Futility Closet - 088-Mrs. Wilkinson and the Lyrebird

Episode Date: January 4, 2016

Almost nothing was known about Australia's elusive lyrebird until 1930, when an elderly widow named Edith Wilkinson encountered one on her garden path one February morning. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll follow the curious friendship that evolved between Wilkinson and "James," which led to an explosion of knowledge about his reclusive species. We'll also learn how Seattle literally remade itself in the early 20th century and puzzle over why a prolific actress was never paid for her work. Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- on our Patreon page you can pledge any amount per episode, and all contributions are greatly appreciated. You can change or cancel your pledge at any time, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation via the Donate button in the sidebar of the Futility Closet website. Sources for our feature on Edith Wilkinson and James: Ambrose Pratt, The Lore of the Lyrebird, 1933. Nicolae Sfetcu, The Birds' World, 2014. Jackie Kerin, Lyrebird! a True Story, 2012. "A.P.", "A Miracle of the Dandenongs," The Age, Feb. 13, 1932. A response from a reader. Anna Verona Dorris, "The Proud Aristocrat of Birdland," New Outlook, July-August 1956. Here's the full lyrebird video we excerpted on the show: More lyrebirds mimicking human technology on Futility Closet. Listener mail: Chicago links: "The Colorful Front-Gabled Italianate Homes at Damen and 33rd," Chicago Patterns (accessed Jan. 1, 2016). John McCarron, "Pilsen Comes Together to Preserve and Build," LISC Chicago's New Communities Program, May 3, 2007 (accessed Jan. 1, 2016). Down to Earth: 9 Stories Above Pilsen (accessed Jan. 1, 2016). Seattle links: A spite mound. The Denny regrade, 1909. Wikipedia, "Regrading in Seattle" (accessed Jan. 1, 2016). Matthew W. Klingle, "Reclaiming Nature: Flattening Hills and Digging Waterways in Seattle," in Building Nature: Topics in the Environmental History of Seattle and Spokane: A Curriculum Project for Washington Schools, Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest, University of Washington Department of History (accessed Jan. 1, 2016). This week's lateral thinking puzzle is adapted from "Detective Shadow's" 2000 book Lateral Mindtrap Puzzles. Here's a corroborating link (don't click until you've listened to the episode). You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed at http://feedpress.me/futilitycloset. Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode. If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at [e-mail]. Thanks for listening!

Welcome to Futility Closet, a celebration of the quirky and the curious, the thought-provoking and the simply amusing. This is the audio companion to the website that catalogs more than 8,000 curiosities in history, language, mathematics, literature, philosophy, and art. You can find us online at futilitycloset.com. Thanks for joining us. Welcome to Episode 88. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. The lyrebird of Australia is so elusive that almost nothing was known about it until 1930, when a widow named Edith Wilkinson discovered one on her garden path.

In today's show, we'll learn about the amazing friendship that developed between them, and how it led to an explosion of knowledge about this extraordinary species. We'll also learn how Seattle literally remade itself in the early 20th century, and puzzle over why a prolific actress was never paid for her work. Our podcast is primarily supported by our amazing fans. Every episode takes us a lot of work to put together, so if you'd like to help support us so that we can keep on doing this, please consider making a donation at futilitycloset.com or check out our Patreon campaign at patreon.com slash futilitycloset. In late 1931, Ambrose Pratt received a surprising piece of news. Pratt was president of the Royal Zoological Society of Victoria, Australia, a position that he

found pleasant enough but undramatic. That was going to change this morning, though, because the news he'd received was that a local widow named Edith Wilkinson had made friends with a lyrebird. I've written a couple times in the past on Futility Closet about lyrebirds. They're fascinating. There's two remarkable things in particular about them. The first is that they're astonishingly gifted mimics. They can mimic almost anything. Other birds, groups of birds, other animals, and indeed almost any other sound they hear,

including human technology. They've been recorded mimicking mill whistles, chainsaws, car alarms, rifle shots, dogs barking, babies crying, ringtones, and even the human voice. I know this is an audio podcast, but here's one example. You can't see the bird, but it's basically a lyrebird, a male lyrebird in a zoo enclosure. This is only about 20 seconds of him just kind of standing there showing off. But in this snippet, you'll hear, I promise you there's no

human technology here, although you can hear some humans in the background, but you'll hear him imitate a camera drive, another bird, the kookaburra, and a child's laser gun, but all these sounds are being produced by one bird. so that's one remarkable thing about lyrebirds the other is that they're extremely elusive they live in the southeastern part of australia is actually where most of Australia's human population lives. But as recently as 1930, almost no one had seen a lyrebird and almost nothing was known about them. John Gould, who was the father of Australian ornithology, spent weeks in mountain gullies in New South Wales.

