Tag: Relationships

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Relationships — Problem-Solving, Siblings, Sons

Problem-Solving

• When he was 13 years old, Steven Spielberg had a problem with a bully who tormented him. He solved the problem by inviting the bully to star in a film he was making of soldiers fighting the Nazis in World War II. During the filming of Battle Squad, the two boys became best friends.

• Even when Aretha Franklin was a school child, she had exceptional musical ability. Whenever the class became too rowdy, her teacher would settle the students down by asking young Aretha to play the piano and sing for them.

• Sometimes, adopted children can be annoyed by nosy questions such as this: “Is that your real brother?” Some adopted children use the answer, “He isn’t fake!”

Siblings

• While managing the Hotel Rand in New York City, Wilson Mizner created a few rules for residents to follow. They included, “No opium-smoking in the elevators,” “Guests must carry out their own dead,” and “No piano-playing before 5 p.m. as it may disturb the other guests.” One day, Mr. Mizner and a friend were walking down the street where the Hotel Rand was located, and Mr. Mizner crossed to the other side of the street, advising his friend, “Never walk under the hotel’s windows. The girls throwing keys down to their friends will knock your brains out.” His brother Henry, a preacher, once stayed at the hotel, so Mr. Mizner went to an employment agency to hire several women and children to sit in the hotel lobby and look respectable.

• When children’s book author Tomie DePaola was in kindergarten, his mother got pregnant, and he let her know that he wanted a sister with a red ribbon in her hair, although his mother told him that he wouldn’t know if he had a brother or a sister until the baby arrived. When the baby arrived, he had a sister. As his parents were bringing the baby home, his mother and father stopped by Woolworth’s, where they bought a red ribbon and tied it in his baby sister’s hair before showing her to him for the first time.

• Buddy Ebsen is perhaps best known as Jed Clampett in the TV series The Beverly Hillbillies; however, he and Vilma Ebsen were a popular brother-and-sister dance team in the 1930s. Buddy was very protective of his sister. Whenever she left in a taxicab, she used to look back and see him writing down the license number of the taxi in a notebook.

• As a boy, movie director Steven Spielberg played pranks on his younger sisters: Sue, Anne, and Nancy. He once locked them in a closet with a skeleton that had a light glowing in its eye socket. And he once cut off the head of Nancy’s favorite doll, then put it on a platter of lettuce, surrounded it with tomato slices, and served it to her.

Sons

• One night, children’s book author/illustrator David McPhail stayed up very late creating an illustration in which the character Henry Bear plays music in the rain. Despite his hard work, he wasn’t sure whether he had correctly drawn the rain, but he knew that if he stayed up any later and worked on the illustration, he could ruin it. Early the next morning, Tristan, his five-year-old son, woke him up. Tristan had the illustration in his hand, and he told his father, “Henry Bear playing music in the rain — it’s good!”

• Feminist Betty Friedan sometimes felt guilty when something she wanted to do for herself interfered with an activity that involved her children. For example, she once turned down a chance to take a class in writing for television so that she could attend her son’s Cub Scout meetings. However, after a few months, her son asked her if he could stop going to the Cub Scout meetings because they were boring. After that, she felt less guilty about doing the things she wanted to do for herself.

• While acting in Jules Massenet’s Don Quichotte, Feodor Chaliapin saw Boris, his son, in the wings. Although the scene required Mr. Chaliapin to be on his knees, crying, he managed to wink at his son with the eye not facing the audience, and even to whisper his son’s Russian name: “Borka, Borka.”

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David Bruce: Names, Parents, Practical Jokes, Problem-Solving

Names

• Bryon, nicknamed “Brynie,” was the eldest of the Seven Little Foys, whose real last name was Fitzgerald. When he met John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the President told him, “You know, Brynie, all we Fitzgeralds are related.” Bryon asked, “What about Ella?”

• When Darci Kistler, a ballerina for the New York City Ballet, was growing up, her nickname was “Crash.” The nickname was the result of her learning to ride a small motorcycle — a Honda Yamaha 80 — and crashing into a tree.

