Julia Child’s list of accomplishments is almost comically lengthy: She was the first woman inducted into the Culinary Institute of America’s Hall of Fame. She received the highest civilian honors from both the U.S. and France. She was a bestselling author, a wildly successful TV personality, and a secret spy for the Allies during World War II. But the opening chapter of her latest biography details another achievement. In The French Chef in America (the “sequel” to My Life in France), author Alex Prud’homme explains how his great-aunt was the first person to put a White House State Dinner on television.
Child’s 1968 TV special, White House Red Carpet with Julia Child, was born out of a failed pitch to the Public Broadcasting Library (PBL). PBL had approached Child about doing a newsy half-hour special in 1966 while she was on hiatus from her cooking show, The French Chef. She initially hoped to document Paris’s legendary Les Halles food market, but PBL deemed the project too expensive. So she proposed a behind-the-scenes look at a White House State Dinner instead. When PBL passed again, National Educational Television (NET) agreed to air the special.
No camera crew had ever been permitted to film a state dinner before. But Julia was able to get the White House on board with countless letters, telegrams, and phone calls from herself and her producers at WGBH, her “home” station in Boston. Once she had approval, Child spent several days interviewing presidential staffers—including the White House executive chef, Henry Haller.
Haller had replaced the Kennedys’ renowned chef René Verdon in 1965, after Verdon quit over creative differences with the Johnsons. (“You do not serve barbecued spareribs at a banquet with ladies in white gloves,” he once protested.) Haller did not share Verdon’s aversion to spareribs, but he did share his training in classic French cuisine. This obviously endeared him to Child, who raved about his seafood vol-au-vent as she covered his kitchen prep for the cameras. She was especially glad to hear he used butter and not that “other spread” she hated: margarine.
The dinner’s guest of honor was Japanese Prime Minister Eisaku Satō, but the 190 attendees also included foreign dignitaries, local politicians, and actors like Kirk Douglas—as well as MLB commissioner William Eckert and St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Bob Gibson. (Satō was a big fan of baseball.) The cameras captured the guests’ arrival and the exchange of gifts between Johnson and Satō. (Satō got a Tiffany desk set; Johnson got a portable TV camera and tape recorder.) Then it was time to eat.
The seafood vol-au-vent came first. It was a puff pastry stuffed with lobster, bay scallops, shrimp, and fish dumplings, all topped with sauce Americaine. The main course consisted of a sautéed lamb filet with artichoke bottoms, asparagus, and a fluted mushroom cap. Guests also sampled salad, small-batch American wines, cheese, and grapes before the dessert: a Bavarian cream mousse with fresh strawberries. Child declared that it was “one of the best dinners I’ve eaten anywhere.”
The night took a tense turn when Johnson gave his toast, which addressed criticisms of America’s involvement in Vietnam. But the atmosphere eased after Tony Bennett, Satō’s choice of entertainment, grabbed the mic.
White House Red Carpet with Julia Childaired on April 17, 1968. The reviews praised Child for her usual ebullience, but the chef didn’t stick around to hear them. On the night of the telecast, she had already escaped to her small vacation home in Provence, France, where she and her husband Paul had gone to rest, relax, and, of course, cook.
McDonald’s Happy Meals are a staple of happy childhood memories for anyone who remembers the disproportionate joy that came with finding a cheap plastic trinket tucked in with your cheeseburger and fries. In more recent years, they’ve also acted as a sort of mini-billboard for whatever movie, toy, or other product the marketing brains at Mickey D’s have teamed up with on any given week. But just in time for Halloween, Los Angeles-based graphic designer Newt Cloninger-Clements has come up with a much darker take on the kiddie banquet-in-a-box by imagining what a horror movie-themed Happy Meal might look like.
“I’ve been a huge fan of horror films ever since childhood, so it’s no surprise that Halloween is my favorite holiday,” Cloninger-Clements said in a statement. “My work is a tribute to all of the creative individuals that have influenced me over the years, and brought so much enjoyment to my life.”
While Cloninger-Clements hasn’t shied away from embracing current small-screen scary things like American Horror Story, The Walking Dead, Ash vs. Evil Dead, and Stranger Things, serious horror movie devotees will love his throwback pieces to cult classics and genre staples like The Exorcist, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, The Thing, Sleepaway Camp, Fright Night, and Critters—each of which comes with its own clever toy (like an axe-wielding Jack Nicholson action figure with The Shining Happy Meal).
