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Martha Raye was an original, and if her knockabout antics quickly dated, they overwhelmed audiences in the 1930s. Sharing a stage with her parents since the age of three, Maggie, as she was known to friends, climbed the lower rungs of show business, desperate to make herself known and liked. She perfected an aggressive and lusty attack, shorn of vanity. She was also a stunning singer, and her powerful rhythmic sense and brassy projection might have earned her a reputation as a Swing Era warbler. Yet she trusted only her comedic ability, a talent recognized by Charlie Chaplin, who cast her as his unsinkable victim in the 1947 Monsieur Verdoux and allowed her to steal their every scene. Maggie's wacky humor was bolstered by a rubbery face centered on a square maw of a mouth and a curvaceous figure that gave a shivery edge to her man-hungry bellow, "O000h boy!" While singing at a club outside Los Angeles, she signed up for a Sunday-night turn at the more glamorous Trocadero, where performers on the make entertained performers who could afford places like the Trocadero. In the audience were Jimmy Durante and Joe E. Lewis, who assisted her with friendly heckling, and an astonished Norman Taurog, who offered her a screen test. At Benjamin Glazer's request, Sam Coslow went down to the joint where she was working and volunteered to write a specialty number for her test. The result, "Mister Toscanini," was perfect - part fake ballad and part raucous swinger. The test delighted Glazer and Taurog, who resolved to add the song as well as Maggie to the picture. In order to avoid offending a living maestro, however, a change in title was mandated. Reborn as "Mr. Paganini," it became her trademark number. Coslow recalled that at a sneak preview of the picture, Raye's delivery of the song liter-ally stopped the show - the audience cheered until the projectionist reran the scene. Gary Giddins, "Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams - The Early Years 1903 - 1940" (2002)

But to get back to my relationship with Clark Gable, when I think of it now, considering the way it started, it was curious. We became devoted to each other. We weren't lovers he was in love with Carole Lombard by that time. In fact, after I repelled his initial attack, we eventually became more like siblings. Nobody believes that,' and you can understand why when you consider Lou MacFarlane's line after I pushed him off the porch: "I wouldn't care if he couldn't read." That's how Clark affected women. But our relationship was unique. Oh, he sometimes gave me the macho routine when people were watching, but he changed when we were alone. We always used to celebrate together at the end of a picture. Clark insisted on it. Maybe we'd include the director, maybe not. It was just a kind of ritual that the two of us had. We would share a bottle of champagne while he read poetry to me, usually the sonnets of Shakespeare. He loved poetry, and read beautifully, with great sensitivity, but he wouldn't dare let anybody else know it. He was afraid people would think him weak or effeminate and not the tough guy who liked to fish and hunt. I was the only one he trusted. He never wanted me to tell about this, and here I am giving him away; but I never mentioned it while he was alive. He had to keep up the masculine image for Carole. Though she joked and teased about it, somehow he kept having to prove it to her. Carole was beautiful and feminine, but she could swear like a stevedore, really take off, and he would just sit back and howl. He loved it, yet it challenged him. That may be why older women generally attracted him. His first two wives were much older. Of course, they helped him: one was a drama coach, the other a rich Texan. But Clark wouldn't marry for those things; he was too independent. I think he lust felt less pressured by them. He more or less continued that through his life. After Carole died, he used to see Dolly O'Brien, who was a lot older. He had some kind of mother fixation, and although I was younger, that's probably what I represented to him. James Kotsilibas-Davis & Myrna Loy (Myrna Loy – Being & Becoming) 1987

The enabler of all this was curiously uncomfortable with what he wrought. Charles Kettering of General Motors, who liked to say, "I am a wrench-and-pliers man," invented what became known as the high-compression engine - one that generated a great deal more power than its predecessors. With more powerful engines, cars could become vastly bigger and carry more of the weighty and often power-consuming optional equipment Americans had come to crave. That was the result of Kettering's invention, but it had not been his intention. He prized efficiency above all else. He had seen the high-compression engine as a means of bringing far greater efficiency to fuel consumption, but this, the last of his many great inventions, was co-opted almost from the start. Instead of bringing an era of greater efficiency, the engine opened the door to an era of unparalleled excess. The age of the gas guzzler had arrived. Kettering was the exceptional man, a true American genius. He was born on a farm in Ohio in 1876, and his early years were not easy. Getting an education was hard enough because of his family's scant income - to earn money he had to teach school at the same time he went to it - but it was made much harder by his poor eyesight; it was so bad that he needed someone to read all his textbooks to him, and so it took him six years to graduate from Ohio State. As a brand-new chemical engineer he got a job with the National Cash Register Company in Dayton, where he invented a small motor that allowed cash registers to be operated electrically. The Cadillac people approached him with the suggestion that he adapt the motor to automobiles, to serve as a self-starter, replacing the handcrank. The idea appealed to Kettering; both uses required an engine that could deliver a brief but strong burst of power. Working in the hayloft of a barn with moonlighting fellow engineers from National Cash Register - "the barn gang," they called themselves - he invented a starter motor that took the need for muscle out of starting cars, enabling women and older people to drive. The innovation, introduced in the 1912 Cadillacs, boosted Cadillac's sales from ten thousand to fourteen thousand. The name of the company Kettering set up was Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company, which became known as Delco; in 1916 Delco became part of General Motors, and Kettering soon became GM's head of research. David Halberstam "The Reckoning" (1987)

