"The other night I was reading the dictionary. I thought
it was a poem about everything."
Steven Wright
**
AMERICA'S LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE HOT DOG
|
"Most recently, a hot debate over whether
a hot dog is a sandwich has arisen, with
experts weighing in on both sides. The
Merriam-Webster Dictionary stated its
website that the hot dog is a sandwich,
defined as 'two or more slices of bread
or a split roll having a filling in between,"
but the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council
disagrees. It declared:'Limiting the hot dog's
significance by saying it's just a sandwich'
category is like calling the Dalai Lama
'just a guy."
Juan Jose' Sanchez."The Hot Dog: American
Icon" in National Geographic History, vol.7,
No.3.
**
Have you heard that the word gullible has been
removed from the O.E.D.?
(from the Friar's Club book of jokes)
***
If sentimentality is the word use to insult emotion –
in its simplified, degraded, and
Indulgent forms—then “saccharine” is the
word they use to insult sentimentality. It
Traces back to the Sanskrit sarkara, meaning
‘gravel’ or ‘grit.’ It means ‘like sugar.’until
the nineteenth century, when it started to
mean ‘too much.’ It started as a concept but
turned into a danger….”
Leslie Jamison. The Empathy Exams (Minneapolis:
Graywolf Press, 2004)
**
ON CABOPHOBIA
"I've had cab drivers pull over to the curb to tell
me about some relative who ought to be the show.
That's why I've got cabophobia -- the fear of being
talked to death in an enclosed space."
JOHNNY CARSON. Playboy Interview (December 1967)
…(KEVIN) Klein says “He (NICHOLS) loved actors—he was thespiphilic, even though there’s no such word.
”
Mark Harris. Mike Nichols: A Life (New York:
Penguin Press, 2021)
PUTTING UP FRANK SINATRA'S DUKES
DUKING – for Frank Sinatra, it referred to tipping, usually hundred dollar bills
“The phrase is lifted from the saloons of Tin Pin Alley, wherein if a crumb ‘dipped his duke
in the tambourine,” he was in fact skimming from the cash register, grabbing extra bread
on the sly. Sinatra’s tambourine over-flowed
for dukes everywhere, ever sly.”
Bill Zehme. Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of
Livin’ (New York: HarperCollins, 1997)
BUS OR TRUCK? THE DIFFICULTY OF GETTING PRECISE QUOTATIONS
When Jack Nicholson was cast to play opposite
Meryl Streep in Heartburn, she was concerned
that Nicholson would tip the movie away from
the woman’s point of view In Mark Harris’s
Mike Nichols: A Life (New York: Penguin Press,
2021)Meryl Streep went to Mike Nichols and
“This movie is about the person who got
hit by the bus. It is not about the bus.”
(p.400)
In She Made Me Laugh: My Friend Nora Ephron
by Richard Cohen (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016),
Cohen writes:
“Almost imperceptibly, the story started to drift
his way. Nora probably noticed, but she was the writer
and in no position to countermand Nichols. Streep was,
and she stepped . “I said this is about a person who
got hit by the truck. It’s not about the truck”
(p. 172)
About Parlance
Parlance derives from the Old French “parler,” meaning “speak,” and from the Latin noun “parabola,” meaning “comparison.”
Did you Know? The parlance in the 1998 movie “The Big Lebowski” is so quotable for audiences because characters often repeat specific phrases they’ve heard other people say in prior conversation. In fact, both The Dude (played by Jeff Bridges) and Maude (played by Julianne Moore) slip the phrase “the parlance of our times” into their own parlance.
WORD GENIUS (JUNE 30th,2021)
SELF DEFINING ETYMOLOGY
“We verb ‘puzzle’ – to perplex or confuse, bewilder or bemuse—is of unknown origin.
“ That kind of fits,” said Martin Demaine, an
artist in residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . “It’s a puzzle where the word ‘puzzle; comes from.”
His son, Erik Demaine, an M.I.T, computer scientist, agreed. “It’s a self-describing etymology,” he said.
Stobhan Roberts.
“To Crack These Codes, Math and a Tight Crease” in The New York Times (ScienceTimes (June 29,2021)
Shakespeare used the word puzzled in Twelfth Night: “ There is no darkness but ignorance
In which thou art more puzzled than the Egyptians in their fog.” (IV, 2, 48)
RATFUCK
“…privately he was happy to have (ELAINE) May back in his life. “Once we got over being mad at each other, we could come together for this or that ratfuck” –Nichols’s favorite word for any event that involved a lot of well-known and/or well-heeled people. “
Mark Harris. Mike Nichols: A Life (New York:
Penguin Books, 2021)
**
“(Tom) Stoppard’s erudition sometimes terrified the cast. At one point he said, ‘Cynthia, that passage wants to be a little more…plangent.’ The actors sat very still. ‘None of us had ever heard that word,” says Gallagher…
…
‘Oh, plangent…:’ Tom says. ‘Mike?’ Mike says,
‘Fuck, if I know.’ Tom says, “’A guitar is more plangent than a trumpet..’ Nothing. Nothing.
