Uncle John’s Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader (21 page)

      
3. Crash plane in the Channel after making S.O.S. to rescue service in plain language.

      
4. Once aboard the rescue boat, shoot German crew, dump overboard, bring rescue boat back to English port.

In order to increase the chances of capturing a small or large minesweeper, with their richer booty, a crash might be staged in mid-[English] Channel. The Germans would presumably employ one of this type for the longer and more hazardous journey.

OPERATION RUTHLESS

The Director of Naval Intelligence passed the plan along to Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who gave it his personal approval. A German twin-engine Heinkell 111, shot down during a raid over Scotland, was restored to flying condition and a crew was recruited to fly it. “Operation Ruthless” was ready to go.…But as David Kahn writes in
Seizing the Enigma,

      
In October, Fleming went to Dover to await his chance. None came. Air reconnaissance found no suitable German ships operating at night, and radio reconnaissance likewise found nothing…. The navy awaited favorable circumstances. But they never materialized, and the plan faded away.

Even though Great Britain never did attempt a raid as daring as Fleming proposed, it did manage to capture codebooks from German ships. By 1943 they were cracking Enigma codes regularly; and by May of that year the Battle of the Atlantic was effectively over.

A NOVEL IDEA

After the war Fleming got out of the intelligence business and became an executive with the company that owned the London
Sunday Times.
He never forgot his wartime experiences.

First Person.
By 1952 Fleming was in his forties and about to be married for the first time. He was apparently tense at the thought of giving up his bachelorhood, and his future wife suggested he try writing a novel to ease the strain. Fleming had wanted to write a novel for years, so he decided to give it a try. Drawing on his intelligence background, he wrote a spy thriller called
Casino Royale
during his two-month winter vacation in Jamaica.

Picking a Name.
The book was filled with murders, torture, and lots of action. It was an autobiographical fantasy, the adventures of a British secret agent named James Bond that Fleming—who spent World War II stuck behind a desk in London—wanted to be, but couldn’t.

Fleming thought that giving the agent an unexciting name would play off well against the plot. But what name? As Fleming later recounted, he found it “in one of my Jamaican bibles,
Birds of the West Indies
by James Bond, an ornithological classic. I wanted the simplest, dullest, plainest-sounding name that I could find. James Bond seemed perfect.”

ON HIS WAY

Casino Royale
was published in England in April 1953, and in the U.S. a year later. The book was a critical success, but sales were disappointing. Luckily for Fleming, he took a two-month vacation in Jamaica
every
year, and in each of the next several years he wrote a new Bond novel during his vacation, including
Live and Let Die
(1954),
Moonraker
(1955), and
Diamonds are Forever
(1956).

Live and Let Die
became a bestseller in England, and Fleming began building a considerable following in the U.K. But in America, sales remained sluggish for the rest of the 1950s.

Thanks, JFK.
The Bond bandwagon got rolling in the U.S. beginning in 1961, when
Life
magazine published a list of President John F. Kennedy’s favorite books. Among the scholarly tomes was one work of popular fiction—
From Russia, With Love
. “This literally made Bond in America overnight,” Raymond Benson writes in
The James Bond Bedside Companion.
“From then on, sales improved almost immediately….It was good public relations for Kennedy as well—it showed that even a President can enjoy a little ‘sex, sadism, and snobbery.’”

How did a little-known Scottish actor named Sean Connery land the role of the most famous secret agent in Hollywood history? The story continues on
page 211
.

*
      
*
      
*

Happy Anniversary!
The first push-button phones were installed Nov. 18, 1963. They were put into service between Carnegie and Greensburg, Pennsylvania.

Thoughts from one of America’s leading wits, Woody Allen.

“My success has allowed me to strike out with a higher class of women.”

“My parents put a live teddy bear in my crib.”

“When I was kidnapped, my parents sprang into action. They rented out my room.”

“The world is divided into good and bad people. The good ones sleep better…while the bad ones seem to enjoy the working hours much more.”

“Life is full of loneliness, misery, and suffering, and it’s all over much too soon.”

“I do not believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear.”

“How is it possible to find meaning in a finite world, given my waist and shoe size?”

“The difference between sex and love is that sex relieves tension and love causes it.”

“My parents stayed together for forty years, but that was out of spite.”

“Basically my wife was immature. I’d be at home in the bath and she’d come in and sink my boats.”

“Don’t pay attention to what your schoolteachers tell you. Just see what they look like and that’s how you know what life is really going to be like.”

“If God would only give me some clear sign. Like making a large deposit in my name in a Swiss bank account.”

“Eternal nothingness is fine, if you happen to be dressed for it.”

“I think crime pays. The hours are good, you travel a lot.”

“It is a gorgeous gold pocket watch. I’m proud of it. My grandfather, on his deathbed, sold me this watch.”

The late 1950s and early 1960s were the heyday of the “adult Western.” And take a look at #3 in 1956-1957. That was Ronald Reagan’s TV show.

