mental_floss » Mark Juddery

10 Famous People Who Turned Down a Knighthood

Mark Juddery — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:08:29 +0000

Of all the honors that the Queen of England bestows on her subjects, a knighthood is easily the most coveted. To British citizens, few titles could be greater than having a “Sir” or “Dame” in front of their name. So what kind of person would turn down such a title? Surprisingly enough, many notables have done so. Here are some of them.

© Denis O’Regan/CORBIS

1. David Bowie

A few rock stars have been knighted, including Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Elton John and Sir Mick Jagger – much to the anger of his fellow Rolling Stone, Keith Richards, who felt that Jagger should have declined … like another of Sir Mick’s friends, David Bowie. Bowie turned down a knighthood in 2003. “I would never have any intention of accepting anything like that,” he said. “I seriously don’t know what it’s for. It’s not what I spent my life working for.”

2. Vanessa Redgrave

The Oscar-winning actress is often considered one of the “grand Dames” of the British stage. But unlike Dame Judi Dench and Dame Helen Mirren, Redgrave actually turned down the title in 1999. Known for supporting various left-wing and humanitarian causes, she might have thought (like many others) that a knighthood would make her too much a part of the establishment. Still, she was happy to be awarded the next-highest honor, a CBE (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire).

3. L.S. Lowry

The artist, famous for paintings of the Lancashire industrial scene, turned down more honors from the Queen than any other individual – a total of five, including an OBE in 1955, a CBE in 1961 and a knighthood in 1968. Always a friend to the working class, he turned down the honors because, according to a friend, he did not want to “change his situation.”

4. Alfred Deakin

The Australian statesman turned down a knighthood in 1887, when Australia was still a colony of Great Britain. He went on to become one of Australia’s founding fathers (it became a nation in 1901) and serve as Prime Minister three times. It seems that his refusal of a knighthood was due to a combination of humility (he would turn down several honors) and his preference for Australia becoming a republic, severing the last of its political links to the British Empire. Australia continued to award knighthoods (conferred by the Crown) after winning independence from Britain, even though many saw them as a remnant of the colonial past. Though it has still not become a republic, Australia finally stopped awarding knighthoods in 1983.

5. Robert Morley

The actor and playwright, famous for playing a variety of rotund eccentrics, accepted an Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1957, but turned down a knighthood in 1975. Other actors to turn down knighthoods included Trevor Howard, Alistair Sim and Paul Schofield.

6. Aldous Huxley

The essayist and author (Brave New World) refused a knighthood in 1959, only four years before his death. Random fact: Huxley, C.S. Lewis and John F. Kennedy all died on November 22, 1963.

7. Doris Lessing

When she was young, the Nobel Prize-winning author was an ardent communist, rebelling against the monarchy and the British political system. In 1993, at the age of 74, she refused to be made a Dame. “Surely,” she said, “there is something unlikable about a person, when old, accepting honors from an institution she attacked when young?” Some years earlier, she had turned down an OBE, as the honor came from a “non-existent empire.” In 2000, however, she accepted a Companion of Honor (CH), claiming to prefer it because “you’re not called anything.”

8. Henry Moore

The great sculptor, a major figure in the modern art movement, was always keen to remember his roots as the son of a Yorkshire coal miner. Hence, he turned down a knighthood in 1951 because he didn’t want to be seen as an establishment figure.

9. Rabindranath Tagore

One of India’s great hyphenates – spiritual man, the first non-European to win a Nobel Prize (for literature, in 1913), poet, songwriter, dramatist, novelist, painter, educator – Tagore was offered a knighthood by King George V in 1915… and accepted it. However, he renounced his knighthood in 1919, following the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, in which hundreds of Indians, suspected of plotting an insurrection, were gunned down by British troops.

10. Michael Faraday

Just to prove that turning down knighthoods isn’t just for modern-day rebels, Faraday (1791-1867), the great chemist and physicist who discovered the electromagnetic field, also turned down a knighthood. Over a century later, another famed scientist, Stephen Hawking, also reportedly said no to the Queen.

Bonus: John Lennon

While ~~turning down~~ returning an MBE, Lennon spelled out his reasons in a letter to the Queen:

“Your Majesty, I am returning this in protest against Britain’s involvement in the Nigeria-Biafra thing, against our support of America in Vietnam and against Cold Turkey slipping down the charts. With Love, John Lennon of Bag.”

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10 Not-So-Famous People We Lost in 2011

Mark Juddery — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 05:59:58 +0000

sarah2 / Shutterstock.com

It has been a solemn year for famous deaths, with tributes to those who achieved several decades of greatness (Dame Elizabeth Taylor), those who died before their time (Amy Winehouse), and even some who belong in both categories (Steve Jobs). Then there were those influential, inspiring, or simply fascinating people who were not nearly as famous, but should be saluted nonetheless for their great feats — from the founder of the Internet (no, really) to the mystery woman on one of the most famous album covers of the sixties.

1. Robert Ettinger: The Immortal Man

Presumably unlike everyone else on this list, Robert Ettinger might yet return. A physics teacher and science fiction writer, he believed that death is only for the unprepared. The father of the cryonics movement, his frozen, 92-year-old body is now stored in a vat of liquid nitrogen at a building outside Detroit, waiting for medical technology to restore him to good health. In 1962, Ettinger described the practical and moral aspects of deep-freezing the dead in the founding document of cryonics, The Prospect of Immortality. Later he founded the Cryonics Institute, which offers discount rates (starting at $28,000) for those who want to be preserved – one-fifth the price of his nearest competitor. It now houses 106 people and dozens of pets. Among the other bodies are Ettinger’s mother and his two wives. “If both of my wives are revived,” he admitted last year, “that will be a high class problem.”

2. Joanne Siegel: A Superman’s Best Girlfriend

Joanne Kovacs was the model for perhaps the most influential character in the history of superhero comics. We’re not talking Superman, of course, but his girlfriend, Lois Lane. Boys could be inspired by Superman’s physique and his sense of morality, but they could never expect to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Girls, however, could be (and were) inspired by Lois’s spirit, courage, and professional ambition in a world before Women’s Liberation. Kovacs, a Cleveland teenager who took up modelling to earn extra pocket money, was used as the model for Lois by two young artists, Joe Shuster and ~~Larry~~ Jerry Siegel. They quickly befriended Kovacs, who would also be the model for Lois’s feisty personality. Siegel married her in 1948, while Lois in the comics still wasn’t giving Clark Kent the time of day.

This year also saw the death of Stetson Kennedy, the social crusader who worked with Superman in his greatest victory: defeating the Ku Klux Klan.

3. John Cashin, Jr: Civil Rights Candidate

The death in March of Geraldine Ferraro, the first female vice-presidential nominee from a major party (she was Democrat Walter Mondale’s running mate in 1984), rightly won much coverage in March. That same week, fewer people noticed the passing of John L Cashin, Jr, another groundbreaker who tried – and failed – to win major public office. In 1970, Cashin, a dentist and civil rights leader, was the first African-American to run for governor of Alabama. He lost in a landslide to George C. Wallace, renowned for his tough anti-civil rights views. Though he won only 15 percent of the vote, Cashin’s political and legal work inspired many other African-Americans to run for higher office. Moreover, his efforts to forge an independent, non-segregationist Democratic party proved fruitful. Alabama, with a smaller black population than some of its neighboring states, soon had Dixie’s highest number of local African-American officials.

4. Paul Baran: Founding Father of the Internet

If there were a Mount Rushmore of Internet pioneers, Paul Baran would have to be on it. In the 1960s, the Polish-born scientist devised a technology known as packet-switching, which packaged data into discrete bundles called “message blocks.” His idea was to build the Arpanet, a distributed communications network, safe from attack or disruption in the event of nuclear exchange. He was so far ahead of his time that AT&T turned him down, insisting that the Arpanet was unworkable. The US military thought otherwise, however, using it as the forerunner of the Internet. Baran was too modest to claim credit for the Internet, which he compared to a cathedral:

“Over the course of several hundred years, new people come along and each lays down a block on top of the old foundations… Then comes along an historian who asks, ‘Well, who built the cathedral?’ Peter added some stones here, and Paul added a few more. If you are not careful, you can con yourself into believing that you did the most important part. But the reality is that each contribution has to follow on to previous work. Everything is tied to everything else.”

5. Suzie Rotolo: The Girl on Dylan’s Arm

Though it’s not as critically acclaimed as Blonde on Blonde, Highway 61 Revisited or many other Bob Dylan albums, it’s probably his most famous album cover: Dylan walking in Greenwich Village with a girlfriend. While The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963) had such reflective songs as “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” the cover was a portrait of young love, with Dylan smiling downwards and his pretty girl, Suzie Rotolo, grinning brightly at the camera. Of course, it didn’t last, and she later became the muse for some of Dylan’s breakup songs — “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” “One Too Many Mornings,” “Ballad of Plain D” — when she decided not to be, as she wrote later, “just this string on his guitar… just this chick.”

She avoided the spotlight, married someone else, and became a book artist. Her own view of that magical time? “All this indulgence of the sixties, ay-yi-yi, get over it. There will always be creative people who feel that they’re different and create a community of some kind. Whether it’s a physical neighborhood or an Internet neighborhood, in Bushwick or in Greenwich Village, it’s not over.”