Parents

• The parents of stand-up comedian Carrie Snow are supportive of her choice of careers. In fact, her mother tells her, “Please make it soon. I hate those award ceremonies where people look up to the sky and say, ‘Mom, if you’re watching ….’” Ms. Snow inherited her sense of humor from her parents, who once placed this ad in a Jewish newspaper: “Our movie star daughter is too busy to look for a husband, so we’ll look for her.” Her mother even showed up at a pre-arranged meeting spot, wearing a carnation.

• Paul Draper tap danced to classical music. However, before he was famous he became stranded without money in the South of France. He wired his parents for money and received the reply, “You’ve sown wild oats for long enough. Will send fare. Come home. Undertake some respectable profession.” Mr. Draper gladly accepted the money and came home, but he went right on tap dancing to classical music.

• Following her gold-medal-winning performance in the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, Germany, Soviet gymnast Olga Korbut toured the United States. Before she left home to go on tour, her parents gave her this advice: “Be careful, be first, be joyful.”

Passover

• Metropolitan Opera tenor Richard Tucker and his family strictly observed the Jewish holidays, even while traveling in areas where Jews were rare. While in a restaurant in a Western city during Passover, they asked for the unleavened bread called matzos — but the waitress brought them matches.

Practical Jokes

• Children’s book author Gary Paulsen owned a dog named Columbia that had a sense of humor. Mr. Paulsen’s dogs have separate houses and are chained — the chains keep them separated so that they can’t fight each other. Every other day or so, each dog gets a big bone with some meat on it. Columbia took his bone and pushed it very close to the area that belonged to a dog named Olaf. The bone was so close that Olaf could lunge at the bone and touch it, but the bone was not so close that Olaf could get the bone and chew it. Columbia watched Olaf try to get the bone for several minutes, and then, according to Mr. Paulsen, Columbia laughed. The realization that a dog could plan a practical joke like that, carry it out, and get enjoyment from it made Mr. Paulsen realize that dogs and other animals are more intelligent than they are often given credit for, and he stopped killing animals, even those animals he had been using for food.

• While in high school, Stephen Wozniak created a ticking device which he placed in a gym bag. The principal heard the device, thought it was a bomb, grabbed the gym bag and took it outside the school. (Don’t do this. Stephen got in trouble because of his practical joke.)

Problem-Solving

• After actors Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith became a couple, they were plagued by the paparazzi, who followed them constantly during a visit to Spain, even when the couple wanted to be alone. Therefore, Mr. Banderas struck a deal with the paparazzi — if they would allow him and Ms. Griffith to be alone on Tuesdays and Thursdays, they would agree to be photographed the other days of the week.

• When four-year-old Ekaterina Gordeeva, the future winner of two Olympic gold medals in pairs skating with Sergei Grinkov, started skating, even the smallest skates were too big for her feet. Her mother and grandmother solved the problem of little Ekaterina’s feet slipping out of her skating boots by knitting several pairs of socks for her to wear while skating.

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Relationships — Mothers, Music, Names

Mothers

• After her first book, The Joy Luck Club, became a runaway success, author Amy Tan was asked what her mother thought of the book. Ms. Tan replied that her mother went into bookstores, looking for her book, and if she didn’t see it, she scolded the bookstore employees.

• When novelist Jackie Collins was raising the two daughters she had with Oscar Lerman, the first word she taught them was not “Mummy” (she was born in London), but “Anything.” Why? She wanted them to learn that they could do anything.

• Paul Gauguin’s mother knew that her son could be abrasive. After she died on July 7, 1867, she advised in her will that he start a career “since he has made himself so disliked by all my friends that he will one day find himself alone.”

• Soprano Rita Hunter’s mother was very proud of her. While Ms. Hunter was singing in Gotterdammerung, her mother turned to a friend and asked, “My God, did I really give birth to that!”

