COATS OF ARMS. In the ’60s, anyone with $20 could send away for a crest corresponding to their last name. At the fad’s peak in 1969, status-seeking Americans spent $5 million a year displaying them on sport coats, ashtrays, bank checks, etc. Elitists were outraged. “People of good taste,” one blueblood sniffed, “don’t use a coat of arms they’re not entitled to.” But by the early 1970s, just about everyone had a crest—which defeated the purpose of having one in the first place. The fad died out soon afterwards.
SMILEY FACES. Introduced in 1969 by N. G. Slater, a New York button manufacturer. At first sales were slow, but by the spring of 1971 more than 20 million buttons had been sold—enough for one in every 10 Americans—making it a craze as popular as the Hula Hoop of the 1950s. Pop-culture pundits called it the “peace symbol of the seventies,” and presidential candidate George McGovern adopted it as his campaign logo. The fad died out after about a year, but in the mid-1970s made a comeback—this time colored yellow and bearing the cheerful message, “Have a Happy Day!” By the late 1970s, however, Americans were completely sick of it.
Smiley Face Update
“Attorneys for a convicted killer asked yesterday that his death sentence be overturned because a judge signed the July 15, 1993 execution order with a ‘happy face’ sketch....The judge has said that he always signs his name that way as a symbol of his faith in God and that he does not plan to change it.”
—The Associated Press
Not fast enough for us: Spring travels north at a rate of 30 miles a day.
WESTERN NICKNAMES
Wild Bill...Black Bart...Billy the Kid...Butch and Sundance. Western heroes had colorful nicknames—but they weren’t all as complimentary as they sound. Here’s some info on a few of the names.
James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok. Had a long nose and a protruding lip, and was originally nicknamed “Duck Bill.”
William “Bat” Masterson. The famous sheriff of Ford County, Kansas, hit more lawbreakers over the head with his cane than he shot with his gun, and thus earned the nickname “Bat.”
Robert LeRoy “Butch Cassidy” Parker. As a teenager, Parker idolized a criminal named Mike Cassidy, and eventually began using his friend’s last name as an alias. He picked up the name “Butch” while working in a Rock Springs, Wyoming, butcher shop.
Harry “The Sundance Kid” Longabaugh. As a teenager during the 1880s, Longabaugh spent 1½ years in the Sundance Jail in Wyoming, serving out a sentence for horse stealing.
William “Billy the Kid” Bonney. Looked like a kid.
Henry “Billy the Kid” McCarty. Looked like a goat.
John “Doc” Holliday. A professional dentist by trade, he became a gunslinger and professional gambler after a bout with tuberculosis forced him to move West in search of a drier climate. Even at the height of his criminal career, he practiced dentistry part-time. Holliday’s girlfriend was a prostitute named “Big Nose” Kate Elder.
Charles E. “Black Bart” Boles. Came up with the name himself after he became a stagecoach robber by accident. Originally a schoolteacher in northern California’s gold country, Boles had a friend who was a Wells Fargo stagecoach driver and decided to play a trick on him. One day in 1875, he covered his face with a scarf, found a stick about the size of a pistol, and jumped out in front of the coach hoping to scare his friend. To his surprise, the driver threw down the strongbox and rode off before Boles could tell him it was only a joke. Opening the strongbox, Boles discovered a fortune in gold coins and bullion. Realizing there was more money in stickups than there was in education, Boles quit his teaching job and began holding up stagecoaches full time. He robbed 28 stagecoaches between 1875 and 1883.
It’s against the law to play rock music on a Venitian gondola.
After each robbery, he penned a short poem and left it behind in the empty strongbox where he knew investigators would find it. He always signed it “Black Bart, Po-8.” One read: “Blame me not for what I’ve done, I don’t deserve your curses/and if for some cause I must be hung/Let it be for my verses.” Boles was eventually caught and sentenced to four years in San Quentin prison, but returned to stagecoach robbing within a few weeks of his release. This time Wells Fargo detectives cut a deal with Boles behind the scene: According to legend, they offered Boles a lifelong pension of $200 a month in exchange for his agreement to give up crime. Whether or not the story is true, the robberies stopped immediately.
...and now, folks, we’d like you to meet
the dumbest train robber in the West.
Al Jennings, a successful Oklahoma lawyer in the early 1890s, and his brother Frank, also a lawyer, gave up their chosen profession and began second career: sticking up trains—or at least trying to.
In 1897 they tried to rob a mail car on a Santa Fe train, but the conductor chased them away. Two weeks later the brothers tried to stop another train by blocking the track with railroad ties, but the train steamed right through the barrier. In another robbery attempt, they tried to dynamite open two safes, but succeeded only in blowing up the boxcar the safes were on.
The law eventually caught up with them. Frank got five years in prison and Al was sentenced to life in prison, but President Theodore Roosevelt granted him a “full citizenship” pardon in 1907.
Jennings returned to his law practice and eventually ran for county attorney under the slogan, “When I was a train robber I was a good train robber, and if you choose me, I will be a good prosecuting attorney.” He lost. In 1914 he ran for governor of Oklahoma (this time his slogan was “It takes the same sort of nerve to be an honest governor as to rob a train or bank”) and lost that too.
