by Ian Frazier
—Bob Hope’s Confessions of a Hooker: My Lifelong Love Affair with Golf, by Bob Hope as told to Dwayne
Netland (1985), p. 112
People always seem surprised when I tell them that Dan Quayle was the man who introduced Coca-Cola to Asia in 1906. But it’s true. I was touring the Far East at the time for Underwood Deviled Ham, in a group that included Stella Stevens and the late President Ike Eisenhower’s father, Dick Snideman. We stopped to play a little jewel of a course in Burma, which is what they used to call Ceylon, and there I met the now Vice-President, who told me of his accomplishments for the soft-drink industry and American business in general. He and I were in a foursome which included Pearl Bailey, the humanitarian Albert Schweitzer, and the chairman of the American Can Company (now Primerica), Mr. William Howard Taft. I had either just been run over by a car or had just run over someone else in a car. Albert Schweitzer—who by the way is one of the nicest guys you’d ever want to meet—and I had a side bet going: dollar a stroke, quart a hole, winner does the loser’s yard. By the time we reached the seventh, which was our sixteenth, the bets were rolling pretty good. Pearl Bailey, who can hit a golf ball farther than any person I’ve ever seen, made a perfect little shank shot off a cow or bull of some kind, directly at the flag, which was beyond a group of people hired specially for the occasion, which included Dick Gibson from Paramount and the gals from Air-India publicity. Tee to green, the distance was 18,000 meters—about 20,000 yards. TV’s Ned Beatty, the only man in the American military to predict the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, noticed that I’d broken a spike on my left golf shoe, and he offered to take me up in his reconnaissance helicopter so that I could have better traction for my swing and wouldn’t have to walk so far. We took off, and when I was above the flag, I lifted a gentle chip shot, meaning to put enough backspin on it to stop it just by the hole. Instead I knocked the ball into the whirling rotorblades, which chopped it into eighteen little pieces. Somehow, each one of those little pieces went into a different hole around the course. I not only had a one on that hole, I had a one for the whole course! Today there is a plaque on top of something commemorating this event.
That was 1926. 1927 I worked for the phone company. Ditto 1928. In 1929 came the Crash, and everything changed. I was working as a hoofer for Zwieback Toast in the old Palace Theatre on Broadway when I got a call from William Lear, chairman of Lear Jet Corp.: would I like to come out and make a movie? Would I! I ran over myself with my car, hopped in, and drove straight to Hollywood.
In my life I have been blessed with a fabulous bunch of friends who love the game just as much as I do, and I put Bill Lear at the very top of that list. He was just a nice, nice man, and a day doesn’t go by that I don’t think of him. Bill met me at the airport with Dick Sniderman, Freddie Williams, and the people from Cannon Towel, and the next day we started production on a picture called The Bear, by William Faulkner, starring the wonderful Mexican comedian Cantinflas, Dorothy Lamour, and yours truly. They had a great big prop bear which was motorized and which I was supposed to box with in the climactic scene. The stunt director, Dick Gibson and Hugh Davis, wanted more realism, so for the last scene the Hamm’s Breweries people loaned us their real grizzly. He sure went to town on me. By the time the scene was over, pieces of my scalp and cheekbone were AWOL, and I had a fractured clavicle. Weak with loss of blood, I practiced my golf swing. When I came to, I was hitchhiking to Chicago, where I’m a nonresident member. A doctor there strapped me to a mechanical X-ray table and turned up the juice until I glowed like the marquee at Caesars Palace. Then he slapped me into a men’s hospital for eight weeks.
The next time I played was in Bing’s Nabisco Pro-Amateur sponsored by Johnson’s Wax at a golf course someplace. I was in a foursome that included Lt. Dan Quayle, Pearl Bailey, Dick Sniderman, and what’s-his-name, the fat guy. Even though it was frowned on, we had a bet going, a reverse Nassau, where the player with the lowest last number on his card pays the opposite of what everybody else pays him, and by the time we reached the seventh, which was our fourteenth, all the wallets were out. As a gag, the guys from Sperry Rand had substituted an electric golf ball which went right into the cup no matter where you hit it, and I teed up with the thing and it went into the hole and then just kept on going into a lot of other holes around the course, I believe.
