In the mid-1970s, Burt Reynolds and Tammy Wynette were the ultimate “it” couple, but their romance was nearly cut short by a freak accident. It wasn’t a stunt gone wrong or a car chase that almost claimed the life of the world’s biggest movie star—it was a quiet moment in a Florida bathroom that turned into a life-or-death rescue. During an appearance on the Drifting Cowboy podcast, Georgette Jones, who is the daughter of Tammy and George Jones, talked about her life and memories growing up with two of country music’s most famous musicians as parents. And of course, she recalled the famous story about how Tammy saved Burt’s life, when he almost drowned in her bathtub in 1976. As Georgette explains, Reynolds would sometimes get low blood sugar if he wasn’t eating properly, and that’s what happened here: “What happened was, mom and Burt dated for a little over a year, and he apparently had some issues at times with low blood sugar. So if he felt bad, he needed to eat some sugar and follow it up with a meal so that he could keep his blood sugar up. Well, he had been filming, and he got there early, he hadn’t eaten in hours, so first thing he eats, he sees mom has made homemade banana pudding. And mom was known for her banana pudding, and if any of you have ever had real homemade banana pudding, you know there’s just a little bit of sugar in it, right? There’s a lot, so he had himself a big helping of pudding, and apparently, he asked mom if he could go clean up in her bathroom and all that while she was cooking supper and doing stuff. Mom’s like, ‘Yeah, go ahead.'” He went back to the bathroom and decided to soak for a little while, and after a long period of time went by, Tammy got worried because he hadn’t come back out. She went back to check on him, and eventually realized something was wrong: “He went back there and I guess decided he was going to take a hot soak in the bathtub, and mom said that he was taking forever, and she was getting kind of worried about him. She went and knocked on the bathroom door, and she’s like, ‘Are you okay?’ And he wasn’t answering, so she said she finally just opened the door, and that he was almost sinking down to where his nose was about to be… he was passing out into the bathtub. And so mom said she panicked, and she just ran over, and she said, you know, he was not a little fella. He was a big, tall guy. So she’s trying to lift him up out of the water and pull him out of the bathtub, and she’s panicking, and she said she finally gets him out and runs and gets some orange juice and kind of forces it into his mouth, makes him drink it and swallow some orange juice.” Reynolds finally starts to feeling better, and he immediately started laughing… because he realized that instead of trying to wrestle him out of the tub on her own, she could have simply pulled the plug to drain the water: “He finally starts waking up and feeling better, she said he started dying laughing. And she’s like, ‘What is so funny?’ Because she was getting annoyed, she was like, ‘I mean, you almost died. You could have drowned if I hadn’t come checked on you.’ And he said, ‘Why didn’t you just pull the plug?’ And she’s like, ‘Well, I didn’t think about that. I just knew I had to get you out of the water. I wasn’t going to let you drown.’ So yeah, he made fun of her for ages after that, because he was like, ‘All you had to do was pull the plug.’ And she was like, ‘I just didn’t think.'” It’s true… but when you’re in panic mode like that, it’s obviously not as easy to think straight. But regardless of her method, Wynette saved his life, and they remained close friends for years after they stopped dating. Wynette still kept a room for him in her Nashville home, and Reynolds even directed the music video for her 1990 single, “Let’s Call It a Day Today,” on his Florida ranch. It’s a famous story, you’ve probably heard the general overview of it before, but it’s really interesting to hear Georgette’s perspective and more details of what her mother told her of the incident directly. The full podcast is available below. “Let’s Call It A Day Today” The post The Bathtub Incident: The Night Tammy Wynette Saved Burt Reynolds From A Hollywood Tragedy first appeared on Whiskey Riff.