Then he reaches down and he says. ‘ It’s as if you were to take a pebble and drop it into the pool from a very small height. Plangent. ‘ We’re Oh my
God! That was plangent.”
Mark Harris. Mike Nichols: A Life (New York:
Penguin Books, 2021).
Nicky Arnstein, Fanny’s (BRICE) first husband, was once being sought
unsuccessfully by the police and was discovered – by the great Dashiell
Hammett – marching in a St. Patrick’s Day parade in New York; it was a
n unlikely place for a man of his ethnic origins to be. Dash Hammett
told me the story himself. Hammett was a Pinkerton detective at that time,
before he took on his successful literary career. In one of his early novels ,
he named aPiano-playing character after me, anagramming my name as Levi Oscant.
Oscar Levant. The Memoirs of an Amnesiac. (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, l965)
**
ON EMBEZZLEMENT
‘Servants and others were thus able to steal with impunity goods entrusted
to them by their masters. A statute of Henry VIII. (1529) was passed to meet
this case; and it enacted that it should be felony in servants to convert to their
own use caskets, jewels, money, goods or chattels delivered to them by
their masters. [Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1910]
quoted in The Online Etymological Dictionary
**
ON THE THIN MAN (1934)
MGM was advised that some dialogue was “censorable,” such as
William Powell‘s line “He didn’t come anywhere near my tabloids,” and
Myrna Loy‘s line “What’s that man doing in my drawers?” However, the
picture was approved for exhibition in 1934 and granted a PCA certificate i
n August 1935. After the film’s release, some territories did censor some
lines of dialogue, and at least one theater owner from the South wrote
to the PCA to complain of excessive drinking in the picture, which his
patrons found offensive.
from IMDb trivia–THE THIN MAN
THE BIRTH OF CHARLIE CHAN
While en route to the Berkshires, his usual summer hideout, (EARL DERR) Biggers stopped by the cavernous New York Public Library to do some reading and refresh his memories of Hawaii.
It was in the Reading Room. while browsing through a big pile
of Hawaiian newspapers, that Biggers supposedly came across the
name of Chang Apana: "In an obscure corner of an inside page,
I found an item to the effect that a certain hapless Chinese,
being too fond of opium, had been arrested by Sergeant Chang
Apana and Lee Fook, of the Honolulu Police. So Sergeant
Charlie Chan entered the story of The House Without a Key."*
Yunte Huang.Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the
Honorable Detective and His Rendevous with AmericanHistory (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010)
* The mystery of the creation of Charlie Chan deepens a bit because Yunte Huang was not able to locate in Hawaiian newspapers of 1924 the news item remembered by Biggers.
The Honolulu police Dept. has stated that there is no
record of Lee Fook of being a police officer with that
Department. If Biggers had read earlier editions of the'
Hawaii newpapers, he could not have done it at the NYPL
because that library did not subscribe to Hawaiian newspapers before 1924. Writers are notorious deceivers when explaining
the workings of their imaginations. What is not in doubt is
that Chang Apana was the inspiration for Charlie Chan.
**
BILK -- "A cheat or to cheat, not often encouraged
as a noun nowadays but a fighting word in some circles
a century or so ago. From a report on a visit to the
western territories after the Civil War: "...the most
degrading epithet that one can apply to another is
to pronounce him 'a bilk.' No western man will fail
to resent such concentrated vituperation. "...the term
is an old one, included in the cheating sense in the
first edition'(1785)of A Classical Edition of the Vulgar Tongue by Captain Francis Gross,who noted
that 'Bilking a coachman, a box-keeper, and a poor whore,
were formerly among men of the town, though 'gallant actions.' The word's origin is uncertain, but the best guess is that it is an alteration of balk. It appears first (OED, 1651), a
term in cribbage, meaning to balk or spoil an opponent's
score by consigning relatively unusable
cards to the ark."
Hugh Rawson. Wicked Words. (New York: Crown Publishers,1989).
ON TECHNIQUE IN WRITING MYSTERIES & OTHER NOVELS
"Incidentally, I found out that the trickiest
part of your technique was the ability to put
over situations which verged on the implausible
but which in the reading seemed quite real. I
hope you understand that I mean this as a
compliment. I have never come near doing it
myself. Dumas had this quality in a very
strong degree. Also Dickens.
Raymond Chandler, in a letter to Erle Stanley
Gardner (5 May 1939). The Raymond Chandler
Papers, edited by Tom Hiney and Frank
MacShane (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000)
FLORENCE MILLS
She was the greatest Negro star I ever saw. She was
thin & reedy and her voice was immeasurably poignant
She also danced wondrously. Florence Mills was to be
the star of the first ann-Negro musical, called
Shuffle Along. Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle wrote
the score and Josephine Baker had a bit in it.One
of the songs was "I'm Just Wild About Harry." Although
I never met het, the memory of Florence Mills remains
somewhat dimmed but lustrous. She was very young when
she died.
