Bernstein, the motorcycle rider

Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990), the famous conductor, composer and pianist.

Arriving at an airport one day, Bernstein was asked by a photographer if he would mind posing for a picture astride a motorcycle. Bernstein objected. "I don't ride a motorcycle," he said. "It would be phony." The photographer tried to persuade him. He showed him the controls, explaining briefly how to operate them. "I'm sure you could ride it if you tried," he said encouragingly. Bernstein climbed onto the machine and, to the horror of his colleagues, shot off at top speed across the airfield. After a few other maneuvers he returned, grinning broadly. "Now you can take your picture," he announced. "I'm a motorcycle rider."

Here's another one that I also thought was funny.

Bernstein's father was criticized for not having given his talented son more encouragement when he was a child. He protested: "How was I to know he would grow up to be Leonard Bernstein?"

Paying for advertising

Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923). French actress.

Clergymen across the United States...denounced Sarah Bernhardt from their pulpits as the "whore of Babylon," thereby ensuring massive attendance at her performances. The Episcopalian bishop of Chicago having delivered a particularly effective piece of publicity, Bernhardt arranged for her agent to send him a note and a bank draft. "Your Excellency," the note read, "I am accustomed, when I bring an attraction to your town, to spend $400 on advertising. As you have done half the advertising for me, I herewith enclose $200 for your parish."

An appreciation for art

Tristan Bernard (1866-1947), French dramatist and novelist.

Bernard once won a newspaper competition by providing the best answer to the question: "If a fire broke out in the Louvre and you could save only one painting, which one would it be?" His reply was, "The one nearest the exit."

Learning Latin: look where it got me

Robert Charles Bentley (1889-1945), American humorist, editor of Vanity Fair, drama critic, published fifteen volumes of his collected humorous essays. Also an actor. This guy was very funny. Unfortunately in later years he succumbed to alcoholism.

Passing Ulysses S. Grant's tomb in New York, Benchley was seen to be scribbling something on the back of an envelope, which he slipped under the door of the monument. The note read: "Please leave 2 quarts Grade A and 1 pint whipping cream. U.S.G."

*****

A scene in one of Benchley's movie shorts required that he be strung up in a mess of telephone wires above a street. While waiting for the final camera, he said to his wife, Gertrude, "Remember how good at Latin I was in school?"

"Yes."

"Well, look where it got me."

Maurice Barrymore on America

Maurice Barrymore (1847-1905), born in England but later moved to the United States where he became an actor, and sired a family of actors (John, Lionel and Ethel). Great-grandfather of Drew Barrymore.

An English friend once scoffed at Maurice Barrymore's enthusiasm for his adopted country. "Why," he said, "we could go over to America and beat the daylights out of it any day."

"Again?" inquired Maurice.

J.M. Barrie's acting advice

Sir James Matthew Barrie (1860-1937), author of Peter Pan and other plays.

While producing one of his own plays, Barrie was approached by an inexperienced member of the cast. Although his part was a very minor one, the young actor, anxious to give it the right interpretation, sought Barrie's advice. Sir James gave the matter some thought. "I am glad you have asked me," he finally replied. "I should like you to convey when you are acting it that the man you portray has a brother in Shropshire who drinks port."

Ethan Allen: I'm off, boys...

Ethan Allen, of course, a prominent figure during the American Revolutionary War, who lived from 1738-89.

Ethan Allen with a group of associates attended a Sunday service led by a stern Calvinist preacher. He took as his text "Many shall strive to enter in, but shall not be able." God's grace was sufficient, observed the preacher, to include one person in ten, but not one in twenty would endeavor to avail himself of the offered salvation. Furthermore, not one man in fifty was really the object of God's solicitude, and not one in eighty--here Allen seized his hat and left the pew, saying, "I'm off, boys. Any one of you can take my chance."

Pound vs. Abercrombie

I have read somewhere the bumper sticker wisdom: "Stupidity carried beyond a certain point becomes a public menace." In fact I'm pretty sure I've at least seen it on a t-shirt. Well, here's...the rest of the story.

Lascelles Abercrombie was a British poet and critic and professor of English literature at Leeds and London universities, who lived from 1881-1938. Ezra Pound was Ezra Pound.

Abercrombie had expressed an opinion with which the poet Ezra Pound violently disagreed. "Dear Mr. Abercrombie," wrote Pound. "Stupidity carried beyond a certain point becomes a public menace. I hereby challenge you to a duel, to be fought at the earliest moment that is suited to your convenience..." Abercrombie was rather disturbed by the challenge, knowing of Pound's skill at fencing, but then he remembered with relief that the choice of weapons lay with the party challenged. "May I suggest," he replied, "that we bombard each other with unsold copies of our own books?" Pound, having far more "weapons" than his opponent, immediately withdrew the challenge.

Frank Lloyd Wright and Rex Stout

In 1930 novelist Rex Stout built a fourteen-room house, with his own hands, on a hilltop in Danbury, Connecticut. Later he invited Frank Lloyd Wright out to see it and waited patiently for his evaluation. Wright examined it carefully and then said, "A superb spot. Someone should build a house here."

An anecdote I can empathize with

Evelyn Waugh, British novelist, who lived from 1903-66. Waugh was male, by the way. He converted to Catholicism in 1930. This was told by Joseph Epstein (an American essayist).

"Once, when he had behaved with particular rudeness to a young French intellectual at a dinner party in Paris at the home of Nancy Mitford, Miss Mitford, angry at his social brutality, asked him how he could behave so meanly and yet consider himself a believing and practicing Catholic. 'You have no idea,' Waugh returned, 'how much nastier I would be if I was not a Catholic. Without supernatural aid I would hardly be a human being.'"

Dante

I recently finished re-reading a collection of anecdotes. Some of them struck as especially funny or interesting. I may post a few more of these in the future. Here's one that cracked me up.

Lope Félix de Vega Carpio was a Spanish playwright who lived from 1562-1635.

On his deathbed in 1635, Vega asked how much time he had left. Assured that his death was at hand, he murmured, "All right, then, I'll say it: Dante makes me sick."