Take a look at some of the artist’s creations below; to see more, visit him on Twitter or Instagram (where you’ll be able to see some non-horror creations, too, including a Showgirls Happy Meal that we only wish were real).
From Connecticut to California, creepy clowns are a national problem. It all started in August in Greenville, South Carolina where, according to Vocativ, the local police received reports of a group of people dressed up as clowns attempting to lure kids into the woods. (One rogue clown in the same area reportedly waved at a woman from the street; she waved back.)
Since then, creepy clowns have been a trending topic both in the news and on social media, with 23 states now reporting some type of unusual clown activity. While it sounds like a story pulled from your own personal nightmares, the trend is even more frightening to members of the World Clown Association, a worldwide organization for professional clowns, who are disturbed by the fact that these hellraisers are being referred to as “clowns” at all.
WCA president Randy Christensen took to social media to address the growing creepy clown concern with a three-minute video, aimed at his fellow clowns, in which he made it clear that, “Whoever is doing this crazy stuff is not a clown. This is somebody that’s trying to use a good, clean, wholesome art form and then distorting it. This is not clowning, this person is not a clown.”
Christensen urged his red rose-wearing brethren to, “Go out and provide a positive image of clowning. Show them what it is really all about. Gain their confidence, make them enjoy it, make them laugh and they will come to realize that all clowns are not a scary-type character.” Try telling that to a coulrophobe.
The new season of American Horror Story is one for Colonial history geeks. After tons of mysterious marketing, fans of the FX series have already become engrossed in the show’s sixth season, which revolves around the lost colony of Roanoke. It’s hardly the first time American Horror Story has drawn on real-life terrors for its bloody camp. Here are seven more historical murders, abductions, and other oddities that have found their way into the show’s storyline in seasons past. (Considering co-creator Ryan Murphy’s love of callbacks, don’t be surprised if one of these monsters returns for some Roanoke mayhem.)
1. RICHARD SPECK’S KILLING SPREE
The second episode of the series featured a flashback directly inspired by serial killer Richard Speck. The sequence showed a man conning his way into a house full of female roommates and then murdering a nurse and nursing student inside. In 1966, Speck broke into a Chicago townhouse where nine nursing students. He tied them all up with torn bed sheets, and then led eight of them into separate rooms in the house. One by one, he stabbed or strangled each of them to death. A ninth young woman, Corazon Amurao, only survived by hiding under a bed, and it was her testimony that ensnared Speck.
Amurao told police about a tattoo on the man’s arm reading, “Born to Raise Hell.” When Speck attempted suicide a few days after the attack, his doctor at the hospital recognized the tattoo from the news. He was subsequently arrested, convicted, and died in prison in 1991.
2. THE BLACK DAHLIA
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Also during season one, American Horror Story revealed that one of the past guests at the “Murder House” was Elizabeth Short, better known as The Black Dahlia. While AHS suggested a creepy dentist raped the aspiring actress and then let a ghost mutilate her, Short’s real-life killer remains a mystery. A mother and her child stumbled upon her body, which was sliced in half and drained of blood, on the morning of January 15, 1947. Her death became a media sensation, and newspapers quickly dubbed her “The Black Dahlia.” This was supposedly both a play on the 1946 film noir The Blue Dahlia and a reference to Short’s love of sheer black dresses.
Because the cuts on her body pointed to a murderer with surgical skills, the police began searching for doctors. They never identified the culprit, but people are still naming suspects to this day. In 2014, retired homicide detective Steve Hodel produced evidence that his own father was the killer.
3. THE ABDUCTIONS OF BARNEY AND BETTY HILL
American Horror Story executive producer Tim Minear traced the alien abduction plotline in season two back to the Barney and Betty Hill affair. The Hills were an interracial couple (much like AHS counterparts Kit and Alma Walker) who claimed they were abducted by aliens in 1961. According to the Hills, they were driving home to Portsmouth, New Hampshire after a vacation in Montreal when they saw lights appear in the sky. A large spacecraft landed in a nearby field, and the Hills could see humanoid aliens in the windows. Then, they say, everything went dark.
The Hills woke up two hours later with scraped shoes and torn clothing, unsure what had happened. The memories returned after both sought hypnosis therapy. Their bizarre tale became a book, The Interrupted Journey, as well as a 1975 TV movie, The UFO Incident, starring James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons.
4. DELPHINE LALAURIE’S ATTIC OF HORRORS
By Reading Tom – Flickr: The LaLaurie Mansion, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons
Kathy Bates made her American Horror Story debut in season three as Delphine LaLaurie, a 19th century New Orleans socialite with a murderous streak. That was no invention on FX’s part: LaLaurie is a ghoulish figure who looms large in New Orleans folklore.