OSCAR LEVANT in The Memories of an Amnesiac (New York:
G.P. Putnam's Sons,1965.
**
There was a great deal of tension during rehearsals of
the Broadway production of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple
between director Mike Nichols and one of the stars,
Walter Matthau. At one particular rehearsal, Nichols
was ridiculing and belittling Matthau's efforts in a
particularly abusive manner, so the actor stopped and
said:
"Okay,Mike, can I have my balls back?"
"Certainly," said Nichols and snapped his fingers:
"Props!"
Peter Hay. Broadway Anecdotes (New York/Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1989)
**
At the end of the play I had to explain to the audience
–as I build the church all in mime – that I’ve been told
by God to wheel my mother in a barrow all over England….
and I’d been wheeling this fragile old lady all over
the stage…until God told me to stop at this mound (on
the stage) and build a church. Finally we stop, and I
build the church – I and the audience have to imagine
it.
As I tell the villagers in the play how it happened,
I could feel the absolute stillness of the audience.
The atavistic hairs on the back of the back of my
neck rose and I thought: what an extraordinary feeling,
That was the first time I felt a sense of the power
of acting, of being the medium through which the emotions
of the words could be felt. That’s when I thought I’ll
go on with it.
Richard Burton, on acting in Christopher Fry’s
The Lady’s NotFor Burning. Quoted by Hollis Alpert
in Burton.
BIOGRAPHY FOR THE NEXT GENERATIONS
Frank Lloyd Wright—
I think I shall write
His biography in 4 seconds. Ready! Set! Go!
Wright. Architect. That’s all I know.
**
ON CARY GRANT
It’s a part I’ve been playing a long time, but no way am I really Cary Grant. A friend told me once, ‘I wanted to be Cary Grant.’ And I said, ‘so did I.’ In my mind’s eye, I’m just
a vaudevillian named Archie Leach.
Cary Grant
Quoted in Cary Grant: A Brilliant Disguise
by Scott Eyman (NY: Simon & Schuster,
2020)
JACKIE GLEASON SKIPS OUT OF A BOARDING
HOUSE WITHOUT PAYING THE RENT
In summer Jackie (GLEASON) was booked into
Wanamassa Gardens in Asbury Park... Jackie
stayed at a local boarding house near the
beach and spent so much of his salary that he
was behind in his board bill. One noontime
he lowered his luggage out a back window to
a friend waiting below and then walked through
the lobby in his bathrobe.
"Going for a little dip," he said brightly.
"They say it's wonderful for the appetite."
When he got outside, he hopped into his friend's
car, got in the back seat and put his clothes on
while they drove to New York. Three years later
he went back to the boarding house to pay the
overdue bill. The landlady took a long look at
Jackie and burst into tears. "We thought you
drownded!" she moaned.
Jim Bishop. The Golden Ham: A Candid Biography of
Jackie Gleason ( New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956).
**
FRANK SINATRA AS A LADIES MAN
"When Sinatra dies, they're giving his zipper
to the Smithsonian."'
Dean Martin
MORE HISTORY THAN WE BARGAINED FOR
In late June 1776, as a massive British fleet prepared to invade New York, a complex drama played itself out at the headquarters of General George Washington’s Continental Army in New York City: a former bodyguard of the general was set to be hanged for conspiracy against the Patriot rebellion—and against Washington, himself.
On June 28, some 20,000 people gathered in a field just north of the city and watched a private in the Continental Army mount the gallows on charges of sedition, mutiny and treachery. The doomed man was Thomas Hickey, an Irish-born former British soldier who had joined the rebel cause after the outbreak of war in 1775.
More importantly, Hickey was a member of Washington’s Life Guard, the elite squad tasked with protecting the commander in chief, on whose shoulders the entire fate of the rebellion appeared to rest.
Now, Hickey would become the first Continental soldier to be executed for treason, thanks to his participation in a shadowy plot to foil the rebellion—and possibly even to kill or kidnap Washington. The plot apparently involved the royal governor of New York, the mayor of New York City and more than a dozen others, though Hickey would be the only one to hang for it.
from HISTORY MAGAZINE
**
THE MUCH OVERLOOKED ROCK SPRINGS MASSACRE
...in 1885, in Rock Springs,Wyoming, a mob of 150
disgruntled white miners, armed with Winchester
rifles, stormed into the Chinese quarter. They
killed twenty-eight Chinese, wounded fifteen, and
burned much of the district to the ground. According
to one eyewitness, 'the Chinamen were fleeing like
a herd of hunted antelopes, making no resistance.
Volley upon volley was fired after the fugitives. In
a few minutes the hill east of the town was literally
blue with hunted Chinamen.' Some linguists believe
that the word hoodlum comes from the anti-Chinese
cry of 'huddle 'em' a signal for mobs to surround
and harass the Celestials.
Yunte Huang. Charlie Chan. The Untold Story of theHonorable Detective and His Rendevous with American
History (New York: W.W. Norton & Company,
THE YEARS OF 3 UNITED STATES PRESIDENTS
In 1841, there were three United States Presidents:
Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, and
John Tyler.
