THE MOST INTERESTING PEOPLE WHO LIVE LIFE, VOLUME 2: 250 ANECDOTES

By David Bruce

Dedicated with Love to Abigail Jacobs

Copyright 2009 by Bruce D. Bruce

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The Most Interesting People Who Live Life, Volume

Chapter 1: From Actors and Entertainers to Death

Actors and Entertainers

• Actors join acting companies for different reasons. Robert Stephens joined England’s National Theatre simply because John Dexter asked him to play the Dauphin in St. Joan—a part for which he thought he was unsuited physically. Mr. Stephens told Mr. Dexter, “I’ll join immediately, because I don’t think anybody would ever offer me that part.”

• Liliane Montovecchi was a stage star of the Follies-Bergère, an occupation in which she made members of the audience happy. Tommy Tune met her later and asked her, “Don’t you remember sitting in my lap at the Follies-Bergère?” She replied, “How could I remember? I sat on everybody’s lap!”

• Actor Douglas Fairbanks became infatuated with European royalty. Charlie Chaplin, who grew up poor, once brought him back down to Earth by asking, “Hullo, Douglas, how’s the duke?” “What duke?” “Oh, any duke.”

Alcohol

• The Doubner Maggid once ate dinner at the house of a wealthy man, who urged him to drink. The Maggid drank one glass of wine, and the wealthy man asked him to drink another, which the Maggid did, despite protesting, “I am not accustomed to drinking.” When the second glass of wine was empty, the wealthy man urged the Maggid to drink a third glass, so the Maggid asked him to fill the glass to the brim. When the glass was full, the Maggid told the man to pour more, surprising him, because—as he pointed out—the glass was already full. “There is a lesson in this,” the Maggid said. “The glass is a lifeless object and it holds only a certain amount. This is even more true of a human being, who has life and will power and therefore should know the limit of his capacity for alcohol.”

• A judge got very drunk, then took off his robe and lay under a tree half-naked to sleep. Mulla Nasrudin came along, saw the judge, and took his cloak. Later, the judge sobered up, returned to his village and saw Nasrudin wearing his cloak. “Is that your cloak?” the judge asked. “No, it is not,” Nasrudin replied. “I saw a very drunk man lying under a tree, asleep, and I took his cloak so that robbers would not steal it. I should like very much to find that man so that I can return his cloak.” Fearing lest his friends and neighbors find out that it was he who had been drunk, the judge replied, “Such a drunken fellow deserves what happens to him,” then left Nasrudin and the cloak alone.

• The Hassidim abhorred drunkenness, but they felt that a drink after prayers was appropriate. Once, Rabbi Israel of Rizhyn was asked why the Hassidim took a drink after prayers while the opponents of Hassidism (the Mitnagdim) studied the Mishna instead of taking a drink. He answered, “The Mitnagdim pray frigidly, without life, enthusiasm, or emotion. They appear almost lifeless. After their prayers, they study the Mishna—an appropriate subject when one mourns the dead. But the prayers of the Hassidim are alive and living people need a drink.”

• When Casey Driessen was in junior high school, his parents bribed him. They told him that if he stayed away from illegal drugs and tobacco and alcohol until he was 21 years old that they would give him $1,000. He accepted the challenge, and he didn’t cheat. When people would ask why he didn’t cheat, he would say, “Could you take $1,000 from your parents?” When he turned 21 years old—at midnight when December 5 changed to December 6—he took his very first sip of beer.

• Some pro athletes make sure to be good role models for the kids who idolize them. Major-league pitcher Nolan Ryan gave up chewing tobacco when he saw some Little Leaguers chewing it. And when NBA star Bobby Jones accepted an award from a liquor company after a computer analysis stated that he was the most effective NBA player, Mr. Jones thanked the liquor company but also stated that he did not drink alcohol.

• Russian bass Fyodor Chaliapin enjoyed partying all night even though he knew that it would interfere with his singing the following day. American industrialist Henry Ford once offered him a large sum of money to sing at 10:30 a.m., but Mr. Chaliapin replied, “Unfortunately, at that early hour I cannot even spit.”

• A preacher once spoke in his sermon about the dangers of alcohol. At one point, he asked an elderly lady—one of the pillars of the church—if she agreed that alcohol was an evil that should be destroyed. The elderly woman replied, “Actually, I enjoy a little toddy once in a while.”