Music

• Sometimes people hear song lyrics incorrectly. For example, singer-songwriter Tom Waits’ wife, Kathleen Brennan, thought that the refrain of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s song “Bad Moon Rising” went, “There’s a bathroom on the right.” (Actually, as you entered many of the clubs that Mr. Waits used to perform in, there was a bathroom on the right.)

• Ritchie Valens became famous as a result of singing such hits as “La Bamba,” but when he was young, his family had a difficult time financially after his father died. In January 1958, his mother was unable to make a $65 house payment, so 17-year-old Ritchie and his band staged a dance. By charging $1.25 per person and $2 per couple, they made $125.

• Soprano Geraldine Farrar started singing in public at a very young age — she performed her first song for a church concert at age three. When she had finished singing, she went to the front of the platform and asked, to the delight of the audience, “Did I do it well, mamma?”

• Aretha Franklin started singing in the church choir when she was eight years old, and she made her professional debut — singing solo at church — when she was twelve years old. For singing, she was paid $15, which she immediately spent on a pair of roller skates.

• Soprano Angelica Catalani was married to M. de Vallebregue, a French captain who lacked knowledge of music. When his wife complained that the piano was too high, he ordered a carpenter to cut six inches off each leg of the piano.

• Sam Cooke started out as a gospel singer, but then he started to record pop songs. He worried about doing this, but his father, a minister, told him, “Sam, the Lord gave you a voice to make people happy. … Go ahead and sing.”

Names

• Mark Twain’s real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. When he was a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River, he liked the words that rivermen called when they measured 12 feet of water. This much water had a depth of two fathoms, so the rivermen called out, “Mark twain.” The phrase meant, “Note (or mark) that there are two (or twain) fathoms of water.” Since two fathoms of water was deep enough to be safe for the steamboat, the pilot could heave a sigh of relief. Mr. Twain once took his family for a trip on a steamboat, and he stood on the deck listening to the cries of “Mark twain” coming from the rivermen. His daughter Clara came up to him and said, “I have hunted all over the boat for you. Don’t you know they are calling for you?”

• As a young girl, ballet dancer Mary Ellen Moylan decided that she needed a new, more romantic name; therefore, she chose “Mimi” and would not answer if she were called by any other name. However, returning to her lessons at the School of American Ballet, she discovered that her new name caused the other students to laugh at her, so she again went by the name of Mary Ellen.

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Relationships — Mothers

Mothers

• After Harry Houdini’s mother died in 1913, Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Conan Doyle attempted to allow her spirit to communicate with Houdini through “automatic writing,” in which Mrs. Doyle would allow Houdini’s mother’s spirit to use her hand to write a message to her son. In fact, a message was written — but it was written in English, and Houdini’s mother knew only Yiddish. However, this didn’t bother Mr. Doyle when Houdini pointed it out. Mr. Doyle felt that Houdini’s mother had learned English in Heaven.

• When lesbian humorist Laura Jimenez left home to go to college, her mother went out and bought a number of novelty envelopes. For a while, Laura was receiving personal mail from her mother in envelopes stating that the senders were such entities as “Johnson and Johnson Venereal Disease Research Center, Test Results Enclosed” and “Los Angeles Breast Augmentation Clinic.” One envelope even bore this legend: “New, Color Illustrated Satanic Ritual Guide Enclosed.”

• When James McNeill Whistler wanted to paint his mother, it took him a while to find the right pose for her. For a few days she stood, but when she asked to sit down for a rest, Mr. Whistler realized that his mother, who was in her sixties, was too old to stand and pose for hours. He put her in a chair and gave her a footstool for her feet — this turned out to be the right pose. His Arrangement in Grey and Black: Portrait of the Painter’s Mother became his most famous painting.

• In Jackson, Mississippi, Eudora Welty’s mother got her a public library card when she was nine years old. The librarian — Mrs. Calloway — was strict, sometimes sending girls home to change their clothes if she thought they weren’t dressed properly. Because of the librarian’s strictness, Mrs. Welty let her know specially that 9-year-old Eudora was allowed to check out any book she wanted — whether it came from the children’s section or the adults’ section of the library.