In 1881, there were three United States Presidents:
Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, and
Chester A. Arthur.
***
In 1873, the President of the United States was
paid $50,000 a year. In l969, the President was
paid $200,000.
VALUE IN 2020 Dollars
1789 $25,000 $736,000
1873 $50,000 $1,080,000
1909 $75,000 $2,135,000
1949 $100,000 $1,089,000
1969 $200,000 $1,412,000
2001 $400,000 $585,000
**
WALTER MONDALE (1928-2021)
Walter Mondale
Did not fail
To fight for minorities & the poor,
Citizens Republican Senators today abhor.
**
"The opening of the second half of our show
was my personal speciality, followed by a
dancing act, and then a scene with (EDDIE)
Cantor and myself. When the curtain rose
for this portion of the show, there was hardly
anybody in the audience. Cantor immediately
came to the conclusion that I had insulted
the people, that I must have done something
to send them away from the theatre. Later,
it was found out that in a park near by, the
newly inaugurated Franklin D. Roosevelt had
come to make a speech. Standing with him was
Anton Cermak, beloved Mayor of Chicago. A
mashuginar had attempted to assassinate the
President by firing at him, but the bullet
found its target in the body of Chicago's
Mayor. Thousands of people had rushed to the
park for that reason, and our audience had not
returned to see us. The seriousness of this
event made us forget our squabble."
George Jessel.So Help Me: The Autobiographyof George Jessel (New York: Random House, 1943)
**
JOHN HANCOCK
Hancock, John
Signed his name upon
Some document or other,
Causing the British a lot oF bother,
Louis Phillips
EARLY MOTION PICTURE HISTORY IN NEW YORK CITY
"In 1911 Thomas A. Edison had an idea for talking pictures
and the first experiments were tried at an uptown studio.
Gus Edwards arranged to have (EDDIE) Cantor, Truly Shattuck,
a well-known prima donna, and me make the original tests.
These tests were tried in a theatre, but were way out of
synchronization, and that was the end of that. Now and then,
during the lay-off season, I used to manage to do bits in
the few pictures that were being made in New York and
Long Island. I played in one called The Other Man's
Wife in 1917, produced by Warner Brothers, in which
nearly the entire Warner family appeared."
George Jessel. So Help Me: The Autobiography of
George Jessel (New York: Random House, 1943)
**
THE LONE RANGER WAS NOT THE FIRST WESTERN COWBOY
STAR TO HAVE A HORSE NAMED SILVER
"After the war, (BUCK JONES) and his wife, Odelle Osborne,
whom he had met in the Miller Brothers show, toured with
the Ringling Brothers circus, then settled in Hollywood,
where Jones got work in a number of Westerns starring
Tom Mix and Franklyn Farnum. Producer William Fox put
Jones under contract and promoted him as a new Western
star. He used the name Charles Jones at first, then
Charles "Buck" Jones, before settling on his permanent
stage name. He quickly climbed to the upper ranks of
Western stardom, playing a more dignified, less gaudy h
ero than Mix, if not as austere as William S. Hart.
With his famed horse Silver, Jones was one of the most successful and popular actors in the genre, and at
one point he was receiving more fan mail than any
actor in the world."
FROM THE BIOGRAPHY OF BUCK JONES ON IMdB
IMdB Trivia goes on to say that Buck Jones Sued Republic Pictures for making Lone Ranger movies, saying it stole his idea. He was making movies in the '20s and into the '30s where he played a Texas Ranger who rode a white horse named Silver and he claimed he originated the yell; "Hi-Yo Silver". He lost the case.
**
TACT
I told the camera man he had made me look gorgeous
in “The Garden of Allah” and asked why he hadn’t done
it in a film we made much later. He said, well he was
eight years older.
Marlene Dietrich
**
ARRIVING MONDAY…ARRANGE OVATION.
Cable to Adolf Zukor
Quoted in The New Yorker (March 21,1994)
NAME ABOVE THE TITLE
When he made his other masterpiece, The Bank Dick, in 1941, no other star in Hollywood had above-the-title billing and carried contractual responsibility for writing and directing as well as performing. ...
"You've heard the old legend that it's the little put-upon guy who gets the laughs, but I'm the most belligerent guy on the screen. I'm going to kill everybody. But at the same time I'm afraid of everybody -- just a great big frightened bully. There's a lot of that in human nature. When people laugh at me, they're laughing at themselves. Or at least the next fellow. ..."
from Make 'Em Laugh: The Funny Business of America
by Michael Kantor and Laurence Maslon (NY: Twelve Hachette Book Group, 2008)
**
ABOUT FINDING THE RIGHT TITLE FOR NORTH BY NORTHWEST
“The project went through a number of titles –
In a Northwesterly direction, In a Northwest Direction,
The CIA Story, Breathless, The Man in
Lincoln’s Nose – before finally settling on North
By Northwest. MGM’s preferred cast was
Gregory Peck and Cyd Charisse, the latter because
she was under contract and the studio didn’t know
what to do with her now that musicals were faltering
at the box office.”