Born conformists: Ostriches yawn in groups before they go to sleep.
HERE’S JOHNNY...
Quips from the archetypal late-night talk show host, Johnny Carson.
“I now believe in reincarnation. Tonight’s monologue is going to come back as a dog.”
“The only absolute rule is: Never lose control of the show.”
On Jimmy Carter: “I think he rented his family. I don’t believe Lillian is his mother. I don’t believe Billy is his brother. They’re all from Central Casting.”
“[Rona Barrett] doesn’t need a steak knife. Rona cuts her food with her tongue.”
“I like my work and I hope you do, too—but if you don’t, I really couldn’t care less. Take me or leave me—but don’t bug me.”
“The difference between divorce and legal separation is that a legal separation gives a husband time to hide his money.”
“Never use a big word when a little filthy one will do.”
“I don’t know where my creativity comes from, and I don’t want to know.”
“The best things in life are free. And the cheesiest things in life are free with a paid subscription to Sports Illustrated.”
“The worst gift is a fruitcake. There is only one fruitcake in the entire world, and people keep sending it to each other.”
“The difference between love and lust is that lust never costs over two hundred dollars.”
“Married men live longer than single men. But married men are a lot more willing to die.”
“Anytime four New Yorkers get into a cab together without arguing, a bank robbery has just taken place.”
“Thanksgiving is an emotional holiday. People travel thousands of miles to be with people they only see once a year. And then discover once a year is way too often.”
20% of French women say being asked to undress during a job interview isn’t sexual harassment.
THE AVENGERS
If there was ever one television show that could be described as both “stylish” and “English,” it would be “The Avengers.” This secret agent send-up of the mid-’60s gave us a taste of “swinging England”—the team of the veddy British Steed (played by Patrick Macnee), and one of the coolest, sexiest women ever to star on the small screen—Emma Peel (played by Shakespearian actress Diana Rigg).
HOW IT STARTED
&
nbsp; “The Avengers” immediate inspiration was a show called Police Surgeon. It wasn’t popular with British viewers, but its star, Ian Hendry, was. So Sydney Newman, the head of programming at ABC-TV in England, decided to feature him on a new show in 1961.
Newman’s plan: team Hendry with a secret-agent character in a crusade against crime. Hendry would still play a surgeon, but he wouldn’t practice medicine. His fiancé would be killed by a gang of criminals, and he’d become obsessed with vengeance! He would make it his life’s work, as he and Steed (the agent) formed “The Avengers.” That’s how they came up with the name of the show. “Also,” admitted Newman, “it’s a great title.”
The “cult” Avengers—featuring Steed, played by Patrick Macnee, and a macho female partner—evolved a little later. During the first season, an actors’ strike forced a layoff in the show; Hendry, with a film career in mind, walked out. The producer decided to replace him with a woman. She’d be a new kind of heroine. Beautiful, but tough; a fighter...but a fashion plate. After a 6-month search for the “right woman,” Honor Blackman was selected to play Cathy Gale...and the approach worked so well that the co-ed team became an instant cult phenomenon, one of Europe’s most popular series. When Blackman left for films three years later, Diana Rigg stepped ably into her boots as Emma Peel and kept the show a favorite.
The show first aired in England in 1961. It debuted in America in 1966 and ran until 1969. It was resurrected again 1976 as The New Avengers.
President Andrew Jackson thought the world was flat.
MILESTONES
“The Avengers” was the first British show ever to air in a U.S. networks fall TV schedule. It was also the groundbreaker in portraying women as tough, capable fighters—predating today’s female cops by 20 years.
KUNG FU FIGHTING
Diana Rigg was the first person ever to do Kung Fu on the small screen. In 1965, Stuntman Ray Austin went to his producers and said, “listen, I want to do this thing called Kung Fu.” They said, “Kung what?” and insisted that Emma, like her predecessor, stick to judo. Instead, Austin secretly taught Diana Kung Fu.
If the fight scenes look choreographed...well, they are. Every move in them was created by Austin.
NAME GAME
Emma Peel’s name was taken from the British film industry expression “M-Appeal,” or “Man Appeal,” which is what the show’s producers were looking for in her character.
THE LEATHER LOOK
The show helped create the “mod” fashion boom in the ’60s. But the most famous of Cathy Gale’s clothing, the “kinky” leather look, was created by accident when she split her pants doing karate. Clearly, something more durable was needed, and Patrick Macnee suggested a leather outfit. It became a fad–and “The Avengers” became instant fashion trendsetters.
MERRIE OLDE ENGLAND
If you think about while you’re watching, you’ll notice how “veddy English” everything is in The Avengers, from the scenery to the slang (they don’t say “truck,” they say “lorry”). Quaint? Not quite. It was an international ploy. The producers figured their only shot at selling the show in America was to offer something that Hollywood couldn’t—England. So they hammed it up with the British stuff.
