“If you really want to study police methods, do what I do: watch television.”
—Officer Gunther Toody, Car 54, Where Are You?
ON STEALING
“If you’re gonna steal, steal from kin—at least they’re less likely to put the law on you.”
—Bret Maverick, Maverick
The average person has 1,460 dreams a year. That’s four a night.
DISASTER FILMS II
Here are more of the worst losers Hollywood has ever produced.
CLEOPATRA (1963)
Description: It started out as a low-budget “tits-and-togas” epic, but became a high-cost extravaganza when studio executives offered Liz Taylor the lead. “Sure,” she supposedly replied, “I’ll do it for a million dollars.” She was joking—no one had ever been paid that much for a single film role before—but 20th Century-Fox took the bait and made her the first million-dollar star in Hollywood history.
Dollars and Sense: Adjusted for inflation, Cleopatra is believed to be the biggest money loser in the history of film. It had a $6 million budget when Taylor was signed, but cost $44 million—the equivalent of $110.6 million in 1980 dollars. Twenty years after it was released, the film was still an estimated $46.2 million in the hole.
Wretched Excess: More than eight acres of sets were built near London, and the Thames River was diverted to create a “mini Nile” for the film. But the fog made filming impossible. “On a good day,” said the director, “whenever a word was spoken, you could see the vapor coming from the actors’ mouths. It was like a tobacco commercial.” Taylor almost died of pneumonia during the filming and couldn’t return to the damp London sets for more than six months. Overhead costs piled up at $45,000 a day. Finally the studio gave up and shut the London studios down. Total cost: $6 million for 12 minutes of usable film.
The Critics Speak: “After [the London premiere], I raced back to the Dorchester and just made it to the downstairs lavatory and vomited.” —Elizabeth Taylor
THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD (1965)
Description: In 1954, 20th Century-Fox paid $100,000 for the film rights to The Greatest Story Ever Told, a novel about the life of Jesus Christ. The studio set out to make a big-budget Bible epic along the lines of Samson and Delilah (1949) and The Ten Commandments (1956).
Dollars and Sense: The film cost more than $20 million to make; five years later it had still only earned $8 million worldwide.
Chickens snore.
Wretched Excess: Director George Stevens insisted on building a fake Holy Land in Arizona, arguing that the real Holy Land wasn’t good enough. “I wanted to get an effect of grandeur as a background to Christ,” he explained, “and none of the Holy Land areas shape up with the excitement of the American Southwest.” Six months into the film, a blizzard pounded the 22-acre Jerusalem set and buried it in snow. Stevens just moved to Los Angeles, where he built a whole new Jerusalem.
Filming fell so far behind schedule that two members of the cast and crew died, and the actress who played Mary Magdalene became pregnant (forcing Stevens to film her standing behind furniture and in other odd angles). Stevens handed out so many cameo roles to Hollywood celebrities that “it made the road to Calvary look like the Hollywood Walk of Stars.” In one scene, John Wayne played a centurion who barked out the now-famous line, “Truly, this man wuz the Son of Gawd!!”
MOHAMMED: MESSENGER OF GOD (1977)
Description: A cinematic biography of the prophet Mohammed, Mohammed: Messenger of God was intended by the producer to be Islam’s The Ten Commandments.
Dollars and Sense: Two different versions of the film were made: one with Islamic actors for the Islamic world, and one with Western actors. Both versions bombed; in fact, every Islamic country except Turkey banned the Islamic version. The film(s) cost $17 million and earned less than $5 million.
Wretched Excess: When rumors spread that Peter O’Toole—and then Charleton Heston—had been signed to play Mohammed, angry protests broke out all over the Middle East. Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal had granted permission to film on location in Mecca, but changed his mind and kicked the director out of the country. The director then moved to the desert outside of Marrakesh, Morocco, and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars building a detailed replica of Mecca. Six months after filming began, King Faisal “communicated his displeasure” over the film to King Hassan of Morocco by threatening to cut off oil shipments to the kingdom and banning all Moroccan pilgrims from entering Saudi Arabia. The director had to move to the Libyan desert and build a third Mecca.
