"THE VERY FIRST"
"COCKTAIL PARTY ICEBREAKERS"
by
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The Female Impersonator
Show biz careers often get started under bizarre circumstances. But none had a more unusual origin than that of ... a certain female impersonator.
In 1919, teenage Jimmy was helping support his family by working as a package wrapper in a New York department store for $16 a week. But he read in the paper that a vaudeville show was auditioning dancers, and the pay was $35 weekly. Well, Jimmy danced a bit, he needed the money, and so he auditioned and got a role as a chorus girl. That’s right, a chorus girl in a musical called “Every Sailor”, a female impersonation show. $35 a week being $35 a week, young Jimmy put on a red wig and a ballet tu tu and stayed with the show almost a year.
He continued in Vaudeville and on Broadway as a song-and-dance man for several years until one of his performances was caught by Al Jolson, another vaudevillian, who took Jimmy to Hollywood and helped him land a contract with Warner Bros. studio.
As far as I know, he only made two movie musicals. Instead, he became one of the toughest of tough guys in a tough movie era. And what movies, 60 of them ... “White Heat”, “Public Enemy”, “Man of A Thousand Faces”, “Mister Roberts” and he won an Academy Award in 1942 as George M. Cohan in “Yankee Doodle Dandy”.
You remember young Jimmy, who began his career as a dancing female impersonator, as James Cagney.
The Amazing Dr. Bell The scene is the University of Edinburgh Medical School. The year is 1877. A shy, bookish student enters the lecture hall of Dr. Joseph Bell, a 39-year-old Scottish professor and surgeon. In addition to medicine, By the end of the second year, Dr. Bell selected the young student to be his assistant in the ward. That way, the student could study first hand Dr. Bell’s amazing talents of observation. Often, the surgeon would startle patients by correctly guessing their habits, occupation and nationality. The student eventually graduated but he only practiced for about a decade. In 1891, he gave up medicine altogether to pursue another profession – one for which he is far better remembered – as a writer. And he took Dr. Joseph Bell’s character with him, at least fictionally, under another name. You know Dr. Bell’s character as Sherlock Holmes. And the shy young student as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. By the way, in Doyle’s books, not once did Sherlock Holmes ever say “elementary, my dear Watson”. That came from actor Basil Rathbone who played the role of Holmes in 14 movies.
Presidential Hanky Panky
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About the Book
What was America’s longest running comic strip?
Where was the first traffic light?
Who was the first real movie star?
What was the first aphrodisiac?
When and what was the first Broadway musical?
Who used the first toothbrush?
Did Jesus turn the water into wine or beer?
The answers to these questions and a couple of gazillion more are contained in these pages, along with the fascinating stories behind them.
You’ll find the very first crossword puzzle (ready for solving), the remarkable chronicles of the first postage stamp, the first horror movie, the first anesthetics, the first baseball and football games, the first women’s fashion magazine, the first condom, not to mention the world’s oldest profession (it’s not what you think).
You will become privy to the origins of many timeless phrases and well-known events. You will experience how the common English working family existed in the 19th century, sans rudimentary hygiene or birth control, and how hotdogs and ice cream sodas came to be. You may be amused or shocked at some of the sexual proclivities of U. S. Presidents. And you will be treated to a number of curious stories of famous and not-so-famous men and women who changed their times and their world by being the very first at something.
About the Author
Bob Magruder, the author, is a veteran Dallas-based actor of stage, TV, films, documentaries, commercials and talking books. Bob has performed over 20,000 radio and TV commercials, a CBS Children’s TV Series, in more than 50 stage plays and a PBS Mini Series. He has also written, produced and voiced industrial film narration as well as radio and TV commercials and syndicated features. An avid curiosity and a lot of research time on the internet led to this, his first book.