Joe Karlosi wrote:
Leo was a big drinker. He was visibly drunk in his last BB outing, CRASHING LAS VEGAS (1956), because his dad Bernard had died in a car accident.


Y'know, that's the way the story's always told. But I tell ya, I think he was more visibly drunk in the previous one, DIG THAT URANIUM, and his dad was even IN that one! Leo spends quite a few scenes lying flat on his ass back on a sleeping bag, for no apparent plot reason. And in the "Western" dream sequence, he looks completely disconnected from what anybody else is doing. He comes across as more over-the-top 'cranky' than the underplayed leadership of days gone by. I was going to comment on it back when it aired, but it was just too depressing to contemplate at the time. I remember thinking that it looked like the end of the road for Gorcey right then and there, with or without Bernard. Leo also looks half shot in his last coupla movie cameos, and that crazy silent color footage of him and Huntz hanging a poster or whatever , that's been floating around.

I really do suspect that the whole Bernard 'death' story was more of an excuse than anything.