G.I. blues: Elvis received 10,000 letters a week during his stint in the U.S. Army.
BAD HAIR DAYS
Think you’ve ever had a bad hair day? Just be glad you never had one like these folks.
BACKGROUND
“One kind of day that everyone dreads is the widely known and feared bad hair day,” wrote columnist William Safire when a reader asked him about the term. Safire speculated that it started with comedian Gary Shandling. “Irritated with his coverage in Us magazine, Shandling (who used to begin his routine with ‘Is my hair all right?’) told the Seattle Times in January 1991: ‘I was at a celebrity screening of Misery and they made up a quote for me. They said I told them I was having a bad hair day. They didn’t even talk to me.’”
A month later the phrase appeared in the L.A.Times, then the Toronto Star (“Was Robert DeNiro caught in a crosswind, or was he just having a bad hair day?”), and now it’s a part of our lexicon.
SIX REAL BAD HAIR DAYS
1. Michael Jackson
In February 1984, Jackson and his brothers were filming a $1.5 million commercial for Pepsi-Cola in which he walked down a staircase as a pyrotechnic display went off behind him. They shot the scene four times, but according to Time magazine, “The effect was not quite right for Director Bob Giraldi....He asked the singer to move more slowly and ordered the fireworks ‘heated up’ a bit. The combination proved volatile: On the fiery fifth take...sparks from a smoke bomb ignited Jackson’s hair, sending the singer to the hospital with second- and third-degree burns on his scalp.
2. Albert Anastasia
Anastasia was head of the Mangano crime family, one of the infamous “five families” of the New York mafia. On the morning of October 25, 1957, he went for a haircut at the Park Sheraton Hotel. While his bodyguard parked the car, Anastasia sat down in the barber chair and fell asleep. Minutes later, two men wearing scarves over their faces walked up to him, drew their guns, and opened fire. Anastasia jumped out of the chair and tried to attack the gunmen, but he was too badly wounded and collapsed dead on the floor.
A blue whale’s sound can be heard from more than 500 miles away.
3. Hans Steininger
Steininger was a 16th-century Austrian man famous for having the longest beard in the world. In September 1567, he tripped on his beard as he was climbing the stairs to the council chamber of Brunn, Austria. He fell down the stairs and died.
4 Hans Hoffman
In 1993, Hoffman, a 31-year-old vagrant, robbed a Rotterdam (Netherlands) bank of $15,000, telling the teller he needed the money to get a haircut and buy a piece of cheese. A few hours later he showed up at the Rotterdam police department, surrendered, and handed over a bag full of cash. Police counted the money and it was all there—minus the price of a haircut and a piece of cheese.
5. King Louis VII of France
King Louis had a beard when he married Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1137, but when he shaved it off, Eleanor thought he looked ugly without it and insisted he grow it back. Louis refused—so she left him and married King Henry II of England. However, Louis refused to give back Aquitaine, Eleanor’s ancestral lands, which had became part of France when the couple got married. King Henry declared war. “The War of the Whiskers” lasted 301 years, until peace was finally signed in 1453.
6. President Bill Clinton
In May 1993, President Clinton received a $200 haircut on Air Force One. The only problem: At the tim
e, Air Force One was parked on the tarmac, and according to a Federal Aviation Administration official, the trim shut down two of LAX’s four runways for 56 minutes. The scene generated so much bad publicity that the hair stylist, Christophe, held a press conference to deny that Clinton was as smug, self-important, or stylish as the incident suggested.
“I am not saying this in a negative way,” he told reporters, “but from what you can see, do you really think that Hillary or Bill Clinton, are very concerned about their appearance?”
The whole thing may have been the work of a political trickster. Subsequent checks of the records at LAX showed that the haircut had actually caused no problems. Runways were not shut down, and no planes were kept waiting.
