Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader (13 page)

Think it’s tough planning ahead now? Try imagining what your dying wish will be. Here are some odd last requests from nine well-known people.

E
leanor Roosevelt:
Fearful of being buried alive, the former first lady requested that her major veins be severed to eliminate the possibility of regaining consciousness after burial.

Harry Houdini:
The famous escape artist asked to be buried in the “trick” coffin he used in his magic act—with letters from his mother tucked beneath his head.

William Shakespeare:
Wanted his oldest daughter, Susanna, to inherit his favorite bed. He left his wife “my second best bed.”

President Andrew Johnson:
The first president to be impeached asked to be wrapped in an American flag, with a copy of the U.S. Constitution placed beneath his head.

J. Paul Getty:
Requested a burial on the property of the Getty Museum in Malibu. However, his lawyers never applied for burial permits, so his remains had to be refrigerated and stored in a nearby mausoleum for
three years
until the necessary paperwork was completed. (Getty left his son J. Paul, Jr. “the sum of $500, and nothing else.”)

W. C. Fields:
Wanted a portion of his estate to be used for a “W. C. Fields College for orphan
white
boys and girls.” (The request was never honored.)

P. T. Barnum:
Wanted to keep the Barnum name from dying with him...so he left his grandson, Clinton Seeley, $25,000—on the condition that he change his middle name to Barnum. Seeley did.

Janis Joplin:
Asked friends to have a farewell party for her at her favorite pub, the Lion’s Share, in California—and left $2,500 in her will to finance it.

Albert Einstein:
No one knows what his last wishes were. On his deathbed, he said something in German to his nurse—but she didn’t speak German.

Leonardo da Vinci painted only 17 paintings—and some of them were unfinished.

“Wild Thing” is one of those ridiculously catchy tunes you can’t forget. It’s been a hit in three different decades and performed by some of the greatest—as well as some of the most forgettable—artists. This tale of how it was written comes from
Behind the Hits,
by Bob Shannon.

A
N OPPORTUNITY

In 1966 Chip Taylor—actor Jon Voight’s brother—was a songwriter working for a music publisher in New York City. One day he got a phone call from a friend who was producing a record by a group called Jordan Christopher and the Wild Ones. The friend explained that the songs he was supposed to use on the album weren’t good enough. He wondered if Taylor had “something different, something unique.”

Taylor said he’d work on it and send something over.

“It was around one o’clock when I spoke to my friend,” Taylor recalls. “I was planning to go into the studio at five o’clock, so between that time and five, I had to figure out what I was gonna do. I didn’t come up with anything until around four o’clock...and then I started to get this little riff on the guitar.”

IMPROVISING AT THE STUDIO

It was almost 5:00, so Taylor headed for the recording studio. He says: “Between my office and the studio, which was about four blocks, I was humming this crazy little thing, ‘Wild Thing, you make my heart sing,’ and just had this groove going.

“I got to the studio and I asked the engineer just to let the tape roll, and I told him not to stop me, I was gonna do this nonsense thing and see what came out. I basically had the chorus already, so I just sang it over and over again, and every once in a while I stopped and said some things. What came out was exactly what you’ve heard on records.

“The next morning, I listened to this [terrible song]. I said, ‘All right, send it over to my friend’—because I promised I’d send something over to him—[but] don’t let anybody else hear this demo. I was really embarrassed.”

Walruses get bald as they age.

THE FIRST VERSION

Eventually, Jordan Christopher and the Wild Ones did make the first recording of “Wild Thing.”

“But they did it very differently, with horns,” Taylor explains, “and they changed the rhythm and stuff like that. I didn’t think it [was very] good, and I was kind of glad that it wasn’t a hit. I was glad they recorded it, but I was a little embarrassed anyway.”

IT’S A HIT

The music publisher Taylor worked for had a deal with a music company in England—they had to send everything they published to the British company. Taylor was horrified. “I asked them not to send it over,” he says, “but somehow it was included with the other material they sent.”