He could hear their songs, but he caught nothing more than just a passing glimpse. It's like seeing a unicorn. Most accounts that they did have were either by bushmen or by untrained observers who had just stumbled onto a lyrebird by accident. So when Pratt heard that an elderly widow on a mountain had made friends with one of these, he at first refused to believe it, but eventually he felt impelled to investigate, and so in January 1932, he and two friends went to visit Edith Wilkinson at her home. She lived hermit fashion on one of the higher slopes of Mount Dandenong, which is about 24 miles from Melbourne. She was a horticulturist and a nature lover who owned a long strip of virgin jungle

that she maintained as a preserve up there, And as she prepared dinner for them that evening, she explained that her property included a deep fern gully that existed in its primeval state, and that's where the lyrebirds lived. Her cottage and garden were above that, and she spent a lot of time working in the garden so that she'd learned the songs of many birds, including the lyrebirds that she could hear, although she'd never seen one. At least she hadn't seen one until one morning in February 1930. On that morning, she was ascending one of her terraces in the garden, and she came face to face with a young male lyrebird that was just standing in the middle of the path beside her outer gate. She froze as soon as she saw him, because this was so rare and unexpected, but he only

watched her, and presently he just began to scratch along the border of the pathway for her food, and she quietly withdrew and figured that might be the end of it, except that the next day he reappeared along with his mate. She was much less bold than he was. The female stayed at the edge of the bracken on the edge of Wilkinson's property and disappeared as soon as Wilkinson made a movement with her spade. That's the normal lyrebird behavior is they're very skittish, nervous, elusive. But the male stayed there and watched her dig for a while and then began to root among her flower beds for grubs, centipedes, and mollusks, which is what these birds eat. And from that time on, in fact, he began to visit her regularly. He never sang or called, but he ranged about her garden and just watched her for hours. His confidence gradually grew until he was willing to let her approach quite close to him.

In fact, he started to become a nuisance by digging up her new shrubs. And one morning when she found him destroying one of her most precious flowering trees, she actually drove him away, which she felt bad about later. She thought he might never come back, but in fact he reappeared the following morning and seemed to be on better behavior. So she wasn't like feeding him or anything. He was just showing up. No, apparently he was just an incredibly bold liar bird. Or just very curious.

Yes. So about this time she figured, well, if he's going to keep visiting, she would try to actively cultivate his friendship. And she began to talk to him, which freaked him out the first time it happened, and he disappeared and hid. But he eventually grew used to it, and eventually began to answer her, because again, lyrebirds can do anything. Each morning, she would greet him by saying

hello, boy, and he would regard her intently while she talked to him. And then he would start looking for his breakfast. Everything, every description of a lyrebird I've been able to find mentions how intelligent they seem, their eyes in particular. So he spent a lot of time just watching her and apparently thinking about all this. And she noticed extremely regular habits. He'd appear for a couple hours in the morning while she was gardening and keep her company there.

And then after sunset, he would spring onto the railing of her veranda and run along the ledge to a point opposite her sitting room window. He did this every day through April and May, and then in early June, the mating instinct seemed to catch him, and he began to sing, finally, first while perched in a tree, and finally, a few days later, right outside her sitting room window, imitating other species and then giving a love song of his own species. He was again accompanied by his mate, but she still seemed nervous and disappeared as soon as the singing stopped.

So this became their new routine. He sang and danced twice daily on the ledge of the veranda throughout the whole mating season of 1930. His tail plumes finally began to molt in early September, and when that happened, he seemed kind of sad about it and stopped singing, and one morning she found one of his two large lyre-shaped plumes on her doorstep. That's why lyrebirds got their name, as their tails sort of form the shape of a lyre. She found that and he disappeared for a few days. She didn't see him, in fact, again, almost for two months. But then she heard his

voice among a number of others calling in the valley, and she decided what she'd do is build a little platform in front of the sitting room window because she's noticed that that was a bit too narrow for him to dance upon it very easily. On December 5th, she was awakened just after dawn by a loud, persistent tapping on the pane. Immediately, she thought, James has returned to me. By this time, she'd named him James after a dear friend of hers who had died recently. So she got up hurriedly, ran into the sitting room, and opened the window, and he was standing on the platform looking at this new platform she'd built for him and examining it with the deepest interest.

