
We've played this game three times before. Below you will find
ten familiar figures from popular culture. But where did they start
their careers? In many cases you may know the answer, but they will turn
out to be more complicated than you expect.
See the white box on the side? Your choices lie within.
Frankie and Johnny
Little Orphan Annie
Lassie
Frank Furillo
Humpty Dumpty
ColumboPeter Pan
Jimmy Valentine
Maynard G. Krebs
Gilgamesh
And here are the answers:
Frankie
and Johnny. Real life. The classic murder ballad was inspired by the
real killing of Allen (Albert) Britt by his sweetheart Frankie Baker in
St. Louis, in 1899. She shot him after finding him with a prostitute but
was found not guilty, pleading self-defense. Bill Dooley wrote a song
called "Frankie Killed Albert." In 1912 Bert and Frank Leighton revised
that to "Frankie and Johnny" and Albert has gone by that name ever
since. It has been recorded too many times to count.
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Mary Alice Smith
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Little
Orphan Annie. Comic Strip. Harold Gray created the comic strip in 1924.
It ran until 2010, spawning a Broadway musical and a bunch of movies.
But the name, or a variation thereof, is even older. James Whitcomb
Riley wrote a poem in 1885 called "The Elf Child." In later editions he
changed the title to "Little Orphant Allie" but a typesetter thought
otherwise and the protagonist has been Annie ever since.
The poem
is about a young orphan who comes to live with a family and tells the
children scary stories that encourage good behavior. "The goblins will
get you if you don't watch out."
Riley based the poem on Mary
Alice Smith, who lived with his family growing up. So the real little
Allie inspired the poem which led to the comic strip. Got it?
Lassie.
Short story. Ah, but which one? British author Elizabeth Gaskell
wrote "The Half-Brothers" in 1859 in which a female collie leads a
search party to two boys lost in the snow. Sound familiar?
But in
1938 Eric Knight wrote a story called "Lassie Come-Home" about a doggie
making a long journey to her master. This led to a novel of the same
name. Several movies followed, followed by a radio show, and finally the
TV series many of us remember. Dave Barry complained that the family in
that show spent so much time trapped in wells that they only survived
on federal farm subsidies, and Lassie had to fill out the applications.
Frank Furillo. Television. But you can get a good argument going about it. Lieutenant Furillo was the protagonist of the classic series Hill Street Blues. But some people claimed the show was, let's say, heavily indebted to Ed McBain's 87th Precinct novels, which starred a cop named Carella.
I don't see it myself. McBain's books are all about a detective squad while the series covered all levels of a precinct.
What did McBain himself think? In his novel Lightning he has a character furiously argue that the show is based on the lives of him and some of his associates. But in a brilliant bit of fourth-wall-bending, the author manages to have his cake and eat it too.
You see, the complainer is Fat Ollie Weeks, a bigoted cop and hardly the first person whose opinion you would trust. So is McBain mocking the theory of the connection?
Not quite. Steve Carella, definitely a reliable voice, is skeptical about Ollie's view but he says that saying the name Ollie Weeks is like (TV character) Charlie Weeks is similar to claiming that the name (TV character) Howard Hunter is like Evan Hunter.
Evan Hunter is Ed McBain's real name. And Hunter/McBain thought about suing the producers, but decided it was too expenaive.
Humpty Dumpty. Nursery
rhyme. I have run into people who think ol' H.D. started life in Lewis Carroll's
Through the Looking Glass. He first appeared a century earlier, 1791,
in a nursery rhyme. John Tenniel in
Looking Glass gave him his familiar
appearance. while Carroll, gave him his the
obnoxious personality many of us remember:
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."
That argument has been quoted by judges in more than 200 legal decisions.
By the way, it is generally agreed that the nursery rhyme was meant to be a riddle. It was identified as such by at least 1843. It is easy to forget that it is a riddle because we all know the answer so well. In the same way, the surprise twist of
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has not surprised anyone in a very long time
Columbo. Television. But much earlier
than you might think. Richard Levinson and William Link wrote "Enough
Rope," which in 1960 appeared as an episode of The Chevy Mystery Show. It included Bert Freed as the famously inquisitive cop.