To his surprise, a few months later “Wild Thing,” by a little-known group called the Troggs (from the word “troglodytes”), hit #2 in England and #1 in the United States. Even more surprising to Taylor, it later became a rock classic, recorded by everyone from Jimi Hendrix to X. Taylor himself got in on the fun in 1967 when he produced a “Wild Thing” satire performed by “Senator Bobby,” a Robert Kennedy soundalike. Even
that
version was a Top 20 hit.

FOR THE RECORD

How did the Troggs pick “Wild Thing”?

• Taylor says: “The story I hear is that when they were presented the package to choose what songs to do, they were given a stack of about fifty tapes. They just kept listening to them until they got to ‘Wild Thing,’ and decided they wanted to do it.”

• The leader of the Troggs, Reg Presley, tells a different tale. He recalls that their manager picked the song—and that he couldn’t stand it. “I looked at the lyrics—’Wild thing, you make my heart sing...You make everything groovy’...and they seemed so corny and I thought, ‘Oh God, what are they doing to us?’”

The ocarina solo on the Troggs’ record was copied from Taylor’s demo tape. But it was originally played on someone’s hands, not an instrument. Taylor explains: “While the engineer, Ron Johnson, was playing the tape back in the studio, I heard him playing this little thing on his hands. I said to him, ‘Go on out and do that in the middle part.’ If you play my demo against the Troggs’ record, you’ll see it’s almost exactly the same.”

The index finger is the most sensitive finger on your hand.

Some of the most important historical discoveries have been complete accidents. Here are four examples.

T
he Discoverer:
A peasant farmer digging a well

What He Found:
Lost cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum

Lucky Strike:
In 1709 a peasant who was digging in the area that had been destroyed when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. brought up several pieces of sculpted marble from statues and other objects. When word of his discovery spread, an Italian prince bought the land and began the first large-scale excavation of the site. Today more than three-quarters of ancient Pompeii has been uncovered; the rest remains buried underneath the modern city of Pompeii.

The Discoverers:
Some quarrymen digging in a cave

What They Found:
Neanderthal man

Lucky Strike:
In 1856 workers excavating a cave in Germany’s Neander Valley unearthed a human skeleton more than 100,000 years old. The remains provided some of the earliest evidence supporting the theory that modern humans evolved from apes.

The Discoverers:
A group of French army engineers in Egypt

What They Found:
The Rosetta stone

Lucky Strike:
In July 1799, French army engineers working near the Egyptian town of Rosetta noted that a section of the wall they were about to demolish had both Greek script and hieroglyphics carved into it. On a hunch, they saved it. The stone turned out to be the first Egyptian hieroglyphic document ever found that was accompanied by a translation into a modern language. With the aid of this “Rosetta stone,” scientists finally cracked the code of the hieroglyphics—which had been indecipherable for more than 1,300 years.

The Discoverer:
A Bedouin boy looking for a lost goat

What He Found:
The Dead Sea Scrolls

Lucky Strike:
In 1947 a Bedouin boy searching for his goat on cliffs near the Dead Sea idly tossed a rock into a cave. He heard some pottery shatter. Investigating, he found a number of large clay jars containing hundreds of scrolls, many of which were early versions of the Bible at least 1,000 years older than any other known copy.

Sweet tooth: 48% of Americans feel guilty after eating candy.

“Look! Up in the sky...it’s a bird...it’s a plane...no, it’s Superman!” “The Adventures of Superman,” a syndicated TV show filmed from 1951 to 1957, has been on the air sporadically for almost 40 years. By modern standards, the special effects (and even the hero himself) are laughable. But if you’ve never seen the show, or don’t remember it, you’re missing a great slice of 1950s Americana. Check it out.

A
TV SHOW IS BORN

“The Adventures of Superman” was actually just part of the Man of Steel’s leap into every existing entertainment medium. In the early 1940s, Superman was the star of a popular radio show and a movie cartoon series. In 1948 and 1950, he became the star of movie serials. (“Now the one and only Superman at his mightiest as a real live hero on the serial screen!”)

