Did Sylvester Stallone start the Richard Gere gerbil rumour?
It’s become embedded so firmly in the fabric of Hollywood folklore that he’s never truly been able to outrun the decades-long fascination with the rumour, but was Sylvester Stallone the culprit responsible for lighting the touchpaper on Richard Gere’s alleged gerbilling?
What can’t be argued is that the two did have a feud, which naturally began with a greasy chicken and a heavy lashing of mustard. During production on 1974 drama The Lords of Flatbush, the cast’s lunch break almost descended into violence when Gere spilled his food on Stallone’s brand-new trousers.
He is said to have responded by elbowing the actor in the side of the head, putting co-writer and co-director Martin Davidson in a sticky predicament. One of them had to stay, and one of them had to go in order to relieve the tension. Gere was given his marching orders and was replaced in the part of Chico by Perry King.
For whatever reason, a decade later, the public became fascinated with an entirely unproven story that suggested Gere had been forced to take a trip to the emergency room in order to have a gerbil extracted from his arse. Where did it come from? Nobody knows for sure, but the Pretty Woman star had his suspicions.
Thanks to the simmering disdain they held for each other, Gere pointed the finger at Stallone. The Rocky and Rambo figurehead admitted to Ain’t It Cool that “he even thinks I’m the individual responsible for the gerbil rumour,” although he quickly sought to deny he was the culprit for one of Tinseltown’s most notorious urban legends.
He might be a Golden Globe-winning star with a decades-long filmography that includes the aforementioned Pretty Woman, American Gigolo, Days of Heaven, Primal Fear, and ‘Best Picture’-winning musical Chicago, but for many people, Gere will always be the guy who may or may not have put a gerbil up his butt.
It took on such a life of its own that Gere acknowledged how it informed his decision to drown out the outside noise that followed him around. “I stopped reading the press a long time ago,” he said. “Lots of crazy things came up about me at first, especially from the tabloids. There is an infamous ‘Gere stuck a hamster up his bum’ urban myth.”
It was a gerbil, actually, but the point still stands. It would be reasonable to assume that Gere has never partaken in such activities with an innocent member of the animal kingdom, but it just goes to show that even the most far-fetched of rumours can hang like a small and furry cloud over a respected veteran of the silver screen if they gain enough traction. Stallone says it wasn’t him who started it, but it can neither be proven nor denied with 100% certainty that he didn’t, either.