WHY DID LES BLANK CALL HIS FILM BURDEN OF DREAMS? Cinema emboldens us. It helps us surmount everyday life and encourages us to take our hopes and desires seriously, to turn them into reality. When things were going badly I headed back to Germany in an attempt to hold together the film's investors. They asked me if I was going to continue. "Do you really have the strength and will?" I said, "How can you ask this question? If I abandon this project, I will be a man without dreams. I live my life or I end my life with Fitzcarraldo." It wasn't possible for me to allow myself private feelings of doubt while making the film. I never had the privilege of despair; had I hesitated or panicked for a single second, the entire project would have come tumbling down around me. The final film ended up basically as I had always hoped it would, with the exception of the Mick Jagger character. Months later Claudia Cardinale said to me, "When you came to Rome four years ago you explained your ideas to me and all the difficulties we would have to overcome. Now I've seen the film, and it's exactly as you first described it." If you watch Fitzcarraldo and have the courage to push on with your own projects, then the film has accomplished something. If one person walks outside after watching one of my films and no longer feels so alone, I have achieved everything I set out to achieve. When you read a great poem you instantly know there is a profound truth to it. Sometimes there are similar moments of great insight in cinema, when you know you have been illuminated. Perhaps, occasionally, I have achieved such heights with my own films. BURDEN OF DREAMS INCLUDES SCENES "FROM THE ORIGINAL VERSION OF FITZCARRALDO, WITH ROBARDS AND JAGGER. People are always asking me if they can visit my sets and shoot footage of me at work; I tell them they will experience nothing but an endless chain of banalities. I didn't invite Les to the jungle but he was eager to come down and make a film. At first I was reluctant to have a camera around because there is something distasteful about making films about filmmakers. I don't like being recorded while working. When you cook a meal at home and there is someone staring at your hands, suddenly you're no longer a good cook. Everyone functions differently when being observed, and filmmkers are usually pathetic embarrassments when they appear on film. I include myself here. Tom Luddy had shown me some of Les's films, and I loved them instantly, especially Spend It All, which has a scene where a man pulls his own tooth out with a pair of pliers, an image I borrowed for Stroszek. His films document the vanishing marginals of American life in the most vibrant ways. I also loved Les's cooking and general attitude to life. He turned out to be a healthy presence in the jungle. Most of the time he was like a southern bullfrog brooding behind a beer, unobtrusive, always knowing when he should turn on the camera and when there were .. significant moments to capture on film. What I really liked about Les was that he wasn't just monosyllabic; often he was zero-syllabic. He hardly ever spoke a word and somehow managed to blend into the environment. I was also persuaded by his argument that however confident I was about finishing the film, if everything fell apart then thanks to his footage there would at least be some record of this foolhardy quest. Les wasn't some court jester who adulated everyone, no matter what they were doing. He had an extraordinarily good eye and brought a considered subjectivity to what he was filming. He was just as interested in watching how the Indians would ferment yucca as he was documenting the production of Fitzcarraldo, and most of the time could be found in the camp where the natives did their cooking. One time at breakfast I explained to him that later in the day there would be a real event: for the first time in months we planned to move the boat up the mountain. "I'm not here to film events," said Les, and he didn't show up. That evening he told me he had spent the day filming an ant carrying a p

An extreme example is Matthew Whitaker, whom I first saw featured on 60 Minutes. Born prematurely, at twenty-four weeks, Matthew was not expected to survive. He defied the odds. But he became blind as a result of a condition known as attendant retinopathy. When he was three, his grand-father gave him a small electronic keyboard. Matthew immediately started playing it, easily sounding out songs he had heard, such as "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." At the age of five, Matthew became the youngest student to be admitted to the Filomen M. D'Agostino Greenberg Music School for the blind and visually impaired in New York City. His teacher reported that the morn-s? after he attended a concert of her performing a Dvorak piano quintet, she heard him playing not only the piano part but all four parts for strings. Matthew now travels the world playing jazz professionally. Temple Grandin "Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions" (2022)

