Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader (71 page)

Things to Listen For:
Ever watch
America’s Most Wanted
? (See
page 329
.)
Gangbusters
was the first show to broadcast the descriptions of real, at-large criminals who were wanted by police and the FBI.

THE CHARLIE McCARTHY SHOW (NBC/CBS, 1937–56)

Edgar Bergen was a ventriloquist who got his big break in radio when he was discovered at a Hollywood party and invited to appear on the
Rudy Vallee Show
. He and his dummy, named Charlie McCarthy, were such a hit that they got their own radio show the following year. (Bergen’s young daughter, Candice, also appeared on the show and later became a well-known actress.)
Things to Listen For:
A ventriloquist act on the
radio
? One thing that made this improbable show a success was Charlie McCarthy’s sharp wit. As a wooden dummy, he got away with insults, double entendres, and racy dialogue (for the time) that network censors would never have allowed to be spoken by “real” people. Mae West’s risqué 1937 appearance—a “blasphemous” Adam and Eve sketch—sounds innocent today, but it got her banned from NBC. She didn’t appear again on radio until 1968.

Like fingerprints and snowflakes, no two Holstein cows have exactly the same pattern of spots.

THE GOON SHOW (BBC, 1951–1960)

The most influential comedy show ever broadcast by the BBC,
The Goon Show
was written by Spike Milligan and starred Milligan, Peter Sellers, and Harry Secombe. The show’s bizarre, satirical sketches and clever sound effects revolutionized British comedy. The creators of
Monty Python’s Flying Circus
and even the Beatles have cited the Goons as a major influence on their work.
Things to Listen For:
Indian characters spouting genuine Hindi obscenities that were snuck past BBC censors. Also: laughs in odd places. The show was recorded before a live audience, and Harry Secombe was fond of yanking Sellers’s suspenders off in mid-show, causing his pants to fall down. Does their speech sound slurred at times? Liquor was banned at the BBC, so the Goons drank milk during their broadcasts. (The milk was spiked with brandy.)

OTHER FAVORITES

•
Calling All Detectives
(Syndicated/Mutual, 1945–50).
A combination quiz show and detective drama starring actor Paul Barnes, who does the voices for every character. Once all the clues were in place, the show paused for a five-minute commercial break while the station called listeners chosen at random and asked them to solve the mystery on the air. When the five minutes were up, the drama resumed and the real solution was revealed.

•
Mary Noble, Backstage Wife
(Mutual/NBC, 1935–59).
An unintentionally funny soap opera about a small-town girl from Iowa who marries Larry Noble, “a matinee idol of a million other women.” Mary spent the next 24 years defending her marriage from the tramps and scam artists who continually try to pry her and her husband apart.

•
Richard Diamond, Private Detective
(NBC/ABC, 1949–53).
This show about an NYPD cop turned private detective was written by Blake Edwards, who went on to direct the Pink Panther movies, as well as
Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Days of Wine and Roses
, and
10
.

•
Queen for a Day
(Mutual, 1945–57).
A game show in which contestants compete for fabulous prizes by sharing their real-life hard-luck stories with the studio audience. The audience then votes, and the woman with the most miserable life gets crowned “Queen for a Day”…and then goes back to her miserable life.

Belleville is the Unidentified Flying Object Capital of Wisconsin.

IT’S A WEIRD, WEIRD WORLD

News from the outer reaches of normal.

H
ITTING THE HIGH NOTES
“Mystery surrounds Ben Nevis, Britain’s highest mountain. Why? A piano was discovered near its 4,418-foot summit. The instrument was found by volunteers from the John Muir Trust, a conservation charity. ‘They couldn’t believe their eyes,’ said trust director Nigel Hawkins. ‘The only thing that that was missing was the keyboard—and that’s another mystery.’ He added that a cookie wrapper with an expiration date of December 1986 was found under the piano, giving a clue as to when it was taken there, but not why.”

