Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes

by Clifton Fadiman

  1 On Mother’s Day 1958, O’Hara remarked on a New York Times book review titled “The Arrow That Flieth by Day,” and suggested it would make a fine title for a poem. At the same time his roommate, John LeSueur, was worrying about neglecting his mother on this day and wanted to send a telegram, but neither man could come up with a good message. So LeSueur went out in the rain to hear a performance of Aaron Copland’s “Piano Fantasy.” Upon his return he found that O’Hara had written a poem called “Ode on the Arrow That Flieth by Day,” which managed to incorporate Western Union, the “Fantasy,” Mother’s Day and the rain.

  O’HARA, John [Henry] (1905–70), US novelist, short-story writer, and playwright.

  1 Pooling their money during the Spanish Civil War, Ernest Hemingway, James Lardner, and Vincent Sheean found they had some to spare. There followed a discussion as to how the surplus should be spent. Suggested Hemingway: “Let’s take the bloody money and start a bloody fund to send John O’Hara to Yale.”

  2 (Someone once said of O’Hara that he was master of the fancied slight.)

  Robert Benchley and his daughter-in-law Marjorie, catching sight of O’Hara at the restaurant 21, called him over to their table. Marjorie said, “John, we’ve just been seeing Pal Joey again, and do you know, I like it even better than I did the first time.”

  “What was the matter with it the first time?” said O’Hara.

  3 Writing to John Steinbeck to congratulate him on winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, O’Hara added, “I can think of only one other author I’d rather see get it.”

  4 O’Hara told Bennett Cerf he wanted to use as the title of his new book a Richard Rodgers song, “A Small Hotel.” O’Hara had known Rodgers from their collaboration on the musical version of Pal Joey, but even so, Cerf suggested he get permission. When O’Hara broached the subject, Rodgers agreed, but noted that the song was actually called “There’s a Small Hotel.” “When I need you to name my books,” fumed O’Hara before storming out, “I’ll tell you!”

  OLDFIELD, Anne (1683–1730), British actress.

  1 Mrs. Oldfield was a passenger on a ferry that appeared in imminent danger of capsizing. When the other passengers broke into lamentations at what seemed to be their approaching doom, Mrs. Oldfield rebuked them with great dignity. Their deaths would be merely a matter for private grief, but, she reminded them, “I am a public concern.”

  OLIVIER, Laurence [Kerr], Baron (1907–89), British stage and film actor.

  1 At the tender age of ten, Olivier gave a highly acclaimed performance as Brutus in a school production of Julius Caesar. The actress Ellen Terry saw the play and declared: “The boy who plays Brutus is already a great actor.” These words of praise were relayed to the young Olivier. “Who is Ellen Terry?” he asked.

  2 On a visit to Jamaica as the guest of Noël Coward, Sir Laurence Olivier accompanied Coward to a mountaintop to see the playwright’s favorite view. Looking out at the terraces of jungle sprawled beneath him, Olivier had but one comment: “It looks like rows and rows of empty seats.”

  3 Olivier and American actor Dustin Hoffman were paired for the filming of Marathon Man, a thriller involving an attempt by aging Nazis to recover diamonds hidden in the United States. To prepare for his role, Hoffman, who famously adhered to the school of method acting, didn’t wash and stayed up for days to achieve the look and feeling of an exhausted man. Appearing on the set in this condition, he was spotted by Olivier, who said, “My dear boy, you look absolutely awful. Why don’t you try acting ?”

  OMAR (d. AD 664), Muslim caliph.

  1 Omar’s general ‘Amr Ibn Al-as conquered Egypt in 640. In 642, when the city of Alexandria surrendered to him, ‘Amr sent to ‘Omar for instructions about how to deal with its great library, which contained hundreds of thousands of texts from classical antiquity. ‘Omar replied, “If the writings of the Greeks agree with the Koran they are superfluous and need not be preserved; if they disagree they are pernicious, and ought not to be preserved.” ‘Amr therefore ordered the irreplaceable manuscripts to be used to fuel the furnaces for the public baths. It is said that they kept the furnaces going for six months.