• As a youngster, Buddy Holley (later, he became known as “Holly” because of a typo on a contract he signed) and Bob Montgomery played country music as a duo. Buddy and Bob once played at a seventh-grade dance, where they dedicated a song to the teachers: “Too Old to Cut the Mustard.” Buddy’s mother was present, and she was embarrassed. Later, she said that she wished the duo had picked a different song to dedicate to the teachers.

• Children’s book author Patricia MacLachlan loved to read when she was a little girl. She and her mother would walk to the library, and young Patricia would read the books as they walked home. Because Patricia was busy reading, her mother would put her hand on Patricia’s neck and guide her as they walked home. By the time they reached home, Patricia had read all the books and wanted to go to the library again.

• One of movie critic Roger Ebert’s friends once worked for a pest control company while attending college. One day, he crawled under a house, exterminating pests with a spray gun. When he had finished, he crawled out, dirty and covered with cobwebs. The woman of the house invited him to drink lemonade, and as he drank it, she told her son, “Study your lessons hard, Jimmy, or you’ll end up like him.”

• Lots of mothers watched the children’s show Captain Kangaroo with their children. One day, Bob Keeshan, who played Captain Kangaroo, was having a drink with a friend in Hollywood. No one recognized him because he wasn’t wearing the Captain’s grey wig, but a woman in the bar complained, “My kids are in college, and I still keep hearing Captain Kangaroo’s voice!”

• Joel Perry went through puberty at the same time his mother was going through menopause, which meant that they had some interesting arguments. Once, he got his mother so angry that she shouted at him, “You son of a bitch!” He laughed and pointed at her, then she started laughing, too.

• When Betty Friedan sold her house, her daughter, Emily, took prospective buyers through the house. Arriving at the third floor, where Ms. Friedan did her writing, Emily would proudly tell the prospective buyers, “And this is where my mother wrote The Feminine Mystique.”

***

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Relationships — Mothers

Mothers

• Although singer Ray Charles became blind when he was a child, his mother was determined that he would be treated like sighted children. One day, young Ray deliberately did a poor job of mopping the floor because he figured that since he couldn’t see, his mother would let him get away with it. She didn’t. Instead, she made him scrub the floor on his hands and knees. Ray didn’t let his blindness interfere with the things he wanted to do. As a teenager, he drove a car with his friends sitting beside him to tell him when he was going too far to the right or to the left; he also drove a motorcycle, riding behind a friend’s motorcycle and following the sound of its exhaust. In addition, he practically invented soul music by combining blues and gospel.

• During the mid-1950s, Mikie, the little son of Metropolitan Opera soprano Regina Resnik, learned to enjoy opera music after a brief time of telling his mother, “No more practicing! I don’t like opera music!” Soon his favorite music included “Three Blind Mice,” “Little Red Monkey,” and the overture from Carmen. Ms. Resnik frequently sang on TV, and her family would gather in the living room to watch her. Mikie would shout, “That’s Mommy! That’s Mommy!” That is, unless she was wearing a black wig over her own blond hair for a role. Then little Mikie would look at her and say sadly, “That’s not Mommy. It’s a different lady.”

• Sir James M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan, helped make Kensington Gardens famous, and as a reward he was given a key so he could roam the gardens in solitude after other people had left. He was quite pleased to be able to do so, for after he had written about Kensington Gardens in his book The Little White Bird, mothers used to lie in wait for him so they could introduce him to their children in hopes that he would use them in a book. (Sir James also used to put his mother, thinly disguised, into every book he wrote. She would read the book, then tell her son, “I’m thinking I am in it again!”)

• At the start of the Depression, comedian Jack Oakie’s mother got worried about her son’s money, which was deposited in the Bank of Hollywood. She insisted that he take all of his money out of the bank. Being a good son, he obeyed. When a bank teller asked his mother why she wanted Mr. Oakie to withdraw his money, she replied, “No particular reason. I just have the feeling that this might be a good day to take all of Jack’s money out of the bank.” It was a good thing she had this feeling — the bank failed to open the very next business day.