For some reason the scene embarrassed Gavin, who resisted playing it with his shirt off. Hitchcock fobbed the actor off on writer Joseph Stefano, who was on the set. "Stefano persuaded him by encouraging him to use that very embarrassment as part of the scene," according to John Russell Taylor's book, "particularly when having an argument while half undressed." The embarrassing nature of the scene was aggravated by the fact that it was the first one Gavin acted with Leigh - and unlike, say, The 39 Steps, he and she were not supposed to be "meeting cute." "It isn't easy to say, 'Hello, nice to see you again,' and then hop in the sack and make love, remembered Leigh. "We were bound to be somewhat awkward. I thought we had begun to warm up and were progressing fairly well. " After some lackluster takes, Hitchcock beckoned the white-lingerie-clad actress over and complained, "I think you and John could be more passionate! See what you can do!" (According to Rebello, Hitchcock actually instructed Leigh "in discreet but descriptive terms" to "take matters in hand, as it were. Leigh blushed, acquiesced, and Hitchcock got a reasonable facsimile of the required response.") Then, almost as an afterthought. the director strolled over to Gavin and whispered something in his ear, too. tantalizing each performer by giving the other secret advice. "I wouldn't have put it past him to pull my chain, and then to pull John's chain," said Leigh, "just to get the desired results." Give Gavin credit: he was struggling with his role. Years later, when Leigh was researching her book Psycho: Behind the Scenes of the Classic Thriller, Gavin told her that his chances weren't improved by the odor he detected on the set. Hitchcock's body odor? he wondered. Or perhaps the director's breath? Or maybe his cigar, as Hitchcock sat there, puffing placidly away, mere inches away from the performers pretending a love scene. And that's the way the tryst opening of Psycho plays: audacious bur awkward, provocative but cold, sexy with a whiff of BO. "In a strange way," Leigh argued later, Gavin's passivity "worked for the suspense. Real passion would have justified Marion's theft. But the lack of the complete abandon with Sam might have led some audience members to think, 'I wonder if he really loves her that much?' It made Marion even more sympathetic, which Hitch was very concerned about her being." During the filming, however, those who watched the dailies though: they were seeing way too much of the back of Gavin's head, according Rebello's book, whereas, under Hitchcock's more sympathetic tutelage. Leigh was exposing unprecedented parts of her anatomy - while achieving her most immortal performance. Leigh was a good sport, who got a kick out of the director's off-color limericks, puns, and pranks. Kim Novak had arrived on the set of Vertigo on the day of her semi nude scene (waking up from her "suicide attempt" in Scottie's apartment), to be greeted by a plucked chicken hanging from her dressing room; her unamused disgust undoubtedly wrecked any second chance Hitchcock might have been giving her. The worst jokes on Leigh seemed to come just moments before her most important scenes - and she found most of them terribly funny. Hitchcock had one running gag involving Leigh and Mrs. Bates - Norman's mother - as he tested the various mummified skeletons created by the effects department. The director "relished scaring me," Leigh wrote in her memoir. "He experimented with the mother's corpse, using me as his gauge. I would return from lunch, open the door to the dressing room, and propped in my chair would be this hideous monstrosity. The horror in my scream registered on his Richter scale, decided his choice of the Madam." Hitchcock CARED about Leigh (and the character she was playing), a concern reflected in the way he helped her out, even acting from the sidelines, during the protracted car-driving interludes. In those scenes Marion wears a troubled, guilty face," according to the script, and the director "completely articulated for me what I was thinking," L

Butchered to make a Roman Holiday (Byron) I don't know if you're at all familiar with Florence. Well, it's got nothing to do with it, but I thought it was a very good opening. Well, there's a housing estate just outside Welling Garden City. And a brand new housing estate, on which there dwelled a family: a wife and a husband. And the wife was very petite, well-spoken, nicely mannered girl, known to her associates as Butch. And she had great troubles at this place because the roads weren't made, and there was a manhole outside her house in which her husband, when coming home from the fish shop (and he frequented the OTHER place, Holmes's place) used to fall in regularly every night. And she badgered the county council to put a lid on this manhole so he wouldn't fall down. But they wouldn't, so she made one of her own, by cutting up an old boiler, which she had. And she put this manhole down over this open manhole. And of course, I don't know if you know anything about housing estates, but you can't DO that. And they said, "You're interfering with the amenities." The Amenities were the people living next door. And they didn't want a manhole. And they asked this lady, Butch, and her husband to leave. And some neighbors were discussing it, and they said, "Why did nice lady called Butch leave?" And they said, "They made her leave because she made her own manhole in it." "Oh, Butch erred to make her own manhole lid, eh" which if you say it quickly, it sounds like "Butchered to make a Roman Holiday." I must point out it doesn't sound VERY much like it now that I come to think of it. Denis Norden 580625b

