Work – davidbruceblog #2

David Bruce: Work Anecdotes

• Comic singer Anna Russell once worked in a pantomime at the Ashton Circus in Australia, which is as famous there as the Ringling Brothers Circus is here. Most of the pantomime performers stayed in hotels, but Ms. Russell decided that she wanted to experience the circus life, so she rented a trailer and stayed with the circus performers. At the end of the season, she was presented with a medal that had her name on one side and the Ashton crest on the other. Now, according to the ancient tradition of the circus, she can get a job — even if it is nothing more than washing the elephants — at any circus in the world simply by showing the circus her medal.

• British ballet was born in the early 1930s. Not surprisingly, it didn’t pay very well. While dancing for Marie Rambert’s company, Alicia Markova was told that she and the other dancers would be paid 6s 6d per performance, but Ms. Markova protested that this would just pay for the ballet shoes she would use in the performance. (Principal ballet dancers wear out one — or two — pairs of shoes per performance.) In addition, she would have to pay 4s for a taxi to get home after the performance. After her protest, Ms. Markova was paid 10s 6d per performance.

• Everyone believes that ballerinas lead a glamorous life, but it is hard work — and often low paying. Illaria Obidenna Ladré danced in the Diaghilev Ballet, where she was paid very little. She, like the other dancers, learned to brush her teeth when she was hungry but had no food to eat. By the way, Mr. Diaghilev, who was not supported by tax money, also suffered for his art. When he died, he had holes in his shoes and $6 in his pocket. (Many people are against the use of tax money to support the arts, but taxes are the price of civilization.)

• While working as a reporter at the Pressin Huntington, Indiana, H. Allen Smith worked alongside a 12-year-old kid whose father, a local politician, owned part of the newspaper and wanted his son to learn to be a reporter. (People started working earlier back then.) One day, an explosion occurred and the kid was sent out to cover the big story because he was the only person available. His story read: “Three men were killed in a dynamite explosion today in the new sewer. An explosion is about the worst thing that can happen to a man.”

• The night before the premiere of Don Giovanni, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was having a good time at a party when the conductor rushed in looking for him. “Where is the overture?” the conductor asked, anxious because so little time was left for rehearsing it. “Don’t worry,” Mozart said. “It’s all up here, in my head.” During the rest of the night, Mozart wrote out the overture and in the morning he gave it to the copyists. (Even so, the overture arrived at the theater only a half-hour before opening, and there was no time to rehearse it.)

• Richard Strauss was once shocked to hear that a former pupil had asked for a year’s leave from an orchestra in order to compose. According to Strauss, the pupil already had plenty of time to compose. Strauss reasoned that each day has 24 hours; therefore, once you take away 8 hours for sleeping, and 12 hours for working, you still have 4 hours for composing.

• Alexander Borodin (1833-1887) was a Russian scientist who found the time to compose. Because of his work, he composed slowly, taking five years to write his first symphony. In addition, he worked on his opera Prince Igorfor 18 years — and still had not finished it at his death. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov worked with his pupil Alexander Glazunov to complete the opera and premiere it in St. Petersburg in 1890.

• No one ever thinks of ballerinas collecting unemployment insurance, but they do. During the off-season, when all the ballet dancers were laid off, ballerina Alice Patelson used to go downtown to the unemployment insurance office on 90th Street and Broadway, where she would see other dancers with the New York City Ballet.

• One of Ludwig van Beethoven’s students, Carl Czerny, reports that the composer did not keep regular hours. He worked whenever he wished, which was usually all the time. According to Czerny, “He would often get up at midnight, startling his neighbors with loud chords, thumping, singing, etc. His singing voice was absolutely horrible.” Of course, genius requires hard work. Carl Czerny, reports that Beethoven’s fingers were powerful but not long. Because Beethoven had played the piano so much, the tips of his fingers were flattened.

• Ludwig van Beethoven’s creation of the Missa Solemniscaused him to lose two servants. According to his secretary Anton Schindler, Beethoven stayed behind closed doors, “singing, howling, and stamping his foot” in an attempt to get the “Credo” fugue right. Two maids were so frightened that they quit.

• Josef Haydn wrote The Creationand sent it to London to be copied. Unfortunately, the manuscript arrived late, so that the copyists had to work long hours to copy it, finishing the work in six days. The chief copyist remarked, “This is not the first time that The Creationwas completed in six days.”

• A man once applied for a job and submitted a resume that had three preachers listed as references. The prospective employer looked at the references, then told the job hunter, “Around here we don’t work on Sunday. Do you have any references from people who see you on weekdays?”

• Giacomo Puccini enjoyed hunting pheasant. While living in the country so he could work on composing a new opera, he used to hire someone to go to his composing room and play the music he had written so that his wife would think that he was working on the opera when he was really out hunting.

• Ballet is glamorous, but it is also hard work. Ballerina Cynthia Gregory always used two pairs of pointe shoes to dance the lead in Swan Lake. After the second act, the first pair would be soaked with perspiration and too soft to use anymore.

***

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Dante’s Inferno: A Discussion Guide

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William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure: A Retelling in Prose, by David Bruce

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Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist: A Retelling, by David Bruce

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***

David Bruce: Work Anecdotes

• A member of President Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet was ambitious to be President, and some of Lincoln’s friends advised him to squelch the cabinet-member’s ambition. However, President Lincoln said the situation reminded him of a time when he was plowing with a slow horse, and suddenly the horse began pushing the plow so quickly that he had to run to keep up with the horse and the plow. When he came to the end of the row, he looked at the horse and discovered that a chin-fly was biting the horse, so he knocked it off. His brother had then criticized him, saying that the chin-fly was the only thing making the horse go. President Lincoln then told his advisors about the cabinet-member, “If he has a Presidential chin-fly biting him, I’m not going to knock it off, if it will only make his department go.”

• Gioacchino Rossini used to boast about his procrastinating abilities, which caused music managers to tear their hair as they waited for him to finish composing a piece of music. In a letter, Mr. Rossini boasted, “In Italy, in my time, all the managers were bald at thirty.” For example, Mr. Rossini composed the overture to Otelloonly after being locked in a room with a little food while a manager waited for the music. While composing the overture to La Gazza Ladra, Mr. Rossini was watched by four men. These men took each page of the overture as it was written, then threw it to the copyists, who were waiting in a downstairs room. According to Mr. Rossini, the four men had orders to throw himdownstairs if he failed to deliver the overture.