• Frequently, when comic writer Robert Benchley wanted a plausible excuse for not completing a piece of writing by his deadline, he asked his mother to send telegrams, supposedly sent by himself, saying that she was ill and he was staying with her. However, sometimes he didn’t care if the excuse was plausible. Once, he asked his mother to send this telegram in his name: “SORRY I CANT ATTEND LUNCHEON TODAY BECAUSE I AM IN BOSTON STOP DONT KNOW WHY I AM IN BOSTON BUT IT MUST BE IMPORTANT BECAUSE HERE I AM.”

• While Tim Conway was appearing on TV in the sitcom McHale’s Navy, his mother called him to say, “You know, one of the Schutt boys is leaving the hardware store. There’s an opening. You know the other boys, so if you could apply for that job, it would probably be to your benefit.” He asked if she wanted him to work in a hardware store instead of on TV. She replied, “Yes — because the hardware store is a much steadier job. At least you know where you’re going to work in the morning and how long you’re going to be there.”

• When ballet dancer George Zoritch’s aged mother was in a nursing home, she called a friend and said, “I need you. Don’t ask questions. Just come here right away.” The friend did come, taking three buses in 98-degree heat. When he arrived, he found her sitting quietly on the side of her bed. He asked, “What is the problem? You sounded distraught on the telephone.” Mr. Zoritch’s mother answered, “I am working on a crossword puzzle, and I didn’t know what this word means, so I can’t fill in the squares.”

***

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Relationships — Illness, Letters, Mothers

Illness

• When he was a child growing up in Harlem, children’s book author Walter Dean Myers used to dance in the streets for money, which he used to buy his favorite red-colored icy pops. One day, after he had danced and eaten, danced and eaten, for hours, he went home with a stomachache. His mother set him on the toilet, then rushed him to the hospital after seeing the red liquid that had come out of his body. At the hospital, they learned that the red liquid was not blood — it was red-colored liquid from the many, many icy pops young Walter had consumed that day.

• When Alicia Alonso could not see out of her right eye, she went to a doctor. He examined her eyes, then told her that she was going to be blind. She would not believe him and had an unsuccessful operation. Shortly afterward, her other eye went blind. Again, she had an operation, and her doctors told her that she had to stay in bed — motionless — for a year. Alicia did not want her young daughter to know that she — Alicia — was blind, and for a year, whenever her daughter was brought into her room, Alicia pretended that she could see her through the bandages.

• Some happily married heterosexual men like to dress like women. One way to get the proper female frontal development is for the man to wear a mastectomy bra. Many wives have ordered a mastectomy bra and been treated so nicely by the sales staff over the telephone that they have been tempted to say, “Don’t worry. I don’t have breast cancer. My husband just likes to wear a bra.”

• When beautiful actress Ann Jillian got breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy, she worried about what her husband, Andy Murcia, would think when he saw the scars where her breasts had been. She needn’t have worried. He looked, then said, “So, you’ve had a mastectomy and I’m still here.” He hugged her, then said, “I’m not only still here. I’m not going anywhere.”

Letters

• When Janet Taylor Lisle was a child, she thought that she detected evidence of fairies. For example, when she found berries dotting the terrace, she thought that fairies had left them. She believed so strongly that she started writing letters to the fairies — and the fairies wrote her back! Of course, a loved one actually wrote the letters, not fairies, but this remains a pleasant memory. This memory served as inspiration for her children’s book The Gold Dust Letters.

• Maurice Sendak’s picture book Where the Wild Things Are has long been a favorite of children, many of whom long to go to this land of fantasy. Mr. Sendak once received a letter from a boy who asked him how much it cost to travel to where the wild things are — if it wasn’t too expensive, he and his sister wanted to spend the summer there. Mr. Sendak says, “I did not answer that question, for I have no doubt that sooner or later they will find their way, free of charge.”