I love my partner, but the rumbling snores keep me awake. Any solutions for people like us? Sharing a bed with someone who snores can be a challenge. It's also a common one — up to half of adults in the United States snore regularly, some data suggests, and their partners can suffer. Experts say the first step to getting some rest is understanding what's causing the noise. When the muscles that keep your airway open become relaxed while you sleep, your airway can narrow, causing the soft tissues in your throat to vibrate with each breath, said Daniel Vena, an assistant professor of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School. "Those muscles go to sleep when you go to sleep," Dr. Vena said. Also, people who are overweight tend to snore because extra tissues in the tongue and throat can hinder airflow, he said. Congestion can also constrict an airway; some people snore because of a cold or allergies, said Dr. Kuljeet K. Gill, a clinical assistant professor of sleep medicine at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. For partners who snore regularly, the first step is to rule out obstructive sleep apnea. This is a potentially serious condition that occurs when the airway collapses enough during sleep that it blocks airflow, temporarily pausing breathing and causing people to wake up gasping for air. Untreated, sleep apnea can increase the risk for heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and certain cancers. Most people with sleep apnea snore, Dr. Vena said. But not all people who snore have sleep apnea, so get a proper diagnosis. A sleep specialist or an ear, nose and throat doctor should be able to help, said Dr. Omar G. Ahmed, an E.N.T. sleep surgeon at Houston Methodist Hospital. Lifestyle changes like losing weight or quitting smoking — or the use of continuous positive airway pressure machines — may also curtail snoring. in addition, consider these tips: DISCOURAGE MOUTH BREATHING If your partner has a blocked nose, he or she is probably breathing through the mouth instead, Dr. Gill said. That can lead to snoring, she added. To promote nose breathing while sleeping, your partner can apply nasal strips or clear the sinuses with a nasal rinse before bed. If there's a more permanent blockage, like a deviated septum or nasal polyps, surgery might be an option, Dr. Ahmed said. PROMOTE SIDE SLEEPING When sleeping on your back, gravity can cause your airway to narrow, which results in snoring, Dr. Vena said. To help your partner, try placing firm pillows behind his or her back, said Heather E. Gunn, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Alabama. Or you can make rolling over uncomfortable by sewing or taping tennis balls or other objects onto the back of a shirt, said Wendy Troxel, a senior behavioral scientist at the RAND Corporation, a think tank whose research includes public health. TUNE OUT THE SOUND Covering your ear with a pillow is one way to stifle the noise, but you'd most likely need to adjust it during the night, Dr. Gunn said. Instead, try wearing earplugs, running a fan or playing white noise, she said. TRY A SLEEP DIVORCE If all else fails, try sleeping separately from your partner, perhaps in a spare bedroom (if you have one) or on the couch. A "sleep divorce" might seem bad for your relationship at first, Dr. Gunn said. But inadequate rest can also sink a relationship, Dr. Troxel said. Offset the time apart with quality time together during the day. Caroline Hopkins Legaspi

Katayama gave a small party in March 1964, when total Nissan sales reached five hundred a month, the target that had been set when the company first opened its American operation. Gradually there was a little money for advertising. In the beginning there had been by American standards virtually nothing, simple black-and-white brochures printed in Tokyo with florid English-language descriptions of the cars. Katayama hired a Los Angeles advertising man named John Parker because he was young, did not cost much, and seemed bright. Parker was delighted to take the Nissan account, unlikely though the future for it seemed, because it offered a rare entry into the automobile field. In the beginning it was fairl primitive work, convincing Tokyo, for example, that its handouts should be printed in America. The budgets were tiny perhaps $50,000 a year at the start. When Nissan needed to shoot still photos for advertising, Parker, his wife, and their son and daughter had served as models. For a long time there was no money for television. The first television commercial was shot in 1963 for a four-wheel-drive wagon called the Nissan Patrol. Parker had no television studio in his company and no film equipment. Hiring a friend who was an L.A. police photographer and who had a 16mm camera, he drove a Patrol into the canyons and they shot a sixty-second commercial for the vehicle; to save money Parker himself was again the model, his film debut. The next year they heard that Roy Rogers, the cowboy actor, liked the Nissan Patrol, and Parker called him up and asked him to do the company's first full-fledged commercial. "I can't offer you any money, Roy," Parker said, "but we'll give you a Patrol, two pickups, and all the glory a man could want." To his surprise Rogers was delighted to participate. As the cars began to sell, there began to be a budget for TV ads. In the fall of 1964 Datsun made it into the list of the to ten importers for the first time, a list absolutely dominated by Volkswagen. VW had 63 percent of the import market with 307,000 cars sold, an average of over 25,000 a month. In July of 1965 Datsun's sales reached 1000 a month. Back in Japan sales were rising quickly, which allowed Nissan to keep cutting the price; success was begetting success. The American market now looked more and more promising, though VW still appeared awesome. Steadily Nissan and then Toyota gained on the other imports. In 1966 Nissan was sixth with total sales of 22,000, David Halberstam "The Reckoning" (1987)

