For instance, the eighteenth century artist Benjamin West had an executed criminal exhumed and crucified to see how he hung in order to be more realistic when painting.

Gustav Mahler was famous for his funeral marches and wrote his first funeral march when he was six years old.  He suffered from depression and had a morbid fixation on death.    He believed that the great composers Beethoven and Schubert lived only long enough to compose nine symphonies.  He thought he could cheat death by calling his ninth work a “Song Cycle.”  As soon as the wrote his first draft, he died suddenly from a throat infection.

James Whistler is famous for his painting called simply “Whistler’s Mother.”  He once had his rice pudding dyed green so it wouldn’t clash with the decor of the dining room.

In 1863, author Louisa May Alcott became ill and wrote in her journal that she suffered from terrible hallucinations in which she was repeatedly molested by a big Spaniard with soft hands.  She recovered and went on to write “Little Women.”

Friedrich Von Schiller, an eighteenth century German poet and dramatist, worked best with his feet on a block of ice while inhaling the fumes of rotting apples.

Arnold Bennett is renowned for his stunning detail when writing his novels.  Bennett was complimented for his description of the death of Darius Clayhanger in his series by that name.  The death scene was said to be the most realistic of its kind in the history of English literature.  He said that while his father was dying, he was at the death bed taking notes.

After Jonathan Swift finished writing “Gulliver’s Travels”, he wrote a piece on excrement in 1733 called “Human Ordure” under the pen name of Dr. Shit.

Robert Louis Stevenson, the Scottish author of “Treasure Island” and “Kidnapped”, spent his early years reading parts of the Bible aloud to sheep.

German composer Robert Schumann had two imaginary friends called Florestan and Eusebius who gave him ideas for his musical scores.  Unfortunately, Schumann died in an insane asylum.

The Belgian-French pulp fiction writer Georges Simenon created the pipe smoking detective Inspector Maigret and was the world’s hardest working author.  He was able to type out as much as eighty pages of manuscript each day.  He said that he found the strain of writing so extreme that it frequently caused him to vomit.  Alfred Hitchcock phoned one day and was told by Simenon’s secretary that he couldn’t be disturbed because he had just begun a new novel.  Hitchcock, knowing that Simenon could write as many as three novels per month, simply replied “That’s all right, I’ll wait.”

Opera composer Giacomo Mayerbeer lived in constant fear of premature burial.  He arranged to have bells tied to his arms and legs so that any movement inside his coffin would be heard.  So far, he continues to rest peacefully.

Nineteenth century French writer Honore de Balzac believed that sex drained him of his creativity.  After several months of abstinance, he was lured into a Paris brothel.  Afterward, he complained of his folly by declaring “I lost a novel this morning.”

Other articles by Bren Parks include:

• Making Movies: Stars Who Died Undone
• Making Movies: Stars Who Collide
• Making Movies: Beyond the Call of Duty
• Strange Stories: Making Hollywood Movies
• Six of the Greatest and Deadliest Bands in Rock and Roll
• Strange Acts of Entertainment