  ONASSIS, Aristotle [Socrates] (1906–75), Greek shipping magnate who married the widowed Jacqueline Kennedy in 1968.

  1 On the Christina Onassis had installed a luxurious private bathroom adjoining his office. The door was a one-way mirror, which enabled him to observe unsuspecting visitors from the privacy of the bathroom. During a business meeting one afternoon Onassis excused himself and went to the bathroom. Comfortably enthroned, he looked up at the door and was horrified to see his own reflection staring back at him. A workman making minor repairs to the door earlier in the day had replaced the mirror the wrong way around.

  ONASSIS, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy (1929–97), wife of John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States (1961–63); subsequently married to Aristotle Onassis.

  1 Jacqueline Bouvier first met her future husband, John Kennedy, at a dinner party in Washington in 1951. It took time for the courtship to develop between the junior senator from Massachusetts and the young newspaper reporter. After their engagement John Kennedy told her that he had decided upon their initial meeting that, were he ever to marry, she would be his bride. “How big of you,” she teased.

  2 At a dinner party a Democratic party official asked her what would be a sensible place to hold the 1960 National Convention (at which her husband became the presidential nominee). Instantly she replied, “Acapulco.”

  3 During the campaign her hairstyles generated enormous attention — providing quite a change from the image of Mamie Eisenhower. Eventually she released the following statement to the press: “What does my hairdo have to do with my husband’s ability to be President?”

  4 French Culture Minister André Malraux commented to President Charles de Gaulle that Mrs. Kennedy was a most unusual First Lady. “Yes, she’s unique,” replied de Gaulle. “I can see her in about ten years on the yacht of a Greek petrol millionaire.”

  5 Jacqueline Kennedy was much occupied with her young children during her husband’s presidency but confessed that she was unable to cope alone and felt she needed help. Dr. Spock’s book provided her the assistance she needed, she said. “I find it such a relief to know that other people’s children are as bad as yours at the same age.”

  6 When he heard that Fidel Castro’s friend and companion-in-arms Che Guevara had expressed a strong desire to meet Jacqueline Kennedy, John Kennedy said, “He’ll have to wait in line.”

  7 As First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy was inundated with advice and literally tons of mail suggesting she redecorate this, begin that, look into such-and-such. Once she confessed her recipe for happiness to a staffer, with a delicious smile: “People have told me ninety-nine things that I have to do as a First Lady, and I haven’t done one of them!”

  8 She was once very late arriving at a rally for her husband in Houston, Texas, which caused the assembled crowd to begin chanting her name over and over. Her husband, in explanation, called out to the crowd, “It takes a little longer but, of course, she looks better than the rest of us when she does it.”

  9 The world was shocked when, in 1968, she decided to marry Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. Americans especially felt they had lost a national treasure. A friend with whom she shared her news before telling the public said to her, “You’re going to fall off your pedestal.” “That’s better than freezing there,” Jacqueline Kennedy replied.

  10 Later in her life, long after the turbulent days of the 1960s, during which she witnessed death and unhappiness in her personal life, she was asked what she considered her greatest achievement. After a pause she replied, “I think it is that after going through a rather difficult time, I consider myself comparatively sane.”

  O’NEAL, Tatum (1963–), US film actress, daughter of actor Ryan O’Neal.

  1 When fourteen-year-old Tatum O’Neal was making the film International Velvet, a school inspector came
to make sure that she was not falling behind in her studies. Noting that her math was not very good, he asked whether that did not bother her. The child star was unconcerned: “Oh, no, I’ll have an accountant.”

  O’NEILL, Eugene (1888–1953), US dramatist, winner of the 1936 Nobel Prize for Literature.

  1 Working as a news reporter on the New London Telegraph, O’Neill sometimes found it difficult to deliver his stories in a form acceptable to his editor. One contribution came back with the following note: “This is a lovely story, but would you mind finding out the name of the gentleman who carved the lady and whether the dame is his wife or daughter or who? And phone the hospital for a hint as to whether she is dead or discharged or what? Then put the facts into a hundred and fifty words and send this literary batik to the picture framers.”