6. Kate Swift: Gender Linguist

If you like hearing about flight attendants and actors (or both genders), you can probably thank editor Kate Swift. Before her, sexism was an everyday part of the English language. When Swift and Casey Miller were asked to copy-edit a sex education manual for junior high school students in 1970, they noticed a major problem. “We suddenly realized what was keeping his message — his good message — from getting across, and it hit us like a bombshell,” Swift said in 1994. “It was the pronouns. They were overwhelmingly masculine-gendered.” Swift and Miller wrote about this in essays (such as “Desexing the English Language,” which appeared in the first issue of Ms. in 1972) and two books: Words and Women: New Language in New Times and The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing. Though some of their ideas (“genkind” as a replacement for “mankind,” “tey” as a gender-neutral substitute for “he/she”) didn’t catch on, the books subtly changed the language, assuring that it now has a better gender balance.

7. Alan Haberman: Baron of the Barcodes

Though barcode technology was invented back in 1949, it did not become the standard until after Alan Haberman, chief executive of New England’s First National chain of grocery stores, headed a commission of retail executives in 1973. These execs discussed ways to make the retail experience easier, including the famously long check-out queues. After two years of meetings, the committee settled on the vertical bar format: the Universal Product Code (UPC) that appears on almost any product you buy. The first barcoded product was rung up by an optical scanner in 1974. Now, more than 10 billion bar codes are scanned worldwide each day.

8. Sybil Jason: South Africa’s own Shirley Temple

A few years ago, I wrote an article on movie star fan clubs and noted that, 70 years after her peak, Sybil Jason still had fans. I received a disappointed reply from Jason herself, not willing to be dismissed as a faded star. (We kept in touch after that, via email.) Not just a cute face, the South Africa-born Jason was a child prodigy who, at age five, could sing, dance, play piano and do uncanny celebrity impersonations. In the 1930s, she was signed by Warner Bros as their answer to 20th Century Fox’s biggest – and cutest – star, Shirley Temple. However, despite her flair for impersonations, her South African accent made her difficult to understand. She was later signed with 20th Century Fox as one of Shirley Temple’s co-stars. Jason returned to South Africa during World War II, but the two child stars remained friends for decades, well after their film careers were over. Though her films were mostly forgotten, Jason’s fan club was still active last year.

9. Del Connell: Unknown Comic Book Hero

Some comic book writers get no respect. You have probably heard of Stan Lee and Alan Moore, and if you haven’t heard of many others, at least their names are known (through the credits pages) to many comic book fans. But those who wrote comics in the so-called Golden Age and Silver Age, when comics could reliably sell a million or more copies, usually went uncredited, and didn’t even retain the copyright to their own work. Del Connell started as an artist on Disney animations in 1939, and moved to Dell Comics in 1954, where he churned out literally thousands of comics. He also created numerous characters, including Daisy Duck’s nieces (April, May and June) and Supergoof, Goofy’s superhero alter ego. His most famous creation, however, was the Space Family Robinson, first seen in the comics in 1962. Two years later, Irwin Allen transferred the characters to television in the popular series Lost in Space, but Connell (as usual) received no credit or royalties. When he finally received a lifetime achievement award this year at the San Diego Comic-Con, only a few people – those who knew his name – knew that the award was long overdue.

10. Vann Nath: Survivor (and Chronicler) of the Killing Fields

Vann Nath was one of only a handful of people to survive the Khmer Rouge’s Tuol Seng torture camp, in which 14,000 died. A gifted artist, he recorded his year in Phnom Penh’s notorious Killing Fields in a series of dark and disturbing paintings (now hung from the walls in a genocide museum). Ironically, his artistic talent – depicting the horror of the regime – allowed him to be spared so that he could produce portraits of the notorious leader, Pol Pot. Last year, giving evidence before the UN war crimes tribunal, Nath added tearful words to his artistic depictions. “We were so hungry, we would eat insects that dropped from the ceiling,” he recalled. “We would quickly grab and eat them so we could avoid being seen by the guards. My suffering cannot be erased – the memories keep haunting me.” The torture had long-term effects on his health and frailty, possibly hastening his death at 66.

Bonus: Nicholas Courtney and Elisabeth Sladen: Cult Figures

Though they have some degree of fame (at least compared to others on this list), I can’t resist adding some actors I enjoyed watching during my childhood. Fans of the classic Doctor Who series were in mourning in the early months of the 2011, which saw the passing of two English actors who — apart from those who played the Doctor himself — were perhaps the most important faces of the series.

Nicholas Courtney was the Brigadier, the Doctor’s longest-serving ally, a terribly British military officer who aided the hero against any number of alien threats. In this role (and a few others), Courtney appeared in the series over a period of 24 years.

In the 1970s, Elisabeth Sladen played Sarah Jane Smith, easily the Doctor’s most popular companion (back when the word “companion” seemed entirely innocent), a spirited journalist. She was so popular that, more than 30 years later, she was finally given her own spin-off series, The Sarah Jane Adventures, which was still going strong when she died at age 65.

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11 Classic Songs That Were Banned

Mark Juddery — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 15:11:33 +0000

Radio stations have censored or banned records for almost as long as they have been playing them. (Billie Holliday’s 1939 song “Strange Fruit,” which helped to inspire the civil rights movement, was banned by many Southern stations.) But since the coming of rock’n'roll in the 1950s, famous pop songs have been banned from airplay, or even removed from records, for a number of unusual reasons. Here are some of the most intriguing.

1. “Wake Up Little Susie” (1957) – The Everly Brothers

Reason: Teenage hanky-panky
Despite their image for showing a wholesome side to rock’n'roll, the Everly Brothers made the news when this song was banned by radio stations because it was all about a pair of teenagers sleeping together (even though, in this case, the emphasis was on “sleeping”).

2. “Splish Splash” (1958) – Bobby Darin

Reason: Nudity
This ditty was about a guy who walks out of a bath and into a party in the adjoining room. (They sang powerful and topical songs back then.) It was banned for an excellent reason: there was no mention of him putting his clothes back on. In fact, it mentions that he just places his towel around him. Shocking.

3. “Tell Laura I Love Her” (1960) – Ray Peterson

Reason: Too sad
This song was banned because it was a little morbid: the story of a teenager who enters a stock car race, in the hope of winning the prize money for his girlfriend’s wedding ring… only to die in an accident on the track. Though censors might have frowned upon it, the song moved straight up the charts, and gave them their worst nightmare: a popular craze for songs about teenage death. Many of them (Mark Dinning’s “Teen Angel,” the Shangri-Las’ “Leader of the Pack,” Twinkle’s “Terry”) were also major hits.

4. “Puff the Magic Dragon” (1962) – Peter, Paul and Mary

Reason: Drug references
In 1970, US vice-president Spiro Agnew described rock music as “blatant drug culture propaganda” and warned that it threatened “to sap our national strength unless we move hard and fast to bring it under control.” He immediately went on a crusade to ban songs that referred to drugs. This included the children’s ditty “Puff the Magic Dragon,” which would surely be harmless to anyone for whom it was written. Despite lyrics like “Puff,” “dragon,” “autumn mist,” “little Jackie paper,” and… that’s it, really… composer Peter Yarrow always protested the song was merely an innocent fantasy, with no hidden meaning.

5. “My Generation” (1965) – The Who

Reason: Unfair to the disabled
This anthem of youth rebellion might have worried a few people, but the line that won the most attention was… a mistake. When it was recorded, Roger Daltrey sang “Why don’t you all f… f… fade away” because he was having trouble reading Pete Townshend’s lyrics. They decided to keep the stutter, and add it to some other lines (“don’t try to dig what we all s… s… say”), partly because it sounded like a young mod on drugs (i.e. like many of their fans). A few listeners, however, were shocked because “f… f…” sounded like he was trying to say something else. Later, the BBC banned the song from radio because it was insulting to people who stammer. As long as it wasn’t about drugs…

6. “Let’s Spend the Night Together” (1967) – The Rolling Stones

Reason: Low morals
The Rolling Stones were asked not to perform this song on The Ed Sullivan Show. Ever the rebels, they refused, but they worked out a compromise, agreeing to change the lyrics to the less suggestive “let’s spend some time together.” Instead, Mick Jagger sang “let’s spend some mmmm together.” To the more optimistic moralists, he was singing “time” and just mumbling. Nonetheless, Sullivan banned them from ever appearing on the show again.

7. “A Day in the Life” (1967) – The Beatles

Reason: Drug reference (but only one)
Often voted by musicians and critics as the best Beatles song ever (a very contentious claim), this final number from Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band has a few sections. Though it has some bizarre, drug-inspired verses written by John Lennon, whose lyrics (“Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall”) don’t immediately seem to make sense, it was the more straightforward lyrics of Paul McCartney’s section that got the song banned by BBC Radio, specifically the line “found my way upstairs and had a smoke.” This was considered an unmitigated drug reference. Still, while McCartney was certainly known to enjoy the odd marijuana joint back then, you could argue that he was possibly just talking about tobacco. (Moot point, perhaps. Either way, it’s not healthy.)

8. “Lola” (1970) – The Kinks

Reason: Free advertising
This song by the Kinks won some controversy for its subject matter: the love between a man and a transvestite. However, it couldn’t be played on the BBC for a different reason: the lyrics “where you drink champagne and it tastes just like Coca-Cola.” To solve this problem, Ray Davies, the lead singer (and songwriter), was flown from the US to Britain to re-record this one line, as the government-run station could not be seen to endorse any product. Now, according to the song, the champagne in North Soho (London) tasted like cherry cola.

9. “God Save the Queen” (1977) – The Sex Pistols

Reason: Unfair to Her Majesty
This song made number one in the British charts, despite being banned from radio for insulting Her Majesty during her Silver Jubilee celebrations. With lyrics like “she ain’t no human being,” you could understand why the radio programmers felt that way. Fans of the Sex Pistols, however, argued that the rebellion of the song was not targeted at the Queen, but at the political classes that treated Britons, including the Queen herself, as something less than human.