I make it a point to get out on the links three hundred and sixty-five days a year, no matter what. I don’t know anyone else in the entertainment industry who can say the same. I’ve played in England where it was so foggy that even the seagulls were flying on instruments, and in Africa where it was so hot that.
I was visiting Syria in 1967 as a guest of the Arab-Israeli war with Freddie Williams, Ariel Sharon, Lucille Ball, and University of Texas Longhorns’ football coach Darrell Royal, and someone suggested we go play this little course about four miles from the front lines. Well, I’m a sucker for sand—I’ve been in it most of my golfing life—and that whole region of the world is one big sand trap, if you ask me. So I said sure, and pretty soon we were barrelling along in a converted half-track troop carrier Ariel had found somewhere. I was driving, and the vehicle registration was in a coffee can on the dashboard, and suddenly it rolled off and then out the open front door, and we went into a skid, bounced over Dick Gibson from Paramount, and ended up in a pond. I stove up my neck pretty good.
Lucille Ball, a terrific gal who I loved as if she were a friend, immediately put me in her car and took me to a hospital where they were filming Fancy Pants, starring Lucille Ball. They had an X-ray table with straps on it, and the doctor buckled me in and turned up the juice. The thing started bucking and prancing around, and the next I knew it flipped me onto my back like an insect. The doctor took one look at me lying there and said, “You’ve got a fractured clavicle.” Then he stretched me out on an X-ray table for eight weeks. Lucy, God bless her, did not play golf, but she sympathized with my predicament: on the following afternoon I was scheduled to play in the Sam Giancana—Underalls Palm Springs Open. Yet here I was, half a world away and laid up in a hospital to boot. Lucy sat down and thought for a while, and then she came up with a solution that was pure Lucy.
Ten years passed. My Desert Classic Tournament, excuse me, my Chrysler Classic Tournament was drawing a good crowd and sensational ratings, and the Timex people had agreed to sponsor me. I was playing every day, don’t forget. I generally teed up with a Dean Martin’s—drinking joke. The guys from Jimmy Dean Pork Sausage always brought a camera crew, and I kidded around, pretending like my putter was a pool cue. This one particular time I sort of remember happened either in California or someplace else. I was with people I had played with before or knew from another context. Dick somebody. We decided to start at the last hole and then play the previous one, and so on. We got all ready, and then we teed off.
The payoff was over half a billion dollars, just for me. It’s one of the largest amounts of money there is. To give you some idea, the average professional golfer votes Republican his entire life for scores which work out to far less. On top of all that I got the houses, the cars, the dough from Texaco, and an international recognition factor that can’t be measured in dollars and cents. You should try it yourself sometime. Bust a clavicle and lie around a German P.O.W. hospital for eight weeks and then escape to the West and play thirty-six holes at Inverness with nothing for breakfast but a Clark Bar. Fall from a plane, hit a fir tree, bust a clavicle, and play Winged Foot with some of the top-ranking daytime stars and the guys from the Village People. Play Pebble Beach: try and hit straight drives in that wind off the Pacific with 5,000 sailors on the U.S.S. Coral Sea two miles offshore and a whole lot of water hazard beyond them, while Stella Stevens (as a shapely Wac) saunters by and your buddies hoot and whistle and comment on your club selection. You might do better than you think.
Coyote v. Acme
In the United States District Court,
Southwestern District,
Tempe, Arizona
&n
bsp; Case No. B19294,
JUDGE JOAN KUJAVA, PRESIDING
WILE E. COYOTE, PLAINTIFF
—v.—
ACME COMPANY, DEFENDANT
Opening Statement of Mr. Harold Schoff, attorney for Mr. Coyote: My client, Mr. Wile E. Coyote, a resident of Arizona and contiguous states, does hereby bring suit for damages against the Acme Company, manufacturer and retail distributor of assorted merchandise, incorporated in Delaware and doing business in every state, district, and territory. Mr. Coyote seeks compensation for personal injuries, loss of business income, and mental suffering caused as a direct result of the actions and/or gross negligence of said company, under Title 15 of the United States Code, Chapter 47, section 2072, subsection (a), relating to product liability.