• Max Schulman was the creator of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis— both the TV series and the books the series was based on. He was quite an original guy. In the fourth year of the series, Bob Denver, who played beatnik Maynard G. Krebs, read a script that seemed familiar. It turned out that Mr. Shulman had found a Writers Guild ruling which said he could submit an old script if 40 percent of it had been changed. Therefore, he had his secretary count the words in a script from the first season, then he changed exactly 40 percent of the words. When Mr. Denver asked why he had done that, Mr. Shulman replied that his secretary didn’t have enough to do.

• When Robert Briscoe, the Jewish mayor of Dublin, Ireland, visited Egypt, he engaged the services of a guide for a while, paying him £1 a day. Discovering that he was overpaying the guide, he fired him, and then engaged a new guide for 5 shillings. Later, the guide he had fired asked to be rehired, saying that he was willing to work for 10 shillings a day. Mr. Briscoe asked, “Why should I be paying you 10 shillings when this other chap gives me good service for 5?” The guide replied, “He is a very lazy man. He has only one wife — I have three.” Mr. Briscoe reengaged him. Why? “His sense of humor was worth the difference.”

• I.T. Frary used to handle publicity for the Cleveland Museum of Art. As a young man new to the staff, he was once hushed in the museum library because he was speaking above a whisper. At night, when the museum was closed and no one was around, Mr. Frary let out a series of loud whoops in the library and felt much better. Other people felt the same way as Mr. Frary about museums — despite being museums, they need not be stuffy. Late at night, when no one else was around, Mr. Frary and a clergyman friend once straddled the museum’s marble balustrades and slid down.

• Constance Benson (1860-1946) worked with actor Stephen Phillips in 1886, when he was no longer interested in his career. While playing Prospero in Shakespeare’s Tempeston stage, he pretended his wand was a fishing pole and dangled it over the orchestra pit. As the play proceeded, he murmured to Ms. Benson in asides which fish he had caught, and from which musical instrument he had caught them.

• The Irish sometimes have a casual attitude to work. Actress Constance Benson once asked an Irish porter to label her trunk because she was travelling from Limerick to Waterford. The porter scratched his head, put a label on her trunk, and then told her, “I haven’t got a label for Waterford, so I’ve put ye one on for Cork.”

• Edward Kennedy ran for the Senate when he was young, and his opponent tried to get the voters mad at him by saying that Mr. Kennedy had never worked a day in his life. The plan didn’t work. Once a voter shook Mr. Kennedy’s hand, then said, “Mr. Kennedy, I understand that you’ve never worked a day in your life. Let me tell you, you haven’t missed a thing.”

• Alexander Hamilton served as George Washington’s secretary, but he was often late to meetings, placing the blame on a malfunctioning watch. After Mr. Hamilton was late once too often, Mr. Washington told him, “Sir, you must provide yourself a new watch, or I a new Secretary.”

• At age 10, comedian Joe Cook got his first job in show business by using a photograph of himself juggling 17 balls. The photograph was faked — the balls were hung from the ceiling with invisible wires.

• “My father taught me to work, but not to love it. I never did like to work, and I don’t deny it. I’d rather read, tell stories, crack jokes, talk, laugh — anything but work.” — Abraham Lincoln.

• “I am always for the man who wishes to work.” — Abraham Lincoln.

• Richard Wagner wrote a little more than an hour of music per year — in 53 years as a composer, he wrote approximately 61 hours of music.

• A new church secretary had previously worked for the Pentagon — he labeled the church files as “Sacred” and “Top Sacred.”

• “It is better for a man to skin animal carcasses than to say to the community: ‘Support me, I am a great sage.’” — Bava Batra, 110a.

***

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Dante’s Inferno: A Discussion Guide

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John Ford’s The Broken Heart: A Retelling, by David Bruce

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William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure: A Retelling in Prose, by David Bruce

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/530136

Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist: A Retelling, by David Bruce

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/731768

***

David Bruce: Work Anecdotes

• A riverboat pilot named Stephen was out of money and in New Orleans. Aware of Stephen’s plight, a steamboat captain offered him the job of piloting a steamboat up the Mississippi — but at a salary of $125 instead of Stephen’s usual salary of $250. Having no choice, Stephen accepted the offer, but he piloted the boat up the middle of the river so that it had to fight the current instead of seeking the easier water nearer the shore. Much slower boats sped past the steamboat that Stephen was piloting. When the captain remonstrated with Stephen, he replied, “I know as much as any man can afford to know for $125.” On hearing this, the captain raised Stephen’s salary to $250, and Stephen began to seek easy water and make that steamboat fly upstream.

• In my opinion, even people who believe in the one true God should be allowed to poke fun at Him. (I hope that God has a sense of humor.) Once a man went to a tailor and ordered a pair of pants. Week after week, the man came back, but the tailor said the pants weren’t ready. After a month had gone by, the tailor finally said the pants were ready. The man put on the pants and was very pleased because they fit perfectly. However, as he paid for the pants, he said, “God made the World in only six days, yet you took an entire month to make these pants.” “That’s true,” replied the tailor. “But look at the quality of those pants, and compare them to the shape the World’s in.”

• Thomas Edison used to test the quality of job applicants by giving them a curiously shaped glass with lots of curves and asking them to figure out its volume, adding that the job applicants could use anything they found in his laboratory. One mathematician spent three hours measuring the cup and figuring out its volume. Mr. Edison listened to the mathematician’s answer, then said, “Your answer is correct, but I can’t hire you because your methods are too slow.” He then walked over to the laboratory sink, filled the glass with water, then poured the water into a measuring cup, which told him the volume of the glass.

• In the early days of radio, songs lasted only two or three minutes, and there were no long-playing records — most records were 78 rpm quickies. This meant that a radio announcer who had to visit the restroom had a problem. Early radio announcer James Kendrick of San Francisco was fortunate to have a huge disk, 16 inches in diameter, that played at 33 1/3 rpm for 15 minutes. To the amusement of his fellow broadcasters, he put a label in large letters on the disk: “CRAPPING RECORD.”

