“It All Started with Neil (Or Did It?)”
I have picked up another version of the story that has nothing to do with racial stereotyping, urban paranoia, or dogs.
The story is told to me by Keith D. Young, who told it three years ago at a meeting of the Adventurers’ Club. The setting is not an elevator but a corridor in the historic Houses of Parliament in London.
Young points out that the British are masters of pomp and ceremony. “Even innocent bystanders and spectators sometimes feel themselves involuntarily caught up in and reacting to the drama of the moment, though they may know little or nothing of the ritual itself….” The innate desire to do the right thing on solemn occasions, he suggests, may explain this story:
In Parliament, the equivalent of our Speaker of the House is called the Keeper of the Woolsack; at the time of the story this gentleman was Sir Quentin Hogg, Lord Hailsham. Parliament had just adjourned, and his lordship, resplendent in the gold and scarlet robes of his office, topped by a ceremonial wig, emerges from the great hall into the corridor on the way to his chambers. The corridor is crowded with an American tour group, beyond which Lord Hailsham sees an old friend, the Hon. Neil Matten, MP, with whom he would like a word.
“Neil!” his lordship shouts. “Neil!”
“There followed an embarrassed silence,” Young concludes, “as all the tourists obediently fell to their knees.”
You never know what might crop up in—or near—the courts of justice. Consider this item that Kincardine lawyer Norman Shepherd snared and sent to me:
The Lord High Chancellor of England, who sits in the House of Lords, presiding over not only that august body but the entire British legal system, is a formidable figure.
Formerly plain Quentin Hogg, now Lord Hailsham, he was wandering down a corridor in the House of Parliament when he spotted an old friend, Conservative MP Neil Marten, emerging from a doorway.
“Neil!” he boomed out.
Just then a party of American tourists stopped to give way as the full-wigged elaborately-gowned and obviously important apparition cruised past, trying to get Marten’s attention.
“Neil!” shouted Hailsham, even louder.
So the Americans duly obeyed, falling to their knees before the astonished, but amused, Lord Chancellor.
During our freshman year at Brown University in Providence, R.I., my friend Neil occasionally served as an altar boy at the Catholic Mass in the campus chapel. During one Mass he neglected to bring out all the things necessary for the consecration of the sacrament. Unnoticed, he slipped away to retrieve them, but was unable to return before the priest needed him.
The priest looked left and right, then out toward the congregation. “Neil?” he said with a frown. Immediately, the congregation dropped to their knees in prayer.
The first example of the Neil/kneel story is from Jack Smith’s column in the Los Angeles Times for September 1, 1983. I partially quoted this in The Choking Doberman as a possible prototype for “The Elevator Incident.” I was informed by British readers that there were several flaws in this telling, including that: 1) Lord Hailsham was never knighted, so he should not be called “Sir,” 2) his office was that of Lord Chancellor, and 3) the “Woolsack” is merely the Lord Chancellor’s seat, and there is no “Keeper of the Woolsack.” Mike Lawrence of Chichester, England, wrote me in 1988 reporting that “the story of Lord Hailsham calling to his friend Neil is an apocryphal tale which English politicians occasionally tell on chat shows.” The second example of Neil/kneel is from Peter V. MacDonald’s “Court Jesters” column in the Toronto Daily Star for August 13, 1989. Like Smith, MacDonald cites an oral source; his details of English government are accurate, so presumably he has the name “Neil Marten” right as well. The third example is from the November 1995 issue of Reader’s Digest, where it is credited to “Matt Skinner.” Scottish folklorist Sandy Hobbs of the Paisley College of Technology also sent me a variation of this story found in a book of classroom anecdotes published in Edinburgh in 1986. This one concerns a teacher who is showing two new students around the school. When the teacher shouts “Neil!” at an older student who is racing down a hallway, the two youngsters at his side kneel down. Possibly the British stories are the actual prototypes of the “Sit” versions of “The Elevator Incident” this would mean that the American Neil/kneel story in Reader’s Digest is either a separate offshoot of the older tradition, an independently occurring actual incident, or even a hoax perpetrated by someone who had heard the earlier story and saw a chance to sell it to the Digest. I’d be glad to send a bouquet of roses to anyone who could sort this out for me. Meanwhile, see the next item for yet another variation on the elevator-incident theme.
“Sit, Whitey!”