Mr. Coyote states that on eighty-five separate occasions he has purchased of the Acme Company (hereinafter, “Defendant”), through that company’s mail-order department, certain products which did cause him bodily injury due to defects in manufacture or improper cautionary labelling. Sales slips made out to Mr. Coyote as proof of purchase are at present in the possession of the Court, marked Exhibit A. Such injuries sustained by Mr. Coyote have temporarily restricted his ability to make a living in his profession of predator. Mr. Coyote is self-employed and thus not eligible for Workmen’s Compensation.
Mr. Coyote states that on December 13th he received of Defendant via parcel post one Acme Rocket Sled. The intention of Mr. Coyote was to use the Rocket Sled to aid him in pursuit of his prey. Upon receipt of the Rocket Sled Mr. Coyote removed it from its wooden shipping crate and, sighting his prey in the distance, activated the ignition. As Mr. Coyote gripped the handlebars, the Rocket Sled accelerated with such sudden and precipitate force as to stretch Mr. Coyote’s forelimbs to a length of fifty feet. Subsequently, the rest of Mr. Coyote’s body shot forward with a violent jolt, causing severe strain to his back and neck and placing him unexpectedly astride the Rocket Sled. Disappearing over the horizon at such speed as to leave a diminishing jet trail along its path, the Rocket Sled soon brought Mr. Coyote abreast of his prey. At that moment the animal he was pursuing veered sharply to the right. Mr. Coyote vigorously attempted to follow this maneuver but was unable to, due to poorly designed steering on the Rocket Sled and a faulty or nonexistent braking system. Shortly thereafter, the unchecked progress of the Rocket Sled brought it and Mr. Coyote into collision with the side of a mesa.
Paragraph One of the Report of Attending Physician (Exhibit B), prepared by Dr. Ernest Grosscup, M.D., D.O., details the multiple fractures, contusions, and tissue damage suffered by Mr. Coyote as a result of this collision. Repair of the injuries required a full bandage around the head (excluding the ears), a neck brace, and full or partial casts on all four legs.
Hampered by these injuries, Mr. Coyote was nevertheless obliged to support himself. With this in mind, he purchased of Defendant as an aid to mobility one pair of Acme Rocket Skates. When he attempted to use this product, however, he became involved in an accident remarkably similar to that which occurred with the Rocket Sled. Again, Defendant sold over the counter, without caveat, a product which attached powerful jet engines (in this case, two) to inadequate vehicles, with little or no provision for passenger safety. Encumbered by his heavy casts, Mr. Coyote lost control of the Rocket Skates soon after strapping them on, and collided with a roadside billboard so violently as to leave a hole in the shape of his full silhouette.
Mr. Coyote states that on occasions too numerous to list in this document he has suffered mishaps with explosives purchased of Defendant: the Acme “Little Giant” Firecracker, the Acme Self-Guided Aerial Bomb, etc. (For a full listing, see the Acme Mail Order Explosives Catalogue and attached deposition, entered in evidence as Exhibit C.) Indeed, it is safe to say that not once has an explosive purchased of Defendant by Mr. Coyote performed in an expected manner. To cite just one example: At the expense of much time and personal effort, Mr. Coyote constructed around the outer rim of a butte a wooden trough beginning at the top of the butte and spiralling downward around it to some few feet above a black X painted on the desert floor. The trough was designed in such a way that a spherical explosive of the type sold by Defendant would roll easily and swiftly down to the point of detonation indicated by the X. Mr. Coyote placed a generous pile of birdseed directly on the X, and then, carrying the spherical Acme Bomb (Catalogue #78-832), climbed to the top of the butte. Mr. Coyote’s prey, seeing the birdseed, approached, and Mr. Coyote proceeded to light the fuse. In an instant, the fuse burned down to the stem, causing the bomb to detonate.
In addition to reducing all Mr. Coyote’s careful preparations to naught, the premature detonation of Defendant’s product resulted in the following disfigurements to Mr. Coyote:
1. Severe singeing of the hair on the head, neck, and muzzle.
2. Sooty discoloration.
3. Fracture of the left ear at the stem, causing the ear to dangle in the aftershock with a creaking noise.
4. Full or partial combustion of whiskers, producing kinking, frazzling, and ashy disintegration.
5. Radical widening of the eyes, due to brow and lid charring.
We come now to the Acme Spring-Powered Shoes. The remains of a pair of these purchased by Mr. Coyote on June 23rd are Plaintiff’s Exhibit D. Selected fragments have been shipped to the metallurgical laboratories of the University of California at Santa Barbara for analysis, but to date no explanation has been found for this product’s sudden and extreme malfunction. As advertised by Defendant, this product is simplicity itself: two wood-and-metal sandals, each attached to milled-steel springs of high tensile strength and compressed in a tightly coiled position by a cocking device with a lanyard release. Mr. Coyote believed that this product would enable him to pounce upon his prey in the initial moments of the chase, when swift reflexes are at a premium.