• Comedienne Tracey Ullman uses many wigs to transform herself into the characters she portrays in her TV shows. Once, after her Fox show The Tracey Ullman Showwent off the air, she pulled out her box of wigs and started talking to them, addressing them as characters she had played on her show. Her daughter Mabel overheard and advised, “Go back to work — this is pathetic!” Shortly afterward, Ms. Ullman began her HBO series, Tracey Takes On.

• Tracey Ullman is a comedienne who is known for her ability to create characters with her incredible acting talent and the aid of costumes, wigs, rubber masks, etc. While filming The Tracey Ullman Showfor the Fox network, she changed characters so often that she once passed out in her dressing room from accidentally excessively inhaling the chemicals used to remove her makeup.

• Phil Baker was both a comedian and an accordion player. Even though he was not a very good accordion player, a manufacturer of accordions once asked him to endorse its products. Mr. Baker asked, “How come you selected me? There are a lot of better accordion players.” The answer came back, “I know, but you’re the only one who’s working steadily.”

• Sylvester “Pat” Weaver was such a busy radio broadcaster that he often came in to work on his day off, but he was frequently embarrassed when his boss would see him going to work at 10 a.m. because he was worried that the boss would think that he was arriving at work late. Finally, he solved his problem by putting a sign in his car’s rear window: “GOING TO WORK ON DAY OFF.”

• Like everyone else, early in his life world-renowned women’s gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi had to decide which career to pursue. Once, his mother gave him an appliance to repair. He did his best, but the appliance blew up in his face. Therefore, he decided not to be an engineer, but instead to pursue his interest in gymnastics.

• James McNeill Whistler, the famous painter, held several jobs early in his career, at which he was always late — in the opinion of his co-workers. Mr. Whistler’s opinion was different: “I was not too late; the office opened too early.”

• Canadian figure skater Kurt Browning performed a version of Gene Kelly’s classic dance “Singing in the Rain” in his 1994 TV special, You Must Remember This. The four-minute program took 10 hours to film.

• Pope John XXIII was once asked how many people worked at the Vatican. He replied, “No more than half of them.”

• Early in his career, Oscar Levant played piano at a little girls’ ballet school. He later told his friends, “My work was child’s play.”

• Robert Benchley’s business motto, which he hung in a prominent position above his desk, was “The Work Can Wait.”

***

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John Ford’s The Broken Heart: A Retelling, by David Bruce

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William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure: A Retelling in Prose, by David Bruce

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Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist: A Retelling, by David Bruce

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/731768

***

David Bruce: Work Anecdotes

• The great black dancer Bill Robinson, aka Mr. Bojangles, fought prejudice. He and his wife were on a train going from Chicago to St. Louis when they went to the dining car to eat. To avoid trouble, they usually waited until all the white people had eaten, but this time they knew that the dining car was going to be dropped off early. There was one white man still in the dining car, so they asked if he would mind if they ate in the dining car. He didn’t, so they began to seat themselves at a table. The steward said, “This table is reserved,” and refused to let them be seated. Mr. Bojangles was furious and pulled out a gun. The train conductor telegraphed down the line that a madman with a gun was in the dining car. Fortunately, Mr. Bojangles was friends with the police in that town and so was not arrested — also, he had gotten rid of the gun before the police showed up. In St. Louis, he made a complaint against the steward to the railroad manager, who said he would fire the steward. However, Mr. Bojangles didn’t want the man to lose his job, so he said, “I’m playing at the Orpheum Theater. If he wants to come down and apologize to me, I won’t force this charge against him.” The steward did apologize and saved his job.

• It pays to have a script supervisor on a television series. At a story conference for the episode “The Twizzle” on The Dick Van Dyke Show, the principals of the show were having a hard time figuring out what was wrong with a scene, so they met in the commissary later, came up with several ideas, and figured out how to fix it. Series creator Carl Reiner then asked, “My God, is anybody getting this down?” Fortunately, script supervisor Marge Mullen wrote the ideas down on a napkin, then typed them up later. Ms. Mullen also came up with the “SOS” notebook. Often, people would have good ideas for the series, but they wouldn’t fit the particular episode being worked on. Ms. Mullen wrote down the ideas and kept them in her “SOS — Some Other Show” notebook. When people became stuck for ideas, she used the SOS notebook as a source of ideas.

• Hollywood screenwriter Ben Hecht found it hard to do his job because he kept being interrupted and forced to attend story conferences with Sam Goldwyn. To solve his problem, he convinced Mr. Goldwyn to hire a collaborator for him, and he picked out Charles Lederer to work with. Thereafter, when Mr. Goldwyn called Mr. Hecht to a story conference, Mr. Hecht told Mr. Lederer exactly what to do — Mr. Lederer was to stretch out on a sofa in the conference room and go to sleep. This unnerved Mr. Goldwyn, but Mr. Hecht pointed out that under union rules, his collaborator had to attend story conferences with him. Soon, Mr. Goldwyn stopped forcing Mr. Hecht to attend story conferences, and Mr. Hecht was able to get some writing done.

• After Rudolf Nureyev defected to the West from the Soviet Union, he began to dance with Margot Fonteyn. At first, Ms. Fonteyn resisted the idea. She was much older than Mr. Nureyev and felt, “It would be like mutton dancing with lamb.” However, she and her husband discussed the idea of the dance partnership. They decided that Mr. Nureyev would be the next great sensation in ballet and for the benefit of her career, Ms. Fonteyn decided to dance with him. Despite the practical nature of her decision, it was a wise one, and the two dancers blossomed artistically together.

• The St. Louis Cardinals, aka the Gas House Gang, once faced a poor-pitching team whose starting pitcher walked four Cardinals in a row before being yanked. The next pitcher also fared poorly, walking two Cardinals and hitting two more Cardinals with balls. Batting ninth for the Cardinals was pitcher Dizzy Dean, who hit a weak grounder back to the pitcher, who misfielded the ball, allowing Dizzy to reach first safely. At first base, Dizzy complained, “A fine team I’m playing on. It isn’t enough that I do the pitching, I have to do the hitting, too.”