Although LaLaurie projected an image as a generous party host, she was a vicious mistress to her slaves behind closed doors. Many suspected her of starving them, but rumors of her cruelty were, for a time, just that. Things changed when LaLaurie chased a 12-year-old slave off the edge of the roof, seeking to whip her for improperly brushing LaLaurie’s hair. The girl died, and her mistress dumped her body down the well.
Despite the public outcry, nothing really happened to LaLaurie in the aftermath. But then, her cook set fire to her mansion. As the neighbors realized LaLaurie had no intention of letting the slaves escape the blaze alive, they broke into the attic to save them. There, they found several dead slaves chained to the walls. Others were alive, but mutilated or dismembered. Buckets of their organs and body parts were scattered across the floor. LaLaurie would have surely been killed by the angry mob that formed after this discovery, but she escaped the city in her carriage, leaving behind her house of unspeakable horrors.
5. THE AXEMAN OF NEW ORLEANS
Another NOLA murderer appeared in American Horror Story’s witchy third season. That would be the so-called Axeman of New Orleans. The anonymous killer terrorized the city between 1918 and 1919 by breaking into houses and slaying residents with an axe. In March of 1919, he reportedly wrote to The Times-Picayune, threatening a fresh attack but promising to spare any home that was playing jazz, his favorite music.
Jazz was blared across the city that night, so no one was killed. But sporadic attacks continued until October, when a grocer got the final blow. Although some speculated that the deaths were spurred by Mafia feuds, the Axeman’s motive and identity were never determined. He remains famous for his peculiar letter to the editor, which was recreated on American Horror Story.
John Wayne Gacy’s crimes filled out two separate seasons of American Horror Story. In AHS: Freak Show, his spirit is channeled through Twisty the Clown, a disfigured children’s entertainer who kidnaps and kills. Later, in AHS: Hotel, the same actor who played Twisty (John Carroll Lynch) returned to play Gacy for “Devil’s Night,” a special Halloween episode featuring other notorious serial killers, including Aileen Wuornos and Jeffrey Dahmer.
It’s easy to see why AHS used Gacy twice, given his backstory. From 1972 through 1978, Gacy sexually assaulted and murdered at least 33 teenage boys. When he wasn’t luring those young men into his suburban home, he was dressing up as Pogo the Clown for kids’ birthday parties. After the police uncovered mass graves in his crawlspace and throughout his property, Gacy was put on trial and sentenced to die by lethal injection. He spent 14 years on death row before he was executed in 1994.
7. THE CECIL HOTEL
It might be called Hotel Cortez, but the inn at the center of American Hotel Story’s fifth season is Los Angeles’s Cecil Hotel in all but name. Over its near-century history, the Cecil has acquired a less-than-stellar reputation—mainly because people who stay there keep dying, or killing others. Murphy said the inspiration for the fifth season came from “a surveillance video that went around two years ago that showed a girl getting into an elevator in a downtown hotel that was rumored to be haunted, and she was never seen again.” Journalists quickly connected this clue to Elisa Lam, a Canadian student who was found dead in the Cecil Hotel water tank. Bizarre footage of her on the elevator was later released.
The Cecil was also a favorite haunt of serial killers like Richard Ramirez (“The Night Stalker”), who appears on the show. Several women who checked into the hotel later jumped to their deaths. And in keeping with American Horror Story’s interconnected storylines, it was rumored to be one of the last places that the Black Dahlia was seen alive.
The tire is made in a big solid mold—those tiny bits of “flash” are the rubber that solidified in holes used to vent the mold, or pump the rubber into the mold.
When the tire is pulled out of the mold, the solidified rubber in the holes pulls out with it (thus clearing the holes for the next tire).
They are actually interestingly called “nubbins” and there are clever ways to eliminate them—which is why you don’t see them so often on expensive tires from manufacturers with more advanced equipment.
While most movie fan theories are outrageous and unbelievably bizarre, there are a few that have turned out to be true. Here are nine of them.
1. THE GENIE AND THE PEDDLER ARE THE SAME CHARACTER IN ALADDIN.
Since the release of Disney’s Aladdin in 1992, there’s been a very popular fan theory that suggests the Peddler who opens the film and the Genie are the same character. There are a number of clues that support this fan theory, namely that both characters are voiced by the late Robin Williams and are the only ones who address the audience directly. In an interview in 2015, co-directors Ron Clements and John Musker confirmed the truth about the Peddler and the Genie.
