Better make SURE it cannot happen

"The impossible sometimes permits itself the luxury of occurring."

(Charlie Chan's Chance)

Buster V. Davenport - one of Lum and Abner's funniest

One of the funniest sequence of programs in the entire history of the Lum and Abner radio show is when Grandpappy Spears is hit on the head and gets amnesia. He then concludes that his name is Buster V. Davenport (because those initials are in his underwear), and that he is a vacuum cleaner salesman from Toledo. Great fun!

The curse of Literary Societies

I do not know if you have had any experience of suburban literary societies, but the one that flourished under the eye of Mrs. Willoughby Smethurst at Wood Hills was rather more so than the average. With my feeble powers of narrative, I cannot hope to make clear to you all that Cuthbert Banks endured in the next few weeks. And, even if I could, I doubt if I should do so. It is all very well to excite pity and terror, as Aristotle recommends, but there are limits. In the ancient Greek tragedies it was an ironclad rule that all the real rough stuff should take place off-stage, and I shall follow this admirable principle. It will suffice if I say merely that J. Cuthbert Banks had a thin time. After attending eleven debates and fourteen lectures on vers libre Poetry, the Seventeenth-Century Essayists, the Neo-Scandinavian Movement in Portugese Literature, and other subjects of a similar nature, he grew so enfeebled that, on the rare occasions when he had time for a visit to the links, he had to take a full iron for his mashie shots.

(from The Clicking of Cuthbert, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Not very conducive to romantic thought

There is probably no better corrective of the pangs of hopeless love than a real, steady application to the prosaic details of an estate. The heart finds it difficult to ache its hardest while the mind is busy with such items as Sixty-one pounds, eight shillings and fivepence, due to Messrs Truby and Gaunt for Fixing Gas Engine, or the claim of the Country Gentleman's Association for eight pounds eight and fourpence for seeds. Add drains, manure, and feed of pigs, and you find yourself immediately in an atmosphere where Romeo himself would have let his mind wander.

(from Money For Nothing, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Dante television program

This series  starred Howard Duff of Sam Spade radio fame as a night club owner who ends up being a detective most of the time. Sort of reminds you of Rocky Jordan. The plots are interesting, and the supporting cast is strong. A number of the episodes are available on Youtube.

Alan Mowbray - one of our favorites

He was in at least one of the Sherlock Holmes movies; he starred as the head waiter in the Dante television series; as the sidekick of the Lone Wolf in one of the films in that series; and in an almost endless series of guest appearances in numerous movies and television shows. Always entertaining. Always classy.

Watch out!

If you are ever in a detective program, and at some point someone you don't know or someone you suspect offers you coffee, DON'T DRINK IT!! It will be a mickey. (You would think these dumb gumshoes would have figured that out by now.)

I take it he was not overly intelligent

"Sweet potatoes!" moaned Dolly. "Use your bean, you poor sap, use your bean. If you had another brain you'd have just one."

(from Money For Nothing, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Here is a creative insult

          "I don't get it," he said.
          Mrs. Molloy straightened herself militantly in her chair. Of all masculine defects, she liked slowness of wit least; and she had never been a  great admirer of Mr. Twist.
          "You poor, nut-headed swozzie," she said with heat. What don't you get? It's simple enough, isn't it?

(from Money For Nothing, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Nut-headed swozzie? Now there is a new one to me. I'll have to remember that one. Might or might not want to use it, depending on what it means in the ever-changing world of slang.

"Time for a work break"

The President of a company I worked for in my youth used to say that when he needed to talk to someone who was engaged in a non-essential conversation. I get to feeling like that quite a bit of the time, myself.

Sort of deadpan?

          "You know what old John is. One of these strong, silent fellows who looks on all occasions like a stuffed frog."
          "He doesn't."
          "Pardon me," said Hugo firmly. "Have you ever seen a stuffed frog? Well, I have. I had one for years when I was a kid. And John has exactly the same power of expressing emotion."

(from Money For Nothing, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Trivia facts about The Quiet Man (movie)

LINK

Not as attractive as he had thought

Left alone at the table with nothing to entertain him but his thoughts, John came almost immediately to the conclusion that his first verdict on the Mustard Spoon had been an erroneous one. Looking at it superficially, he had mistaken it for rather an attractive place: but now, with maturer judgment, he saw it for what it was - a blot on a great city. It was places like the Mustard Spoon that made a man despair of progress. He disliked the clientele. He disliked the head waiter. He disliked the orchestra. The clientele was flashy and offensive and, as regarded the male element of it, far too given to the use of hair oil. The head waiter was a fat parasite who needed kicking. And, as for Ben Baermann's Collegiate Buddies, he resented the fact that they were being paid for making the sort of noises which he, when a small boy, had produced - for fun and with no thought of sordid gain - on a comb with a bit of tissue paper over it.