The world population increases by the equivalent of the population of Mexico every year.
THE STARS
Patrick Macnee
• Was an assistant producer in English TV when he was offered the lead role in the new adventure series, “The Avengers.” He saw his future in production, not acting, so he asked for a ridiculously high salary to discourage the offer. To his shock, they accepted.
• “They told me to make up a character, so I did,” he explained later. Inspired by Leslie Howard in The Scarlet Pimpernel, his father, and his C.O. in the navy, Macnee made Steed very British—a cool, upper-class dandy dressed in Edwardian clothes. Predating “Swinging London” by three years, Steed was a major influence on international fashion.
• “Steed is pretty much me,” he said. “I feel I’m satirizing my own class—hunting, shooting, fishing, and Eton.”
Honor Blackman
Played Steed’s first sidekick, and TV’s first “superwoman—an anthropologist and judo expert—from 1962 to 1965. She quit to become a movie star when she was offered the role of Pussy Galore in Goldfinger.
Diana Rigg
• By the time she appeared as Emma in 1965, she was already a 5-year veteran of the Royal Shakespeare Company. She’d toured Europe and America in a 1964 production of King Lear and appeared on United States. TV in A Comedy of Errors. However, she had decided to take more commercial roles to avoid being typecast as “a lady actress.”
• Meanwhile, “The Avengers” producers were having a rough time replacing Honor Blackman. They’d already hired and fired one actress (Elizabeth Shepard) and had tested dozens more. Then the casting director suggested an actress she’d recently used in a TV drama—Diana Rigg.
• A screen test followed, and Diana was awarded the most coveted female TV role in Britain. The only other regular role she had on a TV series (besides emceeing Mystery for PBS) was a short-lived sitcom called “Diana,” which aired in 1973. It bombed.
It costs 3¢ to make a dollar bill—and 7.8¢ to make a half-dollar coin.
GREETINGS FROM OZ
The Wizard of Oz, by Frank Baum, is on the BRI’s list of recommended bathroom reading for adults. Here are a few random quotes taken from it.
ON COURAGE
“There is no living thing that is not afraid when it faces danger. True courage is in facing danger when you are afraid.”
—The Wizard
ON MONEY
“Money in Oz!...Did you suppose we are so vulgar as to use money here? If we used money to buy things, instead of love and kindness and the desires to please one another, then we should be no better than the rest of the world....Fortunately, money is not known in the Land of Oz at all. We have no rich, no poor: for what one wishes, the others all try to give him in order to make him happy, and no one in all of Oz cares to have more than he can use.”
—The Tin Woodsman
ON EXPERIENCE
“Can’t you give me brains?” asked the Scarecrow.
“You don’t need them. You are learning something every day. A baby has brains, but it doesn’t know much. Experience is the only thing that brings knowledge, and the longer you are on Earth, the more experience you are sure to get.”
ON THE VALUE OF BRAINS
“I realize at present that I’m only an imitation of a man, and I assure you that it is an uncomfortable feeling to know that one is a fool. It seems to me that a body is only a machine for brains to direct, and those who have no brains themselves are liable to be directed by the brains of others.”
THE BEST THING IN THE WORLD
“Brains are not the best thing in the world,” said the Tin Woodsman.
“Have you any?” enquired the Scarecrow.
Expensive hobby: The British monarchy costs taxpayers $85 million a year.
“No, my head is quite empty,” answered the Tin Woodsman. “But once I had brains, and a heart also; so, having tried them both, I should much rather have a heart...for brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world.”
...And Now, Back to the World of Facts & Stats
• There are an estimated 5,000 foreign languages spoken throughout the world today—and nearly all of them have a dictionary translating them into English.
• The largest encyclopedia of all time was a 16th-century Chinese encyclopedia; it was 22,937 volumes.
• Do you know what “unabridged” means when it refers to English dictionaries? It doesn’t mean the work contains all the words in the English language; it just means that it contains all the words listed in earlier editions.
• The world’s first Mongolian-English dictionary was published in 1953.
• What language has the most words? Mandarin Chinese, which has an esti
mated 800,000 words. English is believed to rank second.
• In English dictionaries, the letter “T” has the most entries.
• Few English dictionaries agree on which word is the longest in the language. Two contenders:
floccinaucinihilipilification (Oxford English Dictionary), “the action of estimating as worthless.”
pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (Webster’s Third International), “a lung disease common to miners.”
• Many dictionaries do agree on the longest word in common use: it’s disproportionableness.
• The oldest word in the English language that still resembles its earliest form is land, which is descended from landa, the Old Celtic word for “heath.” It predates the Roman Empire (founded in 200 B.C.) by many hundreds of years.
Different strokes: 50% of Americans say they like going to the dentist.
UNEXPECTED
ENCOUNTERS
“East is east, and west is west, and never the twain shall meet” When we were kids, that seemed to make sense—except the ‘twain’ part. That wasn’t even a word, as far as we knew. Anyway, here are some examples of people you’d never expect to see together:
CHARLIE CHAPLIN & MAHATMA GANDHI
Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader Page 42