10. “Walk Like an Egyptian” (1986) – The Bangles

Reason: It was the wrong time…
After the World Trade Center attacks in 2001, a Texas-based radio network asked its stations to drop 150 songs from their playlist. Sure, the Gap Band’s “You Dropped the Bomb on Me,” even Peter, Paul and Mary’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” could be taken badly. However, banning the Bangles’ catchy novelty hit “Walk Like an Egyptian” (because of its references, however goofy, to northern Africa) was perhaps going too far. John Lennon’s “Imagine,” though many people found it inspiring, was also on the list for the line “imagine there’s no heaven,” which was deemed anti-religious. Most strangely, uplifting songs like Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” were also banned. Was solace considered insensitive?

11. “Cop Killer” (1992) – Body Count

Reason: Los Angeles riots
Ice-T’s heavy metal song was one of many angry songs he performed with his band, Body Count, on their second album (also called Body Count). His fans enjoyed it when it was released, and nobody else seemed to notice. However, after riots in Los Angeles, a Texas police officer called for its ban. The riots had been inspired not by the song, but by the acquittal of white police officers after they had been captured on video beating African-American motorist Rodney King. Still, the song’s somewhat violent sentiments were considered dangerous. After letter bombs arrived at the studio, Time Warner, and Ice-T’s daughter was taken out of school for police questioning, the musician instructed his label to withdraw the album and reissue it without that song. Despite this self-banning, he continued to defend the song, saying that it had a strong sense of justice. As a song about vigilantism, and revenge against corrupt lawmen, he suggested that it was similar to Clint Eastwood’s western ~~The~~ Unforgiven. ~~The~~ Unforgiven went on to win four Oscars; “Cop Killer” was taken away.

For 11-11-11, we’ll be posting twenty-four ’11 lists’ throughout the day. Check back 11 minutes after every hour for the latest installment, or see them all here.

Mark Juddery is an author and historian based in Australia. His latest book, Overrated: The 50 Most Overhyped Things in History (Perigree), is already causing a stir. You can order it from Amazon or Barnes and Noble, and you can argue with Mark’s choices (or suggest new ones) on his blog.

9 Things Everyone Should Know About North Dakota

Mark Juddery — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 04:37:49 +0000

Everyone gives North Dakota a hard time. Well, some people in Montana and South Dakota do. People in states farther away can’t name a single thing about it. But we should all give this place more respect. It might be cold, it might have long and tedious roads, and it might not even be a state. (More about that in a moment.) But it was the birthplace of conservation in the U.S., made a man out of Teddy Roosevelt, and now has a bustling economy and plenty of jobs. The joke might be on everyone else.

1. It’s the thirty-ninth State… or the fortieth… or maybe even the fiftieth!

Did you think that Hawaii was the fiftieth state? Well, you (and most other people) might have been wrong. Poring over historical records some years ago, retired North Dakotan history teacher John Rolczynski noticed something missing when the Constitution was drawn up in 1889. The U.S. Constitution mandates that senators, representatives, state legislators and “all executive and judicial officers” take an oath to uphold the Constitution. By forgetting to include that line, Rolczynski believes, North Dakota defied the U.S. Constitution. North Dakotans will vote in November 2012 on whether they need to “clarify” their statehood.

Before Rolczynski’s discovery, it was assumed that North Dakota was either the thirty-ninth or the fortieth State. When the papers were signed, along with the adjoining state of South Dakota, U.S. Secretary of State James Blaine (instructed by the President, Benjamin Harrison, not to pick favorites) deliberately shuffled the papers so that nobody knew which of the two states was first to sign. North Dakota is officially listed as #39, simply because “North” comes before “South” in the alphabet.

2. It has an Enchanted Highway.

North Dakota is notorious for long roads surrounded by nothing but grassland and farms. To break up the tedium on the way to the town of Regent (in the south of the state), retired schoolteacher and principal Gary Greff had a novel idea: huge scrap metal sculptures every few miles. Since 1991, without attending a single art class, he has constructed seven towering sculptures, all made of recycled metal, on the Enchanted Highway (as the road to Regent has now been renamed). “Geese in Flight,” erected in 2001, holds the Guinness World Record as the largest metal sculpture in the world. Constructed from used oil-well pipes and oil tanks, it is 156 feet long, 100 feet tall, and weighs 75 tons. Greff still has another four sculptures to build, but is currently focused on building a new hotel out of a disused schoolhouse in Regent, in the shape of a castle. Its name: The Enchanted Castle.

3. The economy is booming.

As fellow _flosser Matthew Hickman pointed out last week, North Dakota has been blessed with an expanding economy and low unemployment, thanks to huge oil reserves. Currently, they are undergoing their third major oil boom – mainly because new technology allows them to tap into the oil reserves to the north of the state, which previously couldn’t be drilled sustainably. The northern half of the state is a hive of business, as workers from around the area move to the oilfields. Locals – who have long seen their best and brightest graduates move to Washington or California to pursue their careers – now laugh at the fact that workers from Washington and California are flocking to North Dakota for work. The roads, never constructed for large volumes of traffic, are being rebuilt to cope with their frequent use by heavy vehicles. In some regions, there are five jobs available for every person looking for work.

4. It’s a food basket to the nation.

For all the oil, the number one industry is still agriculture, which directly employs nearly a quarter of the population. There are 30,000 family farms and ranches (average farm size: 1,300 acres), and farms take up nearly 90 percent of the state (that’s 39 million acres). Idaho has its potatoes, and Iowa has its corn, but North Dakota is the nation’s number one producer of spring wheat (nearly half the nation’s total), durum wheat, sunflower, barley, oats, lentils, honey, edible beans, canola and flaxseed. It also grows plenty of potatoes and corn, thank you very much.

5. It changed the rules of meatpacking.

North Dakota’s most popular tourist spot is the Wild West town of Medora, founded in 1883 by a French nobleman, the Marquis de Mores. The Marquis, who came to the Dakota Territory to start a meatpacking plant, was a pioneer. His greatest innovation was refrigerated meat… which was impressive, because iceboxes weren’t widely available back then. However, the economy of meatpacking made him think of new ideas. Rather than crowd the cattle into a railroad carrier, then send them to the slaughterhouse in Chicago, he would have them slaughtered in the North Dakota, dress the meat and pack it in boxcars with slabs of ice. Most of the beef would arrive safely in Chicago.

6. It made a man out of Teddy Roosevelt.

Theodore Roosevelt was known as one of America’s great action-man presidents – hunter, rancher, horse-rider, war hero. But in his younger years, he was a frail, weak, asthmatic dandy whose poor health had made his childhood a struggle. While studying at Harvard, he was told by his personal physician that he didn’t have long to live. But from 1883, at the age of 25, he lived in the Dakota Territory (which would be North Dakota six years later). Falling in love with the wilderness of the Little Missouri River Valley (which reminded him of the poetry of Edgar Allen Poe), he became a rancher and buffalo-hunter. By the time he left North Dakota in 1886, he was a tan, muscular figure who, according to one reporter, was “hearty and strong enough to drive oxen.”

“I never would have been President is it had not been for my experiences in North Dakota,” he later said. Though he was born in New York, North Dakota was probably his favorite state. Even if it wasn’t, North Dakotans are happy to claim him. His time in ND also inspired his love for nature and conservation, and he later declared the first National Parks. The wilderness area that he adored became the Theodore Roosevelt National Park in 1947.

7. You might have seen it in Fargo (if you didn’t blink).

North Dakota’s largest and most famous city, Fargo, has a population of 105,549. However, much of its fame is due to the Coen Brothers’ 1996 movie of that name, which revealed little about the city apart from the snowy weather and the malicious nature of some of its locals. It was hardly the best publicity for the town, which is particularly unfair because Fargo was based vaguely on two true events, both of which happened in Minnesota. (It opens with the words “This is a true story,” which is a slight exaggeration.) The movie was also filmed primarily in Minnesota. However, the snowy exteriors were shot in Fargo, which is indeed known for bitter winters where the temperature falls below 0 degrees Fahrenheit.

8. It’s a great place for A Christmas Carol.

Almost every weekend, in a town somewhere in North Dakota, there is some kind of festival to lure visitors: a goose festival (GooseFest) in Kenmare, a duck festival (Duckfest) in Bowdon, a grape and garlic festival (if you can believe that combo) in Minot, a spare ribs festival and an apple festival in Bismarck, a BBQ turkey festival in Lakota, an oil festival in Williston. But for true festivity, few can beat the town of Garrison. They started drawing in visitors with a walleye fishing contest, but 20 years ago, due to a love for Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, a Dickens Festival was started. People now visit, in the weeks before Christmas each year, to witness the locals roam the streets dressed like characters from a Victorian-era English novel, and see the amateur theatrical troupe produce various version of the story of Ebenezer Scrooge.

While the Dickens Festival brings people from around the state, Garrison’s festival fun doesn’t stop there. “Someone was a kite-flying aficionado, so we started the Kite Festival, which has become very popular,” says one of the Dickens Festival organizers, Jude Iverson. They even have a beach party in late August, on the banks of the mighty Lake Missouri. Not exactly Malibu, but students love it.

9. It was a favorite spot for Lewis and Clark.

The explorers Lewis and Clark, on their famous two-year expedition of territory beyond the Mississippi, spent more time in North Dakota than in any other state – or at least, they would have if the region were already comprised of states. In October 1804, not far from North Dakota’s present-day capital city of Bismarck, they were joined by a Canadian fur trader and his wife, Sacagawea, a local girl who became their interpreter. Sacagawea, a member of the Shoshone tribe, is regarded very highly by North Dakotans for her brains, brawn (she carried her first child on her back throughout the journey) and beauty (she has been immortalized in bronze statues throughout the State). In fact, she is a member of North Dakota’s Cowboy Hall of Fame. She never even met a cowboy, but this is practically the state’s highest honor.