And she watched him through happy tears. She said, Hello, boy, and he said, Hello, boy, and they stared at each other steadily across some three feet of space. She noticed he was a little larger and his tail plumage had been renewed, but it was only half developed. Suddenly he spread his tail fan-wise over his head, advanced toward her, and burst into song. He sang for half an hour, imitating other birds and giving the whole love song of his species. That's basically how lyrebirds give court.

So he was courting her, maybe. Well, I have to be careful here because I'm relying on Pratt's book and I've noticed that Pratt doesn't ever explicitly say that he was courting her, but it is the same behavior and I have seen that described explicitly

as courting elsewhere. And I guess you'd have to be James to know exactly what he thought he was doing. So he was flirting with her, maybe. Maybe that's a better way to say it. She noticed he'd enlarged his repertoire significantly, adding a few new species. And he kept coming back and dancing and singing for her.

In fact, she was taken ill one day in early 1931 and found herself unable to rise when he tapped on the window. She couldn't get out of bed. She was so sick. And finally she gave up trying and just fell asleep and was awakened by scratching sounds outside her bedroom window, which was quite a distance from the normal veranda window. That continued for at least an hour,

and then his head popped up in silhouette above the sill of this bedroom window, and he began to sing to her through there. She opened the window and found that he built a mound of leaves outside that window, which is normal behavior for lyrebirds. They build a mound and then sing to their mates from it. They're very family-oriented, affectionate birds, apparently, in nature. And he'd somehow... She still doesn't know.

They never did discover how he knew that she was in bed or where the bedroom window was or how to find her, and he never did this again. But he managed to do it once, which is pretty impressive. So throughout 1931, he spent at least two hours each day with her, except in very stormy weather, and he wound up erecting fully seven mounds in the garden on which to sing and display for her. I guess you'd have to say he's courting her.

I don't know what else you could call this. Frequently, he brought his mate and his first chick with him, but they rarely ventured into the cultivated areas, just like before. He's sort of, he has a mate mate but he's courting this human woman um and word finally got around because it had been this has been going on so long is that wilkinson mentioned to a few people and word finally got down to ambrose pratt and uh that's what finally brought him here this evening to visit her and hear all this uh she explained all this to him over dinner and his friends.

And Pratt writes, after they listened to all this, he says, not altogether credulously, it was almost midnight and they finally all retired and went to bed. She woke them up soon after dawn and led them to the balcony. The gorge over which she lived was still cloaked with white mist and the tops of eucalyptus trees were sticking up through it. They could hear a lyrebird's mating call. It seemed far away, but she told them it was James' voice and that he was approaching quickly up the mountain. And here's how Pratt wrote this up later. At exactly 4.45 a.m., I heard a queer scratching sound on the veranda, and a second later, a large bird with a long, gracefully drooping tail sprang upon the

platform and stared at us with an air of wild alertness through the pane, little more than a yard distant from the farthest member of his audience. His manner was so nervous, his attitude so tensely poised, that I despaired of his remaining, but even as his wings raised to fly, Mrs. W. spoke to him, and within a few seconds he was completely soothed, and his nervousness a thing of the past. Hello, boy, said Mrs. W. Hello, boy, replied the bird. You're a good boy to come so early, said the lady. You'll be nice and fresh from your rest. You must stay a long time and do your very best for these people who have come to see you. That's right, settle down and preen your feathers. He stood for a while not moving and justazing up at them, and then he preened for ten minutes, and then suddenly erected his tail fan-wise,

which means, here it comes. Pratt described it this way, what happened next. The bird gave two long, melodious trills, then he advanced with mincing steps and shivering feathers towards us, singing as he came the queer dance music of his tribe. In the dance that followed, he got perfect time with his feet and body to the music, invariably fitting three separate steps to each two beats of the tune. When brought up against the pain, he tapped gently with his beak upon the glass and concluded the measure with three very swift, very decided steps and two resonant and bell-like calls that sent notes of challenge ringing down the valley.