(from Money For Nothing, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Trying to figure Bing Crosby

He was not tall, nor athletic. He was not bad looking, but with those ears certainly not dashingly handsome. (And, of course, there was that famous pot belly.) He had a smooth style, but it had enough of a dash of the corny that it did not rate with many of the great screen lovers. He was no challenge to Adolph Menjou as a stylish dresser. He was an awkward kisser and dancer on the screen. Yet he ranks as one of the great heart-throbs of all time. Go figure. I guess it must have been that voice, reckon?

Diminishing regard

There had been a period when, he being fifteen and she ten, Pat had lavished on him all the worship of a small girl for a big boy who can wiggle his ears and is not afraid of cows. But since then her attitude had changed. Her manner towards him nowadays alternated between that of a nurse towards a child who is not quite right in the head and that of the owner of a clumsy but rather likeable dog.

(from Money For Nothing, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

The Emperor Waltz

This is a Bing Crosby movie, pure schmaltz, waltzes, and sentimentality, with some gorgeous Austrian scenery. Not to mention a very nice love story and a couple of the most beautiful tunes Crosby ever sang. "I Kiss Your Hand, Madame" is a song  that will get in your mind and stay there.

Here is a LINK to the song.

Curious names for best friends

It is evident when reading the Sherlock Holmes stories that Holmes and Watson are best friends. Yet, they always address one another by their surnames, not their first names. It is always Holmes or Watson, never Sherlock or John. Sort of an unfamiliar familiarity.

She's getting ready to explode!

There was the sort of silence which I believe cyclones drop into for several seconds before getting down to it and starting to give the populace the works. Throbbing? Yes, throbbing wouldn't be a bad word to describe it. Nor would electric; for the matter of that, and if you care to call it ominous, it would be all right with me. It was a silence of the type that makes the toes curl and sends a shiver down the spinal cord as you stand waiting for the bang. I could see Aunt Dahlia swelling slowly like a chunk of bubble gum, and a less prudent man than Bertram Wooster would have warned her again about her blood pressure.

(from How Right You Are, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

In other words, she is stupid

The silly young geezer. I nearly conked her one with my trowel. I'd always thought her half-baked, but now I think they didn't even put her in the oven.

(from How Right You Are, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

One reason I am for law and order

A few years back (well, quite a few years), I stood a reasonably good chance of out-running any bad guys who might accost me with weapons other than firearms. Not any more. It would have to a thug from the Sunnyvale Nursing Home if I was to outrun him these days, and that might be a doubtful issue.

Why only one?

I listened to the last movement of the Grieg Piano Concerto on the way to work today, and was reminded again of what a monumental composition it is. Surely it is one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written.

This raises the question of why Grieg wrote only one Concerto. If this one was such a success, why not duplicate the effort. I have no idea why, of course, but perhaps we can find the answer in considering other famous efforts in that field. Rachmaninoff wrote four Piano Concertos, but it is the gorgeous Second that we remember. Prokofiev wrote five Concertos, but it is the pyrotechnics of the Third that make their way to the stage most often. Maybe Grieg figured that if you have hit a home run, there is no need to go to the plate again.

Terror-ists

We sometimes forget that the main object of terrorists is not necessarily to inflict damage, but to inculcate fear. It is not so much what happens as what might happen. Hitler was able to do that with continental Europe, but not with Britain. In fact, in his first important speech as Prime Minister, Winston Churchill said that their nation's object was "victory in spite of all terror."

Wesley?

Chester Wesley  Proudfoot: that was his full name, I learned today from an old Gunsmoke radio episode. He had inherited $300+ from a cousin in Texas and had a terrible time trying to decide what to do with it.

One of the really loaded straight lines

"Mortimer, how can you be so stupid?"

This is what Edgar Bergen asked Mortimer Snerd each week on their radio show. Mortimer always had a clever come-back.