Animals

• At one time, zoos kept large animals such as gorillas in small cages. Now, zoos prefer to have larger, more open spaces that resemble the animals’ habitat as much as possible and in which the animals can roam around. The open spaces make the viewing experience more pleasurable for the zoos’ visitors, and the open spaces make the animals happier and more likely to breed in captivity. The first person to design larger, more open spaces for the display and comfort of animals was Karl Hagenbeck, who in 1907 placed antelopes and lions near each other in the Hamburg Zoo in Germany—the lions were kept away from the antelopes by an impassible moat. Today, zoo workers go to great lengths to make the settings resemble the animals’ natural habitat. For example, animals in a tropical forest setting will be forced to take shelter a few times a day when zoo workers create artificial rain showers. During the showers, the zoo workers flash strobe lights for lightning and play recordings of thunder and the shrieks of howler monkeys and the calls of birds. All of these things make the animals feel more at home.

• The 1,049-mile-long Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Alaska is taken seriously. During and after the race the urine of the sled dogs used in the race is tested to make sure the dogs have not been given any performance-enhancing drugs. Preparation for the race is also time-consuming—and not just the training. Susan Butcher, who has won the Iditarod four times, and her friends make up a thousand dog booties to protect the sled dogs’ feet from such hazards as sharp rocks and sharp shards of ice. In addition, she makes up about 75 burlap bags of dog food—while racing, her dogs will each eat about 8,000 calories daily. For one Iditarod, she needs about 1,500 pounds of supplies, much of it left at the various race checkpoints.

• When war correspondent and photographer Margaret Bourke-White received permission to fly on a bombing expedition during World War II, J. Hampton Atkinson piloted her himself, saying, “I’m going to fly you myself because if you die, I want to die, too.” (Fortunately, neither of them died.) By the way, while photographer Ms. Bourke-White was attending the University of Michigan in the early 1920s, she kept something strange in her dormitory room bathtub—a pet milk snake.

April Fool’s Day

• On April Fool’s Day, a small boy played a joke on a new schoolmaster, but the schoolmaster told him as punishment to write out in full the sixth declension in Latin ten times. All of the students were angry with the new schoolmaster for punishing a student for playing an April Fool’s joke, but one small boy suddenly remembered that Latin has no sixth declension. After finding out that the joke was on them, the schoolboys liked the new schoolmaster.

Art

• While famed photographer Yousuf Karsh was taking the portrait of artist Jean-Paul Riopelle, he admired a circular painting that the artist had completed. Mr. Karsh believed that the painting resembled a stained-glass rosette—an image that calls up stained-glass windows in cathedrals. Mr. Riopelle explained that he had a particular purpose in creating a painting with that particular shape: “I’ll tell you why I did that. Because my dealers insist on setting the price of a canvas by the number of square inches in it. For the fun of it, I decided to confuse them and paint one that is round.”

• In New York, artist Louise Bourgeois held a salon on Sundays. One day, an artist called on the telephone and asked for permission to come to the salon. Ms. Bourgeois replied, “Who are you? What kind of work do you do? A painter? What size? … All right. You could come at three o’clock. Don’t come if you have a cold.”

Audiences

• Giuseppe de Stefano sang the high-B note at the end of Celeste Aida exactly the way that Verdi wanted it—softly—instead of the way his Catania, Sicily, audience wanted it—loudly. When the audience whistled in derision, Mr. de Stefano told them, “That’s the way Verdi wrote it!” A know-it-all shouted back, “Verdi made a mistake!”

• Dr. Samuel Johnson once played host to actress Mrs. Siddons, who often sold out theaters. The good doctor’s servant proved to be very slow about getting a chair for her, so Dr. Johnson gave her this compliment: “You see, madam, wherever you go, there are no seats to be had.”

Automobiles

• Joe S, a regular reader of BartcopE on the Web, remembers Saab automobiles from the 1960s. A friend of his ran into trouble with his Saab motor, so he disconnected it from the rest of the car, bolted a handle to it, and hitchhiked to Denver while carrying the motor by the handle to have it repaired. Joe S says, “I don’t think Saabs are like that anymore.”

• Being a world-class gymnast has both advantages and disadvantages. An advantage for Russian gymnast Svetlana Khorkina was that it allowed her to buy a car. A disadvantage is that she found it difficult to find the spare time to learn how to drive it.

