGM to recast the part with Jack Haley. But do not cry for Ebsen: 30 years later, no one would've been able to pick Haley out of a lineup, but everyone knew Buddy on sight as "The Beverly Hillbillies" patriarch Jed Camplett.
Meanwhile, Shirley Eaton turned 87 two weeks ago. I learned this from the internet. If I were a buffoon, I'd ponder as to whether this was a psyop. As a reasonable human being, I'll wish Ms. Eaton a belated happy birthday.