Not-so-tasty breakfasts

          "Was he the Pride of the School?"
          "Oh, rather."
          "Not that it was much of a school to be the pride of, from what he tells me. A sort of Dotheboys Hall, wasn't it?"
          "Conditions under Aubrey Upjohn were fairly tough. One's mind reverts particularly to the sausages on Sunday."
          "Reggie was very funny about those. He said they were made, not from contented pigs, but from pigs which had expired, regretted by all, of glanders, the botts and tuberculosis."

(from How Right You Are, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

The potato's effect on America

According to the BBC (Link), one-eighth of the population of Ireland died during the Great Famine of the mid-1800's, and about twice that number emigrated to America. So, if you are of Irish lineage, and you now live in America, your presence here is very likely related to the potato crop.

Tunney Plastic Surgery Co.

I took a seat and resumed my reading. I had had to leave off at a point where Ma Cream had just begun to spit on her hands and start filling the customers with pity and terror. But I hadn't put more than a couple of clues and a mere sprinkling of human gore under my belt, when the door flew open and Kipper appeared. And as the eye rested on him, he too filled me with pity and terror, for his map was flushed and his manner distraught. He looked like Jack Dempsey at the conclusion of his first conference with Gene Tunney, the occasion, if you remember, when he forgot to duck.

(from How Right You Are, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

The summer that would not end

1980 was the most  brutal summer of my recollection. Day after day of 100-plus temperatures, and no rain. And perhaps the worst part was that the heat did not break when it should have. I note that the record high for our area for today (September 14) is 103 degrees, set in 1980. The average high for today is 85. As the heat dragged on into autumn, it was exceptionally oppressive on the souls of most of us. When is it going to cool off?!

Double-barrell comic fun on radio

There are not a lot of episodes of The Penny Singleton Show radio program still existing, but they are a real treat because they had both Jim Backus and Gale Gordon in prominent roles. Having those two paragons of radio comedy on the same program is great fun.

What if harps were standard equipment?

Harps are used in some orchestral compositions, but by no means all of them. In common with the woodwinds, harps would not make a huge audible difference when the entire orchestra is playing loudly, but in the quieter sections, having a harp involved makes a profound difference in the sound. What if harps became as standard in orchestral instrumentation as clarinets? If a composer would do that, it likely would give his music a very unique identity.

A sympathetic listener

If I do say so, I told my story well, omitting no detail however slight. I had him Bless-my-soul-ing throughout, and when I had finished he t'ck-t'ck-t'ck-ed and said it must have been most unpleasant for me, and I said that "unpleasant" covered the facts like the skin on a sausage.

(from How Right You Are, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

No beauty queen

Mind you, I'm not saying a word against old Kipper. The salt of the earth. But nobody could have called him a knock-out in the way of looks. Having gone in a lot for boxing from his earliest years, he had the cauliflower ear of which I had spoken to Aunt Dahlia and in addition this a nose which some hidden hand had knocked slightly out of the straight. He would, in short, have been an unsafe entrant to have backed in a beauty contest, even if the only other competitors had been Boris Karloff, King Kong and Oofy Prosser of the Drones

(from How Right You Are, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Handle with care

Aunt Dahlia, describing  this young blister as a one-girl beauty chorus, had called her shots perfectly correctly. Her outer crust was indeed of a nature to cause those beholding it to rock back on their heels with a startled whistle. But while equipped with eyes like twin stars, hair ruddier than the cherry, oomph, espieglerie and all the fixings. B. Wickham had also the disposition and general outlook on life of a ticking bomb. In her society you always had the uneasy feeling that something was likely to go off at any moment with a pop. You never knew what she was going to do next or into what murky depths of soup she would carelessly plunge you.

(from How Right You Are, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Those fearsome butlers

It is a very intrepid young man who can see an English butler steadily and see him whole without feeling a wormlike humility, and all Jerry's previous encounters with Beach - in corridors, in the hall, at lunch and at dinner - had left him with the impression that his feet were too large, his ears too red and his social status something in between that of a Dead End kid and a badly dressed leper. There were cats on the premises of Blandings Castle, and those gooseberry eyes had always made him feel that he might have been some unsavoury object dragged in by one of these cats, one of the less fastidious ones.

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

No kidding!

The world may be roughly divided into two classes - men who, when you tell them a story difficult to credit, will not believe you, and men who will. It was to this latter and far more likeable section of the community that, judging by his fatuous expression, George Cyril Wellbeloved belonged. He had the air, which Jerry found charming, of being a man who would accept without question whatever anybody cared to tell him. His whole aspect was that of one who believed everything he read in the Sunday papers.