Quoted in Cary Grant: A Brilliant Disguise
by Scott Eyman (NY: Simon & Schuster,
2020)
**
AUDIENCES IN THE DAYS OF SILENT MOVIES IN HONOLULU
Audiences in the days of silent pictures were often
noisy and sometimes unruly. On the night of February
10,1905, a riot by nearly five hundred Chinese broke
out in the Chinese Theater on Liliha Street during a
kinetoscope malfunction. "There was first a rush to
smash the machine," reads a front-page article
published the next day, "wild disorder...the familiar
Chinese cry to rush the police...Then the mob
attempted to wreck the box-office." Police eventually
restored order."
Yunte Huang.Charle Chan: The Untold Story of the
Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with
American History (New York: W.W.Norton & Company,
2010)
NOEL COWARD'S QUIP ABOUT PETER O'TOOLE
"The young Irishman who played T.E. Lawrence in David
Lean's spectacular 1962 epic Lawrence of Arabia was
arguably one of the most physically actors ever to
grace the screen. NoelCoward famously remarked that
if O'Toole had been any prettier, the film would
have been called Florence of Arabia."
Neil Hickey. ADVENTURES IN THE SCRIBBLERS TRADE.
(Bloomington, Indiana: iUniverse, 2015)
***KickapooNative American people of the Algonquian family, 1722, from native /kiikaapoa/ which is sometimes interpreted as “wanderers” [Bright]
wigwam (n.)1620s, from Algonquian (probably Eastern Abenaki) wikewam “a dwelling,” said to mean literally “their house;” also said to be found in such formations as wikiwam and Ojibwa wiigiwaam and Delaware wiquoam.
from THE ONLINE ETYMOLOGICAL DICTIONARY
****
RALPH WALDO EMERSON & THE FIRST USE OF THE WORD CHINAMAN
When Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in 1854, “The disgust of California has not been able to drive or kick the Chinaman back to his home “ – a sentence cited today by the Oxford English Dictionary as the first recorded American Use of the word Chinaman – the New England sage Seemed well informed about the events in the Wild West. White Californians’ resentment and Discrimination toward the Chinese were indeed on the rise. Yunte Huang. Charlie Chang: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010) **
“You can taste a word.”
Pearl Bailey
**
If Mr. Gladstone were to fall into the Thames, it would
be if a misfortune. But if someone dragged him out again,
it would be a calamity.
Benjamin Disraeli, on the difference between misfortune
and calamity
**
ON ZELIG AND CHRONO-SYNCLASTIC-INFUNDIBULUM
…the name Zelig has since entered the vocabulary, but is always used to designate a secondary property of the creation. It is frequently employed to denote someone who appears everywhere , at popular events, alongside the rich , the famous , a ubiquitous non-entity. But the primary meaning of “Zelig” should be when one searches for a word to describe one who keeps abandoning his position and adopting the new popular one.
Woody Allen , director of the movie Zelig ,
In his autobiography Apropos of Nothing
**
CHRONO-SYNCLASTIC-INFUNDIBULUM
KURT VONNEGUT’s “ term for an imaginary region in outer space where time-warped travelers could miraculously be present at hundredsn of historical events and places simultaneously. The Joycean portmanteau expression has a respectable
etymological pedigrees, according to the O.E.D. :
chrono, time; synclastic, a curved surface with the
same curvature in all directions; infundibulum, a
funnel.”
Neil Hickey. Adventures in the Scribbler’s Trade
(Bloomington, Indiana: iUniverse, 2015)
**
FROM ENGLISH TO LATIN
Once, the hardened leader of the local SWAT team asked me
for a Latin version of his team’s credo. “The strength of
the wolf is in the pack, the strength of the pack is in
the wolf.” I told him: “Robur gregi in lupo, robur lupo in grege.” He thanked me and then said the nine most comforting words a SWAT team leader could say to anyone: “Let me know if you ever need a favor.”
Christopher Francese. “A Degree in English” in The New York Times (May l5, 2009).
SHAKESPEARE AND THE ROLL OF THE DICE
“Shakespeare would have called …loaded dice fulhams
named
for the Thames-side community which was then
rumored to be the seat of a brisk trade in illicit dicing.”
Ricky Jay. Dice (NY: The Quantuck Lane Press, 2003
New York City? I could only last 3 months there. It’s a hard place to be without money and when you don’t know the territory and you don’t have a trade. That was 1944 or 1945, so maybe it’s a nice place now, only I’m not going to try it.
Charles Bukowski
***
LEARNING TO SWIM IN THE EAST RIVER IN THE EARLY 20th CENTURY
"I could swim. I did what was called the East River
stroke, otherwise known as the "slap-overhand." I
put my arms straight out over my head until the
backs of my hands touched each other, then pushed
out to either side. That was the safest stroke to
use when swimming in the East River -- every time
you pushed to the side, you got the garbage out
of the way."