In 1951, DC comics agreed to a deal for a feature film and a TV series. The star of the serials, Kirk Alyn, was offered the lead role, but he declined. So the producers conducted an extensive—and unsuccessful—search for a new hero. They interviewed more than 200 actors; they became so desperate that they even checked out the 1951 Mr. America contest. They weren’t impressed. They wanted brains, not just beef.

It wasn’t until George Reeves strolled into their office one day that Our Hero was ready to fly again. Reeves, who’d played Brett Tarleton in
Gone with the Wind
, had been stuck in “B” films like
Sir Galahad
during the 1940s. Now he was hired to star in the first full-length Superman movie,
Superman and the Mole Men
(“America’s favorite hero! His latest... his greatest!”), not because of his acting ability, but because of his profile and—most important—his chin, which looked like Superman’s from the comics. Reeves wasn’t particularly excited about the part, either. “I’ve played about every type of part you can think of,” he said at the time. “Why not Superman?”

The low-budget film became the pilot episode of the TV series, which went on the air in 1953, sponsored by Kellogg’s.

American hens lay enough eggs each year to circle the equator 100 times.

CHEAP SHOTS

“Superman” was filmed like an assembly-line product. Each episode cost only $15,000 to make, and four episodes were shot every 10 days. The cast always wore the same clothes, because several episodes were filmed at the same time; this way they didn’t have to keep track of when they were supposed to change costumes.

SUPER SUITS

Reeves had naturally sloping shoulders, and Superman had big, broad ones—so the Superman costume had rubber and sponge padding built into it (which made it unbearably hot).

MAN AND SUPERMAN

• The show almost cost Reeves his life. In 1953, while Reeves was making an appearance as Superman in Detroit, a youngster aimed his father’s loaded pistol at Reeves. (He wanted to watch bullets bounce off Superman.) George calmly talked the kid into giving up the gun, but stopped wearing the Superman suit in public.

• Reeves tried to give up smoking, believing he’d be setting a bad example if kids spotted him with cigarettes. He also tried to avoid being seen in public with women, a tall order for a bachelor TV star. In 1953 he toured the country speaking to kids about the dangers of jaywalking, bicycling...and trying to fly.

UP IN THE SKY

Special effects have come a long way since Superman flew in 1951:

• For takeoffs, Reeves jumped off a springboard so he’d look like he was propelled into the air.

• If he was jumping out a window, he just leaped onto a mattress.

• If he was flying, he was pulled into the air by wires and pulleys, and in later episodes by a hydraulic system.

• For Superman’s dramatic landings, Reeves simply jumped from an off-screen stepladder.

TYPECASTING

Sadly, his success as Superman ruined Reeves’s chances for other acting parts. He had a role in the Oscar-winning film
From Here to Eternity
(1953), for example...but his scenes were cut because audiences shouted “Superman!” every time he appeared in the film. In 1959, after trying singing and directing, he put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. The headlines blared: “Superman Kills Self.”

Until 1850, most golf balls were stuffed with feathers.

Did Warren Harding die of a heart attack or was he poisoned? This piece on his suspicious death is from
It’s a Conspiracy!,
by the National Insecurity Council.

T
he Deceased:
Warren G. Harding, 29th president of the United States (1921-1923)

How He Died:
In the summer of 1923, President Harding was visiting Vancouver when he became gravely ill. He was rushed to San Francisco and seemed to recover. But then, on August 2, 1923, he suddenly died of a heart attack.
The New York Times
reported: “Mrs. Harding was reading to the President, when utterly without warning, a slight shudder passed through his frame; he collapsed....A stroke of apoplexy was the cause of his death.”

Although initial newspaper accounts didn’t mention it, the White House physician, General Sawyer, was probably in the room as well when the president died.

SUSPICIOUS FACTS

Warren and the Duchess

• Harding owed his political success to his ambitious wife, Florence (nicknamed “the Duchess”). But his marriage wasn’t a happy one; he strayed often. During the 1920 campaign, for example, the Republican National Committee paid a former lover of Harding’s $20,000 for incriminating letters, paid her $2,000 a month for her silence, and sent her to Europe to keep her away from reporters.