Can you think of any famous dentists? There probably aren’t any that come to mind. Of course gallup dentists are “superstars” to the patients they serve … but generally speaking, dentists don’t hit the ranks of pop culture icons.
With a little digging, we found some better-known individuals who made their name in another arena but who happened to become a dentist along the way. Here they are:
1. We’ll begin with Doc Holliday. Yep! John Henry “Doc” Holliday, the famous gun-slinging companion of Wyatt Earp truly was a doctor – a doctor of dentistry. In 1880, he moved to Tombstone, Arizona hoping the climate would help his tuberculosis. He ended up becoming a legendary gambler and gunfighter of the Old West and the subject of many movies and books.
2. Next, we have Thomas Bramwell Welch. Now, before you can say … who? Think grape juice. That’s right the “inventor,” if you will, of grape juice, Thomas Bramwell Welch was a dentist by profession. Actually he had several professions. He was ordained a Methodist Minister at age 19, then later went to medical school and decided after a few years to switch to dentistry. In 1865, Welch moved to Vineland, New Jersey, where he invented a method of pasteurizing grape juice so the fermentation stopped. Being a former minister, he was very persuasive in getting local churches to adopt his non-alcoholic wine for communion services. He called it, “Dr Welch’s unfermented wine.”
3. Former Heisman Trophy winner, Leslie “Les” Horvath was a dentist. A quarterback and halfback for Ohio State University in the 1940’s, Horvath won college football’s most prestigious award in 1944. He went on to play three years in the pro’s before heading off to dental school and practicing dentistry in the Los Angeles area.
4. “And there’s Uncle Joe … he’s a moving kinda slow … at the junction. Petticoat Junction!” Who would have thought that Uncle Joe from the popular 60’s television show, “Petticoat Junction,” was a dentist! Edgar Buchanan made hundreds of movies working with some of Hollywood’s heavyweights like Cary Grant in “Penny Serenade”, John Wayne in “McClintock,” and Clint Eastwood in “Maverick.” Buchanan was a regular on not only “Petticoat Junction,” but “Green Acres” and “The Beverly Hillbillies” simultaneously.
Well we hope you enjoyed this post about a few famous dentists. Which ones did we miss?