  2 O’Neill always strongly objected to cutting any of his plays. When director and playwright Russel Crouse asked him to shorten the script of Ah, Wilderness! he was very reluctant. The following day he telephoned Crouse to tell him that he had cut fifteen minutes. Surprised and pleased, Crouse said, “I’ll be right over to get the changes.” “Oh, there aren’t any changes to the text,” O’Neill explained, “but you know we have been playing this thing in four acts. I’ve decided to cut out the third intermission.”

  3 O’Neill greatly disliked any kind of publicity. The one time in his life that he went to a nightclub, the excited owner announced to the audience that America’s greatest playwright was in the room and would take a bow. O’Neill obliged, standing in a bright spotlight. As he was leaving, a waiter rushed over with a bill for $60 for his dinner. O’Neill took out a pencil and scrawled across the bottom, “One bow — sixty dollars,” and left.

  3 O’Neill spent his last days in Suite 401 of Boston’s Shelton Hotel, broke and desperately ill. Just before falling into unconsciousness he sat up, looked wildly around his room, and cried out, “I knew it! I knew it! Born in a hotel room — goddamn it — and dying in a hotel room!”

  OPPENHEIMER, J. Robert (1904–67), US physicist in charge of the development of the atomic bomb at the end of World War II.

  1 Physicist James Franck was professor of Göt-tingen University when the twenty-three-year-old Oppenheimer was being examined for his doctorate. On emerging from the oral examination, Franck remarked, “I got out of there just in time. He was beginning to ask me questions.”

  2 As Oppenheimer watched the first atomic bomb explode in a test at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, a passage from the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita came into his mind: “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One.” Then, as the enormous mushroom cloud darkened the sky, another sentence from the same source came to him: “I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds.”

  ORSAY, Alfred-Guillaume-Gabriel, Count d’ (1801–52), French dandy.

  1 After 1841 Count d’Orsay was beset by fear of arrest for debt. The curious laws of the time, however, put him in no danger of being served with a writ or arrested between sunset and sunrise. During daylight hours, visitors to his house had to establish their identity before they were allowed in, and two mastiffs prowled in the garden. Despite these precautions an enterprising bailiff, disguised as an errand boy, managed to gain admittance late one afternoon. He surprised the count in his dressing room and revealed his true identity. D’Orsay, who was halfway through his toilet, did not lose his head. He asked the officer if he might finish dressing and courteously bade him take a chair. For over an hour the man sat and watched, fascinated, oblivious to the rapidly approaching sunset. The count, however, was carefully monitoring the progress of the sun. As it slipped below the horizon, he gently reminded the officer that now his authority no longer ran and sent for a servant to show him out.

  2 Seated at dinner next to the willful Lady Holland, Count d’Orsay found her ladyship determined to monopolize his attention; whenever it seemed to wander, she would reclaim it by dropping something, which, of course, the count had to retrieve for her. First her napkin fell to the floor, then a spoon, then her ladyship’s fan. Finally the count lost patience and turning to the footman behind his chair, told him to place his plates and cutlery on the floor. “I shall finish my dinner there,” he announced. “It will be so much more convenient for my Lady Holland.”

  OSCAR II (1829–1907), king of Sweden (1872–1907) and Norway (1872–1905).

  1 Visiting a village school one day, the king asked the pupils to name the greatest kings of Sweden. The answers were unanimous: Gus-tavus Vasa, Gustavus Adolphus, Charles XII. Then the teacher leaned over to one little boy and whispered something in his ear. “And King Oscar,” volunteered the child. “Really? And what has King Oscar done that’s so remarkable?” asked the king. “I — I — I don’t know,” stammered the unhappy child. “That’s all right, my boy,” said the king. “Neither do I.”

  O’TOOLE, Peter (1932–), British film actor.

  1 As a young actor Peter O’Toole landed a bit part as a Georgian peasant in a Chekhov play. All he had to do was to come on stage, announce, “Dr. Ostroff, the horses are ready,” and exit. Determined to obtain what mileage he could out of this unpromising role, O’Toole conceived of the peasant as a youthful Stalin: he made himself up to look like Stalin, practiced a slight limp like Stalin’s, and rehearsed his line to indicate his furious resentment against his social betters. The first-night audience was duly aroused by the entry of this ominous figure. Concentrating intensely, O’Toole made his announcement: “Dr. Horsey, the ostroffs are ready.”