He paused and then began his concert, began actively singing to all of them. And Pratt, who scribbled this down, astonished in his notes, said that the concert lasted 43 minutes, included by his hastily penciled notes the calls of 20 different Australian birds. And no one, remember how elusive

lyrebirds had been before? No one had ever witnessed this before. Wow. Yeah, so it must have, like you said, been like seeing a unicorn. I mean, just that miraculous. And all of them were watching this, were all bird lovers and were suitably impressed by all this. In fact, this was so impressive

that it actually attracted other birds. There were two birds of other species that were just standing there kind of watching him when he finished. And as he departed, as James withdrew later after he was finished with the concert, he paused occasionally to dance and sing for them, for these other birds. And they followed him, Pratt said, spellbound, Pratt wrote. And so he passed from our sight and hearing an elfin prince of the bushland

singing, laughing, and dancing, and we were left in a garden that seemed void without him and a silence we hesitated long to break. Well, Pratt went back down the mountain and wrote this up in an article that appeared in The Age on February 13th, 1932. The headline is A Miracle of the Dandenongs, and it starts like this. In the heart of the Dandenong Ranges, surprisingly near a main road and several pretty mountain villages, there is daily enacted a dramatic and musical performance of almost unbelievable beauty by a singer of surpassing genius, a denizen of the forest primeval, who has never wandered a hundred yards from his native gully and who owes nothing of his skill and artistry to man. This great singer is a lyrebird whose name is James James and this was the beginning of a great explosion

in knowledge about liar birds thanks to the relationship between these two because more and more people heard about this and would come up and watch James' performances and he seemed very happy to do the performances as long as Edith Wilkinson was among the spectators Pratt wrote I've seen James several times since then. On each occasion,

he's added new features of the miraculous to his performance, and I become more and more uncertain if he is a fairy or a fowl. James became the first lyrebird to be broadcast on radio and one of the first to be filmed and photographed

in display. His repertoire, it turned out, included cats meowing, dogs barking, wood being chopped, and human voices. Edith Wilkinson actually died relatively soon after this. She was quite elderly even when it all began.

But James is still remembered as sort of the ambassador for lyrebirds among humans. Pratt wrote in 1940, quote, it is not an exaggeration to say that the lore of the living lyrebird has been enriched with a greater volume of exact and authentic information during the past eight years than was collated during the preceding century, and that the greater part of this swift and striking enlargement of our knowledge is due to the development of an amazing friendship between a male lyrebird and a widowed lady named Mrs. Edith Wilkinson. In episode 85, Greg told us about how the streets and many of the buildings in Chicago were raised up several feet in the 1850s and 60s to try to alleviate the miserable sanitation conditions of the city. Mika sent us an email on the subject and said,

Dear Futility Closet Hosts and Feline, so Sasha got included in the email. Mika says, I'm a born and raised Chicagoan and a proud patron of your fine podcast. I was so excited to hear you take on a subject that, as you mentioned, many Chicagoans even don't know about, the raising of the city. However, it's not entirely true that no one remembers it, as there's evidence of it that exists to this day. Despite the fact that many buildings and whole neighborhoods either had the means to be raised or were developed later on, there were a fair number of Chicago citizens who couldn't afford to raise their houses.

There were a fair number of Chicago citizens who couldn't afford to raise their houses. Whole residential areas were left at the old street level and tended to be comprised of mostly poor and or immigrant communities. These areas have what we now call vaulted sidewalks. I, in fact, know and love a couple of these neighborhoods dearly as I call them home. And Mika says that she grew up in an area called Pilsen, where her grandparents' house had a front lawn that was about 10 feet below the sidewalk. Yeah, it's hard to almost even picture that, like the front yard of the house is 10 feet below the sidewalk. And Mika now lives in an area called Pulaski Park, where most of the apartment buildings are set about five feet below the sidewalks. Mika sent some links in with some great photos of houses that each have a good portion of the house

and all of the yard well below the sidewalk and the street level. They're really interesting to see. Apparently this was confusing even at the time. I don't think I mentioned this in the feature we did, but the effect it gives. What they did was they built everything at the same level like in a normal city, and then they raised the level of the streets. But if you're just visiting for the first time and you don't know that it looks like all the buildings have sunk down below ground level for some strange reason and it sounds

like that's still the effect it gives now right in certain neighborhoods what on earth could have happened to make that make anyone want it to be that way um in her email mika says uh these neighborhoods populations in the 19th and into the 20th century were mostly Czech, Polish, and Eastern European, many of whom made the best of their situations through wooden or concrete walkways and staircases to the new first, former second floors. One of the links even infers that even though the new houses were built after the grade was raised, they adopted the neighborhood pattern of having a walkway or a staircase to a raised first floor from the vaulted sidewalk, or never meeting the grade of the sidewalk at all. These are only two examples of many Chicago neighborhoods that have houses that look as