“I saw something that speculates that the peddler at the beginning of Aladdin is the Genie. That’s true,” Clements revealed. “That was the whole intention, originally. We even had that at the end of the movie, where he would reveal himself to be the Genie, and of course Robin did the voice of the peddler. Just through story changes and some editing, we lost the reveal at the end. So, that’s an urban legend that actually is true.”
The original workprint ending of Aladdin (above) included an additional scene of the Peddler revealing his true identity.
2. ROBOCOP IS A CHRIST STORY.
After the release of RoboCop in 1987, many fans speculated about the film’s hidden themes of Christianity and Jesus Christ. After all, the sci-fi movie follows a man who is brutally executed, then comes back from the dead to save the city of Detroit from evil. In 2010, director Paul Verhoeven confirmed the RoboCop as Jesus Christ theory.
“The point of RoboCop, of course, is it is a Christ story,” Verhoeven said. “It is about a guy who gets crucified in the first 50 minutes, and then is resurrected in the next 50 minutes, and then is like the supercop of the world, but is also a Jesus figure as he walks over water at the end.”
3. DUMBLEDORE IS DEATH IN THE HARRY POTTER SERIES.
In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Hermoine tells Harry “The Tale of the Three Brothers,” a fable that explains the origins of the Deathly Hallows. The story follows three brothers who come across Death while trying to cross a river. Death felt cheated that the brothers used magic to cross because people would normally drown in the water instead, so he congratulated them for tricking him and gave them gifts for their cunning.
The oldest brother asked for a powerful wand, which he was murdered for once he reached town. The next brother asked for a stone that gave him the ability to bring back his dead lover, whose ghost disappeared as soon as she was brought back from the dead. This led the second brother to kill himself to join her in the afterlife. The youngest brother, who was humble, asked Death for an invisibility cloak to hide from him until it was time to die as an old man. Once it was time, the youngest brother revealed himself to Death and willingly went with him as an old friend.
A theory emerged that the three brothers represented characters in the Harry Potter series: Voldemort is the first brother, who died for power; Severus Snape is the second, who died for his long lost love; and Harry Potter is the third, who “greeted death like an old friend” later in The Deathly Hallows. So who is Death? One fan theory suggested that Dumbledore Is Death, because he ends up meeting Harry in the afterlife and possessed the Elder Wand, the Resurrection Stone, and the Invisibility Cloak throughout the series.
Eventually, Harry Potter creatorJ.K. Rowling chimed in:
For more than 30 years, fans argued about whether Deckard (Harrison Ford) from 1982’s Blade Runner was a Replicant or not. There are a number of clues that support both arguments, but director Ridley Scott confirmed the truth for fans: Deckard is, indeed, a Replicant. In the interview above, from 2002, Scott revealed the truth about Deckard’s origins.
5. JESUS CHRIST WAS AN ENGINEER FROM PROMETHEUS.
Ridley Scott’s vision for Prometheus was something much more than a prequel to Alien. Scott conceived the idea that the Engineers created humanity on Earth and when mankind devolved into endless war and chaos, they sent another Engineer, Jesus Christ, to make things right again. However, instead of making a better world, humanity crucified him.
But as it turned out, the fan theory—which started on LiveJournal—is true. Scott just opted to make the Christ analogy more ambiguous than originally conceived because he believed it was “a little too on the nose.”
“If you look at it as an ‘our children are misbehaving down there’ scenario, there are moments where it looks like we’ve gone out of control, running around with armor and skirts, which of course would be the Roman Empire,” Scott told Movies.com. “And they were given a long run. A thousand years before their disintegration actually started to happen. And you can say, ‘Let’s send down one more of our emissaries to see if he can stop it.’ Guess what? They crucified him.”
6. FROZEN AND TARZAN TAKE PLACE IN THE SAME UNIVERSE.
While Rapunzel and Flynn from Disney’s Tangled appear briefly in Frozen, there is a rumor that suggests Disney’s Tarzan is also linked to Anna and Elsa. As the fan theory goes, the princesses’ parents were the same two people who were shipwrecked on a jungle island at the beginning of Tarzan. This would make the King of the Jungle the baby brother of Anna and Elsa.
During a Reddit AMA, Frozen co-directors Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck (Buck also directed Tarzan), jokingly added fuel to the fire and confirmed the fan theory. “According to Chris, they didn’t die on the boat. They got washed up on a shore in a jungle island. The queen gave birth to a baby boy. They build a treehouse. They get eaten by a leopard,” said Lee.