William Shakespeare invented more than 1,700 words.
LIMERICKS
Limericks have been around since the 1700s. And our readers have been sending them in since 1988. Here are few of their favorites.
There was a faith-healer of Deal,
Who said, “Although pain isn’t real,
If I sit on a pin,
And it punctures my skin,
I dislike what I fancy I feel.”
There were once two young people of taste
Who were beautiful, down to the waist.
So they limited love
To the regions above,
And thus remained perfectly chaste.
There was an old man of Blackheath,
Who sat on his set of false teeth;
Said he, with a start,
“O Lord, bless my heart!
I’ve bitten myself underneath!”
There was a young man of Montrose,
Who had pockets in none of his clothes.
When asked by his lass
Where he carried his brass,
He said: “Darling, I pay through the nose.”
There was a young student called Fred,
Who was questioned on Descartes and said:
“It’s perfectly clear
That I’m not really here,
For I haven’t a thought in my head.”
Dr. Johnson, when sober or pissed,
Could be frequently heard to insist,
Letting out a great fart:
“Yes, I follow Descartes—
I stink, and I therefore exist.”
A cute secretary, none cuter,
Was replaced by a clicking computer.
T’was the wife of her boss
Who put the deal across;
You see, the computer was neuter.
There was a young lady named Jeanie,
Who wore an outrageous bikini,
Two wisps light as air,
One here and one there,
With nothing but Jeanie betweenie.
President Clinton’s feet (size 13C) are the biggest presidential feet since Woodrow Wilson’s.
DEAR ABBY
A few thoughts from one of America’s all-time favorite advisors, Abigail Van Buren.
“If you want a place in the sun, you have to put up with a few blisters.”
“Some people are more turned on by money than they are by love. In one respect they are alike. They’re both wonderful as long as they last.”
“If you are looking for a kindly, well-to-do older gentleman who is no longer interested in sex, take out an ad in the Wall Street Journal.”
Dear Abby: My wife sleeps nude. Then she showers, goes into the kitchen and fixes breakfast—still in the nude. We’re newlyweds and have no kids, so I suppose there’s nothing wrong with it. What do you think?
Dear Rex: It’s all right with me, but tell her to put on an apron when she’s frying bacon.
“The best index to a person’s character is how he treats people who can’t do him any good, and how he treats people who can’t fight back.”
Dear Abby: I have always wanted to have my family history traced, but I can’t afford to spend a lot of money on it. Any suggestions?
Dear Sam: Yes. Run for public office.
“Wisdom doesn’t automatically come with old age. Nothing does—except wrinkles. It’s true, some wines improve with age. But only if the grapes were good in the first place.”
“It is almost impossible to throw dirt on someone without getting a little on yourself.”
Dear Abby: What factor do you think is the most essential if a woman is to have a lasting marriage?
Dear Dotty: A lasting husband.
“I have long suspected that more people are sleeping apart because of snoring than are sleeping together for all the other reasons combined.”
“People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes.”
Mr. Potatohead was the first toy advertised on TV.
THE FLYING NUN
If you had to pick the most ridiculous sitcom premise in history, what would it be? Our choice is “The Flying Nun.” How did they come up with such a stupid idea? And why did Sally Field take the role? Here are the answers.
NUN-SENSE
It was one of the most improbable sitcom plots in American television history: Elsie Ethrington, an American teenager, gives up her life as a beach bunny and enters a Puerto Rican nunnery called the Convent San Tanco, where she is ordained as Sister Bertrille. Weighing only 90 pounds, she discovers that wearing her order’s bulky coronet (nun’s hat) on windy days enables her to fly, a skill she uses to get into and out of trouble (and fight crime).
Sure, the concept was ridiculous, but the show was one of the surprise hits of the 1967 TV season. More important, it gave a needed boost to the acting career of 19-year-old actress Sally Field, who had just finished work on the “Gidget” TV series.
YOU’RE MY INSPIRATION(S)
• Believe it or not, “The Flying Nun” was inspired by a real-life incident involving a small nun, a big hat, and high winds.
