Uncle John's Great Big Bathroom Reader (58 page)

FORGOTTEN FIGURE:
Emile Coue, a pharmacist who dabbled in hypnotism.

CLAIM TO FAME:
In 1920, Coue introduced a system of “healing through positive thinking” at his clinic in Nancy, France. As his reputation grew, he made appearances in London and, in 1923, the United States—where he was mobbed by throngs of admirers in packed lecture halls all over the country. He is best remembered for his famous phrase, “Every day, and in every way, I am becoming better and better.” Frequent repetitions, Coue insisted, would spur the brain to cure just about anything.

Had Coue kept his claims modest, he would probably be remembered as one of the fathers of positive thinking. But he didn’t; he claimed his chant could cure baldness, major illnesses, fight vice, reduce crime, and even determine the gender—not to mention career—of a baby before it was born. “If a mother wants her unborn son to be a great architect,” he explained, “she should visit great buildings and surround herself with pictures of architectural masterpieces and above all she should think beautiful thoughts.”

INTO THE DUSTBIN:
Coue returned to the U.S. for a second tour in 1924, but the crowds that greeted him this time were smaller. Reason: bald people who chanted his phrase all year were still bald, fat people were still fat, mothers gave birth to children in the wrong gender, etc. Patients began to abandon his clinic in France and Coue might have gone out of business entirely...if he hadn’t dropped dead of a heart attack in 1926.

FORGOTTEN FIGURE:
Cromwell Dixon, “boy” aviator

CLAIM TO FAME:
The first aviator to fly over the Continental Divide. In 1911 a group of investors, which included circus owner John Ringling and the president of the Great Northern Railway, offered $10,000 to the first person who could fly over the Divide. At age 19, Dixon decided to try for the money. He left the Montana state fairgrounds in Helena on Sept 30, 1911, then headed for Blossburg, just over the Divide. His friends lit a bonfire on a high peak near the town to help him find his way. Little was known about mountain flying at the time, and a number pilots had been killed when downdrafts slammed them into the mountains. But Dixon made it, and collected both the money and considerable attention.

INTO THE DUSTBIN:
Dixon was killed a few days later at Spokane, Washington when a sudden air current slammed his plane into the ground, “crushing him under the engine.”

FORGOTTEN FIGURE:
“Mr. Greeler,” who is apparently so forgotten that nobody knows what his first name was. He was a nineteenth-century musical composer and patriot.

CLAIM TO FAME:
Greeler set the entire United States Constitution to music in the 1870s. The entire composition, a six-hour opus, was performed for enthusiastic audiences in Boston in the 1870s. His recitative of the Preamble, and his fugues of the Amendments brought the house down.

INTO THE DUSTBIN:
No known copies of Greeler’s score survive today.

There have been more movies about Tarzan than practically any other character. So it surprised us to find out that the first Tarzan movie was actually a flop. It took a smart press agent named Harry Reichenbach to make the “King of the Jungle” a box office success. He did it with the first film in 1917...and then he came back and did it again with the third one. By then, Tarzan was a movie franchise. Here’s Reichenbach’s account of what happened.

T
ARZAN OF THE APES

Background:
In 1917, press agent Harry Reichenbach ran into a friend named Billy Parsons who’d just borrowed $250,000 to make the world’s first Tarzan movie. The movie bombed at the preview and every distributor in the country turned it down. Parsons was desperate. Reichenbach watched the movie, and liked it. He agreed to publicize it if Parsons would give him a percentage of the profits.

Publicity Stunt:
Reichenbach booked a theater on Broadway and filled the lobby with jungle plants, a big stuffed lion, and live monkeys in cages. And it “just happened” that on the day before the premiere, the newspapers were filled with accounts of the exploits of “Prince Charlie,” an orangutan dressed in a tuxedo and top hat, who’d gotten loose inside the lobby of a fancy hotel that was filled with New York’s elite. According to Reichenbach:

Prince Charlie, timid and embarrassed, was about to introduce himself to this brilliant assemblage when he noticed a revolving door on the 42nd Street side and began to spin wildly around in it. Excited by this turn in social life, the big ape leaped into the lobby with greater confidence and cordially screeched at them to try his new sport, but they had all made a clearance in record time. The only way they could be persuaded to return was under cover of police.

When “someone” let the media know that Prince Charlie was a publicity stunt to promote
Tarzan of the Apes
, the newspapers covered the story a second time, letting the public know that the ape would be in the lobby of the theater for the opening.

What Happened:
Tarzan of the Apes
brought in more than $1.5 million at the box office, earning Reichenbach $50,000 and establishing both the Tarzan franchise on film, and Harry Reichenbach as a master press agent.

THE RETURN OF TARZAN

Background:
Reichenbach was not hired to promote the second Tarzan film,
Romance of Tarzan...
and it flopped. So when Samuel Goldwyn produced the third Tarzan film,
The Return of Tarzan
, in 1920, he insisted that Reichenbach be hired again.

Publicity Stunt:
A week before the film was scheduled to open, a “music professor” named Dr. T. R. Zan checked into the Belleclaire, one of New York’s fanciest hotels, and had a large piano box lifted by block and tackle into his hotel room. Dr. Zan explained that he wanted to be able to play his piano in his room.

The next morning, Dr. Zan sent for room service. “I have a very delicate stomach,” he told the bellhop, and he ordered two soft-boiled eggs, a piece of toast, and a glass of warm milk. “By the way,” he told the bellhop, “I also want 15 lbs. of raw meat.”