A year after appearing on Reddit, Buck double-downed on the theory in an interview with MTV News. “I said, ‘Of course Anna and Elsa’s parents didn’t die,'” he continued. “Yes, there was a shipwreck, but they were at sea a little bit longer than we think they were because the mother was pregnant, and she gave birth on the boat, to a little boy. They get shipwrecked, and somehow they really washed way far away from the Scandinavian waters, and they end up in the jungle. They end up building a tree house and a leopard kills them, so their baby boy is raised by gorillas. So in my little head, Anna and Elsa’s brother is Tarzan—but on the other side of that island are surfing penguins, to tie in a non-Disney movie, Surf’s Up. That’s my fun little world.”
7. SPIRITED AWAY IS AN ALLEGORY FOR THE SEX INDUSTRY.
While many people see Spirited Away as a children’s movie about a young girl who learns to embrace the spirit world to return to her parents, some fans view Hayao Miyazaki’s Academy Award-winning film as an allegory for prostitution in Japanese society during the 19th century. The film’s protagonist, Chihiro, is forced to work in a bathhouse for an evil witch after her parents foolishly ate food that was meant for the gods, which turned her mother and father into pigs. Chihiro works as a “yuna,” which is Japanese for “a woman who works with bathers,” or a bathhouse prostitute. According to Miyazaki, “I think the most appropriate way to symbolize the modern world is the sex industry. Hasn’t Japanese society become like the sex industry?”
Studio Ghibli also wrote one Spirited Away fan a lengthy letter explaining why Chihiro’s parents turned into pigs and what their transformation represents which, according to Miyazaki, is a metaphor for greed and materialism.
8. PRINCESS MONONOKE IS ABOUT LEPROSY.
YouTube
There is a longstanding urban legend in Princess Mononoke (1997) that suggests the workers covered with bloody bandages at the factory in Irontown have leprosy (or Hansen’s disease). In its original Japanese version, the characters are described as “gyobyo,” which means “incurable disease” or “suffering the consequences” in English. The word “leprosy” doesn’t appear anywhere in the original Japanese version, but the fan theory grew in popularity.
“While making Princess Mononoke, I thought I had to depict people who are ill with what’s clearly called an incurable disease, but who are living as best they can,” Hayao Miyazaki said during a conference for World Leprosy Day. He also met with patients at a hospital in Tokyo that treated people with Hansen’s disease during the film’s production.
9. ALL QUENTIN TARANTINO MOVIES TAKE PLACE IN THE SAME UNIVERSE.
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For years, fans would speculate about how Quentin Tarantino movies were connected. Aside from Red Apple Cigarettes appearing in almost all of the director’s movies, several of his characters share the same last names and traits: Sergeant Donny Donowitz (Eli Roth) from Inglourious Basterds and Lee Donowitz (Saul Rubinek) from True Romance are related, while Pete Hicox (Tim Roth) from The Hateful Eight and Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) from Inglourious Basterds are also related.
In an interview on Australian TV, Tarantino admitted that all of his movies belong in a shared universe, but in a different way than you’d expect. “There are actually two separate universes,” Tarantino said. “There’s the realer than real universe, and all the characters inhabit that one. Then there’s this ‘movie’ universe, so From Dusk Till Dawn and Kill Bill take place in this special movie universe. Basically, when the characters from Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction go to the movies, Kill Bill and From Dusk Till Dawn is what they go see.”
It’s hard to think of “pizza” without thinking of “delivery.” No matter where you live in America, it probably seems as if your local pizzerias have a lock on the food delivery game—and with good reason: The very first pizza delivery dates all the way back to 1889 (Italy’s Queen Margherita was the lucky recipient). But as online delivery services like GrubHub and DoorDash have made it easier for lazy-but-hungry diners to order what they want, when they want, we’re seeing lots of new culinary patterns emerging.
To find out exactly what Americans are chowing down on at home, Eater asked GrubHub—which facilitates more than 270,000 orders per day in more than 1000 cities across the country—to analyze their data and determine the most popular delivery foods in each state. The results just might surprise you.
While pizza is undoubtedly a staple delivery dish—it’s the most popular item in 12.5 percent of the states studied—it was bested by both Chinese food, which took 15 percent of the states, and chicken, which topped the list, and is a wide-ranging category that includes chicken tenders and wings.