In an episode from the Bob Newhart Show, Julius Harris, in the character of an insurance salesman seeking reasons for his poor sales record, calls his dog “Whitey” by name twice. The first time is during his counseling session with psychologist Bob, and the second is in the reception area after getting his dog a snack from a sandwich machine down the hall. “Whitey” is actually a black Great Dane, obedient but still intimidating. Harris, tall, bald, and black, is dressed in a colorful African-style outfit and wearing beads and sunglasses. Bob timidly suggests that perhaps he should change his image; following this advice, his client decides to stop wearing sunglasses.
After the interview with Bob, the insurance salesman goes around the corner and down the hall; meanwhile, all the other characters in the episode except Bob and Jerry leave on the office elevator. When the man and his dog return, Harris snaps “Sit, Whitey!” and Jerry reacts by sitting hastily but briefly on the edge of the receptionist’s desk.
That’s all there is to it—a quick punch line and sight-gag that leaves the audience in stitches.
From my notes from viewing the videotaped episode originally broadcast on December 1, 1973. Before seeing the tape, I had quoted some references to this episode in the section on “The Elevator Incident” in my 1984 book The Choking Doberman. Based on what readers and columnists recalling the episode had written, I guessed that the dog was white, that the guest star may have been Isaac Hayes, that the incident happened on the elevator, and that more than one Newhart character had sat down on command. None of these things turned out to be true, illustrating how changes in folk stories occur as they are imperfectly remembered and repeated from person to person. Even Bob Newhart himself, who responded to my 1983 query about the episode, failed to recall the name of the guest star; however, when I sent Newhart a copy of my newspaper column discussing the episode, he replied in a note dated June 25, 1992, “regarding the Sit Whitey episode of the Bob Newhart Show, I think it was the longest sustained laugh we ever received. It’s interesting the variations that have arisen over the years.” Vince Waldron, in his 1987 book Classic Sitcoms, comments “the episode contains one of the series’s most memorable throwaway gags,” referring to this bit of action. Whether the sitcom episode spawned the urban legend is an open question. Certainly the televised gag added an elevator and a black man to the Neil/kneel story, but the “Sit, Whitey!” punch line is never echoed in the oral tradition and sounds like a joke-writer’s clever invention. “The Elevator Incident” did not begin to circulate until nine years after the Newhart episode, although reruns continued through most of that period. My guess is that one of the writers had heard a prototype of the elevator story circulating orally and then added details as he scripted it, some of which eventually fed back into the spoken tradition.
“Black and White”
A speech on apartheid before the United Nations, a reception hosted by several foreign ambassadors, and finally dinner with Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe and his wife at the home of Bill and Camille Cosby—the day’s schedule promised to be a heady one, even for a man as prominent as the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
But as he stood outside of a hotel waiting for a limousine, it happened. Out of nowhere came the seemingly innocent yet ugly reminder t
hat some people in this day and age still judge a person’s station in life by the color of his skin. “This White lady walked up to me,” Rev. Jackson recalls. “She said, ‘Oh, I’m so glad to see you. You really saved me. If you hadn’t helped me get those bags off the elevator, I couldn’t have made it.’” Having said all that, she then gave him a dollar.
Startled, Rev. Jackson—a two-time candidate for the presidency of the United States—took the dollar, thanked the woman and climbed into his waiting stretch limousine, which was driven by a White chauffeur.
Michael Thurmond, a lawyer and former chairman of the Black Caucus in the Georgia Legislature, remembers the sting of leaving an elegant reception for lawmakers at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Atlanta last year and being asked by an elderly white woman, and then her husband, to retrieve their car.
Thurmond, dressed in a $250 tailor-made blazer, white shirt and silk tie, was standing by the hotel door waiting for his car when the wife approached him. Thurmond says he politely told her he was not an employee.
But when her husband asked moments later, Thurmond angrily snapped at the man, who stammered an apology and nervously walked away.
“I was really ticked,” Thurmond said. “Here I am being entertained upstairs as chairman of the black caucus with all these business people trying to shake your hand, and you come downstairs and get mistaken for a parking attendant.”
Karl Malone went to Salt Lake International Airport Tuesday to pick up his inbound brother.
While standing in the baggage claim area, however, he was startled when a woman approached and made a strange request.
“She picked me out of the crowd,” said the 6-foot-9 256-pound Malone. “She said she needed a porter-boy. You know, someone to help her with her bags. I said, “‘OK, I’ll help you.’”
Waiting for the woman’s luggage to appear, Malone’s new employer continued the conversation. He discovered she came from his home state and lived in Bossier City, Louisiana.
“She asked if that’s what I did for a living,” Karl said. “I told her I drove a truck during the day and I did this at night, for a few extra bucks…. Some of the Delta [Airline] people saw what was happening. They were dying laughing.”
Bags in tow, Malone and the woman went outside.