Baseball and Softball

• In the 1953 World Series, Dodger pitcher Carl Erskine loaded the bases in the first inning, and Yankee Billy Martin hit a triple. Mr. Erskine was taken out of the game. This made him determined to do better in his next game. In game three of the World Series, he won, 3-2, and after the game another Dodger pitcher, Preacher Roe, told him, “Great game! Do you know you set a World Series strikeout record?” Without realizing it, because of his determination to make up for his previous failure in game one, Mr. Erskine had struck out 14 batters in a World Series game—a record that stood for 10 years.

• When major-league pitcher Christy Mathewson was a kid, he used to play a game he called “hailey over,” in which he would throw a baseball over the roof of a barn to another kid. Once, he threw the baseball too strongly and broke a neighbor’s window. When he was a boy as well as when he was a man, he had good character, so he paid the neighbor the money it cost to fix the window. His mother said, “It took Christy a long time to save the dollar the broken window cost, but it taught him a sense of responsibility.”

• Dodger catcher Roy Campanella used to tell Dodger pitchers, “Now you young pitchers just throw what ol’ Roy calls and I’ll make you a winner.” After losing a game, however, Dodger pitcher Carl Erskine would show Mr. Campanella the box score that said, “Erskine losing pitcher,” and ask him whether instead it should say, “Campanella losing catcher.” Mr. Campanella would laugh and reply, “You can always shake me off.”

• Two nuns went to a baseball game, but a couple of guys sitting behind them began complaining about Catholics. One guy said, “We ought to go to a place where there are only 100 Catholics.” The other guy said, “Better still, let’s go to a place where there are only 50 Catholics.” One of the nuns turned around and said, “Why don’t you go to Hell, where you won’t find any Catholics.”

• Softball great Joan Joyce pitched over 100 no-hit games. Baseball great Ted Williams had a season batting average of .406 in 1941 and ended his career with a lifetime batting average of .344. The two met in 1963 in a ballpark at Waterbury, Connecticut. In ten minutes, Ms. Joyce pitched 40 pitches to Mr. Williams. With those 40 chances, Mr. Williams managed to get one hit.

• Jimmy Piersall was an amazing center fielder who could both make seemingly impossible catches and rifle the baseball to home plate. Manager Casey Stengel was once asked if his team would run on Mr. Piersall. Mr. Stengel replied, “Oh, sure. We’ll run on him—every time somebody hits the ball over the center-field fence.”

Books

• Librarian Malcolm Glenn Wyer decided to accept a position with the Denver Public Library after having worked for years in university libraries. One of his friends wondered why he would want to work in a public library, which was engaged in the distribution of “trivial worthless current fiction.” Mr. Wyer replied that he thought it would be interesting to move from a university library, where 90% of the circulation was by students who were working to complete mandatory assignments, to a public library, where 90% of the circulation was by citizens who were interested in reading for its own sake.

• TV’s Mister Rogers went into television because so much TV was bad, and he knew it could be better. Of course, much TV remains bad, and when he wasn’t working, Mister Rogers watched little TV. He once told a friend that he didn’t want to sound elitist, but he simply preferred reading a book to watching television.

• A ghostwriter once asked female jockey Robyn Smith for permission to write her autobiography for her, but she asked why he instead didn’t ghost the autobiography of fellow jockey Donna Hillman. He said, “Donna Hillman? The pretty one?” Ms. Smith replied, “No, I’m the pretty one.”

• When businessman and statesman Bernard Baruch was asked what book he would most want to have with him if he were shipwrecked on a desert island, he replied, “A practical guide to boat building.”

Children

• In his book Kids Say the Darnest Things! Art Linkletter writes about a time when he asked viewers of his House Party TV program to send in funny things their children had written. One boy had written a letter to the President of the United States: “Dere Mister President. I would like you to send children [to] Mars in the next space ship going in that direction. I would appreciate it very much. One of your future voters: Mitchell.” Mr. Linkletter writes that this note was attached to young Mitchell’s letter: “Dear Mr. President: As the parents of Mitchell Miller, we would like to give you our permission to send Mitchell anywhere into space.”

• Pope John XXIII once visited the Benedictine Abbey of Subiaco, which is located south of Rome. Crowds of people arrived to see the Pope, and several boys with dirty shoes climbed up on a valuable carved antique choir stall so that they could see the Pope better. Some sacristans started to chase the boys away, but Pope John XXIII stopped them, saying, “Leave them alone; let them stay there. Their conscience is still quite pure.”