A quick glance at the map reveals a number of regional trends; according to Eater, the three most popular delivery dishes in Wisconsin are full of cheese, with cheese curds taking the top spot. Does your favorite delivery dinner follow the lead of your neighbors, or are you a culinary trendsetter? Check the map below to find out.
Pool wasn’t much of a mainstream sport back in 1961. It was viewed as little more than something men did to amuse themselves while drinking. But The Hustler changed that. With handsome Paul Newman and elegant Jackie Gleason knocking the balls around, suddenly the game was respectable.
The movie—which was released 55 years ago today—was respectable too, earning nine Oscar nominations (including Best Picture and nods to all four main actors), though it only won for its cinematography and set decoration. (It was West Side Story’s year.) Let’s rack ‘em up and see if we can break down some of the film’s interesting backstory.
1. THE DIRECTOR HAD BEEN A POOL SHARK HIMSELF.
Robert Rossen, born in 1908 to Russian-Jewish immigrants (his father was a rabbi), grew up in the tough ghettos of New York’s Lower East Side. As a youth, he had occasion to hustle pool, and even tried to write a play about it before stumbling across Walter Tevis’s novel The Hustler and deciding Tevis had done a better job.
2. JACKIE GLEASON DID HIS OWN TRICK SHOTS, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
The comedian, best known for playing working-class loudmouth Ralph Kramden on The Honeymooners (which he created), had grown up in Brooklyn. Like Rossen, Gleason mixed it up with neighborhood toughs and got to be a pretty good pool hustler. He required no assistance for his trick shots in the film, and Rossen always positioned the camera so we’d be able to see that for ourselves.
3. PAUL NEWMAN DID MOST OF HIS OWN SHOTS, TOO, DESPITE NEVER HAVING PLAYED POOL BEFORE.
Newman’s story was different. Unlike his co-star and director, he hadn’t hustled pool as a youth, and in fact had never played the game at all before being cast as “Fast Eddie” Felson. Ever the Method actor, though, he installed a pool table in his apartment and practiced for hours a day in the weeks leading up to filming. He got good enough to perform most of his own trick shots. The ones he couldn’t do were executed by Willie Mosconi, an advisor on the film who was the most famous pool player in America at the time.
4. THERE WAS A REAL MINNESOTA FATS … BUT ONLY BECAUSE A GUY STARTED CALLING HIMSELF THAT AFTER THE MOVIE.
When the movie came out, Rudolf Wanderone was up there with Willie Mosconi as one of America’s best pool players. A hefty gentleman, Wanderone had several nicknames, including Double-Smart, New York Fats, and Chicago Fats. There was no Minnesota Fats; The Hustler novelist Walter Tevis had made the character up. But in a promotional interview for the movie, Mosconi said Wanderone had been Tevis’s inspiration (which Tevis denied for the rest of his life, adamantly and with great annoyance). Wanderone seized the opportunity, perhaps flattering himself into thinking Tevis really had had him in mind. He embraced the nickname and declared himself the real Minnesota Fats for the rest of his career.
5. PAUL NEWMAN STARRED IN IT BECAUSE OF CLEOPATRA.
Originally, Newman couldn’t be in The Hustler because he was scheduled to make Two for the Seesaw with Elizabeth Taylor. But then Cleopatra went way over schedule (over budget too, though that’s not relevant here), and Taylor had to drop out of Seesaw. The film was totally recast (with Robert Mitchum and Shirley MacLaine), and Newman was freed up to make The Hustler.
6. IT HURT BOBBY DARIN’S FEELINGS.
The popular singer had already been cast in the lead role when Newman became available. So quickly was Darin scuttled in favor of Newman that word got out before anyone had a chance to tell Darin. He had to hear about it secondhand, adding further insult to the ignominy of being replaced.
7. THE MOVIE ISN’T VERY LONG, BUT IT WAS WIDER THAN USUAL.
The Hustler was shot in Cinemascope, the widescreen technique that had been in use since 1953. But it was mainly used for lavish epics and colorful musicals, not black-and-white dramas set in dingy pool halls. Yet as film critic Michael Wood pointed out, Rossen used Cinemascope “to create an oppressive, elongated world in which ceilings always seem terribly low; and people terribly separate from each other; in one shot Newman is even separated from his own image in a mirror by the whole width of a very wide screen. It is a world in which the pool table seems the one natural shape, while human beings seem untidy intruders.” Neat, huh?
