Famous People With Glass Eyes

Sammy Davis, Jr. Glass eye.

I'm watching an episode of The Mod Squad, and Sammy Davis Jr. is in the episode, and I start squinting real hard to try and see if I can tell which one of his eyes is glass. And I can't. Then I started wondering how many famous people have had glass eyes. I started with the obvious two: Peter Falk and Sammy Davis, Jr., but I figured that would be the tip of the iceberg. But it wasn't. The two most famous people who had glass eyes are Sammy Davis, Jr., and Peter Falk. There are a few others. The first ocular prosthesis was believed to have been used in Iran around 2900 BCE. Isn't that amazing? 

Just one more question. Which one is the glass eye? I suppose it's the one that isn't moving. Can people move the glass eye? Leo fender, the guitar guy, had a glass eye.  Canadian bluesman Jeff Healey, who I remember from the movie Roadhouse, has two glass eyes. Those are the four most notable people I was able to discover who have ocular prosthesis. Wait a minute, I have one more, and I only know this because I'm a poet.

Creeley was one the early Black Mountain poets. They were always fiddling around with language. I'm a big fan of his poetry. His fiddling is less fiddly and more substantive than most language poetry. He lost his eye at the age of four. In his later years he was an advocate of, and a mentor to, many younger poets, as well as to others outside of the poetry world. He went to great lengths to be supportive to many people regardless of any poetic affiliation. Being responsive appeared to be essential to his personal ethics, and he seemed to take this responsibility extremely seriously, in both his life and his craft. In his later years, when he became well-known, he would go to lengths to make strangers, who approached him as a well-known author, feel comfortable. In his last years, he used the Internet to keep in touch with many younger poets and friends.


I Know a Man

As I sd to my 
friend, because I am 
always talking, -- John, I 

sd, which was not his 
name, the darkness sur- 
rounds us, what 

can we do against 
it, or else, shall we & 
why not, buy a goddamn big car, 

drive, he sd, for 
christ's sake, look 

out where yr going. 


Pin It