George Burns. Gracie A Love Story (New York:
G.P.Putnam's Sons, 1988)
NEW YORK CITY'S NUMBER ONE VAUDEVILLE THEATER IN 1909
...Hammerstein's Victoria Theatre on 42nd Street,
the most glamorous vaudeville theatre in all the
world. No other variety theatre ever presented
such a range of performances as did the great
impresario, Oscar Hammerstein, the first, and his
Barnum-like son Willie. Any name that found itself
on the front pages would be seen in person at
Hammerstein's on the stage. For example, two young
ladies charged with the murder of the millionaire,
E.D.Stokes, were set free on bail and were
immediately booked into Hammerstein's billed as
the Shooting Stars.
George Jessel. So Help Me. (New York: Random
House, 1943)
**
THE POET ELIZABETH BISHOP DESCRIBES NEW YORK CITY
"It is like a battered-up old alarm clock that insists
on gaining five or six hours a day and has to be kept
lying on its side"
Elizabeth Bishop
**
A WRITER IN NYC GOES TO
MADISON SQUARE GARDEN TO
" COVER THE NEW YORK KNICKS
BASKETBALL TEAM
Dribble, dribble,
Scribble, scribble,
Dribble, scribble,
Quibble, quibble.
Scribble, dribble,
Quibble, Scribble,
Dribble, dribble
LJP
**
HUBERT'S FLEA CIRCUS IN NYC AT 228-232 WEST 42nd Street
"Jack Johnson, the famous black prize fighter, did
a celebrity act there from 1933 until his death in
1948. Bob Dylan wrote about visiting the plsce in his
early New York days. Even Lenny Bruce had a routine
about going to Hubert's as a boy to see the 'Scientific
Marvel,' Albert Alberta, a half-man half-woman. Professor
Heckler's trained fleas had an irresistibly wacky
quality and often made the news on their own account.
A publicist once tried to check Heckler's star performer
into the Waldorf-Astoria. Another flea was shipped to
Hollywood, where it was slated to appear in a Claudette
Colbert movie. Sadly, it got lost in the mail."
Gregory Gibson. Hubert's Freaks (New York:Harcourt,Inc,
2008).
***
THE FIRST MURDER IN NEW YORK CITY’S CENTRAL PARK
Fans of great city parks will certainly enjoy reading
Stephen Wolf’s memoir of his love affair with New
York City’s Central Park—Central Park Love Song: Wandering Beneath the Heaventrees. In Chapter Ten,
“Garden of Darkness and Light” the author discusses
crime in the urban paradise:
“Mistaken for an Irish Catholic by a gang of Irish
Protestants, William Kane was the first person murdered in Central Park. That was 1870’; two years later a park visitor was killed in a robbery ‘that has actually stained the turf of (our) fairy land,’ wrote The New York Times. “
Hatchards is a branch of Waterstones, and claims to be
the oldest bookshop in the United Kingdom, founded on
Piccadilly in 1797 by John Hatchard. After one move,
it has been at the same location on Piccadilly next
to Fortnum and Mason since 1801...
(Wikipedia)
On the other hand , THE KING'S ARMS, founded by
stationer John Brindley in 1728 had the distinction
of being London's oldest bookshop. In 1928, a book
titled THE OLDEST LONDON BOOKSHOP , 1728-
!928, A History of 200 years by George Smith and
Frank Benger (London: Ellis, 1928). The store was
located at 29 New Bond Street.
**
“Poetry is not the most important thing in life…I’d
much rather lie in a hot bath reading Agatha Christie
and sucking sweets,”
Dylan Thomas
**
"My mother used to read Mark Twain to us. She scared
us half to death with those kids going down into that
cave."
Bill Cosby, quoted in LIFE (March 15, 1968)
**
"I read "A Tale of Two Cities" in the last year of
middle school and found it hard going at times, but
when I got to the sacrifice at the end, I wept like
a baby.
Jeff Vanderbilt. "By the Book" in The New York
Times Book Review (Sunday, April 17, 2021)
**
H.L. MENCKEN AT AGE 9 READS HUCKLEBERRY FINN
"If I undertook to tell you the effect it had
upon me my talk would sound frantic, and even
delirious. Its impact was genuinely terrific.
I had not gone further than the first
incomparable chapter before I realized, child
though I was, that I had entered a domain of
new and gorgeous wonders, and thereafter I
pressed on steadily to the last word. My
gait, of course, was still slow, but it
became steadily faster as I proceeded.As
the blurbs on the slip-covers of murder
mysteries say, I simply couldn't put the
book down."
H.L. Mencken. "Larval Stage of a Bookworm"
***
H
**
MY POETICAL INDEBTEDNESS TO A.E. HOUSMAN
A.E.
I.O.U.
***
THE ALL-TIME BEST EPIGRAPH TO A PUBLISHED BOOK
What the heck is a finial and why do we need one?
Epigraph to Dilbert: A Treasury of Sunday Strips
(Kansas City; Andrews McMeel Publishing.