—
The Guardian

LAST FISH STORY

“A Hungarian fisherman drowned while trying to catch a 150-lb. catfish. Gabor Komlosy was dragged into a river when he refused to let go of the line. The 53-year-old’s body was later pulled from the Szamos river still clinging to his rod. The 4-foot monster catfish was still hooked on the end. Police in Hungary believe he had been yanked down the river bank by the fish. It then pulled him through the water until he hit his head on a rock and drowned.”

—
Sky News

HANDY

“A man has been jailed on assault charges after a police officer, prosecutor, and courtroom bailiff became seriously ill after shaking hands with him. During a court appearance on a traffic charge, John Ridgeway pulled out a vial of an unknown liquid, rubbed his hands with the contents and insisted on shaking hands with the three people. All of them got sick within an hour, suffering from nausea, headaches, and numbness that lasted about a day. The FBI was running tests on the substance to identify it. Ridgeway, 41, told officials the vial contained olive oil.”

—
Associated Press

The last Bonaparte, Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte, died in 1945 after tripping over his dog’s leash.

ETHICALLY DISABLED

There are few things more pathetic than people pretending to be disabled—and few things more satisfying than catching them.

F
UTBOL FAKERS
Their dream was to watch their country’s soccer team play in a World Cup game in Germany in 2006, but the admission price was more than the three Argentinians wanted to pay. Determined to see the match, they found a loophole: Discounted seats were being offered to disabled people. So they somehow got themselves three wheelchairs and rolled into the match against Holland, claiming a handicapped viewing spot near the field.

The ruse probably would have worked, too, if one of them hadn’t gotten so excited after a play that he jumped out of his chair with his arms raised in the air. “A person near us thought there was a miracle happening,” one of the fakers told reporters outside the stadium—which is where the three fans spent the second half of the game after security escorted them out (on foot).

PARALYMPIC FAKERS

The 2000 International Paralympics were a resounding success for Spain: The country won 107 medals overall, highlighted by the gold medal awarded to its developmentally disabled basketball team. A few months later, one of the players, Carlos Ribagorda, made the shocking admission that “of the 200 Spanish Paralympic athletes, at least 15 had no physical or mental handicap.” Ribagorda, a journalist for the Spanish magazine
Capital
, had joined the intellectually disabled basketball team to expose the corruption. In the two years Ribagorda played for the team, no one ever tested his I.Q. Not only that, says Ribagorda, the team was told to slow down their game so they wouldn’t attract suspicion.

A subsequent international investigation concluded that only two members of the basketball team were intellectually disabled. In addition, as Ribagorda had discovered, some members of Spain’s Paralympic track, tennis, and swimming teams were found to be only…
morally
handicapped.

Old English word for “sneeze”:
fneosan
. (Gesundheit!)

LAWSUIT FAKER

In 2006 Las Vegas authorities suspected that wheelchair-bound Laura Lee Medley was taking them for a ride. After four separate lawsuits against four California cities over faulty handicapped access to public buildings, investigators smelled fraud. They tracked Medley to Las Vegas, where they arrested the 35-year-old woman—who was sitting in her wheelchair. Medley immediately began complaining of pain and begged for medical attention. Skeptical—but not wanting to doubt her if she really was in pain—police officers drove her to a nearby hospital. But moments after she was wheeled through the entrance, the “paralyzed” woman got up and started sprinting through the hospital corridors. She was quickly apprehended and cuffed. Medley was charged with four counts of fraud and resisting arrest.

BEAUTY PAGEANT FAKER

Dee Henderson was crowned Mrs. Minnesota International in a 1999 beauty pageant, thanks in part to the aerobic exercises she performed for the talent competition. Henderson owned and operated two businesses selling beauty pageant supplies,
and
was the director of three Midwest beauty pageants. Those are amazing accomplishments, especially considering the fact that at the same time, she was getting disability payments from the government. Henderson claimed she couldn’t work, couldn’t sit for more than 20 minutes at a time or lift anything heavier than her mail. She also had difficulty with “walking, kneeling, squatting, climbing, bending, reaching, and personal grooming.” The injuries, she said, stemmed from a 1995 car accident. From 1996 to 2003, Henderson received Social Security benefits totaling $190,000.