• Bonnie Hellum Brechill’s five-year-old daughter started playing with a little Amish girl, although the Amish girl spoke a Pennsylvania Dutch dialect. Later, Ms. Brechill asked her daughter if she had understood anything the Amish girl had spoken—she had not. Ms. Brechill then asked, “But you played so nicely together. How?” Her daughter replied, “We understood each other’s giggles.”

• Even as a youngster, Jennifer Lopez was feisty. During a fight with her sister, she once held a knife in her hand and chased her. When she was in the fourth grade, she learned that a person whom she thought was a friend had been spreading rumors about her. She stood up for herself, demanded respect, fought the “friend,” and knocked her down.

• When Nasrudin was a small boy, he was bothered by a young bully who claimed that no one could trick him. One day, Nasrudin went to the bully and told him, “If you wait here, I will trick you like you have never been tricked before.” Then Nasrudin went away, leaving the bully to wait for him until the bully realized that Nasrudin was not going to return.

• Some audience members talk way too much during viewings at movie theaters. During the showing of the Star Trek: The Next Generation movie, First Contact, a man kept talking, so a 10-year-old Star Trek fan turned around in her seat and asked him, “Jerk, can you spell ‘Prime Directive’?”

• Nancy Lopez learned how to play golf from her auto mechanic father, Domingo. Even when she was a child, her parents taught her that she was special. Once she started washing the dishes, but her father stopped her, saying, “Those hands are meant for golf, not dishes.”

• As a young girl of 16, Emma Abbott was so eager to hear opera singer Parepa-Rosa in New York that she played her guitar and sang to earn money while traveling from Illinois to New York—and did not hear Parepa-Rosa, because the prima donna was ill.

• Abraham Lincoln grew a beard after reading a letter from 11-year-old Grace Bedell of New York, who thought the beard would make his thin face “look a great deal better.” She also wrote, “All the ladies like whiskers.”

• Occasionally, children will attempt to recite Biblical passages, but not realize that their memory is faulty. One small boy recited the Ninth Commandment as “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife in vain.”

• In 1968, Russian tanks rumbled to Czechoslovakia to help with “troublemakers.” One of the Czech children throwing pebbles at the Russian tanks was future Wimbledon champion Martina Navratilova.

• As a little girl, jockey Julie Krone was a tomboy. Once, she was climbing a tree when her father saw her and warned, “Better look out. You’ll fall!” Young Julie calmly replied, “I already did. Watch me climb.”

• As children, sisters Karen and Michelle Kwan used to wake up at 4:30 a.m. so they could be driven to an ice rink and practice ice skating. To save time in the morning, they used to sleep in their skating clothes.

Christmas

• Political cartoonist Thomas Nast put his artistic skills to use during the Christmas season. In addition to creating drawings of Santa Claus for the newspapers and magazines he worked for, Mr. Nast also decorated his house for Christmas morning. When his children woke up, they discovered lots of giant paper dolls decorating the room where the gifts were found.

• Elite American gymnast Shannon Miller got into gymnastics through accident. Her parents bought her a trampoline as a Christmas present when she was four years old, but after seeing her jump with abandon on it, they were afraid that she would hurt herself, so they enrolled her in gymnastics classes instead.

• Before Christmas, a Sunday school teacher asked her students what kind of presents the infant Jesus would like and use. One student replied the baby Jesus would like disposable diapers because “Jesus was a real baby. Real babies need diapers.”

Clothing

• Mulla Nasrudin was invited to a feast, but because he was wearing ragged clothing, the servers ignored him and served the finely dressed guests instead. So Nasrudin returned home, changed into his best clothing, then returned to the feast, where he was immediately served. At the feast, Nasrudin deliberately spilled soup on himself because he reasoned that the servers respected his clothing, not himself, and therefore his clothing ought to have a share of the feast.

• Players in the All American Girls Professional Baseball League during the 1940s and 1950s were required to wear feminine attire while appearing in public. For example, a player might wear pants while traveling on the team bus, but if she got off the bus to go to the bathroom, she had to put on a skirt.

Coaches

• When Gabrielle Reece started playing volleyball at Florida State University, her coach, Cecile Reynaud, knew that she needed to make a lot of improvement, and so Coach Reynaud had Ms. Reece practice serving the ball to the middle. To motivate Ms. Reece to do her best, Coach Reynaud would order the entire team to run a suicide drill whenever a ball did not hit the desired spot on the court. Coach Reynaud was a good life coach as well as a good volleyball coach. When Ms. Reece had a chance to model as well as play volleyball, Coach Reynaud advised her to do both, but to remember to concentrate on whatever she was supposed to concentrate on at a particular time. In Coach Reynaud’s words, “When you are here, you’re here. When you are there, you are there.”