• Robert Benchley’s first secretary was Charles MacGregor, one of whose jobs was to get Mr. Benchley out of bed. This he did in various ways, such as walking into Mr. Benchley’s bedroom and saying, “The men are here for the trunks.” This news awoke Mr. Benchley immediately, and by the time he realized that no men had come for the trunks, it was impossible for him to go back to sleep. On another occasion, Mr. MacGregor woke Mr. Benchley by saying, “There are some men here to flood the bed for skating.”

• Pope John XXIII, the son of impoverished farmers, once gave an audience to Italian peasants and farmers. He told them, “I know how unrewarding work on the land can be. I speak to you as the son of Roncalli the winegrower. And yet, if the good Lord had not made me a pope, I would rather be a farmer than anything else.”

• Gioacchino Rossini wrote and produced his opera buffamasterpiece, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, very quickly. In fact, it was composed — and rehearsed and staged — in less than a month. When Gaetano Donizetti, another fast worker, learned this, he said of Rossini, “Well, he always was lazy.”

• Pitcher Left Gomez retired from major league baseball, then sought employment elsewhere. A job application form asked for the reason why he had left his previous job, so Lefty wrote, “I couldn’t get the side out.”

• “Body piercing. A powerful, compelling visual statement that says ‘Gee … in today’s competitive job market, what can I do to make myself even moreunemployable?’” — Dennis Miller, Ranting Again.

• “To test the worth of a man’s religion, do business with him.” — Bishop John Lancaster Spaulding.

• “Nothing is really work unless you’d rather be doing something else.” — James Barrie.

***

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John Ford’s The Broken Heart: A Retelling, by David Bruce

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William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure: A Retelling in Prose, by David Bruce

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Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist: A Retelling, by David Bruce

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/731768

***

David Bruce: Work Anecdotes

• B.B. King got a lucky break early in his career in Memphis. Bluesman and radio hostSonny Boy Williamson made a mistake and agreed to sing at two different clubs at the same time, an obvious impossibility. Therefore, he decided to let B.B. sing at one of the clubs—the one that paid less. However, he knew that the owner of that club, Miss Annie, was tough and would not let B.B. play at her club unless he could bring in some customers. No problem. Sonny Boy knew how to make B.B. a celebrity in a hurry—he simply put B.B. on his radio show and had him play some music. Miss Annie and lots of potential customers were listening, and B.B. brought in a bunch of customers when he played at Miss Annie’s club. Another early job that B.B. had at about the same time was selling a popular all-purpose tonic called Pepticon. He played his guitar and sang and then sold Pepticon. For a long time, he wondered why Pepticon was so popular, and then he discovered that it was 12 percent alcohol.

• Chris Tucker, comedian and actor, once visited Ethiopia, where he talked with two nuns about their work running an orphanage. The two nuns admitted to growing discouraged occasionally. However, one nun had worked with Mother Teresa, and Mother Teresa’s words comforted them: “You know how an ocean gets filled up? One drop of rain at a time.” The nun identifies the lesson these words teach: “So you just keep doing what you can do.”

• In 2007, at age 81, actor Dick Van Dyke starred in the mystery movie If Wishes Were Horseson the Hallmark Channel. The movie also featured Barry, Mr. Van Dyke’s son, as well as Shane, Mr. Van Dyke’s grandson. Of course, Mr. Van Dyke has a very good reason for giving work to his young relatives. He points out, “I found that one way to see my children is to give them work.” Of course, members of the Van Dyke family do see each other outside of work, although family get-togethers happen mainly at holidays. As Mr. Van Dyke says, “They have very busy lives, these young people.”

• Henri Landwirth was very ambitious. He worked in a New York City hotel, and he studied hotel management. He once bribed a night accountant with a bottle of whiskey. Why? Not to get out of work. Instead, Mr. Landwirth wanted to do the night accountant’s work for him. Mr. Landwirth ended up learning every job in that New York City hotel. He became very wealthy, and he founded Give the Kids the World in 1985. This hotel and recreation complex in Florida gives a fun experience to kids with life-threatening illnesses and to the kids’ families.

• Actors Eli Wallach and his wife, Anne Jackson, once appeared on TV in a light comedy called “Lullaby” on the program titled Play of the Week. Afterward, TV mover-and-shaker David Susskind told them, “I think ‘Lullaby’ can be developed into a series. I’ll own a third, you’ll own a third, and the network will own a third. And if it’s successful, your children will never have to work again.” Eli and Anne discussed the offer, and Anne asked, “Why shouldn’t the children work?” The two decided they didn’t want to do the series.

• Mack Sennett made a lot of comedies in the silent-film days, including the famous Keystone Cops comedies. Mr. Sennett liked to keep an eye on his employees, so he had a tower built in the middle of his movie studio. That way, he could look out and see what everyone was doing. Mr. Sennett also loved taking baths, so he had a huge marble bathtub built in the tower. When he wasn’t spying on his employees or doing real work such as planning a comedy, he was often either taking a bath or getting a massage.

• Bob Hope made some very good movies and some very bad movies during his career. One of his very bad movies was a short titled Going Spanishwhich he made early in his career. Mr. Hope joked to columnist Walter Winchell about how bad the movie was: “When they catch [bank robber] John Dillinger, they’re going to make him sit through it twice.” Mr. Winchell printed the joke in his column, and Mr. Hope’s movie company fired him.

• Robin Williams found out that his TV sitcom Mork and Mindyhad been cancelled when he read about it in the trade newspapers—the studio did not even show him the courtesy of calling him on the telephone first before releasing the news to the media. At the time, he was working with fellow comedian Eric Idle in The Tale of the Frog Prince, and he says, “I was so angry and hurt—and I was dressed as a frog!”

• Behind the scenes of the hit sitcom Roseanne, a power struggle raged as star Roseanne wrestled control of the show away from executive producer Matt Williams. In the turmoil, many writers either quit or were fired, and one former writer for Roseanne paid for an advertisement in Varietythat announced that he was planning a vacation “in the relative peace and quiet of Beirut.”