Mark Juddery is an author and historian based in Australia. His latest book, Overrated: The 50 Most Overhyped Things in History (Perigree), is already causing a stir. You can order it from Amazon or Barnes and Noble, and you can argue with Mark’s choices (or suggest new ones) on his blog.

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8 Movie Star Life Stories (That Were Completely Made Up)

Mark Juddery — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 04:25:03 +0000

You know you shouldn’t believe everything you read about famous actors and actresses. Here are eight stars whose life stories (or significant parts thereof) were as fictional as the movies they starred in.

1. Theda Bara

The publicists promoting Theda Bara, Hollywood’s first major sex symbol, let their imaginations run wild. She was introduced in fan magazines as the daughter of a desert prince and an Italian or French sculptor (or an Egyptian seeress, depending on the story you read). “Born in the shadow of the Sphinx,” and weaned on serpent’s blood, she was “a crystal-gazing seeress of profoundly occult powers.” She had previously been a star of the Paris stage and, in her spare time, she drove men wild with desire. She would also go heavily veiled in public (thanks to a contractual obligation) and was often photographed with skeletons.

In actuality, she was a girl from Cincinnati named Theodosia Goodman, the daughter of a Jewish tailor. Can you believe that people used to fall for that “daughter of an Egyptian seeress” line? In truth, she was known to be demure and prudent. As a teenage actor on the New York stage (sorry, not Paris), she had tried to make herself sound exotic (or at least non-Jewish) by calling herself Theodosia de Coppet.

But it was as Theda Bara that she became a superstar. She later told stories of public exclusion and being refused service in restaurants. “Audiences thought the stars were the way they saw them,” she recalled. “Once on the streets of New York a woman called the police because her child spoke to me.”

2. Douglas Fairbanks

Douglas Fairbanks was one of the top film stars of the silent era, a successful producer, and an all-around athlete. The evidence is still there, on film. Many of the things he said about himself, however, were not so reliable. Was he a Wall Street stockbroker (which was a great job back then, when the stock market was cool)? Was he a cattle freighter? Or were they just stories?

If you believe one story that he told throughout his life, he was a Harvard graduate. However, there is no record of him on that university’s esteemed register. Perhaps he was trying to add an intellectual side to his dashing image. Or perhaps there’s truth to the story that he attended Harvard for a few months before deciding to travel to Europe – and the “graduation” part of the story was added later. Whatever the case, his son Douglas Fairbanks Jr. (a top star in his own right) said that it was one of many tall tales that his father made up about his early life.

3. Erich von Stroheim

Before he became known as one of Hollywood’s great directors, Erich von Stroheim was the classic evil German soldier in many films made during World War I – and, like Theda Bara, audiences had trouble telling him apart from his roles. People would heckle and spit at him in the streets. But unlike Bara, he loved the attention, as it proved what an effective movie villain he was.

Although he seemed German enough, he wasn’t quite there. When it was revealed that he was actually born in Vienna, he claimed to be of a noble Austrian family. In fact, his parents were Jews from Prussia and the Czech Republic. He was an officer in the Austrian army before moving to America at age 21. He wasn’t an evil German; in fact, despite his name (and, as later films would reveal, his accent), he wasn’t even German.

4. Max Schreck

German actor Max Schreck’s unusual features inspired director F.W. Murnau to cast him as the title vampire in the horror classic Nosferatu (1922). Schreck’s performance was so chilling that, as nobody remembers him for anything else, legend states that he was a real-life vampire, cast in just one film. Many horror fans, in fact, believe that this might be true. In the film Shadow of the Vampire (2000), Willem Dafoe played him like this, as a mysterious actor who avoided the sunlight and casually sucked the blood from a low-flying bat. Dafoe’s performance won him an Oscar nomination and was added to Schreck’s vampirical reputation.

In fact, Schreck was a happily married man who was a 43-year-old established theatre actor when Nosferatu (his fifth film) was released. Though he specialized in horror, he made several more films in Germany (usually playing non-vampires) until his death of a heart attack in 1936. None of them, however, are even remotely as famous as Nosferatu.

5. Adolphe Menjou

Another silent movie star, Adolphe Menjou was famous as a debonair charmer, with a waxy mustache and an impeccable dress sense. His name fit the image perfectly, allowing his fans to assume that he was French. The truth was less glamorous. He was actually an Irish-American born in Pittsburgh.

When talking pictures came in, many stars’ voices revealed them as frauds. Menjou, however, used a French accent to match his name in his first speaking role as a womanizing musician in Fashions in Love (1929). Formerly a stage actor, he was skilled with his voice, but movie stardom meant maintaining an image. He continued making films for another 30 years, though he eventually dropped the accent.

6. Errol Flynn

Many stories have been told about Errol Flynn: high seas adventurer, gun runner, alcoholic, morphine addict, murderer, serial adulterer (no one denies that one), Nazi spy. In his best-selling autobiography, My Wicked, Wicked Ways, he boasted about his misdeeds, but that’s OK, because much of it was a lie. We can’t be sure of exactly how much, but some of it we know was untrue.

He claimed, for example, that his film debut was playing Fletcher Christian in In the Wake of the Bounty. That’s true enough, but he also said that he was discovered by an American producer named Joel Schwartz, and the film was shot on location in Tahiti. He was actually discovered by Australian producer-director Charles Chauvel, and the movie was filmed in Sydney. (Unlike Merle Oberon, he didn’t want anyone to see him as an Australian. Doubt has even been cast over whether he was Australian-born.)

Even less reliable, perhaps, was Charles Higham’s Errol Flynn: The Untold Story (1980). Higham accused Flynn of being all sorts of things: a closet bisexual, a drug-runner, a pedophile (OK, that was technically true), and a Nazi spy, supplying Japan with crucial intelligence for the Pearl Harbor attack. This was discredited by many of Higham’s own sources, who accused him of inventing their quotes. Flynn’s family tried to sue the author, but the case was thrown out of court because, as Higham was doubtless aware, the dead can’t be libeled under American law. Instead, some of the stories gained wide acceptance – and added to the myth.

7. Shirley Eaton

Jill Masterson is one of the most famous James Bond girls, which is no mean achievement, as she really didn’t have to do much, dying in an early scene of Goldfinger (1964) after betraying her titular boss, who suffocates her by covering her in gold paint. Jill’s painted corpse, lying naked on the bed, still ranks as one of the most memorable sights from the Bond movies – and led to a long-running story that, like the character she played, Shirley Eaton had also died of asphyxiation thanks to Goldfinger. The story was so widespread that it might have done some damage to the career of the 27-year-old starlet (who already had a lengthy CV of British comedies), but she went on to make another eight movies before retiring in 1969, then wrote an autobiography called Golden Girl. Not bad for a dead woman!

Oh, and painting your body to death? As long as you can breathe through your mouth and nose, asphyxiation shouldn’t be a problem.

8. Walter Matthau

Craggy-faced comedy star Walter Matthau was born Walter Matuschanskyayasky. His middle name was Foghorn and his mother was a gypsy. Or maybe not. Thought he would stick by such “facts” in several interviews, these were jokes that he told so that he wasn’t driven crazy by his constant procession of media calls. In truth, his surname was Matthow (which has exactly the same pronunciation) and his parents were Russian-Jewish immigrants in New York. Those who knew him said that it was often difficult to know whether he was joking or being serious. Hence, it’s anyone’s guess whether his father was an Orthodox priest who lost his job after claiming that the Pope was infallible.

Mark Juddery is an author and historian based in Australia. His latest book, Overrated: The 50 Most Overhyped Things in History (Perigree), is already causing a stir. You can order it from Amazon or Barnes and Noble. You can see a slideshow excerpt from the book, and you can argue with Mark’s choices (or suggest new ones) on his blog. Mark offers one tip: If you want to say “This book is overrated”… it’s been done.

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5 Memorable Moments in Comic Book Censorship

Mark Juddery — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 17:02:25 +0000

In a story we first published in 2008 (server migration week continues!), Australian writer/historian Mark Juddery discusses what happened when comic book characters ran afoul of the comic book code (or angered a hostile government).

1. The Comics Code and the C-word

For decades, the comic book industry was ruled by the toughest censorship body in America: the Comics Code Authority. The Code was written in 1954 as an answer to a nationwide anti-comics movement. This was instigated by angry parents during a boom in graphic horror comics, and fueled by psychologist Dr Frederic Wertham’s 1953 book Seduction of the Innocent, which blamed comics for “different kinds of maladjustment” in young minds. Soon, comics had such a bad reputation that distributors even refused to open their batches of comics. By the mid-1950s, almost 75% of the U.S. comic book industry had been forced out of business.

The Comics Code was the only way out – with its long and stringent set of guidelines, prohibiting everything from “excessive levels of violence” to “self-destructive use of tobacco.” The Code thought of everything!

But Wertham hadn’t just complained about horror comics. In fact, much of his book raged against the popular true-crime comics of the time, with titles like Crime Does Not Pay, Crime Must Pay the Penalty, Crime and Punishment and Crimes by Women. The word “crime” seemed to bother Wertham, and he possibly would have wanted it removed. Instead, the Code decreed that the word “crime” could stay in the title, but rather than taking pride of place, it could be no bigger than the other words. Hence, you could buy the latest edition of Crime DOES NOT PAY. That’s telling ’em!

