Flush It Friday: Mustaches out for Burt

By W.

September 7, 2018

2871

By now you’ve heard that one of Hollywood’s all-time greatest mustache-bearers has passed over the Salt-and-Pepper Bridge into Valhairla. Today we honor Burt and the mighty Mjolstachenir he wielded with honor, dignity, and justice.

Burt Reynolds was born in the winter of 1936 to a sapient ape-man and the daughter of a tobacco mogul; he spent his formative years in a log cabin in Waycross, Georgia, where he learned to hunt and fish and arm-wrestle trees. Reynolds applied these skills to an early career in lumberjacking in the northern swamps of Palm Beach, Florida, until he was discovered by a talent scout looking for an attractive young Wiccan to star as the lead in the upcoming picture Angel Baby. So impressed was the talent scout by Reyndolds’ budding facial shrubbery that he completely rewrote the film and released it a decade later as Fuzz (interestingly, a completely different film called Angel Baby would still be released in 1961 with a young, hairless impostor credited as Reynolds; the actual identify of this cherubic interloper remains one of Hollywood’s greatest unsolved mysteries).

After the wild success of Fuzz, Reynolds and his mustache would go on to co-star in landmark titles, including Deliverance, Smokey and the Bandit, Smokey and the Bandit II, The Cannonball Run, Smokey and the Bandit Part 3, Cannonball Run II, All Dogs Go to Heaven, Smokey and the Bandit Episode IV, Striptease, Cannonball Run 3, Time of the Wolf, and Smokey and the Bandit Unleashed.

But Reynolds wasn’t merely a rough-riding, tobacco-swallowing mustache of action and intrigue; the half-half-man turned actor also had a sensitive side (beneath his mustache). That tender underskin was given full-bloom on Reynolds’ 1973 debut album Ask Me What I Am. The album, a smooth-talking blend of smooth-talking country went certified triple Platinum inexplicably before the creation of the RIAA, with critics everywhere agreeing, “Listening to Burt croon on tracks like ‘The First One I Lay With’ feels like having your ear gently caressed by a kind and supportive bit of lip hair.” Audiences everywhere agreed, and eggheads everywhere noticed a substantial increase in teen pregnancies in August the following year.

As Reynolds aged gracefully, so too did his mustache. Reynolds retired from film in 2015 following the release of Hamlet & Hutch, and his mustache, now grey and dignified, would follow him into retirement 3 years later after the release of Smokey and the Bandit Reborn. The two performed one last spoken word tour this summer.

Reynolds passed away September 6th, 2018, in the company of friends and other mustaches at age 82. He will be interred in Arlington National Cemetery next week. Reynolds’ mustache will be cremated the following week, and its ashes will be spread by helicopter across the Rocky Mountains.

Burt Reynolds, today Toilet ov Hell is proud to carve your graven image into Mount Stachemore. Welcome home, old friend.