13 Facts About L. Frank Baum’s Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Posted on by

Joy Lanzendorfer and Mental_Floss present 13 Facts About L. Frank Baum’s Wonderful Wizard of Oz.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. BAUM FRAMED THE PENCIL HE USED TO WRITE THE NOVEL.
L. Frank Baum—former chicken rancher, traveling salesman, and theater manager—had already published two successful children’s books when he started The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1898. He finished the book in October 1899. He must have been proud of his work, for he framed the pencil stub and hung it on the wall of his study. On the attached paper he scrawled, “With this pencil I wrote the manuscript of The Emerald City.”

2. HE GOT THE NAME “OZ” FROM HIS FILING CABINET.
At first, Baum had trouble coming up with a name for the magical land Dorothy visits. Then one day he found himself looking at the filing cabinet in his study. There were three drawers marked “A to G,” “H to N,” and “O to Z.” And so Oz was born.

9. THE BOOK SOLD OUT IN TWO WEEKS.
Full distribution began in August. According to the publisher, the first printing of 10,000 copies sold out in two weeks, followed by a second printing of 15,000 and a third printing of 10,000. In November, there was a fourth printing of 30,000 and in January, a fifth printing of 25,000. That’s 90,000 books in the first six months. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz remained a bestseller for two years.

The Other Frankenstein Monster: The Strange Fate of Glenn Strange

Posted on by

Quick, name the famous actor in the photo above who played Frankenstein.

Nope, it’s not Boris Karloff.  Try again.  No, he’s not Lon Chaney, Jr..  Try again.  No, it’s not Bela Lugosi either.  The actor playing Frankenstein in the photo above is Glenn Strange.

Although Glenn Strange played the Frankenstein monster three times (tying Karloff’s record), most folks seldom think of Glenn Strange when they think of Frankenstein.  In a career that spanned over 300 roles in 43 years, Strange was best known as Sam the Bartender on Gunsmoke.

If you’ve read this far, you’ll enjoy the short piece by Jim Knipfel titled The Other Frankenstein Monster: The Strange Fate of Glenn Strange at Den of Geek.

11 Expert Facts About “Leon: The Professional”

Posted on by

Tara Aquino and Mental_Floss present 11 Expert Facts About Leon: The Professional.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. NATALIE PORTMAN’S PARENTS WERE COMPLETELY AGAINST HER PLAYING MATHILDA.
It was an extremely complicated role for an 11-year-old: Not only would she have to deal with a broken home and violence, but she’d also have to deal with the unwanted sexualization of a young girl. In Starting Young, a documentary about Portman that’s included on the 10th anniversary DVD edition of Léon, the actress admits that after she read the script, she was so moved to tears by the film that she knew she had to have the role. Her parents weren’t as convinced. “My parents were like, ‘There is no way you’re doing this movie. This is absolutely inappropriate for a child your age … and I was like, ‘This is the greatest thing I’ve ever read! You’re gonna ruin my life!’” she shares in the doc. “[I] was basically just fighting with them so much.”

4. PORTMAN’S PARENTS ARE THE REASON WHY MATHILDA QUITS SMOKING IN THE FILM.
As per the agreement Portman’s parents outlined with Besson, the actress was allowed five fake cigarettes in her hand during the entire film shoot, and she was never allowed to inhale a single one of them. If you pay close attention to her character, you’ll see that she only puts the cigarette to her lips, but never blows smoke out. Additionally, her parents demanded that her character quit smoking at some point in the movie. In the film, Léon scolds Mathilda for smoking, and later you see her throwing her unfinished cigarette away when she’s alone.

10. BESSON HAS SHUT DOWN RUMORS THAT A SEQUEL IS IN THE WORKS.
So stop asking. During his press tour for Lucy, Besson told The Guardian, “You can’t imagine how many people ask me for a Léon sequel. Everywhere I go they ask me. If I was motivated by money, I would have done it a long time ago. But I don’t feel it.”

In an earlier interview with Cinema Blend, Besson elaborated on the topic, saying, “Natalie is old now, she’s a mother … It’s too late. If I got an idea tomorrow about a sequel, of course I would do it. But I never came up with something strong enough. I don’t want to do sequels for money; I want to do a sequel because it’s worth it. I want it to be as good or better than the original.”