2. The Sins of a Comic Book Artist

While American comics were winning the wrath of parents, comics on the other side of the Pacific were also being targeted for all kinds of moral depravity. It didn’t help that one of Australia’s top artists was Len Lawson. Lawson’s most famous character was the Lone Avenger, a masked vigilante of the 1870s American West. (Yes, even Aussies did westerns.) While the Lone Avenger was a good guy, his creator was slightly more disturbed. In 1954, Lawson was imprisoned for 14 years for rape. One newspaper, “exposing” this rapist as a comic book artist, described Lawson as “the artist of violent comics, which frequently depicted bosomy heroines.” Almost immediately, The Lone Avenger was banned in Queensland, followed by several other comics. Afraid that other states would follow suit, distributors Gordon & Gotch imposed their own censorship.

Soon after his release in 1961, Lawson made headlines for killing two teenage girls, one of them accidentally, in a struggle at a girls’ school chapel. Anti-comics crusaders had a field day. Fortunately, most comic book artists have not killed anyone, though American artist Bob Wood was sent to prison for three years after killing a woman in 1958. Wood’s most famous comic? Crime Does Not Pay.

3. The Devil Made Them Do It

In the sixties, the Comics Code stamp of approval was essential for any comic book that wanted to get on the newsstands. In 1961, however, an edition of Marvel Comics’ Strange Tales nearly broke one of the rules. Artist Steve Ditko’s story told of a vengeful socialite who meets a guy dressed as the Devil at a costume party, and falls for him. But at midnight, when it’s time to unmask… you can probably guess the rest. “Mask?” says the Devil. “What mask, my love?”

However, the editors were afraid of what the Code might think, so they removed the final panel (which presumably suggested a terrible fate for the socialite) and hurriedly replaced it with two small panels, drawn by another artist, in which she faints, recovers and resolves to change her malicious ways, while the “Devil” (who is obviously somewhere else) pulls of his mask, and is revealed to be one of her would-be victims in disguise. Yes, they included all of that. When you’re censoring a story, you can squeeze a lot into two small panels.

4. The Code Freaks Out

In the comics, Spider-Man has long been a hero who gets in trouble with the authorities, no matter how much he tries to do the right thing. He even faced that problem in the real world, when he ran afoul of the Comics Code. In 1971 the US Department of Health, Education and Welfare approached his publisher, Marvel Comics, to alert their readers to the dangers of drugs. Marvel was happy to oblige, so in one story, a “freaked out cat” was so stoned that he threw himself off a building, only to be saved by the web-swinging hero. A few issues later, one of Spidey’s friends was revealed to be an addict. While both stories were decidedly anti-drug, they weren’t approved by the Comics Code. However, they were published anyway, drawing media coverage and public support. Eventually, the Code was modified, allowing drug usage to be shown within reason. Before long, even a superhero (Green Arrow’s sidekick, the appropriately-named Speedy) was revealed as a drug addict. The Code let that one through.

5. The Final Censorship

No comic book writer can claim to have suffered for their art as much as Hector Oesterheld. Long regarded as Argentina’s greatest comic book writer and publisher, he became very political in the sixties, most notably with Vida del ChÃ© (1968), a comic book biography of revolutionary ChÃ© Guevera, drawn by Alberto and Enrique Breccia. After Argentina’s military coup of 1976, Oesterheld and his family joined the banned anti-government group, the Montoneros. Oesterheld also started a new story in his popular time-travel epic El Eternauta, showing a future Argentina ruled by a brutal dictator.

At the end of 1976, Oesterheld and his four daughters were arrested by the government and never seen again. Italian journalist Alberto Ongaro, investigating his fate three years later, was allegedly told by a government official: “We did away with him because he wrote the most beautiful story of ChÃ© Guevara ever done.” Unable to censor his comic book politics, the regime dealt with the man himself.

Mark Juddery is a writer and historian based in Australia. See what else he’s written at markjuddery.com.

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Spider-Man’s 8 Boldest Moments

Mark Juddery — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 14:45:46 +0000

Spider-Man is the most important comic book superhero of the past 50 years – and the main reason is because he’s always been daring. Even when he was introduced in 1962, by writer-editor Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko, he was a brave concept: a superhero motivated not by altruism (like Superman and most others), or even by revenge (like Batman), but by guilt. (While he selfishly uses his powers for a showbiz career, he fails to stop a burglar. As a result, the burglar goes on to kill his uncle.) In 1971, Spider-Man tackled drugs, in a story that fell foul of the censors – and though that one belongs here, it’s already covered in a previous article, 5 Memorable Moments in Comic Book Censorship.

He is still daring today – and not just in comics, as we can see from Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, one of the most ambitious musicals in Broadway history. But here are the boldest moments of the past 50 years. Some have been successes; others have backfired terribly. That’s what boldness is all about…

1. The Night Gwen Died (1973)

As teenager Peter Parker, Spider-Man’s high-school sweetheart was the lovely Gwen Stacy, a popular supporting character. By 1973, it was becoming a little too cozy, so artist John Romita suggested that they kill her. In one comic, the Green Goblin (aware that Parker was Spider-Man) kidnapped Gwen and threw her from the top of the Brooklyn Bridge.

As anyone who saw the movie Spider-Man (2002) would recall, this is exactly what he did to Mary Jane Watson, but Spider-Man saved her. In the comics, Gwen was not so lucky. Spidey swept down to catch her, only to discover that she was dead. In case this wasn’t shocking enough, writer Gerry Conway included a snapping sound effect when he caught her, implying that her death was caused by the shock of being caught while falling at a great speed (meaning that it was Spider-Man’s fault). Whatever the case, it was truly shocking for a children’s comic (as it was in those days). But despite many complaints from readers, she never returned to life, unlike many comic book characters.

Did it work? It wasn’t exactly a feelgood comic, but The Night Gwen Stacy Died is now considered a classic story. It also showed one of the most startling things about Spidey: sometimes the good guys lose.

2. Spider-Man in Black and White (1984)

When a superhero is famous, not just with comic book readers but also with the public, you don’t go changing his costume. However, in 1984, Marvel Comics gave Spider-Man a new, black-and-white one. It was a controversial decision, leading to the theory that it was introduced so the artists wouldn’t need to draw so many webs. To make it even more useful, the costume was an alien lifeform, which Spidey could transform at will into regular clothing. Though he wore the costume for some time, it eventually went evil, and they parted ways. With a new “host”, it later became the monstrous super-villain Venom.

Did it work? The black costume eventually grew on readers – until it was removed, as the familiar red-and-blue jumpsuit had been licensed to too many merchandisers. Spider-Man still occasionally wears a black suit – a duplicate of the alien one – most recently when he was in a particularly dark mood.

3. The Clone Saga (1994-95)

To combat falling sales, Spider-Man’s writers and editors agreed that he had become too happy, married to his sweetheart Mary Jane Watson. The solution – worthy of any soap opera writing team – was to hearken back to a 1975 story, in which the hero had been cloned, and the clone had supposedly died. The clone returned in The Clone Saga, an epic story that lasted two years. In the end, it was revealed that, for 20 years (of our time), Spider-Man had been a clone. The real Spider-Man had been hiding for all those years, thinking that he was the clone. (Got that?) Now that this was revealed, the real clone was allowed to lose his powers and retire gracefully to his life of marital bliss, while the original Spider-Man took over again, with all his life issues intact.

Did it work? Not at all. An email group, The Spider-Man Expatriates, promoted a boycott of any comics that suggested their hero was an impostor. They weren’t simply a vocal minority; subscriptions fell to 235,000—a 30-year low and a 60 percent drop from 1993. Eventually, Marvel did a desperate about-face, restoring the clone’s powers and revealing that, whatever they said, he wasn’t really a clone after all. (Still got that?) “Somewhere, the ‘Clone Saga’ became the catchphrase for all that is wrong in everything, not only comics,” said Howard Mackie, the only Spider-Man writer who didn’t lose his job in the process. “World War III will be caused by the ‘Clone Saga.’”

4. Sins Past (2004)

In one of the more alarming stories, Spider-Man met a woman who looked exactly like his tragic sweetheart, Gwen Stacy. He later discovered the truth: she was one of a pair of twin siblings who had been secretly born to Gwen after an affair with… Norman Osborn—the Green Goblin! Using his scientific genius, he had now aged them prematurely, in an attempt to defeat Spider-Man. The idea that sweet Gwen would have an affair with Osborn was not taken well by some fans…

Did it work? The story, besmirching Gwen’s memory, was so badly received by fans that its writer, J. Michael Straczynski (better known as the creator of the TV series Babylon 5), later asked his editors if he could “retcon” the story so that it never happened. As far as future writers (and most fans) are concerned, it never did.

5. Unmasked! (2006)

In the mini-series Civil War, Spider-Man revealed his secret identity to a large media throng. As the press corps went wild, his friend Tony Stark (alias Iron Man) congratulated him: “Soak it up, Peter. You’re bigger than Elvis now.” It was promoted as “the most shocking event in comic book history,” and sure enough, fans reacted strongly. However, they had to get used to it. “There is no going back after Civil War,” said Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada at a comic-book convention. “We use these events to modernize our characters.”

Did it work? It was perhaps the most talked-about story of the year—and some people were angry. In one blog, US comic-book retailer Ryan Higgins called it “the biggest mistake in the history of modern comic books.” Within days, the internet chat rooms were filled with stunned comments like “Spidey sold out!” But whatever Quesada had said, it wasn’t intended to last. Instead, everything was back to normal after a year, in an even more controversial story…

6. Brand New Day (2007-08)

Spider-Man’s happy marriage was still bothering the folks at Marvel, leading to perhaps the most daring move in Spider-Man history. To save the life of his Aunt May, who was dying in hospital, Spider-Man made a deal with Mephisto, lord of the underworld, to save her. The price: his marriage to Mary Jane would not only be over, but it would never have happened, and their memories would also be wiped.