• Arthur Fiedler, conductor of the Boston Pops (for popular, rather than pop, music), lived by the personal motto, “He who rests rots.” Long after most people retire, he was still at work bringing music to other people. Of course, one piece of advice that he gave other people was “to make your life’s work something that you really enjoy.”

• Caryll Householder, author of This War is the Passion, once worked as a cleaning lady, but unfortunately she was afraid of mice. Part of her job was to take dead mice out of traps, but rather than do that herself, she paid the cooks to do it. The bribes took up most of her salary, so she quit her job.

***

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John Ford’s The Broken Heart: A Retelling, by David Bruce

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William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure: A Retelling in Prose, by David Bruce

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/530136

Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist: A Retelling, by David Bruce

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/731768

***

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David Bruce: Work Anecdotes

• Entertainers in show business can be big, and then, later, they can be not so big. Marty Allen and Steve Rossi were big: They appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show44 times. In the 1990s, Penn Jillette and Teller of Penn and Teller fame were headlining at Trump Plaza in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Being headliners, they were in the big room — the room with the theater where the audience plays attention to the performers. Penn and Teller would open the next night, and this night Penn got a call from Mr. Rossi inviting him and Teller to see Allen and Rossi perform their act in a lounge. Lounges are places in the open. They don’t have walls, and unless the entertainers are in a band that makes a lot of sound, it can be difficult to get people to pay attention to you. In addition, the noise that can be heard coming from the casino can be a big distraction. Allen and Rossi were funny; they were committed to putting on a good show; they were great. But this was not the high point of their careers, and few people were present to pay attention to them, although Penn and Teller and a few others were enjoying the act. In a break between bits, Teller, who had been intently watching and laughing at the comedy, looked around the room and noticed the few people who were present and the noise that was coming from the casino. Penn leaned over to him and said, quietly, “You know, this is us in a very few years.” Teller looked around again, smiled, and replied, “I am so OK with that.” Penn, happy with the reply, cried a little.

• Singer/songwriter Jack White used to make a living as an upholsterer. As you may expect, he was an unusual upholsterer. Everything in his business — clothing, tools, even his van — had to be yellow or white or black. Why? He explains that it was “an aesthetic presentation.” When he made out his bills, he says that he used crayon. When he restored furniture, he hid in the upholstery poems for the next upholsterer who would restore the furniture. Mr. White says, “I thought, we’re the only ones to see inside this furniture, we should be talking to each other, like the Egyptian masons might leave a message on the stone they were putting in the pyramid.” He even formed a band with another upholsterer. The band, obviously, was called the Upholsterers. They recorded a single, made 100 copies, and hit them inside the furniture they restored. Mr. White says, “Not one’s been found yet. They were on clear vinyl with transparency covers, so even if you x-rayed the furniture you wouldn’t be able to find them. I know where a couple of them might be, but it’s very funny in that sense.”

• M.F.K. Fisher began writing because a man was reading an old book about Elizabethan recipes in a public library. When he left the book on a table, she looked at it because she liked its smell and began reading it. She said, “Later I wrote about those recipes simply to amuse my husband and our friends, just as to this day I write books for myself.” She did write well. She wrote that “a well-made dry Martini or Gibson, correctly chilled and nicely served, has been more often my true friend than any two-legged creature.” Her feminism sometimes shows in her writing. She and her first husband “sweated out the Depression” by doing such things as cleaning other people’s houses. She remembers, “It annoyed the hell out of me because he got 50 cents an hour and I only got 35 cents because I was a woman.” Selling her first piece of writing was a joy. She got $10 for the essay and $15 for an illustration that she created to go with the essay. She remembers, “I thought — am I a writer or am I going to be a sort of mediocre illustrator for the rest of my life?”

• Like many writers, Carl Sandburg had a great wealth of experience from his childhood and his many jobs to draw upon for inspiration. As a young boy, he was arrested for skinny-dipping in a neighborhood pond. His parents thought that the arrest was silly; they had seen Carl naked when he was born, and they saw him naked whenever he took a bath in a laundry tub. Young Carl once got a summer job washing bottles from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. in a bottling works. (This was before modern child-labor laws.) He was allowed to drink as much soda pop as he wanted, and he drank so much that he got diarrhea and lost his job. For a while, he rode the rails as a hobo. One night he and four other hoboes tried to sleep in an empty boxcar, but it was so cold that they gave up and walked to a jail where a kind sheriff let them sleep on the floor of a cell. When Carl attended college, he had a job as a firefighter. His professors knew that whenever the town’s fire whistle blew, Carl had to leave class and fight a fire.

• Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis became a musician not because of a love of music, but because he watched musicians and he noticed that they drank, they smoked, they got women, and they slept late. He watched to see which musicians were most noticed, and he noticed that the drummers and the tenor saxophonists were widely noticed. To him, playing the drums looked like it took more work and so he learned to play the tenor saxophone. When he told this story, he always said, “That’s the truth.” He probably made a good decision not to play the drums. Lester Young played drums, but he switched to the saxophone because he would want to spend time with a woman, but while he was busy putting away his drums after a gig her mother would call her and she would leave and go home. Putting away a saxophone was a whole lot quicker.

• “When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: ‘Whose?’” — Don Marquise