But her case unraveled when a video taken by a private investigator showed her doing activities such as snorkeling and carrying heavy luggage (not to mention the aerobics). More damning evidence: an email in which Henderson claimed she would “keep going and going and going and going” like the Energizer Bunny. She did keep going…to prison for 46 months.

*        *        *

If I die, I forgive you. If I recover, we shall see.

—
Spanish proverb

The average child eats over 15 pounds of cereal in a year.

TALK TO THE SWORD

Dutch Schultz was a notorious New York mobster who made his name in bootlegging and numbers rackets. But Schultz had another claim to fame: the grisly story of his death and bizarre last words.

B
ACKGROUND
On October 23, 1935, 33-year-old Dutch Schultz (real name: Arthur Flegenheimer) was dining at the Palace Chop house, a restaurant in Newark, New Jersey, that also served as a mob hideout. Schultz was in the bathroom when three Murder, Inc. hit men working for a rival gang burst in—“Charlie the Bug” Workman, Emanuel Weiss, and a third man known only as “Piggy.” They went into the back room and shot Schultz’s associates Otto Berman, Abe Landau, and Lulu Rosenkrantz. Schultz heard the shots but couldn’t stop urinating fast enough to flee.

While he was still peeing, the hit men came into the bathroom. Schultz turned around and they shot him in the stomach. The bullet pierced his liver, colon, and gall bladder, and exited out his back.

Not wanting to be found dead with his pants unzipped in a men’s room, Schultz stumbled into the restaurant; Rosenkrantz, still alive, called an ambulance from a phone booth and then collapsed. The police arrived first and loaded Schultz up on brandy to numb the pain. It didn’t work. When they finally got to the hospital, Newark police sergeant Luke Conlon interrogated Schultz. In a state of physical agony, high fever, drunkenness, and morphine-induced euphoria, Schultz babbled on for nearly two hours. What follows is an actual transcript of Schultz’s talkfest.

LAST WORDS

Schultz:
George, don’t make no bull moves. What have you done with him? Oh, mama, mama, mama. Oh stop it, stop it; eh, oh, oh. Sure, sure, mama? Has it been in any other newspapers? Now listen, Phil, fun is fun. Aha…please! Papa! What happened to the sixteen? Oh, oh, he done it? Please…please…John, please. Oh, did you buy the hotel? You promised a million sure. Get out. I wish I knew. Please make it quick, fast, and furious. Please. Fast and furious. Please help me get out; I’m getting my wind back, thank God. Please, please, oh please. You will have to please tell him, you got no case? You get ahead with the dot dash system. Didn’t I speak that time last night. Whose number is that in your pocketbook, Phi1? 13780. Who was it? Oh, please, please. Reserve decision. Police, police, Henny and Frankie. Oh, oh, dog biscuit and when he is happy he doesn’t get snappy please, please do this. Henny, Henny, Frankie! You didn’t meet him; you didn’t even meet me. The glove will fit what I say oh, kayiyi, kayiyi. Sure, who cares? When are you through! How do you know this? How do you know this? Well, then, oh, Cocoa; no…thinks he is a grandpa again and he is jumping around. No Hoboe and Poboe I think mean the same thing.

Dark-roasted coffee is “weaker” than medium roast. Roasting burns off caffeine.

Conlon:
Who shot you?

Schultz:
The boss himself.

Conlon:
He did?

Schultz:
Yes, I don’t know.

Conlon:
What did he shoot you for?

Schultz:
I showed him, boss; did you hear him meet me? An appointment. Appeal stuck. All right, mother.

Conlon:
Was it the boss shot you?

Schultz:
Who shot me? No one.

Conlon:
We will help you.

Schultz:
Will you help me up? Okay, I won’t be such a big creep. Oh, mama. I can’t go through with it, please. Oh, and then he clips me; come on. Cut that out, we don’t owe a nickel; fold it; instead, fold it against him; I am a pretty good pretzeler. Winifred—Department of Justice. I even got it from the department. Sir, please stop it. Say listen, the last night.