• Whittier College football coach George Allen had a strict rule against his players smoking, so if a player with a cigarette in his mouth saw him coming, the player would quickly throw the cigarette to the ground and hope that Mr. Allen would not see it. One day, however, Mr. Allen did see the lit cigarette, and he asked the player, “What about that cigarette?” The player replied, “You can have it—you saw it first.”

Crime

• A monk stole a valuable book from Abbot Anastasius and took it to a book dealer to sell. The dealer looked at the book, then asked the monk to leave the book with him so that he could determine its worth. Since the dealer knew that Abbot Anastasius could tell him the value of the book, that evening the dealer took the book to Abbot Anastasius. The good abbot looked at the book, realized that it was his and that it had been stolen, but told the dealer only what the book was worth. The following day, the dealer told the monk what the book was worth, saying that he had asked Abbot Anastasius to look at it. The monk replied that he had decided not to sell the book, then he returned the book to Abbot Anastasius and asked for his forgiveness.

• Cher and Meryl Streep co-starred in the movie Silkwood. In a 1987 interview, Cher called Meryl “incredibly brave” and told about a night in Manhattan when the two saw a huge man mugging a woman: “Meryl screamed and ran straight at the man—who let go of the woman and ran straight at us! I thought we were going to be killed, but he ran between us and disappeared. We were both a wreck, but that’s Meryl. She does what’s right, no matter what.” Meryl said, “I convince myself of my own courage. After I’ve played Isak Dinesen [in Out of Africa], I think I’m as brave as she is. I can fight lions—for a while. I stuff my straw in there, and I really believe I can scare the crows.”

• A thief went to Zen master Shichiri to rob him. Shichiri told the robber where his money was located, then as the robber was leaving, he told the robber, “It’s polite to say ‘Thank you.’” The robber was so startled that in fact he said, “Thank you.” A few days later, the robber was caught and taken to Shichiri, and the police asked Shichiri, “Did this man rob you?” Shichiri answered, “No. I gave him the money—he even thanked me for it.” The robber did serve a prison term—for his other crimes—but after getting out of prison, he became Shichiri’s disciple.

• Country comedian Jerry Clower has many friends, including one man who planted one acre of cotton, came up with seven bales of cotton, and was put on trial for stealing cotton. Asked by the district attorney how he had gotten seven bales of cotton from only one acre, he replied, “I fertilize heavily.”

Day of Atonement

• Human beings are born with an Evil Inclination that lusts after forbidden things. On the Day of Atonement, Jews fast, neither eating nor drinking. According to the Palestinian Yoma VI, 4, on one Day of Atonement, Rabbi Haggai was ill, and Rabbi Mana visited him. Rabbi Haggai complained of thirst, and Rabbi Mana told him, “Seeing that you are sick, you may drink.” However, Rabbi Haggai did not drink, instead saying, “The moment you permitted me to drink, my thirst disappeared.”

Death

• Mildred Frisby, reporter for the Chicago American, married Eddie Doherty of the Chicago Tribune. A few days after the marriage, she was assigned to cover the maiden voyage of a dirigible. However, before she and a photographer boarded the dirigible, her husband telephoned her. They spent some time together, and she ended up not boarding the dirigible. She arrived back at her newspaper to try to explain why she had missed the story, and city editor Eddie Mahoney stared at her and told her, “We’ve got you listed among the dead!” Shortly after takeoff, the dirigible had burst into flames, crashed, and killed 10 people, including the photographer for the American.

• When Sharon Salzberg entered Burma and began to practice meditation, she experienced a great deal of discomfort, in part because of a persistent cough. She complained to the leader of the retreat, Sayama, who replied, “Well, I guess this will be good practice for when you die.” This made Ms. Salzberg realize that spirituality is not just for when you feel well. It also made her realize that for many people, dying involves pain. After all, a dying body is a malfunctioning body, and dying people don’t feel well.

• In 1693, Zen Master Bankei knew that he was dying. When one of his disciples asked him to compose a traditional death poem, he replied, “I’ve lived for 72 years. I’ve been teaching people for 45. What I’ve been telling you and others every day during that time is my death verse. I’m not going to make another one now, before I die, just because everyone else does it.”