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Corpses, but not pigs!

If Lancelot Cooper, handing him the keys, had said, "Oh, by the way, when you get to Sunnybrae, you will find the kitchen rather full of pigs, I'm afraid," he would have known where he was. But not a word had been spoken on the subject. The animal had come upon him as a complete surprise, and he sought in vain for an explanation of its presence. It was not as though it had been a corpse with a severed head. A corpse with a severed head in the kitchen of Sunnybrae he could have understood. As a writer of mystery thrillers, he knew that you are apt to find corpses with severed heads pretty well anywhere. But why a pig?

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Carmen Miranda? This one I would not have guessed.

In 1946 she was the highest-paid woman in America according to the St. Petersburg Times. LINK

He couldn't help how he looked

The junior partner of Caine and Cooper, though a man of blameless life, had one of those dark, saturnine faces which suggest a taste for the more sinister forms of crime, and on one cheek of that dark, saturnine face was a long scar. Actually it had been cause by the bursting of a gingerbeer bottle at a Y.M.C.A. picnic, but it gave the impression of being the outcome of battles of knives in the cellars of the underworld. And on top of all that, he had been wearing lavender gloves.

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Shostakovich could finish a symphony, too

Beethoven definitely knew how to finish a symphony. So did Bruckner and Mahler. But they were by no means the only composers who could. Take, for instance the end of Dmitri Shostakovich's 5th Symphony. Here is the LINK. Start at about the 44:30 mark. Less than two minutes, but it is stirring music.

At the end of the premier performance in 1937, it received an ovation that lasted well over a half hour.

Recycling radio music

Once again, I heard some of the music from the Barry Craig radio program and also from Tales of the Texas Rangers, this time on Hollywood Star Playhouse. It is amazing how much musical recycling was done.

Those blasted authors!

Authors are like that. No reticence. No reserve. You or I, or Beach, finding a pig in the kitchen of a furnished villa in which we had just hung up our hats, would keep calm and wait till the clouds rolled by. But not an author. The first thing this blighted Vail will do, unless nipped in the bud, will be to rush out and grab the nearest passer-by and say, "Pardon me for addressing you, sir, but there appears to be a pig in my kitchen. Have you any suggestions?" And then what? I'll tell you what. Doom, desolation and despair. In next to no time the news will have reached Parsloe, stirring him up like a dose of salts and bringing him round to Sunnybrae with a whoop and a holler.

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Not very tasty

"Have your story all planned out. Get tough with her. Talk out of the side of your mouth. For heaven's sake, Clarence, don't keep groaning like that. She can't eat you. And I don't suppose she'll want to," said Gally, "for anything more closely resembling a condemned food product I never saw in my life."

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Composure under fire

With the possible exception of Mrs. Emily Post, a few of the haughtier Duchesses and the late Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, the British barmaid, trained from the earliest years to behave with queenly dignity under the most testing conditions, stands alone in the matter of poise.

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

A wife in the series

Remember this face from Hogan's Heroes in three different episodes? She was Louise Troy, who was the real-life wife of Werner Klemperer, who played Colonel Klink.

Pride before the fall

"Swelled head sometimes give police more cooperation than criminal mistake." (Charlie Chan at Treasure Island)

Wrong numbers

"There is always something intriguing and stimulating about the ringing of a telephone bell. Will this, we ask ourselves,  be the girl we love, or will it be somebody named Ed who, all eagerness to establish communication with someone named Charlie, has had the misfortune to get the wrong number? Jerry, though always glad to chat with people who got the wrong number, hoped it would be Penny." (from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

I once had a lady call our number at work, and it took me five minutes of steady back-and-forth to convince her that this was not the jail, and that I had no idea when the man of her dreams was going to get out of jail.

Lord Epping

The Mexican Spitfire series of movies, starring Lupe Velez, are  entertaining taken one at a time, since a little of Velez goes a long way. The main attraction of the films is the performance of Leon Errol in the dual role of Uncle Matt Lindsay and Lord Epping, not to mention Uncle Matt disguising himself as Epping.

Rathbone and Bruce as Holmes and Watson

If you are a fan of the Rathbone/Bruce series of Sherlock Holmes fans, as my wife and I definitely are, then you may like this LINK.