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David Bruce: Work Anecdotes

• Dominic Holden, a writer for the Seattle, Washington, newspaper The Stranger, used to work as a waiter. Four young Russians came into the restaurant where he worked and ordered something sweet and shots of room-temperature vodka. Mr. Holden happily served them their order, but trouble arose. The four young Russians had apparently drunk too much, and their table was covered with brown butcher paper on which a lit candle was sitting. The Russians used the candle to set on fire the brown butcher paper, and smoke began to fill the restaurant. Mr. Holden cheerily told them to put out the fire, and they obeyed, but soon they again set the paper on fire. This time, Mr. Holden ordered them more firmly to put out the fire. When the restaurant closed, the Russians paid their $75 tab and had only $1.52 in coins to leave as a tip. This tip was not satisfactory to Mr. Holden, who told them that they MUST leave a bigger tip. The Russians said that they had no more money, but Mr. Holden told them, “Go to the cash machine and get me a real tip.” How much is a real tip? On a $75 tab, at least $10. The Russians got the money and left a $10 tip, but the next morning they showed up at the restaurant and complained to the manager, who fired Mr. Holden, who says, “Fair of him to fire me, but I’d do it again.” Other Strangerstaff worked in food places. For example, writer Lindy West worked in the Backdoor Bakery, kind of. Actually, she worked a few hours for free as she auditioned for the job, which she did not stay around to get. The bosses put her on the orange juicer — for hours. Ms. West says, “The Backdoor Bakery went through many, many gallons of fresh-squeezed orange juice every day. Math fact: The number of oranges required to make one gallon of fresh-squeezed orange juice is eleventy grillion. Backdoor Bakery fact: All of those oranges were juiced BY HAND. SPECIFICALLY, MY F**KING HAND. There was an ‘electric’ juicer, but it only ‘worked’ if you leaned into it mightily at an arm-torquing angle. I juiced and juiced and juiced for hours. I sweated, I groaned, my limbs cramped.” Eventually, Ms. West found herself alone with an employee who whispered to her, “Get out. Run. Don’t work here. Run. Get OUT.” She did. Another Strangerwriter, David Schmader, served a regular customer who was known as “Total Bitch” — an affectionate nickname. In fact, she used the term when Mr. Schmader first served her. Mr. Schmader remembers that she said to him, without making eye contact, “I’m a total bitch. But I’m a stud tipper. Now bring me my sh*t.” Her sh*t was a plate of scrambled eggs and a coffee with five creams, and she expected to be served that every time she entered the restaurant without anyone asking her what she wanted. She worked as a bartender at a strip club, and after working her shift, all she wanted was her eggs and her coffee — no chitchat. Mr. Schmader says, “I loved her honesty. Serving her was an honor. Her bill always came to four dollars and some change. She always left a five-dollar tip.”

• The Hasidim loved Israel. Rabbi Velvele of Zbaraz moved to Eretz Israel, but money was hard to come by and so his wife became a washerwoman in order for her and her husband to avoid taking money from charity to live. Rabbi Yaakov Shimshon of Sheptivka came to visit and he saw the rabbi’s wife washing laundry in the yard. Believing that the rabbi’s wife would feel humiliated if she knew that he had seen her washing her laundry, he attempted to leave quietly without being seen. However, the rabbi’s wife saw him. She knew why he had attempted to leave before revealing his presence, so she said to him, “Do not be concerned, Rabbi. This is not my personal wash, but rather work that I undertake, and which ensures our livelihood. Thank God that we are able to live in Eretz Israeland to live off our manual labor.”

• When cartoon producer Leon Schlessinger asked Mel Blanc to create the voice of Porky Pig, Mr. Blanc asked for time to do some research. Mr. Schlessinger was surprised by the request, but agreed. Mr. Blanc drove out to a pig farm to study the pigs and listen to them grunt. However, he decided to turn the series of grunts into a stutter. He also decided to have Porky Pig attempt to say several words before saying a different word. He then drove to see Mr. Schlessinger and auditioned the voice: “Porky would say good-bye like this: ‘Bye-b — , uh-bye-b — , so lo — , uh-so-lon, auf Wiede — , auf Wiede — , Toodle-loo.’” Mr. Schlessinger loved the voice and gave Mr. Blanc the job, but he also told him, “Go home and take a bath, will you?”

• When Jerry Lee Lewis was still a teenager, he performed for $15 a night, playing from 1 a.m. until dawn at an after-hours bar run by Roy Hall on Commerce Street in Nashville. Jerry Lee was the youngest person there, and patrons let him hold onto their watches and jewelry because they figured that because he was so young, police would not search him if they busted the bar. Sure enough, police busted the bar, and Jerry Lee, who had at least 15 wristwatches on his arms, was the only person who was not searched.

• On 10 July 2011 the British tabloid News of the Worldceased publication, the result of a scandal involving reporters illegally tapping telephones. As a result of the scandal, many businesses ceased advertising in News of the World. The final crossword puzzle in News of the Worldcontained a hidden message. The answers to four clues were these words: “TOMORROW WE ARE SACKED.”

• Three men worked together. Two of the men were clever, and the third man was a fool. When the two clever men disagreed, the fool cast the tie-breaking vote.

• “Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.” — Anatole France

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David Bruce: Work Anecdotes

• Cartoon director Chuck Jones worked on a cartoon starring Marc Antony, a bulldog who adopts a kitten. The only dialogue is by a woman, and so expressions are incredibly important. At one point, the woman says to Marc Antony, “What are you up to now?” Marc Antony points to himself and assumes an expression of exaggerated innocence. Mr. Jones worked hard to get that expression right. He created and rejected a minimum of 50 drawings before he got the expression exactly right. He remembered, “I needed thatdrawing, and I knew it was somewhere between my memory and the tip of my pencil, but there was a sort of cornucopia of unsuitable drawings before I finally got the right one. Mr. Jones told a parable about a Japanese painter whom a rich man commissioned to create a painting of a stork for $10,000. The painting was supposed to be done in two months, but at that time the Japanese painter told the rich man to come back in another two months. When the rich man came back after waiting for four months, the Japanese painter took out his paints and created the painting of a stork in ten minutes. The rich man thought that he had been cheated: “Ten thousand dollars for that? It took you no longer than ten minutes!” The Japanese painter opened a cabinet door and thousands of drawings of storks fell out. Mr. Jones stated, “I didn’t do a thousand drawings of Marc Anthony’s look of exaggerated innocence, but I did do at least fifty before I got it right, and that doesn’t count the thousands of drawings I had done when I was learning to draw this dog, after learning how to draw anydog, after learning how to draw.”

• Joseph Barbera and William Hanna are famous for their Hanna-Barbera cartoons, featuring such stars as Yogi Berra, Huckleberry Hound, Tom and Jerry, and — of course — the Flintstones. Mr. Barbera almost became a professional boxer. As a youth, he was good, and a man said to him, “You’re a good lightweight. I’d like to manage you.” He wanted young Joseph to train and do roadwork for a while and then come down to the gym and see him. Young Joseph trained, getting up every morning to do so, and then he went to the gym. There he saw the current lightweight champion of the world working out and sparring in the gym. He also saw the lightweight’s managers — men wearing suits and pinkie rings and smoking cigars. Young Joseph thought, I’m getting into this business at the wrong end. He turned around and walked out of the gym.