“With your—your delicate stomach?” The bellhop asked.

“No, it’s not for me, foolish boy! That’s for my pet.” And with that, Dr. Zan opened the door to the adjoining room to reveal a lion sitting on the carpet. The bellhop told the management what he’d seen. They investigated and then called the police. Meanwhile, “someone” let a newspaper reporter know what was happening.

What Happened:
According to Reichenbach,

Every morning newspaper carried the story of T. R. Zan the next day. The newsreel weeklies didn’t overlook it either. It was a story that caught the imagination and spread over the wires to all the papers in the country.

A few days later, advertisements appeared announcing that
The Return of Tarzan
would open at the Broadway Theatre and only then did the stunt become apparent and the newspapers gave new publicity to the hoax, linking T. R. Zan of the Belleclaire Hotel with Tarzan of the pictures....The lion, Jim, appeared in person at the opening of the picture. We polled over 25,000 columns in news stories and established the film as a national hit.

Here’s another excerpt from our book
Uncle John’s Indispensable Guide to the Year 2000. At
the end of the 19th century, practically every celebrity made predictions about the 20th. Most were laughably off-target...but every once in awhile someone showed an extraordinary gift at “seeing” into the future. One of these was David Goodman Croly.

B
ACKGROUND
In 1888, an obscure little volume with a long title—
Glimpses of the Future, Suggestions as to the Drift of Things (To Be Read Now and Judged in the Year 2000)—
appeared on bookshelves.

Ever heard of it? Its author, David Goodman Croly (who died shortly after its publication), was a newspaper columnist known as “Sir Oracle.” Today, his work is considered a milestone in predictive literature. Historian I. F. Clarke calls him “one of the early American pioneers in writing about the future.” To appreciate his feat, remember what life was like in 1888—the electric light had only been invented about a decade earlier; there were no cars, radios, movies, airplanes, television, etc. Here are some of his predictions....

Telecommunications:
“In the year 2000, it will not be necessary to go to a meeting to hear a political orator, or to a church to be edified by a fine discourse, or to a concert hall to hear the noblest instrumental or vocal music. The telephone and the graphophone [sic] will be so perfected that we can enjoy these pleasures at our own homes.”

The Green Movement:
“No one should be allowed to cut down a tree without planting another in its place. Our wasteful destruction of forests is...a crime against the generations that are to follow us.”

Careers for Women:
“Women are largely beginning to support themselves; they are being educated with that view. Those who enter a lucrative calling do not care to be the wives of men who cannot keep up the standard of comfort they have set for themselves. Hence there are great classes of women beginning to take part in our modern life who are not dependent on the other sex.”

Desktop Publishing:
“It looks to me as if the journal of the future will dispense with the compositor or typesetter. The artist will be employed as well as the writer and their sketches and text will be photographs put on gelatin, or some similar menstruum, and multiplied ad infinitum. This will revolutionize the whole art of printing.”

Tabloid Journalism:
“It is sickening to take up a newspaper and read of murders, or of railroad and marine disasters, the abandonment of wives by their husbands and vice-versa...but it must be confessed that readers crave this kind of literary pablum.”

Negative Campaigning:
“The average politician wants to offend no one; this is why negative presidential candidates and ‘dark horses’ take the place of really able statesmen in our quadrennial contests.”

No-fault Divorce:
“Marriage is no longer a religious rite even in Catholic countries, but a civil contract, and the logical result would seem to be a state of public opinion which justifies a change of partners whenever the contracting couple mutually agreed to separate.”

Legal Reform:
“Our tedious legal forms waste the time and money of very busy people. Our Supreme Court is three years and a half behind its business. Every murderer can now have two or three trials. Thus time is wasted and costs continue to increase. By-and-by the people will not stand it, and a social convulsion may result.”

Corporate Mergers:
“The larger commercial movements of the age in all civilized countries are tending to mass wealth in fewer hands and to decrease the numbers and influence of the middle classes. Look at the great stores in all the capitals of the world!...These have driven out the small storekeeper, because they can give a better article for a lower price....The brain-work of the business world is destined in time to be represented by a very few great firms, who will practically be in control of the wealth of the several nations.”

Air Transportation:
“Aerial navigation will solve the mystery of the poles, and eventually there will be no ‘dark region’ on any of the continents. Of course all this seems very wild, but we live in an age of scientific marvels, and the navigation of the air, if accomplished, would be the most momentous event of all ages....If the
aerostat
should become as cheap for travelers as the sailing vessel, man may become migratory, like the birds, occupying the more mountainous regions and sea-coast in summer and more tropical climes in winter.”

This article was contributed by BRI member Jeff Cheek. It’s a great example of the role serendipity plays in history (and our diet). At the very least, it should make ordering a cup of coffee and a croissant more interesting.

ON THE ROPES

From July 17 until September 12, 1683, the Austrian capital of Vienna was besieged by a Moslem army commanded by the Turkish Grand Vizier, Kara Mustafa. Historians note this as the high-water mark of Islamic influence in Europe. If the Moslems had succeeded here, it’s likely they would have taken all of Europe.

After Vienna was encircled, a Polish mercenary named Kulczyski volunteered to go for help. Disguised as a Turk, he made his way through enemy lines. He was discovered, but his linguistic ability made his cover story believable. He escaped, made his way to Bavaria, and led an 80,000-man army back to Vienna.

The Viennese people had no way of knowing this—they were completely isolated as they beat back repeated Turkish assaults on their walled city. Their outer defenses were lost, but the besieged city held out.