Women on the telephone

For some moments after silence had come like a poultice to heal the blows of sound, all that occupied his mind was the thought of what pests the gentler sex were when they got hold of a telephone. The instrument seemed to go to their heads like a drug. Connie Keeble,for instance. Nice sensible woman when you talked to her face to face, never tried to collar the conversation and all that, but the moment she got on the telephone, it was gab, gab, gab, and all about nothing.

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Dragnet - sometimes too realistic

Jack Webb's object in the Dragnet radio show was to show the real-life situations of police officers. To that end, the program included lots of conversations about completely mundane subjects that were irrelevant to the case on the program. All that is well and good, and it reinforced the idea that cops are just real people, but it also made big portions of the show very uninteresting.

What you want is a pig expert

          George Cyril Wellbeloved was a long, lean, red-haired man with strabismus in the left eye. This rendered his left eye rather unpleasant to look at, and as even the right eye was nothing to cause lovers of the beautiful to turn handsprings, one can readily understand why Sir Gregory during the chat which followed preferred to avert his gaze as much as possible.
          But, after all, what is beauty? Skin deep, you might say. His O. C. Pigs had a mouth like a halibut's, a broken nose acquired during a political discussion at the Emsworth Arms, and lots of mud all over him, but when you are engaging a pig man, Sir  Gregory felt, you don't want a sort of male Miss America, you want someone who knows about pigs. And what George Cyril Wellbeloved did not know about pigs could have been written on one of Maudie Montrose's picture postcards.

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

More brains than a cuckoo clock?

          "Come, come, Jeeves. Would I start pressing gloves to my lips at the moment when I was about to pinch a policeman's helmet?"
          "Apparently Mr. Pinker did, sir."
          I was on the point of explaining to him that what old Stinker would do in any given situation and what the ordinary, normal person with a couple of ounces more brain than a cuckoo clock would do were two vastly different things,when I was interrupted by the re-entrance of  Gussie.

(from The Code of the Woosters, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Just like Sherlock

I was astounded at my keeness of perception. The moment I had set eyes on Spode, if you remember, I had said  to myself, "What ho! A Dictator," and a Dictator he had proved to be. I couldn't have made a better shot if I had been one of those detectives who see a chap walking along the street and deduce that he is a retired manufacturer of poppet valves named Robinson with rheumatism in one arm, living in Clapham

(from The Code of the Woosters, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Marlowe just got knocked out

I listened to an episode of Phillip Marlowe on the way to work today. He took a gun butt to the head and got knocked out. Naturally. All good private eyes get knocked out.

Not a poetic soul

I remember Mrs. Bingo Little once telling me, shortly after their marriage, that Bingo said poetic things to her about sunsets - his best friends being perfectly well aware, of course, that the old egg never noticed a sunset in his life  and that, if he did by a fluke ever happen to do so, the only thing he would say about it would be that it reminded him of a slice of roast beef, cooked just right.

(from The Code of the Woosters, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Quite a curse!

          "Bertie," she said, "I wish to begin by saying a few words about Sir Watkyn Bassett, C.B.E. May green fly attack his roses. May his cook get tight on the night of the big dinner party. May all his hens get the staggers."
          "Does he keep hens?" I said, putting a point.
          "May his cistern start leaking, and may white ants, if there are any in England, gnaw away the foundations of Totleigh Towers. And when he walks up the aisle with his daughter Madeline, to give her away to that ass Spink-Bottle, may he get a sneezing fit and find that he has come out without a pocket handkerchief."

(from The Code of the Woosters, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Stay on the good side of JPs

The thing that poisons life for a country policeman, the thing that makes him pick at the coverlet and brings him out in rashes, is the ever-present fear that one of these days he may talk out of turn and get in wrong with a Justice of the Peace. He knows what happens when you get in wrong with Justices of the Peace. They lay for you. They bide their time. And sooner or later they catch you bending, and the next thing you know you've drawn a strong rebuke from the bench. And if there is one experience the young copper wishes to avoid, it is being in the witness-box and having the Bench look coldly at him and say something beginning with, "Then are we to understand, officer . . .?" and culminating in the legal equivalent of the raspberry or Bronx cheer.

(from The Mating Season, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

The Doctor Watsons of this world

Although Sherlock Holmes was fictitious, his relationship with Watson was not. It is not an uncommon thing for brilliant people to feel the need for a companion in order to do their best work. These sidekick generally contribute little from a cognitive standpoint, but their very proximity seems to serve as a motivation or a to have a stabilizing effect upon the primary member of the duo.