IN INTERVIEWS YOU CLAIMED NO KNOWLEDGE OF ABEL FERRARA AND HIS ORIGINAL BAD LIEUTENANT. Until this very day I haven't seen his film, nor any of his work. A few years after my Bad Lieutenant came out I met Ferrara for the first time, at a film festival, and though we sat down to talk, we didn't do it over a drink because apparently he has problems with alcohol, and I had no desire to provoke anything. It was actually wonderful that even before I started making the film there was accompanying thunder from this man, who said he hoped I would rot in Hell for remaking his film. It was good music in the background, like the manager of a baseball team running out to the umpire, standing five inches from his face, yelling and kicking up dust. That's what people really want to see. At that meeting with Ferrara we laughed so much I barely recall what we talked about. I agreed to do Bad Lieutenant only after the screenwriter, William Finkelstein, gave me a solemn oath his script wasn't a remake. The only thing that connects my film to Ferrara's is that one of the producers owned the rights to the title and was interested in starting a franchise; it was never a question of different "versions." The two films have nothing to do with each other, and the title - which was forced upon me: and which I told the producers would waft after the film like a bad smell - is misleading. Calling it a remake is like saying Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ is a remake of Pasolini's The Gospel According to St Matthew, though practitioners of "film studies" will surely be ecstatic to find a reference or two in my film to Ferrara's. I call upon the pedantic theoreticians of cmerna to chase after such things. Go for it, losers. The producers sent the script to my agent, but when it comes to negotiating contracts I prefer doing things myself, and chose to face them and their henchmen man to man. At our first meeting I sat with five people from the production company. My first question was, "Are any of you legal counsel for the production?" one of them identified himself. I asked him to stay in the room but not participate in the discussion, then said, "What I have to say here isn't the invention of some industry agent who is trying to sound important. I represent myself here. If you want to be in business with me, I need certain indisputable prerequisites. I decide who the cameraman, editor and composer of this film will be." They quickly accepted this, then asked me for my rate. "What do you mean by 'rate'?" I said. "How much do you get for directing a film?" they said. "What's your price?" My response to such a ridiculous question was the most coherent I could muster: "I'm priceless." How can I answer a question like that in any other way? With a film like The Wild Blue Yonder I paid myself virtually nothing and used mostly my own money, but with Bad Lieutenant I quoted them an exorbitant figure, immediately adding, "I guarantee you I'll finish this film under budget, so in effect you'll be saving money." The main producer wanted to shake on it immediately, but I resisted. I prefer the overnight rule. "If I have a contract in my hands at eight o'clock tomorrow morning," I told them, "we have a deal." I have a general understanding of Hollywood: if you don't have a deal in two days, you won't have it in two years either. The next morning a messenger was at my house with a signed contract, which I looked at carefully for a few minutes, signed without telephoning a lawyer, then handed back for delivery to the producers. I appreciate the value of money and know how to keep costs down because I've been my own producer for so many years. If it's your own money, you had better learn to look after it. I demanded a say on the size of the crew and asked for daily access to the cash flow, which the producers acceded to. I needed to know if I could afford another half a dozen police cars in this shot or twenty more extras in that sequence. People often throw money at problems, but I have always preferred to use vigilance and flexibility in advance, diffusing si

Music and Math Thinkers Patterns instead of pictures dominate the thinking processes of these children. Both music and math are a world of patterns, and children who think this way can have strong associative abilities. They like finding relationships between numbers or musical notes; some children may have savant-type calculation skills or be able to play a piece of music after hearing it just once. Musical talent often emerges without formal instruction. Many of these children can teach themselves if keyboards and other instruments are available. When they grow up, pattern thinkers are often very good at computer programming, engineering, or music. Some of these children should be advanced several grades ahead in math, depending on their abilities, but they may need special education in reading, which may lag behind. Verbal Thinkers These children love lists and numbers. Often they will memorize bus timetables and events in history. Interest areas often include history, geography, weather, and sports statistics. They are not visual thinkers. Parents and teachers can use these interests and talents as motivation for learning less-interesting parts of academics. Some verbal thinkers are whizzes at learning many different foreign languages. I know individuals with verbal thinking skills who have been successfully employed in sales, stage acting, accounting, factual/technical writing, and pharmacology. The thinking patterns of individuals with ASD are markedly different from the way "normal" people think. Because of this, too much emphasis is placed on what they "can't do" and opportunities to capitalize on their different, but often creative and novel, ways of thinking fall by the wayside. While impairments and challenges do exist, greater progress can be made teaching these individuals when parents and teachers work on building the child's strengths and teach in a manner aligned with their basic pattern of thinking. Temple Grandin "The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism & Asperger's" (2011)

Another souvenir Hitchcock brought back from Germany was the playful tyranny in his persona; a tyranny that was very German, mingled with playfulness that was very much his own. At Elstree in the late 1920s emerge the first eyewitness accounts of a director who sometimes ruled the set like a fuhrer, manipulating the people and the atmosphere the way he manipulated pieces of film - achieving darkness or light according to his mood. To get what he wanted on film, he was capable of behaving like a dictator, or a circus clown. Like other tales of Hitchcock hubris, these stories have grown and been exaggerated over the years. The penchant for elaborate, sometimes borderline-ugly practical jokes was widespread during this era. Hitchcock was not the only practical joker at B.I.P (or, later, Gaumont); the trend was industrywide. People say, for example, that whenever Monta Bell - an American who was "literary editor" of Chaplin's Woman in Paris before turning director - was on the lot, the madness was rife. Sometimes Hitchcock's "odd behavior" was simply good publicity. Teatime, for example, was a treasured afternoon break, and so it was fodder for the columnists when Hitchcock took to hurling crockery over his shoulder, signaling "Back to work!" after drinking his cuppa. "I always do it when I'm feeling good," Hitchcock explained one time. "I like to get up onto a high rostrum with a camera, and tip the tray over. Or push cups over the edge of a platform. Or just open my hand and let the whole thing drop. Wouldn't you?" The first time he did it, Hitchcock told the press, one of his favorite crew members split his sides with laughter - a sure invitation to repeat performances. Soon he was expected to smash all his teacups. Such eccentricity woke people up, and made for an exclamation mark in an otherwise humdrum day. The crew relished it, which was sensible policy. Hitchcock also hated uninvited visitors to the set, especially members of the general public on courtesy tours (ironic considering his later association with Universal Studios, packager of the most lucrative studio tour in film history). So, when such tours materialized, Hitchcock would switch to German, shouting curses and obscenities - all the more amusing when the visitors were priests accompanied by ecclesiastical students. Most of his practical jokes were innocent: hosting formal dinners with all the food tinged with blue coloring, placing whoopee cushions under the hinds of stuffy guests, plying uptight people with strong drink and watching as they came unglued. Some were elaborate and expensive: tying quantities of kippers onto the bumpers of a victim's fancy car, ordering a load of coal to be dumped on someone's front doorsill. But practical joking was also a matter of one-upmanship - a game Hitchcock was driven to win at all costs. Assistant cameraman Alfred Roome recalled how the director used to poke fun at his posh, beetle-size Austin-Healey, and one day requisitioned the car for a conference with floor manager Richard "Dickie" Beville. Both hefty men, Hitchcock and Beville squeezed inside the vehicle, pointedly annoying Roome, who felt his private vehicle ought to be off-limits. Roome went in search of a smoke pot, found one in storage, placed it underneath the Austin-Healey, and then lit the fuse. "You never saw two fat men get out of a car quicker," recalled Roome. "Hitch never tried anything again on me. He respected you if you hit back. If you didn't, he'd have another go." No question, some of his jokes had a bullying quality that disturbed people. Actors he didn't like or considered "phony" were special targets for sarcasm or pranks. Hitchcock said defensively in a 1972 televised interview that he never meant to harm or denigrate anyone. But everyone knew his jokes were at their worst when a film wasn't going right. Oh, my son couldn't be a murderer, Bruno's mother (Marion Lorne) exclaims in Strangers on a Train; it must be one of his practical jokes. "Sometimes he goes a little too far," she sighs. People reflexively cite the case of Dickie Beville

