Do the British realize their country's shortcomings?

"People of so many nationalities come to live in England, that I dare say we don't give the matter a great deal of thought. I mean to say, if Americans choose to live here, and pay our outrageous taxes, and put up with our climate, I dare say we should be more flattered than anything else."

(from The Applegreen Cat, by Frances Crane)

Training to be a manhunter

"Listen, I didn't know a thing. I didn't know how to walk or talk or even eat right. I had to watch everything I said and did not o give myself away in that job, because when I applied I faked a high classa education on my application. But I learned. I went without food and lived in a dump in order to have clothes and an Arden Complexion and figure. Nature didn't give me this beyootiful silhouette, darling. I acquired it, and I keep it now by main force."

(from The Applegreen Cat, by Frances Crane)

The downside of tips

"The poor kid. She was such a good egg. Wouldn't hurt a fly, and would do anything for you, just anything. I hate to give money to people. That is one thing I can't get used to. I mean the tipping. It always seems a king of insult or something. I come from a little town in Indiana and there you wouldn't think of handing out money to people just because they'd been kind to you."

(from The Applegreen Cat, by Frances Crane)

Gail Davis trivia

She lived in McGehee and Little Rock, Arkansas, in her early years. She was the daughter of a prominent Little Rock physician, who went on to become the State Health Officer.

She made 20 films with Gene Autry.

She was the star of the Annie Oakley television series.

She made a guest appearance on The Andy Griffith Show as Thelma Lou's cousin.

She had to rise each morning at 4:00 while they were shooting the Annie Oakley series.

She said that Smiley Burnette was a wonderful cook.

Leo Carrillo trivia

He was most famous for playing The Cisco Kid's sidekick, Pancho.

He was of Castillian Spanish derivation, which means that the "double ll" in his name is pronounced with a liquid "L" sound, and not as a "y" as is the case in Mexican Spanish.

His great-great grandfather was governor of Alta California, and his great-uncle was a three-time mayor of Los Angeles. His father was the first mayor of Santa Monica.

A California State Park is named for him.

He was paid $500 per episode of the Cisco Kid television program.

His daughter was named Marie Antoinette.

His actual first name was Leopoldo.

English courtesy

    "Thank you, Madam," she said again. The polite people of England are eternally thanking you for nothing. She walked towards the door, and, her hand resting on the knob, said, "If you'll just leave your suit on the wardrobe, I'll press it when I can, Madam."

    "Why, thank you, Elsie."

    "Thank you Madam," she said, and went out.

(from The Applegreen Cat, by Frances Crane)

Charles Bronson trivia

At the height of his fame in the early 1970s, he was the world's #1 box office attraction, commanding $1 million per film.

His birth surname was Buchinsky. He was the 11th of fifteen children in a family of Lithuanian descent who lived in the coal region of Pennsylvania.

He learned to speak English when he was a teenager. Before that he spoke Lithuanian and Russian.

During the Depression his mother could not afford milk for his younger sister, so she fed her warm tea instead.

He flew 25 missions in a bomber during World War II and received a Purple Heart.

He said of himself, "I guess I look like a rock quarry that someone dynamited."

That guilty look

    Lady Lacklander stared at him like a basilisk. She had a habit of blinking slowly, her rather white eyelids dropping conspicuously like shutters: a slightly reptilian habit that was disconcerting. She blinked twice in this manner at Alleyn, and said, "What are you getting at, my dear Roderick? I hope you won't finesse too elaborately. Pray, tell us what you want."

    "Certainly. I want to know if, when I arrived, you were discussing Sir Harold Lacklander's memoirs."

    He knew by their very stillness that he had scored. It struck him, not for the first time, that people who have been given a sudden fright tend to look alike; a sort of homogeneous glassiness overtakes them.

(from Scales of Justice, by Dame Ngaio Marsh)

Fact and truth

    "What persuaded you to leave the Service for this unlovely trade?"