Mothers

• While running his dog sled team one day, using a wheeled cart instead of a sled because it was spring, children’s book author Gary Paulsen came across a dead ruffled grouse and a nest of her eggs. He took the 14 eggs home and put them in the nest of a banty hen named Hawk. This simple action may have been a mistake, as it brought down what his wife called a “summer of terror” on the Paulsen household. The eggs hatched, and Hawk devoted her life to protecting her chicks. However, ruffled grouse can fly much further than banty hens, which meant that Hawk had to patrol a wide area to protect the young grouse. Hawk therefore sat on top of a woodpile and whenever the grouse were threatened — or Hawk thought they were threatened — she charged down the woodpile and attacked whatever she thought needed attacking. A fox once grabbed a chick and Hawk slammed into the fox so hard that spit flew from the fox’s mouth as it let go of the chick. Unfortunately, Hawk attacked some things that didn’t need to be attacked — such as Mr. Paulsen’s wife, son, cat, and dog. On one occasion, his wife went to get some tomatoes from the garden, and when she returned, the tomatoes were smeared on her shirt — this despite the bicycle helmet she had worn for protection from the attack that she knew was coming. Smeared with tomatoes, she announced to her husband, “The Hawk strikes again.” After the ruffled grouse grew up, Hawk calmed down — but the Paulsen pets were still very careful when they were near her.

***

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Relationships — Husbands and Wives

Husbands and Wives

• Director William Wellman once allowed his wife to play a small role in one of his movies. She had seven words of dialogue to begin with, but in the editing room her part was cut down to only three words. After seeing the movie, his wife told him, “Bill, I’ve been married to you for 13 years, and do you know what I’ve gotten out of it? Five kids and three words of dialogue.”

• Tom Waits often collaborates with his wife, Kathleen Brennan. For example, they co-wrote the stage play and musical titled Frank’s Wild Years. Asked in an interview for Spin whether the two had worked together, or worked separately and sent stuff back and forth, Mr. Waits joked, “We sent stuff back and forth — like dishes, books, frying pans, vases.”

• Babe Didrikson’s husband, George Zaharias, fully supported her athletic endeavors. Whenever she was about to compete in an important tournament, he slept in a separate bedroom so his snoring wouldn’t bother her. Apparently, it helped — Babe won a record 17 golf tournaments in a row. (By the way, her husband’s nickname for her was “Romance.”)

• Tenor Richard Lewis danced in perfect rhythm, of course, but his steps when dancing a fox-trot or a waltz were his own original creation. A friend, Brenda Webb, once danced with him, then complained to his wife, Elizabeth, who laughed, adding that it had taken her years to get used to her husband’s dance steps.

• Eleanor Roosevelt was an extremely active first lady, flying around the country visiting schools, hospitals, government buildings, etc. One day, the first lady’s secretary told President Franklin Roosevelt that the first lady was in a prison. President Roosevelt joked, “I’m not surprised — but what for?”

• When Henry Koster, director of Harvey, married actress Peggy Moran, he asked her to give up acting but promised to include her in every movie he directed. How did he keep his promise yet keep his wife from acting? In each movie he directed, a certain piece of art — a bust of his wife — appears.

• Neither Dr. Seuss nor his wife liked to cook, and so they nearly always ate in restaurants. One day, his mother visited, and she was shocked when she opened the refrigerator door and discovered nothing inside except a cookbook that she had given the happy couple at their wedding.

• Some people look for love in the wrong places. Philosopher Richard Watson once knew a man who was looking for his perfect soulmate: a woman who was willing to sail around the world with him. Mr. Watson asked, “And you’re looking in St. Louis, Missouri?”

• One night, singer Nat King Cole’s wife woke him because he was snoring and joked, “Gosh, honey, we’re going to have to get twin beds.” He said immediately, “There’ll be no twin beds in here!” Mrs. Cole says, “I loved it when he said that.”