A Carpenter's known by his chips (Swift) My story starts in a lonely, rather deserted street in a town not a thousand miles from Piccadilly Circus. Wandsworth actually. It's a borough isn't it, not a town, but never mind. There were two fried fish shops in this street. Follow me very carefully here. One was run by a chap called Charlie Holmes. And these fish shops were in deadly rivalry And Charlie Holmes suddenly got all the trade because he'd put a big neon sign outside his fish shop saying, "There's no place like Holmes's" And he got all the trade. And this other chap, old Alf Carpenter, he was absolutely furious at this, so he said to his staff. He only had one staff because they were very small shops, and his staff was the batter man, a chap called Gunga Din. He said to Gunga Din, "Now if you can think of a slogan for my shop that will get all the trade back and I'll make you the chipper." Now although Holmes's place was undoubtedly very good, Old Alf was a very good buyer of spuds. And he really did you a very crisp chip And actually that was the idea that gave Gunga Din the slogan that now Carpenter, of course, sought out, now has all the trade, because there's now a big neon sign outside his shop that says, "A Carpenter is known by his chips." Frank Muir 580625a download at http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?wuibf89ixw5wk3f

I love my partner, but the rumbling snores keep me awake. Any solutions for people like us? Sharing a bed with someone who snores can be a challenge. It's also a common one — up to half of adults in the United States snore regularly, some data suggests, and their partners can suffer. Experts say the first step to getting some rest is understanding what's causing the noise. When the muscles that keep your airway open become relaxed while you sleep, your airway can narrow, causing the soft tissues in your throat to vibrate with each breath, said Daniel Vena, an assistant professor of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School. "Those muscles go to sleep when you go to sleep," Dr. Vena said. Also, people who are overweight tend to snore because extra tissues in the tongue and throat can hinder airflow, he said. Congestion can also constrict an airway; some people snore because of a cold or allergies, said Dr. Kuljeet K. Gill, a clinical assistant professor of sleep medicine at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. For partners who snore regularly, the first step is to rule out obstructive sleep apnea. This is a potentially serious condition that occurs when the airway collapses enough during sleep that it blocks airflow, temporarily pausing breathing and causing people to wake up gasping for air. Untreated, sleep apnea can increase the risk for heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and certain cancers. Most people with sleep apnea snore, Dr. Vena said. But not all people who snore have sleep apnea, so get a proper diagnosis. A sleep specialist or an ear, nose and throat doctor should be able to help, said Dr. Omar G. Ahmed, an E.N.T. sleep surgeon at Houston Methodist Hospital. Lifestyle changes like losing weight or quitting smoking — or the use of continuous positive airway pressure machines — may also curtail snoring. in addition, consider these tips: DISCOURAGE MOUTH BREATHING If your partner has a blocked nose, he or she is probably breathing through the mouth instead, Dr. Gill said. That can lead to snoring, she added. To promote nose breathing while sleeping, your partner can apply nasal strips or clear the sinuses with a nasal rinse before bed. If there's a more permanent blockage, like a deviated septum or nasal polyps, surgery might be an option, Dr. Ahmed said. PROMOTE SIDE SLEEPING When sleeping on your back, gravity can cause your airway to narrow, which results in snoring, Dr. Vena said. To help your partner, try placing firm pillows behind his or her back, said Heather E. Gunn, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Alabama. Or you can make rolling over uncomfortable by sewing or taping tennis balls or other objects onto the back of a shirt, said Wendy Troxel, a senior behavioral scientist at the RAND Corporation, a think tank whose research includes public health. TUNE OUT THE SOUND Covering your ear with a pillow is one way to stifle the noise, but you'd most likely need to adjust it during the night, Dr. Gunn said. Instead, try wearing earplugs, running a fan or playing white noise, she said. TRY A SLEEP DIVORCE If all else fails, try sleeping separately from your partner, perhaps in a spare bedroom (if you have one) or on the couch. A "sleep divorce" might seem bad for your relationship at first, Dr. Gunn said. But inadequate rest can also sink a relationship, Dr. Troxel said. Offset the time apart with quality time together during the day. Caroline Hopkins Legaspi