• A cashier (“Anonymous”) at a Wisconsin department store wrote about talking with another cashier when a customer approached them. The other cashier said, “Hi, we are both open and can help.” The customer asked, “Well, which of you wants to help me more?” Of course, it didn’t really matter to the two cashiers — both were willing to help the customer. The customer asked, “Then how about you fight for the honor of checking out my items. You know — a fight to the death?” The cashiers were unwilling to do that — “Too much blood. It’s a mess to clean up” — so the cashiers played a game of rock-paper-scissors to see who would help the customer. “Anonymous” wrote, “I ultimately lost, but it made the customer happy and was the highlight of the evening!”

• Cartoon director Chuck Jones of Bugs Bunny fame did not make a lot of money when he created cartoons for Warner Brothers, but he valued the autonomy he had on the job — he could make decisions. Walt Disney paid his employees more money, but Walt retained the right to make all of the decisions. His employees would sometimes wait weeks for Walt to make a decision. Chuck once worked for four months for Walt, and he told him, “There’s only one job worth having at this studio: yours.” Walt replied, “That job’s taken.”

• Walt Disney stuck up for his employees. One of his employees mowed the grass by the window of a visiting film company executive who was so annoyed that he shouted at the employee. Mr. Disney called the executive into his office and told him, “You spoke harshly to that man. He’s been with me for 20 years. I don’t want it to happen again.” The executive replied, “Yes, sir.” By the way, Mr. Disney once stated what he felt was the way to success: “Quit talking — and start doing it.”

• When Count Basie broke up his big band and started a sextet, everyone was surprised that Freddie “Pepper” Green, an important part of Count Basie’s “All-American Rhythm Section” for 14 years, was not part of the sextet. But Pepper showed up for work anyway, telling Count Basie, “After I gave you the best years of my life, you think you’re going to leave me now?” The six-musician group became a seven-musician group, and Pepper worked for Count Basie another 35 years.

• Heinrich Conried, director of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, knew that the clouds in Wagner’s Walküreare important, and once he spent three hours rehearsing the movement of the clouds with the stagehands before a performance. He then told them, “Very good! If you do it as well as that tonight, I shall be much pleased.” One of the stagehands replied, “But Mr. Conried, we shall not be here tonight. Our eight-hour day expires at five o’clock.”

• The father of syndicated columnist Froma Harrop worked in a box factory during the Great Depression. As you would probably expect, everyone was broke and desperate for money. However, her father told her that whenever overtime was available, the employees let it go to an employee who was raising children. Ms. Harrop explains, “The laborers were obeying the unwritten and unenforceable ‘humanity clause,’ whereby one gives up some personal gain in deference to another’s screaming need.”

• “Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I’m not there, I go to work.” — Robert Orben

• “It’s just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.” — Muhammad Ali

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David Bruce: Work Anecdotes

• For a while, Michael Sembello, although he preferred jazz, played guitar for Stevie Wonder. A friend got Mr. Sembello to audition by pretending that they were going to a place to jam, but he did mention that Stevie Wonder would be present. When Mr. Sembello found out that it was an audition, he was ready to leave immediately. For one thing, about 200 people were there to audition, and the wait would be very long to play. His friend, however, waited until no one was looking and erased the first five names on the audition list and put his name and Mr. Sembello’s name first. Mr. Wonder was going in a different, more jazzy direction at this time, and so Mr. Sembello had an advantage on the other guitarists although they knew the Stevie Wonder catalog of hits. Mr. Sembello remembered, “It was kind of like a game show for guitar players: if you hang in there you got to stay, but if you screw up you were eliminated.” Mr. Sembello got to stay. At one point, Mr. Wonder played some songs from an album that had not yet been released, but Mr. Sembello “copped the changes immediately.” When Mr. Wonder asked him how he was able to do that, Mr. Sembello replied that he had a good ear. Mr. Wonder asked if he had heard the new album, and Mr. Sembello replied that he had not. Mr. Wonder asked an assistant, “Is the album out yet?” No, it was not. Next question: “How the hell do you know these tunes?” “I don’t know the tunes. I’m just guessing where you’re gonna go.” “You’ve got the gig.” “I didn’t come here for no gig — I just came here to jam.” Mr. Sembello ended up taking the job. He said about the experience of working for Mr. Wonder, “I had all the technical ability in the world and could play like the fastest guitar player in the West, but he was the one who taught me the most about feel.”

• Arthur Whittemore and Jack Lowe became a two-piano team by accident. In 1935, when Arthur was 19 years old and Jack was 18 years old, Arthur’s aunt invited him to visit her in Puerto Rico. Arthur wanted his friend Jack to come with him, so he told his aunt that he and Jack were a two-piano team and so Jack had to come, too, so they could continue to practice together. His aunt invited Jack to visit, and she arranged a two-piano concert for Arthur and Jack to play in San Juan, Puerto Rico. As soon as they found out that Arthur’s aunt expected them to play a two-piano concert, the two young men immediately began to practice together. They had no music for two pianos, so they transcribed famous musical classics. The concert was so successful that they decided to continue working as a team. This is fortunate for music history because they were so good, and because both were so gregarious that they probably would not have worked as solo piano virtuoso pianists because they would have hated being lonely while traveling on tour. One of their prized possessions was a letter from twentieth-century French composer Francis Poulenc, to whom they had sent a copy of their recording of his Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra— the orchestra was the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Leonard Bernstein. Mr. Poulenc wrote, “Your performance of the Concerto, like that of [Vladimir] Horowitz of my Toccata, is the one for posterity.”

• Early in its history, online book seller Amazon lacked money and inventory space. Of course, it needed to order books, but book distributors required that each order contain at least ten books, and Amazon often needed only one book. Amazon found a way to receive one book in an order. It would order a copy of the book it needed, and then add to the order nine copies of an obscure book on lichens that was always out of stock. By the way, early employees worked long hours. One employee spent eight months getting up, biking to work, working, and then biking back home and going to sleep. He completely forgot about his blue station wagon and the city law requiring it to be moved occasionally. After eight months, the employee had time to look at his mail — anything that wasn’t a bill he had put in a pile. He found several parking tickets, a notice telling him that his car had been moved, a few notices from the towing company, and finally a notice that his car had been auctioned off.