**
SELF REFERENTIAL MOMENTS IN FICTION
In Number 3 of The Hardy Boys Series — THE SECRET OF THE OLD MILL – as the story gets underway, there is a plug for the previous two adventures:L
However, the Hardy boys had inherited much of their father’s ability and deductive talent. Already they had aided in solving two mysteries that had kept Bayport by the ears. As related, in “The Hardy Boys: The Tower Treasure,” they had solved the mystery of the theft of valuable jewels and bonds from Tower Mansion… In the second volume of the series, “The Hardy Boys: The House on the Cliff,” has been told how the Hardy Boys discovered the haunt of a gang of smugglers…
Now, if that isn’t an example of post-modernism in literature, I do not know what is. It is also smart marketing. Any reader starting the series at any point beyond the first volume would soon be hustled back to buy the books he missed. I have to admit that age 11, I had no idea what bonds were, but at least I knew they were valuable.
**
GOING BEYOND THE BOUNDS OF FICTION IN MICHAEL CONNELLY’S THE CROSSING
If the creators of THE HARDY BOYS SERIES were clever and postmodern in promoting books in their series, Michael Connelly goes them one better in crisscrossingThe boundaries of fiction and reality. In Chapter 12 of Connelly’s Hieronymus Bosch novel The Crossing, Connelly’s other famous character The Lincoln Lawyer (Mickey Haller) steps outside the novel to become a living person who has had a film made about him:
‘Haller missed the entire session with Foster. He waseither a celebrity lawyer or a notorious lawyer, depending on how you looked at it. He had received the ultimate imprimatur of L.A. acceptance – a movie about one of his cases starring no less than Matthew McConaughey.”
The more I think about the above paragraph, the more confused I get about the blurred boundaries of fact (the movie) and fiction (the character who has a movie made about his adventures). Obviously a ton of fictional characters have been brought to life on the screen, but the movies never became part of those characters’ identity/biography in the books they appeared. On the other hand, in Part 2 of Don Quixote, the great knight and Sancho Panza, his faithful squire, enter new adventures fully aware that they have become celebrities of sort and that their activities were fully recorded in Part One. Indeed, it can be said that Post-Modernism in novel writing was invented by Cervantes.
THE AUTHOR OF STIFF GOES TO THE MEDICAL SCHOOL LIBRARY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA , SAN FRANCISCO TO DO RESEARCH FOR HER BOOK ABOUT CADAVERS
A young man was looking at the computer record of the books under my name: The Principles and Practice of Embalming, The Chemistry of Death, Gunshot Injuries. He looked at the book I now wished to check out: Proceedings of the Ninth Stapp Car Crash Conference. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t need to. It was all there in his glance. Often when I checked out a book I expected to be questioned. Why do you want this book? What are you up to? What kind of person are you?
Mary Roach. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2003).
"By my mid-30s, I was a mother. One day, I was on
the subway and, of course, reading. As I finished
V.S. Naipaul's 'A House for Mr. Biswas," I burst
into tears. Oh, how I wanted Mr. Biswas, the
humiliated sign-writer turned journalist to get
his heart's desire."
Min Jee Lee. "Shelf Lives" in The New York Times
Book Review (Sunday, April 18, 2021)
**
radio (n.)
"wireless transmission of voice signals with radio
waves," 1907, abstracted or shortened from earlier
combinations such as radio-receiver (1903), radiophone
"instrument for the production of sound by radiant
energy" (1881), radio-telegraphy "means of sending
telegraph messages by radio rather than by wire" (1898),
from radio- as a combining form of Latin radius "beam"
(see radius). Use for "radio receiver" is attested
by 1913; sense of "sound broadcasting as a medium"
also is from 1913."
from THE ONLINE ETYMOLOGICAL DICTIONARY
**
PAUL VON DULLAC talked continuously
for 82 1/2 hours on a Chicago radio show.
from BELIEVE IT OR NOT ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE BIZARRE
**
WXYZ- "Radio station for which Alan Scott (The Green
Lantern)is program director (comic books). Actually.
WXYZ is a Detroit radio station on which the radio
series 'The Lone Ranger'(1933), 'The Green Hornet'
(1936), and 'Challenge of the Yukon' (1947) premiered."
from The Complete Unabridged Super Trivia Encyclopedia by Fred L. Worth (Los Angeles:
Brooke House,1977).
**
"Shirley Temple--'Presh' to her mother --now
a radio actress, has long been a radio fan.
She has six or eight radio sets at her
command and in her daily comings and goings
likes Gang Busters almost as much as her
favorite The Lone Ranger. But because of
studio and parental objections she has never
been allowed to act on a radio program before
this week."
Time. January 1,1940
**
REMEMBERING THE QUIZ KIDS
Quiz Kids was a radio and TV series of the 1940s and 1950s.
Created by Chicago public relations and advertising man
Louis G. Cowan, and originally sponsored by Alka-Seltzer,
the series was first broadcast on NBC from Chicago,
June 28, 1940, airing as a summer replacement show for
Alec Templeton Time. It continued on radio for the next
13 years. On television, the show was seen on NBC and CBS
from July 6, 1949 to July 5, 1953, with Joe Kelly as
quizmaster,[2] and again from January 12 to September 27, 1956,
with Clifton Fadiman as host.