8. THE STUDIO SUGGESTED CHANGING THE TITLE.
“Hustler” was also a well-established (since 1924) slang term for a prostitute. One alternate title suggested was Stroke of Luck. When cooler heads prevailed and The Hustler remained The Hustler, “Stroke of Luck” was added to the Kentucky Derby scene as the name of one of the horses.
9. ROSSEN HAD TO GET SNEAKY TO GET THE STUDIO TO PROMOTE THE FILM.
20th Century Fox was hemorrhaging money because of Cleopatra, and they wanted The Hustler to be as profitable as possible (they’d already short-changed Rossen on some production costs). To that end, they told Rossen to trim some of the pool-playing scenes—including the one that opens the film—as they feared female audience members wouldn’t understand the game. In response, Rossen held a midnight screening for all the cast members of all the shows then playing on Broadway. Word-of-mouth from that prestigious group of thespians was so strong that Fox left the film intact and actually stepped up efforts to promote it.
10. GEORGE C. SCOTT TURNED DOWN HIS OSCAR NOMINATION.
A little stung at having lost when he was nominated for Anatomy of a Murder, and generally disdainful of the whole award-giving enterprise, Scott sent the Academy a telegram declining his Best Supporting Actor nomination for The Hustler. The Academy declined his declination, and Scott remained a nominee. (He lost to George Chakiris from West Side Story.) A decade later, when Scott was not just nominated but actually won the Best Actor prize for Patton, he did not attend the ceremony and refused to accept the trophy. Hollywood learned its lesson: do not try to give George C. Scott things.
11. THE FAMOUS WHISPER BETWEEN BERT AND SARAH WAS NOTHING.
One of the film’s most shocking moments comes when Bert (George C. Scott) whispers something to Sarah (Piper Laurie), who responds by throwing her drink in his face and crumpling to the floor. We’re left to infer that he said something lascivious. Later, people would ask Laurie what Scott had said, but she didn’t know—whatever he’d whispered was too faint for her to hear. So she asked him. Scott said, “You know, I never really said anything. I figured anything that I said would not be as powerful as what your imagination could bring.”
12. A LOT OF THE UNSAVORY TYPES HANGING AROUND THE POOL HALL WERE ACTUAL UNSAVORY TYPES.
Always in the pursuit of realism, Rossen hired actual street thugs to use as extras. He even had them join the Screen Actors Guild so they’d be legit.
If you’ve ever dreamed of running your own bookshop in a picturesque town full of bibliophiles, now’s your chance. For anyone curious about the life of a bookshop owner, The Open Book in Wigtown, Scotland, is open for bookings. More of a residency than a straight rental, the Airbnb experience allows renters free rein of the bookshop with accommodations in the apartment directly above. In exchange for a $38 per night rental, guests get the chance to manage the day-to-day operations of the bookshop with responsibilities ranging from bookkeeping to decorating.
With a team of volunteers and fellow bookshop employees for support, the residency aims to celebrate and encourage education in running independent bookshops. “The bookshop holiday provides a creative, social, energizing holiday for both seasoned booksellers or novice bookies (like me),” says Margi Watters, who took over the shop for a week all the way from Philadelphia. “The ability to make the shop one’s own encourages each new visitor to invest in the project and put his or her personal stamp on the shop.”
But the area offers plenty of other things for book lovers to do that don’t require ringing a register. In 1998, Wigtown (population: 900) was designated Scotland’s National Book Town and is now home to more than a dozen book-related businesses, in addition to the annual Wigtown Book Festival, which this year runs from September 23 to October 2. Here are some of Wigtown’s highlights.
THE OLD BANK BOOKSHOP
Formerly the Customs House and Bank, The Old Bank Bookshop is now home to five rooms full of secondhand fiction, local history, antiquarian titles, and, most distinctively, a room full of sheet music and art history.
READINGLASSES
While ReadingLasses offers a variety of new and used titles, its first distinguishing feature is its charming cafe. Whether stopping in for lunch or a spot of tea, you can get cozy in the back cafe or in the front reading rooms surrounded by books. The cheery pink store also sets itself apart from the rest of the town by specializing in books “by and about women.”
GLAISNOCK CAFE AND GUEST HOUSE
The Glaisnock is Wigtown’s three-for-one, offering books, bites, and board all in one place. While their book collection is small and comprised mostly of secondhand fiction ($1.50 paperbacks!), their diverse, locally-sourced menu is a bit more wide-ranging. Here you can try traditional favorites ranging from fish and chips to haggis, neeps, and tatties, followed by a decadent selection of cakes and sweets. On the first Saturday of each month, they also host Drink, Read, Relax, which offers special deals on its drinks, treats, and books.
