Word: merricks
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Quasimodo probably had it. Digger Barnes of the television soap opera Dallas has developed the symptoms. In real life the most famous victim was John Merrick, the grotesquely deformed "Elephant Man," who became a sought-after celebrity in Victorian England...
...affliction is neurofibromatosis, a terrifying and, so far, incurable neurological disorder usually accompanied by varying degrees of deformity. Though most Americans had not heard of it before the Dallas episodes, or before The Elephant Man, a play about Merrick, opened in New York City this year, the ailment is surprisingly common; in the U.S., it affects some 100,000 people...
...Merrick, who had both external and internal signs of the disease, was so shockingly deformed that producers of The Elephant Man wisely decided against using any grotesque makeup for the actor in the title role; Merrick's appearance is merely suggested by the actor's body language and the reactions of others in the cast. Lame and in constant pain, the real Merrick was covered with lesions and pendulous folds of skin. His right hand, nose and feet were unrecognizable...
Associate Editor Frank Merrick first met Edward Moore Kennedy in 1962, when Kennedy, then 30, made his initial bid for a seat in the U.S. Senate and Merrick was reporting for the Holyoke, Mass., Transcript-Telegram. In the next 17 years Merrick often wrote about the Massachusetts Senator, tracing his career as one of history's most famous noncandidates. Now in this week's cover story, Merrick has Kennedy off and running at last as a formidable presidential candidate...
Despite all the press coverage that Kennedy attracts, the Senator remains an enigmatic subject. Says Merrick: "Everyone may know about his troubled marriage and his sailing at Cape Cod, but little is known about what he really thinks. He has lived in the public eye so long that he has become a master at shielding his privacy...