Kup's Chicago - Irv Kupcinet [118]
“How come?” asked Groucho Marx.
“Because,” snapped Burns, “I had my own teeth then!”
Stories about the colorful Tallulah Bankhead are legion. One of my favorites concerns the time my friend Earl Wilson, the Broadway columnist, was interviewing her. Fascinated by her husky, mannish voice, which is many degrees lower than his tenor, he asked if she ever had been mistaken for a man on the phone.
“No, dahling,” she cooed. “Have you?”
They’re Professional
A patient making his first visit to a psychiatrist was invited to tell all about himself. “Well,” he said, “I have a huge home in Lake Forest with four servants. My wife has two minks and a car. My son attends college and has his own car. My daughter also attends college and has a sporty little Jaguar.”
Whereupon the doctor cut in and exclaimed, “My goodness, man, what’s your problem?”
“Doc, I only earn fifty dollars a week!”
Then there was the psychiatrist who received this post card from a vacationing patient: “Having wonderful time. Wish I knew why.”
Shortly after Dr. Enrico Fermi, the Nobel prize-winning scientist, joined the University of Chicago staff for his highly secret work on the atomic bomb, he was approached by several university executives, who told him, “Now that you are undertaking this mysterious and important work for the government, you undoubtedly will need a secretary. We’ll see to it that one reports to you tomorrow.”
“But,” protested Fermi, “I’m a physicist, not a businessman. What would I do with a secretary?”
“You must have one,” the executives explained. “All important people in this country have secretaries.”
“All right,” said the scientist. Then, without hesitation, he added:
“But I shall need two secretaries – so they can keep each other busy.”
Bennett Cerf tells about the mouse used for various scientific experiments. Pie was placed in a missile that went into orbit, and three months later when the nose cone was retrieved he was restored to his cage in the scientific laboratory. Eagerly, all the other mice crowded around him, asking how it felt to be in orbit. Shrugging his shouders, he said:
“Well, it beats cancer.”
The late Coroner Al Brodie was describing a murder victim.
“The man,” said Brodie, “was 5 feet 8 inches long.”
“Pardon me,” said a reporter, “but you mean 5 feet 8 inches tall, don’t you. Coroner?”
“When I get them,” said Brodie, “they aren’t tall – they’re long.”
Brodie also swore that this happened at a coroner’s inquiry:
“You say you shot your husband with this pistol at close range?”
“Yes, sir.‘”’
“Were there powder marks on his face?”
“Yes, sir – that’s why I shot him!”
At the Clarence Darrow Centennial, Melvyn Douglas told this story:
During the Leopold-Leob case, the press repeatedly called attention to Darrow’s slovenly appearance. At first Darrow ignored it. Then one day, tired of such mentions, he stormed into the pressroom and told the reporters:
“My suit is just as expensive as any of yours. My shirts are just as clean. And my ties are just as natty. The only difference is that you fellows take your clothes off when you go to bed!”
And Howard (Vestaglas) Ader knows a minister who bought a used car – but didn’t have the vocabulary to run it.
This Is Business?
A wealthy textile merchant visited his physician complaining about insomnia.
“Have you tried counting sheep to induce a sleep?” asked the doctor.
“Have I tried counting sheep?” bellowed the merchant. “Last night I counted 20,000 sheep. From 20,000 sheep I figured I could get 100,000 pounds of wool. From 100,000 pounds of wool, I figured I could get 185,000 yards of material. With this much material, I could make 45,000 overcoats. Listen, Doc. With an inventory like that, who can sleep?”
Colonel Leon Mandel tells of the yokel who made a killing in business and moved to California. There he purchased a lavish twenty-five-room house, equipped with the most expensive furnishings his new-found wealth could afford. An old friend who