• In 1955, author Tere Rios recalled a trip she had made to France. “I saw a little Sister of Charity in her big white bonnet nearly blown off her feet in Paris,” she recalls. It gave her the idea for The Fifteenth Pelican, a book about a flying nun that became the inspiration for the TV series.
• The show was also inspired by “Bewitched,” a successful TV series about a friendly witch with magic powers, and “I Dream of Jeanie,” a show about a magical genie who marries an astronaut. “Bewitched” creator Harry Ackerman thought a similar show about a nun would be a hit, but he worried that giving a nun magical powers would be too controversial. So he stuck with The Fifteenth Pelican’s original premise and gave the nun special powers, brought on by high winds, her coronet, and the laws of aerodynamics, instead of magic ones.
You burn 50% more calories watching TV than you do when you sleep.
SHE’D HAVE NUN OF IT
• The show might never have made it onto the air if “Gidget,” another of Ackerman’s shows, hadn’t bitten the dust in 1965. Ackerman knew that Sally Field, the show’s 19-year-old star, had talent, and he wanted to find another series for her.
• The only problem: Field wanted to quit TV. When “Gidget” failed, she took it to heart. As TV Guide put it, “Sally came away with the feeling that she was somehow responsible for Gidget’s flop and no one would tell her why....She left the studio ‘feeling defeated’... and embarked on a movie career, determined that TV should never darken her door again.”
• Field’s first stab at a movie career bombed as badly as “Gidget.” She tried out for the part of daughter Elaine Robinson in The Graduate...but Katherine Ross got the part. Then she tried out for the role of Neely in Valley of the Dolls...but lost it to Patty Duke.
• All of a sudden, another TV series didn’t look so bad. “It was presumptuous to think I could step into movies,” Field later recalled. “‘Idiot,’ I told myself, ‘you’re not Liz Taylor!’ ‘The Flying Nun’ would give me time to learn and still keep me in the public eye. So—I changed my mind.” (Studio executives cemented the deal by raising her $450-a-week “Gidget” salary to $4,000 a week.)
&n
bsp; CATHOLIC CONTROVERSIES
• Studio executives were worried about potential Catholic objections to “The Flying Nun” and went to great lengths to see that the Church was not offended. They gave special sneak previews of the pilot episode to high Church officials all over the country, hoping to enlist their support for the show. “We just wanted to be sure the Catholic community dug it,” one of the show’s promoters told TV Guide in 1968.
But their concerns were unfounded: Catholic Church officials loved the show. They saw it as a much-needed recruiting film for nuns, whose numbers had been in decline since Vatican II.
“The show is positioning nuns as human beings,” an official with the National Catholic Office for Radio and Television said. “Only the studio, the agencies and the sponsors were worried. I guess they thought Catholics might stop buying toothpaste.”
Experts say: Elephants are the only animals in the world that can’t jump.
FIVE PET FADS
An informal study by the BRI has shown that many bathroom readers are also pet aficionados. Uncle John himself keeps a piranha in his bathtub. And he’s trying to convince Mrs. Uncle John to keep a fainting goat in the bedroom.
AQUARIUMS
Fish tanks were popular in the United States as far back as the early 1800s, but for the most part only the wealthy had them. The reason: Water quickly became deprived of oxygen, and fish died unless the water was constantly changed. No one wanted to take on that responsibility...unless they could afford to pay someone to do it for them.
It wasn’t until 1850 that Robert Warrington, a chemist, announced to the world that he’d kept a pet fish alive for a year in a tank without changing the water. His secret: He added plants to the tank, which replenished the oxygen supply. His contribution was so significant that the first aquariums were known as Warrington [sic] cases.
Not long afterward, British naturalist Philip Gosse published The Aquarium, a how-to book that quickly became a bestseller. Soon, American and British fish lovers had made aquarium-keeping one of the largest and most popular pet fads in the world.
Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader Page 64