Did it work? Like the Clone Saga, it angered many fans, again not happy with history being changed. However, while many boycotted Spider-Man comics, the sales were as strong as ever, with a revitalized (and newly single) Spider-Man.

7. Spider-Man is… Andrew Garfield? (2010)

Sure, it might not seem as daring as many of the other things on this list, but Hollywood casting can often be a gamble – especially as superhero fans can be violently opposed to casting decisions they don’t like. When a certain actor is strongly connected with a role, it can be even worse. So in the next Spider-Man movie, the very popular Tobey Maguire will be replaced by… some English guy nobody’s heard of? When this was revealed, the chatrooms were abuzz – and many people weren’t happy.

Did it work? It’s too early to tell, but since Andrew Garfield has a major role in The Social Network, the gamble might have paid off. In that film, he played a badly-treated geek – perfect training for Peter Parker! (Oh, and he proved that he can do an American accent.)

8. Turn Off the Dark (2010-11)

Even before the onstage accidents and delays, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark seemed like a dangerous idea. The most expensive (costing twice as much as the previous record-holder) and logistically challenging show ever staged on Broadway? A score by Bono and The Edge? (Great rock musicians, sure, but they’d never written a musical. Nor did they make their reputation with light and breezy show-stoppers.) A book co-written by the divisive Broadway director Julie Taymor? A little-known cast forced to learn trapeze along with the singing and dancing? Broadway shows are always a gamble, but never more than this one.

Did it work? Not so far. Opening night was delayed due to safety issues, three of the cast were injured (including one of the main cast, who quit soon afterwards), and critics were unimpressed by the previews. We await opening night on March 15 (subject to change)…

Mark Juddery is an author and historian based in Australia. His latest book, Overrated: The 50 Most Overhyped Things in History (Perigree), is already causing a stir. You can order it from Amazon or Barnes and Noble. You can see a slideshow excerpt from the book, and you can argue with Mark’s choices (or suggest new ones) on his blog. Mark offers one tip: If you want to say “This book is overrated”… it’s been done.

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Remembering 10 People We Lost in 2010

Mark Juddery — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 17:29:47 +0000

This past year, like every year, many celebrated and significant people left us – an eclectic group, from Alexander Haig to Gary Coleman, from Lynn Redgrave to J.D. Salinger. With one tragic jetliner crash, we lost much of Poland’s political elite. But here, as published each year, are some of the other people whose deaths you might not have noticed, whose names you might not know, but who are certainly worth saluting.

1. Tsutomu Yamaguchi: Double A-Bomb Survivor

This Japanese engineer had a knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time… but his appearance on this list suggests that he was a very lucky man. Yamaguchi was on business in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, when it became the first city struck by an atom bomb. Badly burned, he went home to Nagasaki three days later… and once again, found himself facing an atom bomb attack. Last year the Japanese government formally recognized him as the sole “nijuuhibaku”, the only person officially recognized to have survived the A-bomb attacks on both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He later became a teacher and worked for Mitsubishi. But he believed that the radioactive fallout had delayed side-effects. When his son died of cancer in 1995, Yamaguchi blamed the radioactivity in his bloodstream. This inspired him to become an anti-nuclear campaigner, writing his memoirs and addressing the United Nations.

On the subject of lucky war survivors, 2010 also saw the passing of U.S. Air Force flyer Col. Bud Mahurin, who was shot down over both the Atlantic and Pacific during World War II… and once again during the Korean War, for old times’ sake. (It wasn’t all agony for him. He was also the only American to shoot down enemy planes over both oceans during World War II.)

2. Francisco Varallo: World Cup Survivor

Paul the Octopus wasn’t the only significant football World Cup death this year. Another football luminary lived to be 98 years older than the famous eight-limbed clairvoyant. Francisco Varallo, the last surviving player of the first-ever World Cup final in 1930, was a forward for Argentina, known for his bravery and accurate shooting. Argentina (still a football superpower) lost 4-2 to Uruguay in the 1930 final, played in Montevideo. At the time, of course, the World Cup had yet to become the world’s most popular sporting event.

It was a big year to say goodbye to “last survivors.” In addition to Varallo (who was 100), 2010 saw the deaths of Jack Babcock, 109, Canada’s last World War I army veteran; Jeanette Scola Trapani, the last survivor of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire (!), who was four years old when the city was leveled; and (less distantly) Willard Wirtz, the last surviving member of President Kennedy’s cabinet.

3. Vladimir Raitz: Package Holiday Pioneer

Vladimir Raitz, a Russian Jew who had moved to London a child, invented the modern package holiday. The idea had come when a Russian friend invited him to a beachside “holiday camp” in Corsica, set up for Soviet expatriates. Here, Raitz saw the potential for selling happiness to the depressed, post-war UK. With £3,000 inherited from his grandmother, Raitz chartered surplus British military aircraft and set up Horizon Holidays in 1949. Eleven paying customers boarded a Dakota DC3 from London for the maiden flight in 1950. The tourists were treated to a week in the sun, staying on the beach in large canvas tents (each with two beds). It was a hit. Middle-class Britons could now visit the Meditteranean – a comparative luxury, previously available only to the wealthy – for an affordable price, with meals and local wine included.

Within a few years, Horizon was flying to many destinations in Europe, and established airlines had to lower their prices to keep up with Horizon’s bargains. According to critics, the tourists were loud, uncouth drunks – the ugly side of English travelers. Yet Raitz argued that he was bringing “a social revolution” to the average Briton.

“The man in the street acquired a taste for wine, for foreign food, started to learn French, Spanish or Italian, made friends in the foreign lands he had visited,” he said. Whatever the case, Raitz helped to start a tourism boom.

4. Beatrice Sinclair: Reluctant Role Model

If you were the model for a famous fictitious character who brought smiles to millions on a classic television series, you would probably be flattered. If this character had been polled as the series’ most admired character, you would have every reason to be happy, right? Sadly, Beatrice Sinclair didn’t see it that way. She was the model for hotelier Sybil Fawlty in the 1970s British sitcom Fawlty Towers. While Sybil’s husband Basil (played by John Cleese) was inept and rude to guests, Sybil herself (Prunella Scales) was formidable, if somewhat bossy and intimidating. The hilarious Fawlty Towers, sometimes voted Britain’s greatest-ever TV show, was based on a hotel where Cleese stayed in 1970, while filming with the Monty Python comedy team. Cleese remembered the manager, war hero Donald Sinclair, as “the most wonderfully rude man I have ever met,” and his wife Beatrice as domineering.

Though she refused to talk about Fawlty Towers for 30 years, Beatrice said in 2002 that the series was unfair to her late husband, who had been “turned into a laughing stock.” “The entire [Monty Python] cast behaved so badly it beggared belief,” she recalled of their stay in the hotel, “and if there was one thing my husband couldn’t stand, it was bad manners.”

She did note, however, that Cleese and his co-writer Connie Booth were correct that she was the driving force in the hotel, starting the business while Donald was serving in World War II. She sold the hotel after his death in 1981, and the new owners attracted tourists with Fawlty Towers-themed events. She steadfastly refused to be involved.

5. “Baby” Marie Osborne: Hollywood’s First Child

In our list two years ago, we saluted Anita Page, one of the last surviving stars of the silent movie era. However, she wasn’t the very last. Child actor Virginia Davis, who starred in many of Walt Disney’s early films, passed away last year – and 2010 saw the death of Hollywood’s first major child star, Marie Osborne, an audience favorite during World War I. Osborne (nee Helen Alice Myres) was born in Colorado in 1911, made her movie debut at age three, and starred in nearly 30 pictures before she was 10, including Little Marie Sunshine and Joy and the Dragon (both 1916), usually billed as “Baby Marie.”

“I set the trend for virtually every other child star that followed,” she said, nearly 90 years later – but she wasn’t proud. “I was the first of Hollywood’s washed-up child stars.” By her tenth birthday, her career was over and her foster parents, struggling actors, had frittered away her hard-earned fortune on their gilded Hollywood lifestyle. As an adult, she appeared in numerous films as an extra, or a stand-in for various stars, both children (Deanna Durbin) and adults (Ginger Rogers, Betty Hutton). After World War II, she worked as a costume supervisor. Once the youngest of Hollywood’s stars, her death at age 99 would suggest that she must surely be the last of Hollywood’s silent stars — except late-1920s star Barbara Kent is still apparently living in Idaho at age 104!

6. Doris Eaton Travis: Last of the Ziegfeld Girls

Like Marie Osborne, Doris Eaton Travis was the last of her era – and while “Baby” Marie was just short of 100, Travis achieved an even greater feat. The 5-foot-2 showgirl was the last of the legendary chorus girls of the Ziegfeld Follies, which brought glamor and sex appeal to the Broadway stage in the early twentieth century. Discovered by the legendary producer Florenz Zeigfeld (the Hugh Hefner of his time), many of the Ziegfeld girls (Marion Davies, Billie Burke, Louise Brooks, Barbara Stanwyck) became stars in their own right before the Follies ended in 1931. Travis continued to sing and dance in Broadway shows, and later had a second career as a dance instructor. At a reunion of Ziegfeld girls (only four of them) in 1997, she proved that she was the only one who could still dance. Eventually, she outlived all the others by a) being the youngest when she joined in 1918, aged only 14, and b) living to the age of 106.

7. David Warren: Life-Saving Inventor

Australian wireless enthusiast David Warren’s invention did not make him wealthy or famous. However, he was happy in the knowledge that it had saved untold thousands of lives. As a rocket fuels chemist in 1954, researching a series of unexplained high-altitude explosions involving Britain’s de Havilland Comet (the world’s first jet airliner), Warren noted that, had it been possible to record the events in the aircraft before the explosion, the mystery would have been solved easily. Using his prowess as a tinkerer, he developed the “black box” flight memory recorder, which could store four hours of crew conversations and eight instrument readings in a casing strong enough to withstand fire or explosion. (If the whole aircraft were made of the same casing, it would be too heavy to leave the ground!)

