BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: PROFESSIONS

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MAGICIAN’S ASSISTANT

“ I met a woman once who was divorced from
 a professional magician. She hated this man 
with a passion. She used to appear with him in a
baffling trick where they exchanged places 
handcuffed and manacled in a locked cabinet.
I asked her how it was done. The divorcee and
her feelings  meant nothing compared to her
loyalty to the magical profession. She looked at 
me coldly and said, ‘The trick is told when the
 trick is sold.’”

Roger Ebert. Awake in the Dark (Chicago: The 
University of Chicago Press, 2017).
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RAINMAKER

RUGGLES' CANNONS AT THE BATTLE OF SHILOH  

"About midnight April 6, 1862, a driving rainstorm pelted the soldiers after a massive bombardment by Ruggles' Battery. After the war, Daniel Ruggles became an inventor, submitting several rainmaking patents that included the application of explosives. Perhaps Ruggles associated  the downpour at Shiloh with the artillery fire he directed, and his experiences at Shiloh may have contributed to his  rainmaking ideas.  

Gregory A. Metz. Attack at Daylight and Whip Them: The Battle of Shiloh (April 6-7, 1862). (El Dorado Hills, California. Savas Beatie LLC, 2019).

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GENTLEMAN’S GENTLEMEN: BASIL RATHBONE’S BUTLER

Film-star Basil Rathbone (well-known to mystery fans 
for his many films about Sherlock Holmes) was 
well-served for a time by an almost perfect butler 
named Poole.. Unfortunately, the gentleman’s gentleman 
had one slight flaw: non his nights off, he was a 
foot-pad who used a pistol to hold-up wealthy Londoners 
walking home at night. Poole was finally caught and was sentenced to two years and nine lashes with the 
cat o’ nine tails for carrying a pistol. 
   
In his autobiography –In and Out of Character—-Rathbone  
writes” I never found out the whys and wherefores of his predilection  for a Jekyll and Hyde existence. All I 
could get from him was that he had learned his technique 
from the movies:  they had taught him what not to do! 
And he claimed with complete sincerity, that he had 
never hurt anyone in his life, and had always contributed liberally to organized charity. 
“Anonymous , of course,” he had said with a wry smile.”
   As for the reference to Jekyll and Hyde, I wonder if  
Basil Rathbone was aware of the fact that Jekyll’s butler 
was also a gentleman’s gentleman named Poole.
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SPIRITUALIST

"It's a good time to be dead -- at least, if you
want to keep in touch with the living. Almost a
third of Americans say they have communicated 
with someone who has died, and they collectively
spend more than two billion dollars a year for
psychic services on platforms old and new.
Facebook, Tik Tok, television: whatever the
medium, there's a medium."

Casey Cep. "KIndred Spirits" in The New Yorker
(May 31, 2021)


MUTTON SHUNTER

Mutton-shunter – A policeman who seeing prostituted
on a street  shunts –or moves them along.



Eric Partridge. A Dictionary of Slang and
Unconventional English.




CRIMINAL LAWYER


“The criminal lawyer, like the criminal, is the enemy of 
Law and Order. The criminal attacks society head on; the 
lawyer is trying to set you free after you have been
 caught 
so that you can go out and steal some more. Whether he 
succeeds or not, he profits from your crime. The only 
way you can pay him is out of the money you
ve got away 
with at one time or another, everybody knows that. It’s 
called  his share of the loot, of course.
It’s called 
‘the fee.’ But that’s only because he has a license that entitles him to do what he’s doing,, and
You haven’t.

"

Willie Sutton with Edward Linn.  Where the Money Was 

(New York: Viking Press, 1976)


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QUIZ SHOW CHAMPION


“The Quiz Champion is not a self-thinker. He is too 
busy trying to recollect the words and thoughts of 
others,
which he has read and memorized. The Quiz 
Champion spits in the eye of thee music lover who 
wants nothing more than to spend a couple of hours 
listening to the Toscanini recording of Otello, but 
who is now burdened with a deep sense of guilt 
because he does not know (a) when the opera was 
first produced (b) who was the conductor, and (
C) the name of the soprano of the premiere.”



Harry Golden. Only in America (1959)

DRAMA CRITIC

“Probably the greatest privilege enjoyed by a commercial drama critics

is not having to go the theatre during the summer. It is a comfort and delight

on a par with the mint julip and not fastening the collar button of a shirt when one is

wearing a necktie.”

George Jean Nathan. The Theatre in the Fifties. 1953

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