    "It's a long time ago," Alleyn said; "but I seem to remember that it had something to do with a liking for facts - "

    "Which should never be confused with the truth."

(from Scales of Justice, by Dame Ngaio Marsh)

Colorful British language

    "Do you mind having your brains picked at nine o'clock in the morning?"

    "What do you want with other people's brains, I should like to know," she said. Her eyes, screwed in between swags of flesh, glittered at him.

    Alleyn embarked on a careful tarradiddle. "We begin to wonder," he said, "If Carterette's murderer may have been lying doggo in the vicinity for some time before the assault."

(from Scales of Justice, by Dame Ngaio Marsh) 

Still wet behind the ears

He arrived with his alma mater's milk wet on his lips, full of sophisticated backchat and unsophisticated thinking.

(from Scales of Justice, by Dame Ngaio Marsh)

Right and justice

One of the more important moments in the film The Winslow Boy is when Sir Robert Morton distinguishes between "right" and "justice" during a discussion of the phrase in British jurisprudence, "Let right be done." Embodied in that discussion is the principle that there are limits to the ability of the law to ensure that the right thing is done.

Big band beginnings

Ann Sheridan was one of the biggest female movie stars of the 1930s and 1940s. While she was in college at what is now North Texas University, she sang with the jazz band. North Texas is now noted for having one of the best jazz programs in the country.

Village eccentric

    "Mr. Danberry-Phinn?" Alleyn said sharply.

    "Mr. Octavius Danberry-Phinn to give you the complete works. The 'Danberry' isn't insisted upon. He's the local eccentric I told you about. He lives in the top house up there. We don't have a village idiot in Swevenings; we have a bloody-minded old gentleman. It's more classy," said Sir James acidly.

    (from Scales of Justice, by Dame Ngaio Marsh)

Furze bushes

"Their torches flashed on rods of rain and dripping furze bushes." 

This is a line from Scales of Justice, by Dame Ngaio Marsh. I like that poetic description, "rods of rain." But I must admit that I had to look up what a furze bush is. It is a thorny evergreen shrub.

"Light cruisers"?

So it had fallen to Lady Lacklander to break the news to Kitty who she had found, wearing her black velvet tights and flame-coloured top, in the drawing room. Lady Lacklander in the course of a long life spent in many embassies had encountered every kind of eccentricity in female attire and was pretty well informed as to the predatory tactics of women whom, in the Far East, she had been wont to describe as "light cruisers."

(from Scales of Justice, by Dame Ngaio Marsh)

He missed an opportunity

Because of his prodigious dancing talents, Fred Astaire necessarily was cast in movies which had dancing in them at some point. However, his facial features, especially with make-up, would have lent themselves to horror movies. He easily could have played the role of a zombie or some such character.

Casual cat

"He had the air of having got himself together in a hurry and was attended by Mrs. Thomasina Twichett, who, after the manner of her kind, suggested that their association was purely coincidental."

Thomasina Twickett was a cat. Those marvelous creatures always have an air of disinterestedness, as if they are permanently "just passing through."

Out where men are men

Smith, on leaving Harvard, had been attracted by newspaper work, and had found his first billet on a Western journal of the type whose society column consists of such items as, "Jim Thompson was to town yesterday with a bunch of other cheap skates. We take this opportunity of once more informing Jim that he is a liar and a skunk," and whose editor works with a pistol on his desk and another in his hip-pocket. Graduating from this, he had proceeded to a reporter's post on a daily paper in Kentucky, where there were blood feuds and other Southern devices for preventing life from becoming dull.

(from The Prince and Betty, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Market value

She had come and gone as she pleased, her path smoothed by her stepfather's money, and she had been accustomed to consider herself free. She had learned wisdom now, and could understand that it was only by sacrificing such artificial independence that she could win through to freedom. The world was a market, and the only independent people in it were those who had a market value.

(from The Prince and Betty, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)