• Dawn Foster, who wrote the opinion piece “I hate my job, I hate my job, I hate my job — what many think but won’t tell the boss,” for the British newspaper The Guardian, knows that many people hate their jobs, often for good reason. She remembers being a temp at a company where, on her last day at work, her boss dumped a lot of work involving invoices on her desk and told her that once again she — the boss — was way too busy to do these invoices. Ms. Foster wrote in her opinion piece, “With nothing to lose, I pointed out that she had a large plate glass window behind her, so for the entire length of my temp job, I’d been able to see that she spent most of the day playing Spider Solitaire.”

• The union animators at the Disney studio once went on strike, and of course they wanted people not to see Disney animated movies so they picketed various movie theaters showing Disney’s The Reluctant Dragon. At the Pantages Theater in Hollywood, a uniformed doorman would open the car doors and greet moviegoers. (This was a long time ago.) A chauffeured limousine pulled up, the doorman opened the car doors, and a fabulously dressed couple got out. The chauffeur also got out and handed the fabulously dressed couple a picket, and they joined the picket line. The fabulously dressed couple was Steve and Audrey Busustow, and the chauffeur was Maurice Noble. Steve and Maurice were on strike against Disney. Eventually, the strike was resolved by arbitration in favor of the union.

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David Bruce: Work Anecdotes

• Cindy Margolis took action to get what she wanted. She could not get a modeling agent, so she told herself, “I’m gonna do this myself.” She created her own greeting cards using herself as the model for the photographs. She admits that the greeting cards were “really, really cheesy,” and the photographs were really, really cheesecake. For example, one photograph showed her in a police uniform along with the slogan “Go ahead. Make my day.” She was successful, and America Online put her photograph online. AOL even told her, “You broke all these download records. Seventy thousand in twenty-four hours. Every ten seconds, someone was downloading you.” She has her own Web site, and mothers e-mail her to say, “Thank you for having a clean site. I don’t mind if my son comes to your site.” Ms. Margolis points out, “My site is completely PG rated. I’ve never posed nude. If they want a sweet, sexy girl next door, then they come to my site. Everything is 100 percent me.”

• Mariah Carey worked hard to become the major musical success she is. When she was a teenager, she got very little sleep. During the day, she worked in a restaurant, and at night she went to a music studio, writing and recording songs until 7 a.m. Then she slept for “a couple of hours,” she says, and woke up and did the same thing again. Some of her older musician friends were amazed at what she was doing. They would ask her, “Why are you working so hard?” Ms. Carey says that she knew that they were “loafing about in the middle of the day,” and she would think, “Because I don’t want to be like you.” Her first five singles all reached No. 1 in the United States. She has a bit of a reputation for being a diva, but she says, “I try not to be a jerk. I really do.” She also says that rumors about her are just that: rumors. For example, she says, “They said I wouldn’t come into a hotel unless there were petals on the floor. I’m like, do you really think at 3 a.m. I give a s**t what I’m walking on?”

• Moe Howard of Three Stooges fame knew at an early age that he wanted to be in show business. When he was 17 years old, he ran across an advertisement in Billboardfor an actor on a showboat. As part of the application process, he had to mail a photograph of himself. To improve his chances of getting a job, Moe did not use his own photo, but instead he sent the photo of a taller, more handsome friend. The plan worked—he got the job! Of course, the company manager who had advertised for the actor was surprised when Moe showed up—he did not at all look like the man in the photo he had mailed. But the company manager let Moe run errands for the actors, and when he did let Moe act in a few small roles, Moe was excellent.

• Screenwriter Dan Berendsen writes movies for the Disney Channel; his work includes The Cheetah Girls: One World, Twitches, and Wizards of Waverly Place: The Movie. He actually started out as an insurance underwriter, but says, “After five years I thought I wanted to kill myself.” Therefore, he researched business schools, but came across an article about the graduate screenwriting program at the University of Southern California. He applied and became one of the 15 people accepted out of approximately 2,000 applicants. He sold his house, moved to Southern California, and wrote. Today, when he signs his autograph for a young person, he adds, “Follow your dreams.”

• While serving in the United States Army in Germany, Richard Peck noticed that the soldiers were bored by the chaplain’s sermon, so he wrote a sermon that he knew would address a topic that the soldiers were interested in, and he slipped it under the chaplain’s door. He was happy when the chaplain delivered it the next Sunday, so he wrote another sermon. This time, he made sure that he was caught when he slipped the sermon under the chaplain’s door, and he became the chaplain’s assistant. Not only did he write the chaplain’s sermons, but he also counseled the soldiers, an experience that helped him when he became an author of novels for young people.

• David Wolff, the manager of musician Cyndi Lauper, started his career as a musician, an insecure job that necessitated stints at ordinary jobs to get money to live on. Once, he needed a job as an exterminator. He knew that the person doing the hiring would not like his long hair, so he wore a short-hair wig when he interviewed for the job, which he got. However, on his first day on the job he did not wear the wig. The man who had hired him looked at his long ponytail and said, “You didn’t look like that yesterday. You better be real good at this.” Actually, Mr. Wolff quit after a month because he hated the straight job.

• Phil Schaap, a jazz disc jockey in New York, really knows his stuff. While he was in college, he auditioned to be a disc jockey at WKCR. Another student gave him a blindfold test, playing records for him to identify while he was blindfolded so he could not look at the album cover. Mr. Schaap quickly identified some famous pianists such as Count Basie and McCoy Tyner, so the student played someone who was not nearly as well known. Ms. Schaap immediately identified him: “That’s Richard Aaron Katz, born March 13, 1924, in Baltimore, Maryland.” The other student was impressed. By the way, the other student was Mr. Katz’ son.

• Action movie star Jean-Claude Van Damme worked for a while as a limo driver. Once, a customer—the publisher of a big magazine—asked him if he could drive from the airport to Malibu in 20 minutes. Mr. Van Damme did it, flooring the gas pedal and driving through red lights. When he got to Malibu, he opened the door for the magazine publisher, who told him, “You drive too fast”—and did not give him a tip.

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