In short, squashed

I have spoken earlier of the tendency of the spirit of the Woosters to rise when crushed to earth, but there is a limit, and this limit had now been reached. At these frightful words, the spirit of the Woosters felt as if it had been sat on by an elephant. And not one of your steamlined, schoolgirl-figured elephants, either. A big, fat one.

(from The Mating Season, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

La Boheme - again

For the third time since I got satellite radio in my car, I got to listen to the last scene of La Boheme as I was riding to work. This time it was from 1952, with Licia Albanese and Giuseppe Di Stefano in the lead roles.

"Poor folks got poor ways"

So often young couples  starting out in marriage have a hard time making it financially. There is nothing wrong with that. It teaches them how to make it on just a little, draws them together, etc. But what happens too often is that young couples want to start off where their parents finished. They forget that poor folks can't live like rich folks - and stay solvent.

Yestreen

We are no longer a very expressive people, in contrast to our European forebears. "Yestreen" means "last night" or "yesterday evening." Might even make an interesting girl's name, what?

Why wouldn't my watch have a second hand?

It's a secondhand watch.

(Mortimer Snerd, on the Edgar Bergen radio show)

Public policy affects names

We used to eat boysenberry pie. But of course, now that we must recognize gender equality, we have to eat personsenberry pie.

Surprise?

"Surprised detective might as well clutch iron ball and dive in lake."

(Charlie Chan in The Shanghai Chest)

Hats and headrests

One of the blows to the habit of wearing dress hats are the headrests that are mandatory in cars today. With a bill in the back, it is difficult to wear hats while driving, and unless you spend a lot of time outdoors, it is just not worth the trouble. So, ball caps have replaced hats.

Unique odor

It was one of those mid-Victorian jobs in glazed red brick which always seem to bob up in these olde-world hamlets and do so much to encourage the drift to the towns. Its interior, like those of all the joints of its kind I've ever some across, was dingy and fuggy and smelled in about equal proportions of apples, chalk, damp plaster, Boy Scouts and the sturdy English peasantry.

(from The Mating Season, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

McLaglen the boxer

Movie fans know of his famous battle with John Wayne in The Quiet Man, but perhaps not all of them know that Victor McLaglen was a real-life boxer and wrestler before he entered the field of acting. In fact, in 1918 he was the heavyweight champion of the British Army.

Deliver us from well-meaning people

          My heart stood still. I clutched at the windscreen for support, and what-whatted.
          "The great thing to remember, the thing to bear in mind and keep the attention fixed on, is that he meant well."
          My heart stood stiller. In your walks about London you will sometimes see bent, haggard figures that look as if they had recently been caught in some powerful machinery. They are those fellows who got mixed up with Catsmeat when he was meaning well.

(from The Mating Season, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
         

No eating and running here

Instead of the ordinary dinner, a regular binge had been arranged, with guests from all over the countryside. No fewer than ten of Hampshire's more prominent stiffs had been summoned to the trough, and they stuck on like limpets long after any competent chucker-out would have bounced them. No doubt, if you have gone to the sweat of driving twenty miles to a house to dine, you don't feel like just snatching a chop and dashing off.

(from The Mating Season, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Tough aunts

"It's the old dragon gag. In the days when knights were bold, as you probably know, girls used to hound fellows into going out and fighting dragons. I expect your old pal Childe Roland had it happen to him a dozen times. But dragons are one thing and aunts are another. I have no doubt that Esmond Haddock would spring to the task of taking on a fire-breathing dragons, but there isn't the remotest chance of him ever standing up to Dame Daphne Winkworth, and the Misses Charlotte, Emmeline, Harriet and Myrtle Deverill and making them play ball."

(from The Mating Game, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Restful reading

I have generally found on these occasions when the heart is heavy that the best thing to do is to curl up with a good goose-flesher and try to forget, and fortunately I had packed among my effects one called Murder At Greystone Grange. I started to turn its pages now, and found that I couldn't have made a sounder move. It was one of those works in which Baronets are constantly being discovered dead in libraries and the heroine can't turn in for the night without a Thing popping through a panel in the wall of her bedroom and starting to chuck its weight about, and it was not long before I was so soothed that I was able to switch off the light and fall into a refreshing sleep.

(from The Mating Season, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Perseverence

His whole attitude recalled irresistibly to tie mind that of some assiduous hound who will persist in laying a dead rat on the drawing-room carpet, though repeatedly apprised by word and gesture that the market for same is sluggish or even nonexistent.