11 Things You May Not Know About John Lennon

Posted on by

Eddie Deezen and Mental_Floss present 11 Things You May Not Know About John Lennon.  Here are three of my favorites…

9. HE WAS ORIGINALLY SUPPOSED TO SING LEAD ON THE BEATLES’ FIRST SINGLE, 1962’S “LOVE ME DO.”
Lennon sang lead on a great majority of the early Beatles songs, but Paul McCartney took the lead on their very first one. The lead was originally supposed to be Lennon, but because he had to play the harmonica, the lead was given to McCartney instead.

10. “ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE” WAS THE BEST LYRIC HE EVER WROTE.
A friend once asked Lennon what was the best lyric he ever wrote. “That’s easy,” replied Lennon, “All you need is love.”

11. THE LAST PHOTOGRAPHER TO SNAP HIS PICTURE WAS PAUL GORESH.
Ironically (and sadly), Lennon was signing an album for the person who was to assassinate him a few hours later when he was snapped by amateur photographer Paul Goresh on December 8, 1980.

Lennon obligingly signed a copy of his latest album, Double Fantasy, for Mark David Chapman. Later that same day, Lennon returned from the recording studio and was gunned down by Chapman, the same person for whom he had so kindly signed his autograph.

Morbidly, a photographer sneaked into the morgue and snapped a photo of Lennon’s body before it was cremated the day after his assassination. Yoko Ono has never revealed the whereabouts of his ashes or what happened to them.

$2 Billy the Kid Photo Expected to Bring $5 Million at Auction

Posted on by

In 2010, Randy Guijarro purchased the vintage photo above for two bucks. Guijarro is a collector of old photos and the shot of some folks in the wild west playing croquet would make a nice addition to his collection.

It was recently confirmed that one of the croquet players in the photo is none other than Billy the Kid and the other folks playing are the Kid’s gang known as the Lincoln County Regulators.

The photo has been verified to be legit and is going to auction.  Guijarro’s two buck purchase could bring in as much as five million dollars.

I’m not sure which surprises me more…

  1. The fact that someone recognized that the small figure in the photo was Billy the Kid.
  2. That a two dollar purchase is going to bring in millions.
  3. Billy the Kid, the notorious killer was playing croquet.

Source: People.

14 Unusual Ways McDonalds Did Business in the ’60s

Posted on by

Jake Rosen and Mental_Floss present 14 Unusual Ways McDonalds Did Business in the ’60s.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. THEY DIDN’T HIRE WOMEN.
Fast-service restaurants in the ‘40s and ‘50s were renowned for their carhops—perky young women who delivered trays of food to parked automobiles. But franchise founders Maurice and Richard McDonald held a negative opinion about these jobs: They felt it created an atmosphere where families would be uncomfortable visiting a burger stand populated by obnoxious teen boys ogling employees. They eliminated the carhop position, expecting customers to instead approach windows on foot. Subsequent owner Ray Kroc held firm to the no-women policy: “We don’t hire female help,” he told the Associated Press in 1959. The freeze lasted until franchise operators began insisting on a gender-balanced staff in the mid-to-late-‘60s. Even then, Kroc ruled that female employees be “flat-chested” and not work the grill since they didn’t possess the “stamina” for such intensive labor.

6. THEY DIDN’T WANT BUSINESS FROM DIRTY HOBOS.
Family was a key selling point for McDonald’s. Time and again, spokespeople for the chain reinforced the idea of creating an environment parents would be comfortable in. The companytold press that new locations were scouted based on the number of church steeples, schools and residential streets nearby, not foot traffic. McDonald’s, Kroc said, didn’t want to cater to “transients.”

9. YOU COULDN’T SIT DOWN.
With an average transaction time of just 50 seconds, McDonald’s didn’t really have the time or resources to put into washing dishes. Virtually all locations in the early ‘60s amounted to front counters and drive-in windows: There was no place to sit down inside the restaurant itself until 1962, when a Denver, Colo. location became the first to offer stools.