He hated waste, and he felt that America had become a wasteful country, not only of its abundant natural resources but also of its human talents. It was a nation, he believed, about to squander its exceptional blessings. He mocked American management, finding it responsible for most of the nation's woes, and he liked to tell audiences that the one thing this country must never do is export its managerial class - at least to friendly nations. He had little tolerance for fools (and he thought most American managers fools), especially those who pretended to care about his principles but had no intention of changing their ways. He was for most of his career virtually unknown in America, a prophet without honor in his own land, but he was one of the most important figures of the second industrial revolution, that is, the challenge of East Asia to the West. As much as any man he gave the Japanese the system that allowed them to maximize their greatest natural strength, their manpower. His system for quality control provided them with a series of industrial disciplines mathematically defined, and with a manner of group participation that fitted well with the traditions of their culture. It was in essence a mathematical means of controlling the level of quality on an industrial line by seeking ever finer manufacturing tolerances. What Deming and the other leading American authority on quality control, Joseph Juran, were telling the Japanese was that quality was not some minor function that could be accomplished by having some of the workers at the lowest levels attend a class or two, or by appointing a certain number of inspectors to keep an eye on things. True quality demanded a totality of commitment that began at the very top; if top management was committed to the idea of quality and if executive promotions were tied to quality, then the priority would seep down into the middle and lower levels of management, and thus inevitably to me workers. It could not, as so many American companies seemed to expect, be imposed at the bottom. American companies could not appoint some medium-level executive, usually one whom no division of the company particularly wanted, and, for lack of something better to do with him, put him in charge of something called quality. The first thing that an executive like that would do, Deming said, and quite possibly the only thing, was to come up with slogans and display them on banners. If the company treated quality as a gimmick or an afterthought, then true quality would never result. Above all, he was saying, quality had to be central to the purpose of a company. The America of the fifties and sixties had scorned Deming and his teaching and in effect driven him abroad to find his students. America in those years was rich and unchallenged, the customers seemed satisfied, and in most important fields there were few competing foreign products against which a buyer might judge the quality of an American product and find it wanting. The theory of management then asserting itself in American business was a new one: managers should no longer be OF the plant. They should come from the managerial class, as it arrived from the best colleges and business schools, and they should view management as a modern science. Their experience should not be practical, as it had been in previous generations, but abstract. Practical experience was, if anything, a handicap. They were not men who knew the factory floor, nor did the people on their boards of directors know it either. Later, after Japan became immensely successful, too much was made, Deming thought, of the fact that an ordinary Japanese worker had a lifetime contract with his company; too little was made of the fact that the Japanese manager had a comparable contract – he would stay the course, remain absolutely loyal to the company and thus to the product, and his restraint on his ambition might be its own reward. Too little was also made, Deming believed, of that fact that the Japanese manager's roots were typically in science and engineering, as were those o

WHAT PREPARATION DID YOU DO FOR FILMING IN THE JUNGLE? The calibre of some films is decided by pre-production, and preproduction on Aguirre was meticulous. Before I took the crew into the jungle I bought the most primitive and cheapest of cameras - some tiny Super 8" plastic thing with a wide-angle lens which I couldn't even focus - and went to Peru, where I scouted locations. It was the first time I had ever been in the jungle. I did reconnaissance on a small steamboat, then had a nimble balsa raft constructed. For several weeks an oarsman and I drifted down the Urubamba, Nanay and Huallaga tributaries, sleeping on hammocks and rarely leaving the raft. From the first to the last tributary was a distance of nearly fifteen hundred miles. I was trying to develop a feeling for the river's currents, searching for those that looked spectacular but weren't too dangerous. Several stretches were clearly too hazardous for a film crew. At one point the raft struck some rocks and was split in two. The half we were on became caught in a whirlpool; what saved us was getting stuck in a strong current and being swept several miles away. It would have been a disaster to have made the film without having gone down there beforehand to test things out. It was crucial to be in physical contact with the rapids before I started filming, not unlike a few years before, when I took the actors and crew around the fortress before we shot Signs of Life. I had to create some tactile connection to the place, and wanted everyone to be familiar with the environment before we started filming. "We aren't going to pull out the equipment for at least two days," I said, and asked them to walk around, touching the walls and feeling the smooth surfaces, which is how I had experienced the fortress myself when I first encountered it as a teenager. Peru was governed by a military dictatorship it the time we made Aguirre, but a left-wing one that had nationalised various industries and instituted a vast land-reform programme. President Juan Velasco Alvarado was of Native Indian descent and controlled a regime very different to those of people like Stroessner in Paraguay and Pinochet in Chile. We weren't offered much assistance by the Peruvian government, though the army supplied us with an amphibian aircraft and established a radio station, which meant we could be in contact with the nearest big city, providing the electricity didn't fail. Shooting permits were needed, otherwise showing up at conspicuous places like Machu Picchu would have been problematic. The government representatives we worked with appreciated that the strongest force in Aguirre is the Native Indians with their ancient heritage, fighting the imperialist invaders. They are the ones who ultimately survive, not the plundering Spanish conquistadors. Once production started, we built an encampment for 450 people on Rio Urubamba, including the 270 Indians from the mountains who acted as extras. It was so big I decided it needed a name, so I called it Pelicula a Muerte [Film or Death], which is a joke version of the Cubans' cry of "Patria a muerte" at the Bay of Pigs. For a time I slept in a nearby hut owned by a hunchback dwarf, her nine children and more than a hundred guinea pigs, which crawled all over me. We eventually moved to Rio Huallaga, but with a much smaller group of extras because throughout the story so many characters drop away like flies. Filming took about six weeks, including a whole week lost when we took the cast and crew from one tributary to another, a distance of more than a thousand miles. Once we arrived at Rio Nanay we lived on rafts that had been especially built. There were less than ten in total, and on each was a small hut with a thatched roof and hammocks inside. We weren't able to set foot on dry land because in the flat lowlands the jungle was flooded for miles around, so at night we tied the rafts to overhanging branches. They floated in a convoy about a mile behind the one we were shooting on, which meant we could film the river without having any other rafts in sh