(from The Code of the Woosters, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Not a fresh smell

Eve went in. The single sitting-room of the cottage certainly bore out the promise of the exterior. It contained a table with a red cloth, a chair, three stuffed birds in a glass case on the wall, and a small horsehair sofa. A depressing musty scent pervaded the place, as if a cheese had recently died there in painful circumstances.

(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Be prepared

Meanwhile, back in Confusion, circumstances were moving men on the chessboard to involve Matt Coburn. For there are, in the affairs of men and nations, inexorable tides  from which they cannot remain aloof. If they do not enter upon them prepared, they will be caught unprepared, and at the wrong time.

(from The Empty Land, by Louis L'Amour)

The making of peace

"If you're going to have peace rather than violence, both sides have got to want it. Once side alone  can't make peace. You cannot go down there and talk the law and the rights of the public to men who can only profit by breaking the law. They just aren't going to listen."

(from The Empty Land, by Louis L'Amour)

Jester Hairston - one actor who stuck with it

He was more famous as a conductor and arranger of spirituals, but he also did a good bit of acting on radio, television and the movies. Jester Hairston was married to the former Isabelle Margaret Swanigan for 47 years. I actually got to see him direct a master class on spirituals while I was in college.

LINK to Hairston conducting Elijah Rock.

Calm aplomb to the end

I  relapsed into a baffled silence. But it is never any good repining on these occasions. When I next spoke, I doubt if Catsmeat spotted the suspicion of a tremor in the voice. We Woosters are like that. In moments of mental anguish we resemble those Red Indians who, while getting cooked a crisp at the stake, never failed to be the life and soul of the party.

(from The Mating Season, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

A tough old babe

The thought crossed my mind that life for the unfortunate moppets who had drawn this Winkworth as a headmistress must have been like Six Weeks on Sunny Devil's Island. Previous to making her acquaintance, I had  always supposed the Rev. Aubrey Upjohn to be the nearest thing to the late Captain Bligh of the Bounty which the scholastic world had provided to date, but I could see now that compared with old Battling Daphne he was a mere prelim boy.

(from The Mating Season, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Miserable fathead!

This is a very useful term, I think. What could better summarize some of the people I have met. Not that they are miserable - far from it. They do not have misery; they are carriers.

Of crawling to aunts

          "I told him I wouldn't have any more to do with him unless he asserted himself and stopped crawling to those aunts of his."
         "He crawls to his aunts, does he?"
         "Yes, the worm."
          I could not pass this. Better men than Esmond Haddock have crawled to their aunts, and I said so, but she didn't seem to be listening. Girls seldom listen to me, I've noticed.

( from The Mating Season, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

An abrupt surprise

I opened the door, accordingly, and was immediately knocked base over apex by some solid body with a tongue like an ant-eater's. This tongue it proceeded to pass enthusiastically over my upper slopes and, the mists clearing away, I perceived that what I was tangled up with was a shaggy dog of mixed parentage. And standing beside us, looking down like a mother watching the gambols of her first-born, was Catsmeat's sister Corky.

(from The Mating Season, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Sometimes blind dates work

Famous comedian Jerry Colonna met Florence Purcell on a blind date in 1930. They were married until his death in 1986.

Forget Sicily - stay away from Albania!

According to the Christian Science Monitor, from 1992 to 2008, there were 5000 people killed in vendettas or blood feuds in Albania.

That really was his name?

A glance at the young visitor was enough to tell me that he was low-spirited. And, mind you, it isn't often that you find the object under advisement in this condition. A singularly fizzy bird, as a rule. In fact, taking him by and large, I should say that of all the rollicking lads at the Drones Club, Claude Cattermole Pirbright is perhaps the most rollicking.

(from The Mating Season, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Makes it hard to find seating

If, as is advertised, all these gunslingers of the old West would only sit with their backs to a wall, that must have limited the seating space in eating establishments.

What do you have?

The Basenji breed has been called the "barkless dog" (although they can make bark-like sounds). I was just wondering what you would have if you had a disgruntled pig.

The Looney Bin

His lordship was no novice in the symptoms of insanity. Several of his best friends were residing in those palatial establishments set in pleasant parks and surrounded by high walls with broken bottles on them, to which the wealthy and aristocratic are wont to retire when the strain of modern life becomes too great. And one of his uncles by marriage, who believed that he was a loaf of bread, had made his first public statement on the matter in the smoking-room of this very castle. What Lord Emsworth did not know about lunatics was not worth knowing.