• Grant Wood, painter of American Gothic, was married briefly. Following a big quarrel, his wife left him. This didn’t seem to bother Mr. Wood much. After she left their house, he merely mowed the lawn and said, “I’m a free man again.”

• Shimon Apisdorf finds saying “I love you” to his wife is very easy, but he regards that as a problem. Such important words should not be said lightly; instead, they should be said with the deepest emotion.

***

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The Funniest People in Relationships — Buy The Paperback

The Funniest People in Relationships — Barnes and Noble

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Relationships — Husbands and Wives

Husbands and Wives

• Comedian Bob Newhart’s first date with his future wife, Virginia “Ginny” Quinn, was inauspicious. Mr. Newhart wasn’t hungry, so he ordered a drink at the restaurant and watched her as she ate. This made her so nervous that she spilled mayonnaise on her dress. Mr. Newhart then announced that they were going to visit Carl Reiner and his family — people whom Ginny had never met. Once again, Ginny was nervous and during the entire visit she used her purse to cover the mayonnaise stain. About their first date, Ginny says, “I could have killed Bob.”

• Ivan Jadan, the premier lyric tenor of the Bolshoi Opera from 1928-1941, sang at the wedding of Barbara Mitchell, a friend in the Virgin Islands. He sang “The Lord’s Prayer” at the wedding, then he sang Russian and Ukrainian folk songs at the reception. He was quite a good singer. After listening to him for over an hour, Barbara knew that it was time for her and her husband to go on their honeymoon, but she asked her mother, “Do I really have to leave?” (A man who had heard Mr. Jadan sing once remarked, “He doesn’t sing; he prays.”)

• When Mark Twain wanted to marry Olivia Langdon, the daughter of a wealthy family in Connecticut, her father asked him to provide character references. Mr. Twain gave him the names of some prominent men, including ministers, whom he had known in the West. Unfortunately, the men reported that Mr. Twain was “born to be hung” and would end up in a “drunkard’s grave.” Nevertheless, Mr. Langdon allowed Mr. Twain to marry his daughter, saying, “Take the girl. I know you better than they do.”

• The 18th-century eccentric Timothy Dexter, who lived in Newburyport, Massachusetts, wanted a street named after himself in the town. The town officials declined to do so, and even Mr. Dexter’s wife thought that it was a bad idea. However, Mr. Dexter found a novel way to get revenge on his wife. He simply woke up one morning and started referring to her as “the ghost that was my wife.” She continued to live with him from that year, 1795, until he died in 1806, but he denied her living presence for all those years.

• When Albert Schweitzer met and fell in love with Helene Breslau, he had already formed a plan to go to Africa as a physician. He knew that his plan would result in lots of hardship, and he told Helene that he was worried that the hardship would be too much for her. Helene replied, “I will take a training course in nursing, and then you won’t be able to get along without me.” That’s exactly what happened. She did take the training course, and she went to Africa as Dr. Schweitzer’s nurse and wife.

• In his Answer Man column, film critic Roger Ebert answered a question by Matt Sandler about who was the world’s most beautiful woman by saying that she was Indian actress Aishwarya Rai. In a later Answer Man column, a reader stated that Mr. Ebert should have answered the question by saying, “My wife.” However, Mr. Ebert had a good reason for not answering the question that way: “Matt Sandler asked about women, not goddesses.”

• Stephen Wozniak is famous because he and Steven Jobs started Apple, Inc. together. Mr. Wozniak met his wife when she dialed a Dial-a-Polish-Joke phone line he had set up. He talked with her for a few minutes, then said, “I bet I can hang up faster than you.” He won, but a few days later she called him again and they set up a date. To decide whether to marry her, he flipped a coin — and kept on flipping it until it said to marry her.

• Some spouses are very accommodating. While illustrating his Caldecott Medal-winning children’s book, Jumanji, Chris Van Allsburg used photographs and models, as well as drawing from his imagination. He needed to draw pictures of monkeys, but he couldn’t find any photographs of monkeys in the exact poses he needed, so his wife posed for him and he drew the monkeys using her as the model.

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