  2 Besides being an enormously talented actor, O’Toole was known for his enormous ego on and off the sets of movies. His reputation for this started with his first starring role, in Lawrence of Arabia. Not long after casting the unknown O’Toole in the film, Sam Spiegel said of him, “You make a star, you make a monster.”

  “Walter O’Keefe, an actor in the US in the 1930s, was once invited to address a medical convention. He found on arrival at the banquet that the convention was in fact one of chiropodists.

  “O’Keefe had hardly tucked his napkin into his collar when a fanfare rang through the hall and the chiropodists leaped to attention. A spotlight roved across the heads of the multitude and picked up, on a wall bracket, Old Glory rippling in the breeze of an electric fan. After a properly patriotic salute, O’Keefe and the chiropodists again attacked their meal, an interval largely given over to a long, unhappy account by the chairman of his troubles in organizing the luncheon. Just as the ladyfingers and bombe glacée were arriving a second fanfare brought everyone up again.

  “The spotlight settled on the swinging doors to the kitchen where stood a chef in a tall hat and apron. He bowed, flourished to his staff inside, and a huge foot sculptured out of ice rolled into view on a tea wagon. Amid thunderous applause, it made a slow, majestic circuit of the tables. As it drew abreast the speaker’s table, the already irascible chairman turned a rich mulberry.

  “ ‘God damn it,’ he snarled into O’Keefe’s ear, ‘they’ve gone and dropped the metatarsal arch!’ ”

  — S. J. PERELMAN, “Two Years Down the Drain,” in ’47, The Magazine of the Year

  OTTO (1865–1900), archduke of Austria, father of Emperor Charles I.

  1 The archduke submitted to a medical examination by a renowned Viennese physician. The latter made careful, exhaustive inquiries about his patient’s symptoms, pains, and so forth. These insistent questions irritated the archduke and he was frank enough to say so. The doctor replied, “Your Highness, I suggest the next time you ask for a veterinarian. He cures without asking any question.”

  OUIDA [Marie Louise de la Ramée] (1839–1908), British novelist.

  1 Ouida, who never suffered from false modesty, enjoyed the chagrin of “serious” writers whose success was a fraction of her own. Once when Oscar Wilde asked her the secret of her popularity, she confided, “I am the only woman who knows how two dukes talk when they are alone.”

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bsp; OWEN, Robert (1771–1858), Welsh manufacturer and founder of the New Harmony, Indiana, utopian community.

  1 There are many heart-breaking records of nineteenth-century child labor in the coal mines of England. The philanthropist Owen once talked to a twelve-year-old breaker boy, coal-black, weary from digging shale from broken coal. “Do you know God?” asked Owen. Replied the boy, “No. He must work in some other mine.”

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  PACHMANN, Vladimir de (1848–1933), Russian pianist whose eccentric manners on the platform made him highly popular with audiences.

  1 Pachmann’s eccentricities were not confined to his own stage appearances. During a concert by Leopold Godowsky, Pachmann once rushed onto the stage saying, “No, no, Leopold, you moost play it like so. ” He then gave a demonstration to the delighted audience as Godowsky sat by, crimson-faced. He explained that he would not have bothered for just any old player. “But Godowsky is ze zecond greatest liffing pianist,” he announced.

  2 During a London recital at which he played Chopin’s Minute Waltz Pachmann adopted a curious hunched position, crouching over the keyboard so that no one could see his hands. Feeling the audience was owed some explanation, he said, “Vy I do zis? I vill tell. I see in ze owdience mein alte freund Moriz Rosenthal, and I do not vish him to copy my fingering.”

  3 One of de Pachmann’s favorite tricks before a recital was to play about with the piano stool, adjusting and readjusting it, until the audience became desperate. Then he would rush into the wings to fetch a large book, place it on the seat, and try that. He would indicate that all was still not satisfactory and would tear one page from the book and try again. Finally, if the audience was lucky, he would begin.