Though it initially had a lukewarm reception, the device was eventually sold to Britain. Countless times, the ability to recover the data after a crash has allowed manufacturers and safety authorities to correct oversights and design flaws, preventing similar accidents. Similar devices are now installed in trains and ships. One problem: the “black box” is usually orange, yellow, or red. But with all these lives saved, that’s just nitpicking!

8. George Nissen: Inventor with Bounce

Inspired by trapeze artists leaping off small “bouncing beds,” Iowa teenager George Nissen invented the trampoline in 1934. Basically a large-scale bouncing bed, it was originally used as a gimmick by Nissen and two university classmates in their acrobatic troupe, the Three Leonardos. The name “trampoline,” a Spanish word for diving board, was adopted while touring Mexico City. Going into business with his college gymnastics coach, he marketed the trampolines with little success, until the US military used them to train pilots and parachutists. By the 1960s (as “bounce centers”), they became a fad, in backyards all over the world, and Nissen designed other gym equipment. He visited Sydney for the 2000 Olympics, to see the start of trampolining as an event. In so doing, he became one of the very few people in history to witness his invention become an Olympic sport. “That was always my goal and my dream,” he said. “The struggle and the journey—that’s the Olympic spirit.”

9. Lawrence Garfinkel: The Bane of Big Tobacco

It’s astonishing today to realize that, until 1948, smoking was not generally linked to lung cancer, nor even to bad health – and perhaps nobody did more to enlighten us of this shocking truth than Lawrence Garfinkel. The studies that exposed the links were co-designed by Garfinkel, an epidemiologist with the American Cancer Society. Remarkably, Garfinkel (a lifetime non-smoker) had no relevant scientific qualifications, joined the ACS as a statistical clerk, and learned epidemiology on the job. Nonetheless, he ultimately published 147 articles in scientific journals on the link between cancer and many lifestyle aspects, mostly famously smoking.

Despite all the best efforts of the tobacco industry, Garfinkel’s work ensured that cigarettes and cancer are now inextricably linked. Were in not for Garfinkel, cigarettes might still be advertised during children’s television hours (by such characters as Fred Flintstone), and they would certainly not be sold with warning labels.

10. Helen Wagner: Turning for 54 Years

She never had the awards of Katharine Hepburn, or the popularity of Lucille Ball, but veteran actress Helen Wagner could boast an equally impressive record. Though the soap opera As the World Turns seemingly began at the dawn of time, it really lasted a mere 54 years – that’s 19,700 turns – and through that, there was one constant: Nancy Hughes, the Wagner’s mild-mannered character. She spoke the first line (“Good morning, dear”) when the series premiered in April 1956, and the 91-year-old Wagner was last seen on the series this year, soon after the CBS had announced its cancellation – with eerie precision. She held the Guinness record for the longest time that one actor has inhabited a television character (a record that will not be equaled for at least four years, if actor William Roache is still in British soap opera Coronation Street).

After all these decades, actor and character might become so close that they are difficult to tell apart – but fortunately for Wagner, Nancy was not central to any of the more shocking storylines involving drugs or incest. “Nothing ever happens to Nancy,” admitted Wagner.

Mark Juddery is an author and historian based in Australia. His latest book, Overrated: The 50 Most Overhyped Things in History (Perigree), is already causing a stir. You can order it from Amazon or Barnes and Noble. You can see a slideshow excerpt from the book, and you can argue with Mark’s choices (or suggest new ones) on his blog. Mark offers one tip: If you want to say “This book is overrated”… it’s been done.

10 Disabled Comic Book Superheroes

Mark Juddery — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 18:53:22 +0000

One of the great things about comics is that characters can be physically disabled, yet still be superhuman. Here are some of the great disabled superheroes.

1. Dr. Mid-Nite

This DC Comics hero was introduced in 1941, teaming up with do-gooders like the Flash and the Green Lantern throughout World War II. Originally physician Dr. Charles McNider, he was blinded by a hand-grenade explosion (the work of organized crime). Though he had to renounce the surgery, he could see in pitch darkness for some reason, so he became a crime-fighter. As well as having an advantage during the night, he wears special pitch-black goggles so he can see during the day.

2. Captain Marvel, Jr.

Well, sort of. Elvis Presley’s favorite childhood hero was in reality Freddy Freeman, a newsboy who was crippled in an attack by the dastardly Captain Nazi. The super-hero Captain Marvel (in reality a newsboy named Billy Batson – what’s with these double-initials?) took Freddy to Shazam, the wizard who had given him his powers, and he was granted the same powers (with a bolt of lightning) whenever he uttered the hero’s name: “Captain Marvel!” Sadly, when he uttered the same again, he would transform back into Freddy, de-powered and still crippled. As they often teamed up (and Junior presumably needed to introduce himself on occasion), this must have been an awkward arrangement. Nonetheless, Captain Marvel – published by Fawcett – became the top-selling superhero, the first one to outsell Superman. Junior, riding on his capetails, was published by from 1942 to 1953.

3. Thor

In 1962, nearly a decade after Fawcett stopped publishing the highly successful Captain Marvel titles, Marvel Comics (no relation) introduced another disabled man who can transform, with a bolt of lightning, into a hero with godlike power. In fact, it wasn’t so much god-like, as Dr. Donald Blake, GP (who can only walk with the aid of a cane) was transformed into Thor, the Norse god of thunder. As punishment for showing appalling pride, Thor had been sent to Earth by his father, Odin (king of the gods), in the fragile form of Dr. Blake – and to further humiliate him, didn’t even know he was a superhero until a visit to Norway first saw him transform into Thor. One of Marvel’s classic heroes (Kenneth Branagh, no less, is currently directly a movie), he is known to fans as one of the “big three” of their main super-hero team, the Avengers (along with Iron Man and Captain America).

4. Daredevil

Marvel Comics also created Daredevil, whose origin story must rate among the dumbest in comic-book history (no mean achievement). The story: athletic teenager Matt Murdock leaps in to save a blind man from being hit by a truck. However, the truck is carrying a canister of radioactive waste material that breaks open, bombarding Murdock with radiation. He is blinded, like the man he saved. However, thanks to radiation, his other senses are “mutagenically heightened” to superhuman levels. According to The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe (published in 1983): “His sense of touch is so acute that his fingers can feel the faint impressions of ink on a printed page, allowing him to read by touch… and he can distinguish between identical twins at 20 feet by minute differences in smell.” Daredevil uses blindness to his advantage, happily swinging over the New York skyline. As he can’t see how high he is, he earns the label “the man without fear”. But instead of sight, he has radar sense, suggesting that he’s more of a bat-man than Batman.

5. The Chief

As followers of the X-Men movies (and for 40 years years before, the Marvel comics) would know, Professor Charles Xavier is the most unusual superhero: wheelchair-bound after an accident, his telepathic and psychic powers make him more than a match for most of the tough musclemen he confronted. Less famous is the Doom Patrol, another group of oddballs led by a wheelchair-bound genius (and first published by DC Comics in October 1963, only one month before the X-Men). Their leader was the Chief, alias Niles Caulder, who built several weapons, including flame-throwers, into his wheelchair. Sadly, the Doom Patrol didn’t catch on like the X-Men, and in 1968, they all died heroically. (As often happens in comics, most of them – including the Chief – were brought back to life several years later.)

6. Puck

Introduced by Marvel in 1983, Puck was a dwarf with no superhuman powers, but great acrobatic and fighting skills – a character suggested to writer-artist John Byrne by his wife. He soon became one of the most popular members of the Canadian superhero team Alpha Flight, whose fans included other sufferers of dwarfism. However, comics being what they are, he couldn’t stay just a “normal” guy. Writer Bill Mantlo, Byrne’s successor, gave him a new origin story: he was previously a (very tall) adventurer, who had been turned into a dwarf by a demon. Oh, and he was immortal. Byrne was not happy with this. “The whole ‘demon inside’ thing [was] based, apparently, on the single reference Puck had made to being in constant pain, something which Bill failed to grasp was an effect of the condition – achondroplasty… which caused Puck’s dwarfism.” Immortal or not, Puck was killed (along with most of Alpha Flight), and at time of writing, is still dead.

7. Oracle

Barbara Gordon was formerly Batgirl, fighting crime with martial arts and a skintight costume. She even appeared in the 1960s Batman television series, played by Yvonne Craig. By day, she was Barbara Gordon, a mild-mannered librarian with Clark Kent spectacles. This changed, however, in the 1988 graphic novel The Killing Joke (written by Alan Moore), when she was shot in the spine by Batman’s insane foe, the Joker. After that, her appearances focused on the tragedy of her new, wheelchair-bound life. But this eventually gave way to her new identity, Oracle. As super-smart as she was previously super-athletic, she oversees crime-fighting missions from a computer console, guiding her able-bodied (and mostly female) operatives, the Birds of Prey.

In 1993, Batman himself had his back broken by a tough criminal, and conducted his detective work from a wheelchair, replaced in the cape by an able-bodied crime-fighter. Unlike Oracle, however, his disability was only temporary.