1955-1956

(1) The $64,000 Question

(2) I Love Lucy

(3) The Ed Sullivan Show

(4) Disneyland

(5) The Jack Benny Program

(6) December Bride

(7) You Bet Your Life

(8) Dragnet

(9) I’ve Got a Secret

(10) General Electric Theater

1956-1957

(1) I Love Lucy

(2) The Ed Sullivan Show

(3) General Electric Theater

(4) The $64,000 Question

(5) December Bride

(6) Alfred Hitchcock Presents

(7) I’ve Got a Secret

(8) Gunsmoke

(9) The Perry Como Show

(10) The Jack Benny Program

1957-1958

(1) Gunsmoke

(2) The Danny Thomas Show

(3) Tales of Wells Fargo

(4) Have Gun, Will Travel

(5) I’ve Got a Secret

(6) Wyatt Earp

(7) General Electric Theater

(8) The Restless Gun

(9) December Bride

(10) You Bet Your Life

1958-1959

(1) Gunsmoke

(2) Wagon Train

(3) Have Gun, Will Travel

(4) The Rifleman

(5) The Danny Thomas Show

(6) Maverick

(7) Tales of Wells Fargo

(8) The Real McCoys

(9) I’ve Got a Secret

(10) Wyatt Earp

1959-1960

(1) Gunsmoke

(2) Wagon Train

(3) Have Gun, Will Travel

(4) The Danny Thomas Show

(5) The Red Skelton Show

(6) Father Knows Best

(7) 77 Sunset Strip

(8) The Price Is Right

(9) Wanted: Dead or Alive

(10) Perry Mason

1960-1961

(1) Gunsmoke

(2) Wagon Train

(3) Have Gun, Will Travel

(4) The Andy Griffith Show

(5) The Real McCoys

(6) Rawhide

(7) Candid Camera

(8) The Untouchables

(9) The Price Is Right

(10) The Jack Benny Program

Here are a few tidbits of obscure Americana, from the 1941 book
Keep Up with the World,
by Freling Foster.

I
NSTANT HEIRLOOMS

In 18th-century America, before cameras, portrait painters traveled from town to town with an assortment of pictures of men and women, complete except for the face and hair. People who wanted an oil portrait of themselves merely had to select the body they liked best. The head and features would then be painted in by the artist.

THE CORPSE WOULDN’T TALK

As late as the 17th century, America held “trials by touch,” in which the defendant in a murder case was made to touch the corpse. If the accused was guilty, the dead man was supposed to move or to indicate the fact in some other way.

BANANAS IN TINFOIL

Bananas were virtually unknown in this country until 1876, when they were featured at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. Wrapped individually in tinfoil, they were sold as novelties at 10¢ apiece.

I GET A WHOLE BED TO MYSELF?

The greatest event in hotel history was the opening of Boston’s Tremont House in October 1829. It surpassed every other inn and tavern in size (it had 180 rooms), furnishings, and accommodations. Instead of making four or five people—usually strangers to one another—sleep together in one bed in an unlocked room, the Tremont gave each guest a whole room with a lock on the door and clean linen on the bed. Instead of having to use an outside pump to wash, the guest was supplied with a bowl and a pitcher of water. Moreover, the Tremont was the first to install a device in its rooms to signal the office for service; and it was the first hotel to employ bellboys who, at that time, were known as “rotunda men.”

Good question. When we were kids, they sold rabbits’ feet at the local variety store “for luck.” We always wondered how a rabbit’s foot could be lucky for
us,
since it obviously didn’t do the rabbit any good. Anyway, one day someone wondered aloud where the idea came from, and we went to our BRI library to look it up. To our surprise, no two books gave the same answer. After a while, we were just looking to see how many “reasons” we could find. Here are some favorites.

O
RIGINS AND FIRSTS, by Jacob M. Braude

“The rabbit’s foot originated as a good luck symbol in show business, where it was used as a powder puff in makeup, and when lost or misplaced, it might delay a performance…bad luck. Hence the reverse when it wasn’t.”

SUPERSTITIOUS!, by Willard Heap

“The rabbit is a prolific animal, producing large numbers of offspring. For that reason, it was thought to possess a creative power superior to other animals, and thus became associated with prosperity and success. If a person carries a rabbit’s foot, preferably the left hind foot, good luck is sure to follow. True believers stroke their hands or faces with it, so they will have success in a new venture.”

SUPERSTITIOUS? HERE’S WHY, by Julie Forsyth Batchelor and Claudia De Lys

“The first fears and superstitions developed about the European hare…. Since most of the habits of these two are alike, superstitions about the hare also apply to the bunny.

“The ancients noticed many things about these timid creatures that they couldn’t explain, so they considered them both good and evil. They saw how rabbits came out at night to feed, and how they gathered in bands on clear moonlit nights to play as if influenced by the moon. Another astonishing fact was that northern hares were brown in summer and white in winter.