In
1962 L&L turned their TV episode into a play, Prescription:
Murder. In 1968 the story that wouldn't die was turned into a TV
movie. But who would play the hero? Lee J. Cobb was not available.
Bing Crosby (!) was considered but he thought it sounded like too much
work. Then came Peter Falk who said he would kill to play the part. If
he had, I'm sure Columbo would have caught him.
The show was a
huge hit, of course, and the show went onto a long but irregular career:
There were almost 70 episodes, spread out over more than 30 years.
Oh,
one more detail: Remember I said Columbo began on TV? Technically
true, but back in 1960 Levinson and Link published a story in Alfred
Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine called "Dear Corpus Delecti." Their
original title was "May I Come In?" which should give you a hint about
one of the characters. But the police lieutenant in this story was
named Fisher.
And speaking of names, What was Columbo's given
moniker? It is never mentioned in the show but sharp-eyed viewers
noticed that his police ID said it was Frank.
Not surprising that
no one called him by his first name. The man, especially in early
years, was practically a phantom. I theorized that he wasn't a cop at
all but a nut who had gotten his hands on a badge. I mean, in the first
episodes we never saw him in a police station and he had to introduce
himself to every police officer he encountered...
Peter Pan.
Novel. The Little White Bird is an adult novel by J.M. Barrie (1902)
about an aging bachelor trying to establish a relationship with a young
boy. I hasten to add that "adult novel" only means that it was not
aimed at children. Let's not take this the wrong way.
In the
middle of the book Barrie wrote an odd section about a week-old baby who
travels to Kensington Gardens where he is taught to fly by fairies and
birds. This baby's name is... Frank Columbo.
Sorry. Got my notes
mixed up. It was Peter Pan. Two years later Barrie returned to the
character with the play Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up,
which brought in Wendy, the lost boys, Neverland, Captain Hook, etc.
Then there was a novel, and who can keep up with all the variations that
followed...
Jimmy Valentine. Short story. The most famous
safecracker in fiction is sort of like Professor Moriarty, in that he
has taken on a much larger life than his creator ever dreamed or
intended. O. Henry wrote precisely one tale about Valentine, "A
Retrieved Reformation," but it is such a classic that it has led to five
movies and a radio show. Stick to the short story; it's a treat.
Maynard
G. Krebs. TV. The lovable beatnik, played by Bob Denver, who shrieked
in horror at the sound of the word "work," appeared on the TV series
The Many Loves
of Dobie Gillis, which was based on the novel of the same name by Max
Shulman. Maynard, however, does not appear in the novel. He is a
creation of the scriptwriters and is probably television's first example
of a breakout character, paving the way for Fonzie and Steve Urkel,
among many others.
Gilgamesh. Real life? Now, hear me out.
Certainly Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, slayer of monsters, and seeker after
immortality, was the legendary protagonist of an epic poem, one of the
oldest surviving works of literature . But once again, it's more
complicated than that. What follows is from David Damrosch's excellent
The Buried Book.We have a list of the kings of the Sumerian
region. The recent (and by "recent" I mean about 3,000 years old) kings
are recorded to have ruled for reasonable lengths of time, say six to
thirty years. But the oldest kings supposedly ruled for hundreds of
years.
Unless you believe those early monarchs had a really
fabulous health care system, we can assume that they are
mythical, or no more than names the chroniclers dutifully recorded.
Now
guess who stands squarely between the mythical old and the realistic
new? Gilgamesh, supposedly ruling for 126 years. Which suggests to many scholars
that he was the first king for whom they had authentic records. But I doubt he
really slayed the bull of heaven. That sounds like p.r.
Interestingly,
the Epic of Gilgamesh vanished from the record for two millennium until
1872 when George Smith, an engraver and self-taught amateur scholar,
translated the cuneiform tablets in the British Museum. Victorian
England was shocked that the epic included the story of a world flood
which only one man's family survived - and the man's name was not Noah.
And that's enough. As Little Orphan Annie probably never said, see you in the funny papers.