8. Iron Man

For a multi-millionaire genius and playboy, Tony Stark has had a rough time. Wounded in the Vietnam War (though that has since been updated to the Iraq War), he designed an iron chest-plate to sustain his weak heart. Though he was later fitted with a pacemaker, his armor remains. Nonetheless, his problems continued. He has been an alcoholic, clinically dead (twice), lost his mind, and been on the run from authorities. He was also shot – not by a super-villain, but by an unhinged girlfriend. As his doctor dramatically announced, “Tony Stark will never walk again!” At first, the concept of a paraplegic superhero (while not exactly new) was well portrayed. In his secret identity, he felt helpless. Nonetheless, this was still a comic book, so he continued to fly around as Iron Man, moving his legs with the aid of high-tech armor. “I’ve only solved one problem,” he said. “There’s still a whole world I’m going to have to face without the armor.”

Writing stories around this wasn’t so easy. Within a year he was walking again, thanks to a “biochip implant” in his spine developed by a brilliant team of scientists (or more accurately, a desperate writer).

9. Echo

A Native American heroine, created in 1999 as one of Daredevil’s foes (though later an ally), Echo was thought to be mentally disabled as a child and was sent to a special school. But when she was able to replicate an entire song on a piano, she was moved to a school for gifted children. This must have been confusing, but it soon turned out that she was deaf, but has “photographic reflexes” – the ability to perfectly copy other people’s movements. After study, this turned her into an amazing fighter and athlete. She also became one of the few superhero cross-dressers, disguising herself as a masked swordsman called Ronin. Readers were kept guessing for some time at the identity of the mysterious Ronin, and when Echo finally revealed herself, some of them were surprised – mainly because she had somehow hidden her deafness all that time.

10. Komodo

The Lizard, a Spider-Man villain, was really Dr. Curt Connors, a one-armed scientist who was hoping that he could regenerate his arm (like reptiles do) by injecting himself with lizard serum. This gave him an arm, but also turned him into a human lizard, taking away his mind. Fortunately, he was cured (though he never replaced his arm), and continued life as a respectable scientist, despite occasional lapses into reptile form. One of his graduate students, an amputee named Melati Kusuma, stole the serum to replace the legs that she lost in a car accident. In her case, she didn’t lose her mind in the process. Kusuma — Komodo — was introduced by Marvel Comics in 2007, as a trainee member of the Avengers.

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10 Famous Lost Films

Mark Juddery — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 02:08:02 +0000

There’s a long list of classic (or at least, significant) movies that might never be seen again: major films starring some of the most popular stars of the silent cinema; Saved from the Titanic (1912), the first drama about the sinking of the Titanic, starring real-life survivor Dorothy Gibson; The Life of General Villa (1914), a legendary Hollywood film starring the Mexican revolutionary as himself; most segments of the classic film serial The Perils of Pauline (1914), starring Pearl White; Alfred Hitchcock’s second feature, The Mountain Eagle (1926); and the first movie versions of The Great Gatsby (1926) and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1928). Like up to 80% of movies from the first 30 years of cinema, they are now “lost” films.

Film buffs are thrilled, of course, when a lost film resurfaces. A recent discovery was 30 minutes of lost footage from the great German science-fiction epic Metropolis (1927), which had somehow materialized in Buenos Aires. Even after 80 years, these movies can show up in the most unlikely places. So if you see any of the following, hidden in a warehouse or under the floorboards, please let someone know…

1. The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906)

Running over an hour, this Australian film was the world’s first feature film. Directed by Melbourne entrepreneur Charles Tait, it told of the exploits of Ned Kelly, the nation’s most famous outlaw (or “bushranger”), and toured England as “the longest film ever made.” A popular and critical success in its time, it led to a fashion in bushranger movies—until they were banned by various Australian states for making the criminals look good. Sadly, Kelly Gang vanished, along with most of Australia’s film industry, in the first half of the 20th century. Nine minutes of footage were discovered under a bed in a deserted house in 1979, and for years, that was all that existed.

As the centenary approached, however, Australia’s National Film and Sound Archive contacted archives around the world, asking if they might have something to add. The British Film Institute had another incomplete film labeled “Kelly Gang,” but nobody knew what this was. With some detective work, an archivist noticed that one of the scenes was in a photo on the original Kelly Gang promotional poster. The footage was promptly included on a special DVD release. Most of the film, however, still seems to be gone for good.

2. A Daughter of the Gods (1916)

Another film with an Australian connection, this Hollywood movie starred Aussie swimmer and movie star Annette Kellerman (who is mostly forgotten by film buffs today, except as the heroine played by Esther Williams in the 1952 film Million Dollar Mermaid). It won notoriety for Kellerman’s nude scene (the first by a major film star), which she never lived down.

3. Cleopatra (1917)

The publicity photos from this movie, featuring the alluring Theda Bara in the title role, are so famous that you’d think it still existed. It doesn’t. In fact, almost every movie starring Bara, Hollywood’s first major exotic sex symbol (actually a Cincinnati gal named Theodosia Goodman), is now lost. Fox (now 20th Century Fox), which is now much more diligent about preserving their films, was less careful in the early years.

4. Hollywood (1923)

One of the first Hollywood dramas about Hollywood, this film was adored by the critics of the time… but still somehow went missing. It was a comedy about a girl who goes to Hollywood with dreams of becoming a star, only to find herself unemployed as her loved ones accidentally get movie roles. Like The Player (1992), it attracted cameos from dozens of top Hollywood stars playing themselves—from Charlie Chaplin to Gloria Swanson, and even Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, recently disgraced by a scandal, as an unemployed actor. Director James Cruze was left to find total unknowns to play the leads. Hope Drown, a 20-year-old from Illinois, played he heroine. Though she was very pretty, and (according to critics) gave an excellent performance, she never made another movie. Perhaps she took the film’s cautionary message to heart.

5. Greed – The Directors’ Cut (1924)

Greed, directed by edgy genius Erich von Stroheim, is known as one of the masterpieces of silent film. As there were no DVDs back then, however, we will never have a chance to see the most extreme Director’s Cut in history. While many director’s cuts are considerably lengthier than the release prints, this film was shown only once in its complete, nine-hour version, before MGM Studios ordered it to be edited to a more manageable 100 minutes, described by von Stroheim as “a mutilation of my sincere work.”

We will never know whether the full version was the greatest film ever made, or a load of long, self-indulgent tedium (which, according to at least one early review, is a fair description). Once the editing was complete, the remaining negative was melted down for its silver nitrate. It’s hard to put a film back together from that.

6. Humorisk (or Humor Risk) (1920s)

This was the Marx Brothers’ first film, and their only silent movie, in which (from the few reports that exist) they played quite different characters to the ones we all know. Groucho Marx was so disillusioned with Humorisk that, after one screening, he purchased the film, destroying all prints and negatives. The brothers would not make another movie until the all-talking, all-singing, all-dancing The Cocoanuts (1929), based on their popular stage show.

7. London After Midnight (1927)

This detective/horror movie featured the great Lon Chaney in two roles: both the detective and the chief suspect. Chaney’s mastery of character acting and disguise (he applied his own make-up) gave him the sobriquet “Man of a Thousand Faces.” Thanks to surviving studio photos, his chilling performance as a smiling vampire in this film is still a famous image. But though many of his performances survive, some of his most well-regarded films (including The Miracle Man and The Tower of Lies) are missing. The last known copy of London after Midnight was destroyed in a fire in an MGM vault in 1967. In 2008, a horror movie aficionado known as “Sid Terror” caused a lot of excitement by claiming to have spotted another copy, which (he insisted) had since been misplaced somewhere in the UCLA Film Archives. So far, he has not provided any proof.

8. My Man (1928)

Hollywood’s second musical (after the legendary The Jazz Singer), this starred the great Ziegfeld Follies singer-comedienne Fanny Brice (best known to anyone under 90 as the heroine of the biopic Funny Girl, played by Barbra Streisand). Many early Hollywood musicals have also gone missing, including Honky Tonk (1929), one of only three films to star the great Sophie Tucker (only the soundtrack survives); and the epic Rogue Song (1930), with Laurel and Hardy.

9. Convention City (1933)

Though studios were more careful to preserve their films once they started talking, there were a few notable (and notorious) exceptions. Convention City, about the hijinks at a salesman’s convention, was so risqué for its time that Warner Bros’ studio boss Harry Warner ordered every copy to be destroyed in 1943 to get on the good side of the Production Code (especially the powerful chief censor, Will Hays). We know, however, that it was a comedy with an amazing cast (Joan Blondell, Adolphe Menjou, Dick Powell and Mary Astor among them) and a series of witty one-liners laced with pure, unadulterated smut. There are many rumors that this film is in the hands of a private collector, but that seems unlikely.

10. Catch My Soul (1974)

Most lost films are from the early years of cinema, but there are some intriguing exceptions. The “indie” film Catch My Soul was the only feature film directed by the late Patrick McGoohan, the suave Irish-American actor and visionary behind the classic TV series The Prisoner. Filmed in New Mexico, it was rock-opera based on Shakespeare’s Othello. Folk singer Richie Havens, the opening act at Woodstock, played Othello. It opened in New York to low audiences and poor reviews. Vincent Canby in The New York Times said it was “pricelessly funny though seldom meaning to be,” though he added that the songs were pretty good: “Forget the movie and get the soundtrack album.”

According to McGoohan, one of the producers “found God” and recut the movie, adding 15 minutes of religious material. Appalled by the final product, McGoohan tried unsuccessfully to remove his name from the credits. Though it was on the 16mm stocklist the next year, retitled Santa Fe Satan, it now appears only on lost film lists. But come on! McGoohan? Richie Havens? Hippie-style Shakespeare? Unintentional hilarity? Cool soundtrack? Early-70s rock opera? Someone needs to find this!

Today is October 10, 2010—10.10.10! To celebrate, we’ve got all our writers working on 10 lists, which we’ll be posting throughout the day and night. To see all the lists we’ve published so far, click here.

mental_floss » Mark Juddery

10 Famous People Who Turned Down a Knighthood

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