To increase the shoes’ thrusting power still further, Mr. Coyote affixed them by their bottoms to the side of a large boulder. Adjacent to the boulder was a path which Mr. Coyote’s prey was known to frequent. Mr. Coyote put his hind feet in the wood-and-metal sandals and crouched in readiness, his right forepaw holding firmly to the lanyard release. Within a short time Mr. Coyote’s prey did indeed appear on the path coming toward him. Unsuspecting, the prey stopped near Mr. Coyote, well within range of the springs at full extension. Mr. Coyote gauged the distance with care and proceeded to pull the lanyard release.
At this point, Defendant’s product should have thrust Mr. Coyote forward and away from the boulder. Instead, for reasons yet unknown, the Acme Spring-Powered Shoes thrust the boulder away from Mr. Coyote. As the intended prey looked on unharmed, Mr. Coyote hung suspended in air. Then the twin springs recoiled, bringing Mr. Coyote to a violent feet-first collision with the boulder, the full weight of his head and forequarters falling upon his lower extremities.
The force of this impact then caused the springs to rebound, whereupon Mr. Coyote was thrust skyward. A second recoil and collision followed. The boulder, meanwhile, which was roughly ovoid in shape, had begun to bounce down a hillside, the coiling and recoiling of the springs adding to its velocity. At each bounce, Mr. Coyote came into contact with the boulder, or the boulder came into contact with Mr. Coyote, or both came into contact with the ground. As the grade was a long one, this process continued for some time.
The sequence of collisions resulted in systemic physical damage to Mr. Coyote, viz., flattening of the cranium, sideways displacement of the tongue, reduction of length of legs and upper body, and compression of vertebrae from base of tail to head. Repetition of blows along a vertical axis produced a series of regular horizontal folds in Mr. Coyote’s body tissues—a rare and painful condition which caused Mr. Coyote to expand upward and contract downward alternately as he walked, and to emit an off-key accordionlike wheezing with every step. The distracting and embarrassing nature of this symptom has been a major impediment to Mr. Coyote’s pursuit of a normal social life.
As the Court is
no doubt aware, Defendant has a virtual monopoly of manufacture and sale of goods required by Mr. Coyote’s work. It is our contention that Defendant has used its market advantage to the detriment of the consumer of such specialized products as itching powder, giant kites, Burmese tiger traps, anvils, and two-hundred-foot-long rubber bands. Much as he has come to mistrust Defendant’s products, Mr. Coyote has no other domestic source of supply to which to turn. One can only wonder what our trading partners in Western Europe and Japan would make of such a situation, where a giant company is allowed to victimize the consumer in the most reckless and wrongful manner over and over again.
Mr. Coyote respectfully requests that the Court regard these larger economic implications and assess punitive damages in the amount of seventeen million dollars. In addition, Mr. Coyote seeks actual damages (missed meals, medical expenses, days lost from professional occupation) of one million dollars; general damages (mental suffering, injury to reputation) of twenty million dollars; and attorney’s fees of seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Total damages: thirty-eight million seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. By awarding Mr. Coyote the full amount, this Court will censure Defendant, its directors, officers, shareholders, successors, and assigns, in the only language they understand, and reaffirm the right of the individual predator to equal protection under the law.
In the Plain Air
While Manet painted the Monet family, Renoir painted beside him and Monet worked nearby. Monet painted Renoir at his easel (present location unknown), while Renoir, like Manet, painted Madame Monet, Jean Monet, and the rooster (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.). Monet later recalled that as Renoir painted, Manet glanced at his canvas from time to time, and at one point the older artist walked over to Monet and whispered: “He has no talent at all that boy! You, who are his friend, tell him please to give up painting.”
