The Ameches

     In my youth, I remember vividly one television program called International Showtime. Each week it would feature a different circus. The host was Don Ameche. Decades later, when my wife and I became big fans of old movies, we got more acquainted with Ameche's career as an actor, which spanned 58 years, and included an Oscar late in his career. He was married for 54 years to Honore Prendergast, who bore him six children.

Don's younger brother was Jim, who was about seven years his junior. He also acted, although his career was more heavily weighted toward radio. Jim also had six children.

A cousin of the acting Ameches was Alan "The Horse" Ameche, who won the Heiman Trophy in college and went on to play six seasons in the NFL.

Her Honor the Mayor

 Beverly Garland was a busy television actress from 1949 to 2005, perhaps best known for her role on the My Three Sons sitcom. Like several other actors and actresses, she served as an Honorary Mayor of a California city, in her case North Hollywood. For 39 years, she had the somewhat unwieldly real-life designation of Mrs. Filmore Crank.

Quite a noise!

     What a female novelist wants with an occasional table in her study containing a vase, two framed photographs, a saucer, a lacquer box, and a jar of potpouri, I don't know; but that was that Bingo's Rosie had, and I caught it squarely with my right hip and knocked it endways. It seemed to me for a moment as if the whole world had dissolved into a kind of cataract of glass and china. A few years ago, when I legged it to America to elude my Aunt Agatha, who was out with her hatchet, I remember going to Niagara and listening to the Falls. They made much the same sort of row, but not so loud.

(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Bad memory is the secret

     "Change of scene is the thing. I heard of a man. Girl refused him. Man went abroad. Two months later girl wired him, 'Come back, Muriel.' Man started to write out a reply, suddenly found that he couldn't remember girl's surname, so never answered at all, and lived happily ever after."

(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Brainy girls, dull boys

     "It is a known scientific fact that there is a particular style of female that does seem strangely attracted to the sort of fellow I am."

    "Very true, sir."

    "I mean to say, I know perfectly well that I've got, roughly speaking, half the amount of brain a normal bloke ought to possess. And when a girl comes along who has about twice the regular allowance, she too often makes a bee line for me with the love light in her eyes. I don't know how to account for it, but it is so."

    "It may be Nature's provision for maintaining the balance of the species, sir."

    "Very possibly. Anyway, it has happened to me over and over again. It was what happened in the case of Honoria Glossop. She was notoriously one of the brainiest women of her year at Girton, and she just gathered me in like a bull pup swallowing a piece of steak."

(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Cheerful family

     "No doubt you remember my mother?" said Professor Pringle mournfully, indicating Exhibit A.

    "Oh-ah!" I said, achieving a bit of a beam.

    "And my aunt," sighed the prof, as if things were getting worse and worse.

    "Well, well, well!" I said, shooting another beam in the direction of Exhibit B.

    "They were saying only this morning that they remembered you," groaned the prof, abanoning all hope.

    There was a pause. The whole strength of the company gazed at me like a family group out of one of Edgar Allan Poe's less cheery yarns, and I felt my joie de vivre dying at the roots.

(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

It's rough being poor

     As I stood in my lonely bedroom at the hotel, trying to tie my white tie myself, it struck me for the first time that there must be whole squads of chappies in the world who had to get along without a man to look after them. I'd always thought of Jeeves as a kind of natural phenomenon; but of course, when you come to think of it, there must be quite a lot of fellows who have to press their own clothes themselves, and haven't got anybody to bring them tea in the morning, and so on. It was rather a solemn thought, don't you know. I mean to say, ever since then I've been able to appreciate the frightful privations the poor have to stick.

(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Not her favorite limey

     "I don't understand a word you say. You're English, aren't you?"

    I admitted it. She didn't say a word. And she did it in a way that made it worse than if she had spoken for hours. Somehow it was brought home to me that she didn't like Englishmen, and that if she had had to meet an Englishman I was the one she'd have chosen last."

(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Groucho's wives

     Famous comedian Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx was from 1947 to 1961 the host of the game show "You Bet Your Life." For most of the time it ran on both radio and television. The personna which Groucho cultivated on the air was that of a lecherous "dirty old man" type. Evidently that may not have been too far from reality.

    Groucho was married three times. His first wife was a chorus girl. He was 29 at the time, and she was 19. His second wife was 21 when they married, and he was 54. At the time of his third marriage, he was 64 and the bride was 24.

One of those looks

     She looked at me in rather a rummy way. It was a nasty look. It made me feel as if I were something the dog had brought in and intended to bury later on, when he had time. My own Aung Agatha, back in England, has looked at me in exactly the same way many a tie, and it nevr fails to make my spine curl.

(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

The easy life

     He had his scheme of life worked out to a fine point. About once a month he would take three days writing a few poems; the other three hundred and twenty-nine days of the year he rested. I didn't know there was enough money in poetry to support a chappie, even in the way in which Rocky lived; but it seems that, if you stick to exhortaions to young men to lead the strenuous life and don't shove in any rhymes, American editors fight for the stuff.

(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

NOT a brain surgeon

     I could guess what the old boy was thinking. He was trying to square all this prosperity with what he knew of poor old Bicky. And one had to admit that it took a lot of squaring, for dear old Bicky, though a stout fellow and absolutely unrivalled as an imitator of bull-terriers and cats, was in many ways one of the most pronounced fatheads that ever pulled on a suit of gents' underwear.

(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Mr. Basketball

     Almost forgotten in today's media saturation is the first mega-star of the NBA. George Mikan would be scoffed at today when athletic 7-footers abound on every corner, but he revolutionized the game of basketball and made the big man relevant. True basketball fans know who he was, but since his playing career ended about the time I was born, there is not much film footage of his playing.

    Mikan was born in Joliet, Illinois to a Croatian father and a Lithuanian mother. As a boy, he shattered one of his knees so badly that he was kept in bed for a year and a half. When he entered DePaul University, he was an awkward 6-10 boy who wore thick glasses because of his near-sightedness. Legendary coach Ray Meyer taught Mikan to shoot hook shots with either hand - long before Lew Alcindor did it.

    Mikan married his girlfriend in 1947, and they remained together for 58 years until his death. They had six children. Mikan was what he appeared to be - a "gentle giant" who was tough and relentless on the court, but friendly and amicable in private life. He suffered from diabetes, and in his later years his right leg was amputated below the knee.

    Shaquille O'Neal paid for Mikan's funeral, saying, "Without Number 99 (Mikan), there is no me."

Good dog!

     "Where's that dog, Jeeves? Have you got him tied up?"

    "The animal is no longer here, sir. His lordship gave him to the porter, who sold him. His lordship took a prejudice against the animal on account of being bitten by him in the calf of the leg."

    I don't think I've ever been so bucked by a bit of news. I felt I had misjudged Rollo. Evidently, when you got to know him better, he had a lot of good in him.

(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Rollo's nose

     "Rollo is not used to you yet, sir," said Jeeves, regarding the bally quadruped in an admiring sort of way. "He is an excellent watch-dog."

    "I don't want a watch-dog to keep me out of my rooms."

    "No, sir."

    "Well, what am I to do?"

    "No doubt in time the animal will learn to disciminate, sir. He will learn to distinguish your peculiar scent."

    "What do you mean - my peculiar scent? Correct the impression that I intend to hang about in the hall while life slips by, in the hope that one of these days that dashed animal will decide that I smell all right."

(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

She was a broad Broad

     She fitted into my biggest arm-chair as if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing arm-chairs tight about the hips that season.

(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)