(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Twice as good as a half-wit

He looked at Eve. He looked at her searchingly. Into her pleading eyes he directed a stare that sought to probe her soul, and saw there honesty, sympathy, and - better still - intelligence. He might have stood and gazed into Freddie's fishy eyes for weeks without discovering a tithe of such intelligence. His mind was made up. This girl was an ally. A girl of dash and vigour. A girl worth a thousand Freddies - not, however, reflected Mr. Keeble, that that was saying much.

(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

It is just tough to be still

Miss Peavey eyed a clump of bushes some dozen yards farther down the drive. They were quivering slightly, as though they sheltered some alien body; and Miss Peavey, whose temper was apt to be impatient, registered a resolve to tell Edward Cootes that, if he couldn't hide behind a bush without dancing about like a cat on hot bricks, he had better give up his profession and take to selling jellied eels. In which, it may be mentioned, she had wronged her old friend. He had been as still as a statue until a moment before, when a large and excitable beetle had fallen down the space between his collar and neck, an experience which might well have tried the subtlest woodsman.

(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Here's a new term of admiration

"Liz," said Mr. Cootes, lost in admiration, "when it comes to doping out a scheme, you're the snake's eyebrows!"

(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

He botched this one

          "In this life, Comrade Cootes," said Psmith, "we must always distinguish between the Unlikely and the Impossible. It was unlikely, as you say, that you would meet any friend of McTodd's in this out-of-the-way spot; and you rashly ordered your movements on the assumption that it was impossible. With what result? The cry goes round the Underworld, 'Poor old Cootes has made a bloomer?'"
          "You needn't rub it in."

(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Reckon they were kin?

Jill Ireland and Jeff Chandler

Not conceited, just convinced

"I think you're terribly conceited."

"Not at all," said Psmith. "Conceited? No, no. Success has not spoiled me."

"Have you had any success?"

"None whatsoever."

(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Familiarity breeds contempt

The first few times I watched episodes of the old Dobie Gillis TV show, Bob Denver as beatnik Maynard G. Krebs was really funny. And I can imagine that back when the show was life, he was funny all the time, watching him once a week. However, these days when we have a collection of the shows and watch him several shows in a row, funny quickly becomes merely irritating. I mean, after all, no one can be that stupid!

Once again, concerning fish

To me, Miss Clarkson, from the very start, the fish business was what I can only describe as a wash-out. It nauseated my finer feelings. It got right in amongst my fibres. I had to rise and partake of  a simple breakfast at about four in the morning, after which I would make my way to Gillingsgate Market and stand for some hours knee-deep in dead fish of every description. A jolly life for a cat, no doubt, but a bit too thick for a Shropshire Psmith.

(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

To my generation, he WAS beatnik

Maynard G. Krebs

Fishy subject

"Yes. He is a hard man, and he judges his fellows solely by their devotion to fish. I never in my life met a man so wrapped up in a subject. For years he has been practically a monomaniac on the subject of fish. So much so that he actually looks like one. It is as if he had taken one of those auto-suggestion courses and had kept saying to himself, 'Every day, in every way, I grow more and more like a fish.' His closest friends can hardly tell now whether he more nearly resembles a halibut or a cod. . . . But I am boring you again with this family gossip?"

(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

King of the finny denizens

"Owing to a financial upheaval in my  branch of the family, I was until this morning at the beck and call of an uncle who unfortunately happens to be a Mackerel Monarch or a Sardine Sultan, or whatever these merchant princes are called who rule the fish market. He insisted on my going into the business to learn it from the bottom up, thinking, no doubt, that I would follow in his footsteps and eventually work my way to the position of a Whitehead Wizard. Alas! he was too sanguine. It was not to be," said Psmith solemnly, fixing an owl-like gaze on Miss Clarkson through his eyeglass.

(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

They have to be Old!

He went to the waiting room, and, having picked up a magazine from the table, settled down to rad a story in The Girl's Pet - the January number of the year 1919, for Employment Agencies, like dentists, prefer their literature of a matured vintage.

(From Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse. Fans of old radio shows might recall that once, when they were trying to set up an office for the dentist who had moved to Pine Ridge, Lum and Abner were frustrated because they could not find any magazines that were old enough to put in the dentist's office.)