About halfway through" shooting Aguirre, it looked as though everything we filmed had been lost in transit to the laboratory in Mexico, where the exposed negative was to be processed. The plan was for everything to be transported to Lima, and from there to Mexico City. Our only form of communication with the lab was a telex machine, but they insisted no negative had been received. Only my brother Lucki and I knew that everything might be irretrievably lost; we told none of the actors or crew because they would have instantly freaked out. We knew it was an absurdity to continue shooting because we had no insurance, so there was no choice but to muster our nerve and carryon with our work. I thought perhaps the lab had accidentally destroyed everything, but had a hunch there was a problem with the shipping company in Lima. They insisted the material had been sent to Mexico, so I asked Lucki to head down there and told him to enter their offices if necessary by force. He eventually scaled a high fence and found all the footage thrown away, scattered inside the sealed-off customs area at Lima airport, baking in the scorching sun. The shipping agency had bribed various airport employees to stamp the documents, which "proved" our negative had left the country. Apparently it was too much trouble to actually send the material. Lucki grabbed everything and took it to Mexico City himself. So I you all now: whenever you have to, Jump the Fence. And if you can't do that, barbed wire is easy enough to get through; just set about it with wire cutters. Razor wire is something else. Find a mattress to cover it before making the leap. Werner Herzog "Werner Herzog A Guide For The Perplexed" (2015)

Wanger endorsed putting Hitchcock on radio mainly for the promotional value - at that point he and Hitchcock were talking about a long-term association - whereas the Selznick Agency was motivated by the financial considerations. Myron's brother David, as usual, was the chief skeptic. Wasn't radio declasse? Wouldn't a radio series take too much of Hitchcock's time - time better spent on prestigious Selznick films or better-paying loan-outs? And if Hitchcock did apply himself to radio, wouldn't DOS be entitled to his usual cut? Throughout the spring of 1940, the director squeezed in meetings and phone calls and memos, dreaming up an Alfred Hitchcock radio series. Radio producer Joe Graham saw Hitchcock as emcee of a weekly anthology program presenting the favorite detective stories of famous people; the first episode, hypothetically, might be based on a story of President Roosevelt's choice. But Hitchcock told Graham he wasn't a fan of detectives per se - he was generally more interested in the victims and criminals – and the concept evolved, after a few meetings, into a series of mystery melodramas of Hitchcock's choosing, with him introducing and producing. The series would be called Suspense. But the meetings and preparatory work were suspended after DOS decided he didn't want his director wasting valuable energy on a radio profram over which Selznick International exerted no control, and for which it was unclear who would receive the payment. Myron tried to budge his brother - this is one instance where the agency aggressively pursued Hitchcock's wishes - but, as was becoming typical, without effect. DOS was was adamant: No radio series. Because the contract with DOS was ambiguous when came to nonfilm activity, Hitchcock wasn't convinced it was the producer's prerogative. But lawyers for the director and the agency warned him repeatedly against skirting the contract. Shrewdly, then, Hitchcock floated an idea: What if he exercised his acquired rights to The Lodger for radio? Not only would that help him establish a foothold in the broadcast medium, but a well-done radio show would enhance his prospects of remaking the film. DOS reluctantly okayed a radio production of The Lodger as a onetime experiment. Hitchcock borrowed two of the main actors from Foreign Correspondent: Herbert Marshall as Mr. Sleuth (the Lodger) and Edmund Gwenn (whose English currency had helped secure the rights) as the landlord. (This was an in-joke: his brother Arthur Chesney had played the part in Hitchcock's silent film. The Lodger was broadcast as an audition in the Forecast series on July 22, 1940. Patrick McGilligan "Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light" (2003)