WIKIPEDIA
"In many American homes in the early 1940s, tuning
in the Quiz Kids was nearly as habitual as turning
on the evening news to hear how our boys were doing
overseas. The press followed our feats almost as
closely as the troop maneuvers in Europe and the
Pacific."
...
"Children all over the country Quiz Kids Magazine,
played with Quiz Kid toys and games, and wore Quiz
Kid club badges on their Quiz Kids sweatshirts.They
looked up words in the Quiz Kids Dictionary, read
our favorite stories and poems in the Quiz Kids
anthology, and tried to 'Beat the Quiz Kids' by
topping our scores in a syndicated quiz column."
Ruth Duskin Feldman. Whatever Happened to the
Quiz Kids? (Chicago: Chicago Review Press,1982)
**
INFORMATION PLEASE
Another popular quiz show was INFORMATION PLEASE.
"which aired on NBC from May 17, 1938 to April 22, 1951. The title was the contemporary phrase used to request from telephone operators what was then called "information" but is now called "directory assistance"." Wikipedia
The show, with its 3 regular panelists Oscar Levant,
John Kiernan, and Franklin Pierce Adams, inspired a
bit of light verse by Irwin Edman, who was the chairperson
of the Philosophy Department at Columbia University.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Herman Wouk (Columbia
class of 1934), dedicated his first novel to Edman.
I quote the closing 3 stanzas from
INFORMATION, PLEASE!
I listen as they quip and quiz
And get a joke or get an answer:
What's the pluperfect tense of Is?
Whose head was carried by what dancer?
I listen to the poems and dates,
The facts, the whimsies, and the sparks,
The prompt mind that infuriates,
The quick recall, the bright remarks.
And as the quizzes end I go
(Sometimes I last but half-way through them)
To study hard until I know
So much I needn't listen to them.
"To police is to maintain law and order, but
the word derives from polis - the Greek for
'city' or 'polity' -- by way of politia, the
latin for 'citizenship,' and it entered English
from the Middle French police, which meant not
constables but government."
Jill Lepore. "The Long Blue Line" in The NewYorker (July 20,2020)
If you write well, you should not be writing a mystery.
Mysteries should only be written by people who can't
write. I regard this as vicious propaganda from the
Edmond Wilson crowd. Obviously you can't expect
detective fiction to be anything but sub-literary,
to use Edmund Wilson's word, if you insist on
weeding out from the field anyone who shows any
pretensions to skill or imagination.
.
Raymond Chandler, in a letter to Somerset Maugham
Gardner (4 May 1951). The Raymond Chandler
Papers, edited by Tom Hiney and Frank
MacShane (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000)
**
WHAT SHOULD A MYSTERY WRITER LOOK LIKE?
In 1944, H. Allen Smith published his best-selling Humor book
Lost in The Horse Latitudes and in one of the chapters he describes
meeting Raymond Chandler when they were writing screenplays for
Paramount. Here is Mr, Allen’s description of Chandler:
I wanted to meet Mr. Chandler right off.
I expected to find a hulking guy with a flat
nose and football-shaped biceps. He turned
out to be the last man in the world I would
have picked as the author of his books. He is
a mild mannered guy of medium size with
black wavy hair, horn-rimmed glasses, and
a sensitive face. He looks like a poet is
supposed to look.
**
GRACIE ALLEN & S.S. VAN DINE
"..in 1938 mystery writer S.S. Van Dine had
published The Gracie Allen Murder Case, featuring
his famed detective Philo Vance, as well as
Gracie and me. Gracie publicly claimed that
she could never understand why a man would
spend a year writing a novel when he could
buy one for only two dollars, but privately
she was very pleased by the compliment.When
Paramount decided to turn the book into a
movie. I suggested they eliminate my character.
Nobody argued."
George Burns.Gracie: A Love Story. (New York:
G.P.Putnam's Sons, 1988).
***
A PARADOX IN MYSTERY TITLES
PAPERBACK THRILLER is the title of a
mystery by Lynn Meyer. The book, published in
the mid-1970’s by Random House, was issued
in hardcover.
**
HOMAGE TO WILLIE SUTTON
It is beautiful to be
In a bank at night –all alone,
Thus spoke Willie Sutton.
When he uttered those thoughtful words
He hit it right on the button.
O you can have your Irving Berlin
As sung by Betty Hutton.
I’d rather be in a bank at night,
Alone with Willie Sutton.
The rich may dine on crepes Suzette,
The poor may munch on mutton,
But, as for me, I’d rather dine
In a vault with Willie Sutton.
O novelists, keep your publishers,
Your Random House or Dutton.
I’d rather be in a bank at night,
Alone with Willie Sutton.
There are stacks of gilt-edged bonds
Stacked away in vaults.
The fact that money rules so many lives
Is not poor Willie’s fault.
Louis Phillips
**
PhillipsMiscellany 