“I asked her what kind of car we were looking for,” he said. “She said a blue Mercedes. We found it—the guy inside was looking at me kinda funny—and I got the stuff put away.”
Then, the moment of truth.
Said Malone, “She reached in her purse to tip me and I told her, ‘No, thanks,’ I said. ‘It’s O.K., I really play pro basketball.’ She looked at me and hey, she turned another color she was so embarrassed. It was really funny. It was all in fun; I was having a good time.”
After this, the Mailman might deserve a new nickname.
The Skycap, perhaps!
The Jesse Jackson anecdote is from Douglas C. Lyons’s article “Racism and Blacks Who’ve ‘Made It,’” in Ebony for October 1989. Lyons also tells of the time David Wilmot, dean of admissions at Georgetown Law School was mistaken for a parking valet at a posh Washington hotel. The Michael Thurmond anecdote is from Robert Anthony Watts’s article on racism distributed to newspapers by the Associated Press in September 1993. The Karl Malone anecdote is from Steve Luhm’s “NBA Notes” column in the Salt Lake (City) Tribune for December 2, 1990. Mistaken identities of blacks by whites certainly do occur, but in their retellings details are selected for emphasis and the stories may enter the realm of folklore. In Salt Lake City, for example, variations on the Karl Malone story circulating by word of mouth that week involved the make of car, the conversation, what Malone was wearing, his reaction, etc. A similar incident is supposed to have occurred to U.S. Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall being mistaken for an elevator operator in the Supreme Court building. An older and even more legendary body of similar stories describes a black (or Hispanic) celebrity mowing his lawn and being mistaken for a gardener by a woman—always a woman—who asks how much he is paid for his work. “Well, Ma’am, they don’t pay me nothin.’” the man replies, “but the lady of the house lets me sleep with her.” This story has been told about blacks from George Washington Carver to Charley Pride, as well as about golfers Lee Trevino and Chi Chi Rodriguez.
“The Ice-Cream-Cone Caper”
As told by Paul Harvey
Our For What It’s Worth Department understands that actor Robert Redford is in Santa Fe, New Mexico, making a movie…
But the lady who encountered him in an ice-cream parlor on Canyon Street was determined to stay cool…
She pretended to ignore the presence of the movie star…
But after leaving the shop she realized that she did not have the ice-cream cone she’d bought and paid for.
She returned to the shop…
To ask for her ice-cream cone.
Overhearing, Robert Redford said, “Madame, you’ll probably find it where you put it—in your purse.”
Meltdown time
Paul Newman’s blue eyes can make more than a heart melt.
Will Spanheimer of Kennewick was visiting his aunt, Madalaine Hart, in Phoenix, Arizona, when they decided an ice cream cone would be just the thing on a 110-degree day.
But walking into the shop just ahead of them were Newman and wife Joanne Woodward. After working up their nerve, Spanheimer and Hart walked inside, ordered cones and left.
Then Hart realized something was amiss. “Where’s my ice cream cone?” she asked her nephew. They went back inside the store to look for it.
Then the magic moment—Hart felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to see those famous blue eyes gazing into hers.
And he had the answer to the missing cone caper. She had put it—a waffle cone with three scoops and whipped cream—in her purse.
In this legend the celebrity involved is recognized, but with embarrassing results for the civilian. Most versions are jam-packed with circumstantial details, none of which can be true, since all the celebrities supposedly involved in the incident have denied it ever occurred. Paul Harvey was one of many journalists and broadcasters who told and retold the cone-caper story in 1986; this is quoted from the 1991 book For What It’s Worth, as told on the air in Harvey’s trademark breathless style. The Paul Newman version quoted is from the “FYI” column of the Tri-City Herald (published in Pasco, Washington) for October 11, 1993. Similar versions appeared in Lois Wyse’s column “The Way We Are” in Good Housekeeping for April 1991, and in Robin Adams Sloan’s “Gossip Column” distributed by King Features to newspaper television magazines in September 1992. Robert L. Kierstead, ombudsman for the Boston Globe, published a good account of his paper’s initially falling for the story, plus a survey of the story’s history, in a November 1986 column sent to me by Philip Moshcovitz of Brookline, Massachusetts. Kierstead commented, “The story was too good to be true and was not challenged soon enough.” My own report on the popularity of the story in 1986—when it was also told about Jack Nicholson and Tom Brokaw—appeared in Curses! Broiled Again! where I suggested a possible Freudian reading of the cone-in-the-purse reaction to the presence of the handsome star.
“The Blind Man”
Too Good to Be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends Page 41