CURLY TALE BOOKS
Curly Tale Books, the town’s newest addition, appeals to Wigtown’s youngest visitors. Functioning as both a publisher and a brick-and-mortar shop, the store has an extensive collection of children’s and young adult books, including their own titles. They also often open their space for readings and children’s activities.
BYRE BOOKS
Almost completely hidden from the town square, Byre Books is off the beaten path and almost completely overtaken by greenery. Up until 2000, the building used to be a cow shed (“byre” in Scottish) but is now home to a book collection centered around folklore, archaeology, and history.
THE BOOKSHOP
The largest and perhaps most well-known of Wigtown’s bookshops is The Bookshop, simply named and most reminiscent of the Hogwarts Library. With more than 100,000 used books, The Bookshop is Scotland’s largest secondhand bookstore and home to a maze of an ever-changing selection and an owner who will shoot your Kindle on sight (not really, but he does have footage of burning Kindles in mock emulation of Amazon’s “Kindle Fire”). From the rows of Penguin classics, to the rustic ladders for help reaching higher shelves—not to mention the lofted bed nook and the comfy recliners in front of the fireplace—this bookshop is every bibliophile’s dream. Did we mention the spiral stairs? And if you want to take a piece of The Bookshop’s magic home with you, sign up for The Random Book Club, where you’ll be mailed one random secondhand book each month.
BELTIE BOOKS AND CAFE
Wrap up your tour of Wigtown’s bookshops with a stop at Beltie Books and Café. Beltie’s has a small selection of secondhand books, mostly nonfiction, and many with a focus on all things Scottish. Enjoy coffee and tea in the cafe alongside art on display—most of it astronomical photos of the night sky taken from the Galloway Forest Park.
COMMUNITY SHOP
If you’ve checked into all of Wigtown’s bookshops but are still hungry for more, don’t forget to stop into the Wigtown Community Shop—a charity shop across the street from The Open Book. While you’re sure to find the typical thrift store odds and ends, they also have a smaller second room piled high with book donations, categorized by genre, with all proceeds going to local Wigtown organizations.
When your eyes are tired of scanning row upon row of books, you can take a break and visit Craigard Gallery, The Bookend Studio, and Historic Newspapers for a change of pace that’s still on-theme. While these shops aren’t centered around bookselling, the majority of their goods are all book- or print matter-related. From The Bookend’s jewelry made of old book pages to gorgeous letterpressed journals, each of these shops finds a way to continue the bibliophilic love of the town. Even the local pub has a small corner of books!
Finally, our last and most unique stop on the tour is a visit to Christian Ribbens’s, a local book binder. Ribbens began restoring bindings of old books as a hobby and, just as he came to Wigtown, the current book binder of the time was just about to retire. He bought her supplies and set up his own home workshop, where he restores book bindings for customers all over the UK. Although most of his business happens to be the preservation of heirloom family Bibles, he also restores antique books.
While most of these businesses are open year-around, the town’s main attraction is the Wigtown Book Festival, which runs for 10 days each autumn. Each year, thousands of visitors come to Wigtown to attend events centered around literature, music, film, theater, and other arts, with guest authors and speakers from around the world. But no matter what time of year, there are plenty of places for every book lover.
There are four reasons why you don’t find a parachute under your seat on commercial airlines:
1. Parachutes are bulky, heavy and expensive. They would not even fit under your seat, they would occupy a lot of space, and add a lot of weight. They would also need regular inspection and repacking. To provide several hundred per airplane would add significantly to costs, making flying much more expensive.
2. Passengers are not trained to use them. Without a minimum of training most people would not even be able to strap the parachute on correctly, never mind open it and land safely. Even on the ground and with plenty of time this is not easy. In the confined space of an airliner and in a high-stress situation it would be even more difficult.
3. There isn’t a convenient way to jump out of typical airliners. You would need to redesign aircraft with a special jumping exit. Just jumping out of normal side-facing airplane doors or emergency hatches you would probably hit the wing or the tail. You would need to install a ramp on the rear of the cabin.
4. There are very few situations where it would save anybody. You would have to be in a situation, in daylight, over land, where there is no hope of a landing but plenty of time to get everyone out. I can only think of a single case in the entire history of civil aviation where it could have been useful—The United Airlines Flight 232 case—but then only if the aircraft had been redesigned with a rear exit. Even in that case, jumping was as risky as staying aboard.
