Many celebrities would probably love to get revenge on tabloid magazines that print bogus stories about them, but Burt Reynolds actually saw that fantasy through. For years, Reynolds was the subject of many National Enquirer articles, and needless to say, they didn’t paint a pretty picture of the Smokey and the Bandit star. Though Reynolds stayed quiet about their nonsense claims, he finally reached his breaking point when the folks at the Enquirer announced they’d erected the tallest Christmas tree in the world.
Reynolds didn’t think it was right for a publication of that sort to hold such an honor, and decided to take action. At the time, National Enquirer headquarters was in Lantana, Florida, about 25 miles from Reynolds’s ranch in Jupiter. Reynolds had close to 100 horses living there in those days, and as a result, would accumulate quite a bit of manure.
Ordinarily, ranchers compost this overabundance of horse crap or sell it to local farmers, but Reynolds had other plans for it on this occasion.
Burt Reynolds Once Showered a Tabloid’s Christmas Display With Horse Manure
Around 3 a.m. on Christmas Eve, Reynolds and his ranch foreman loaded his helicopter with manure and sent it raining down on the Enquirer’s pride and joy. “Dumping a helicopter full of horse s—t on the National Enquirer made me feel great,” Reynolds told The Guardian in 2017. “They’d been writing crap about me for years, so I thought it was only fitting,” he continued, adding that he and his accomplice “flew over the building and watched it cascade down their giant Christmas tree.”
The National Enquirer addressed the incident on their website the following year, calling Reynolds a “Grinch-like star” who “took delight in taking aim at the Enquirer’s annual Christmas display that thrilled local kids in Florida.”
They went on to say, “It had become a Sunshine State tradition for children to gather at Enquirer headquarters to see an annual holiday display featuring animated figures, 280,000 twinkling lights, and the world’s tallest Christmas tree. But none of that mattered to Burt…”
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