though they're set into the ground, but I'm happy to hear more stories about my hometown's engineering and architectural achievements. Love the podcast and look forward to it every week. Thanks for the puzzles. So thank you, Mika, and we'll put some of Mika's links in the show notes for anyone who wants to see what she's describing with the houses set below the sidewalk and street level. As you say, it kind of looks like they've sunk into the ground somehow. It's a very odd effect. Bob Seidensticker also wrote in about the Raising Chicago episode saying, Seattle had a similar issue with the regrading of an existing city,

but their problem was a little different. There was a flat shore and then a steep hill. Potholes in the dirt streets were so bad that some were named. Legend claims that one person was drowned in a pothole. And I admit, I didn't know much about the geography of Seattle before this, but I've learned a little bit about it since getting Bob's email. Apparently, Seattle is rather tricky for a city as it lies on a narrow strip of land between two bodies of water. And it also originally included several good-sized hills, which further impeded both

transportation and growth. So they had a lot to try to contend with there. The City of Seattle's website calls it a city built on hills and around water. And after a massive fire in 1889 destroyed much of the downtown area, the city engineer basically initiated a whole plan to entirely reshape and regrade the whole area. I guess he figured since so much of it burned down, now's the time to do it. The University of Washington's History Department notes that in a series of almost continuous construction projects from 1890 to 1940,

engineers and workers moved mountains, straightened rivers, leveled hillsides, dug sewers, paved roads, and carved canals. I'd never heard of this until Bob wrote in. Yeah, no, me neither. I had no idea. I also didn't realize that Seattle was in such a tricky situation for a city. I mean, this sounds in many ways like a bigger undertaking than Chicago, but Chicago, you

occasionally hear about it in passing. Right. But I'd never heard about this, and it sounds like a huge job. So much work was needed to be done in Seattle that it took several decades, as I alluded to before. And Bob says that after the fire, the impatient landowners didn't want to wait for the regrading before they would start rebuilding. So he says the result was that some parts of the street were up to 14 feet higher, as I recall, than the sidewalks. This meant using a ladder on both sides to cross the street. There's a story of horse-drawn carriages falling into the well made by the sidewalk.

All told, it took a series of about 60 separate projects just to remove many of the ridges and hills that were throughout Seattle. And in total, they moved over 50 million cubic yards of earth, some of which they then used to fill in some of the low-lying areas. These projects began in the 1890s using pickaxes and horses and finished in the 1920s using hydraulic cannons and conveyor belts powered by water and electricity. So it's kind of interesting how they started with just their little pickaxes. Yeah, but still just the scale of that work. Yeah, and overall the whole project really didn't go as smoothly

as you said the Chicago one did. There were a wide variety of problems reported in Seattle, including landslides, collapsed building foundations, broken water and sewer mains, blocked streets, and collapsed sidewalks. So it really wasn't nearly as smooth. A number of residents ended up suing the city for the different problems they were having, and the city in turn threatened the contractors with lawsuits and non-payments. So you just had these rounds and rounds of litigation. A further problem

in Seattle was that there were some landowners who wouldn't consent to having their property regraded. And so any property owners who wouldn't cooperate with the project basically found their lots turned into enormous towers of dirt that were popularly called spike mounds. And these would loom as high as 50 feet above the now flattened land below them. So you would basically have these houses stranded way up above the rest of the land, just on these little mounds of, you know, 50 feet of earth. We'll have some photos in the show notes to show the Spite Mounds, because they are just amazing to see. The Spite Mound is a terrible name for anything.

And apparently some of these houses ended up tumbling down their mounds and then smashing on the ground. So that would be pretty. Just because the owners didn't want to participate in the regrading. Yeah, for whatever reason. Right. They would say, no, I don't want my property regraded or I understand everybody else is having so much trouble with theirs. So leave mine alone. And so they would leave it alone but flatten everything else around it.

would flatten everything else around it. The first round of the regrading projects ended early in the 20th century because the city ran out of money. A newspaper article written in 1926 noted that the projects had left Seattle almost bankrupt, but unfortunately they had stopped work right in the middle of regrading what was called Denny Hill.

So for 20 years, there was the left half of a 100-foot-high hill that was still standing above the newly flattened half of it. In 1931, they finally finished flattening Denny Hill, and then the Great Depression basically quashed any further regrading projects. But in looking this up, I found out that apparently the area of Seattle where Denny Hill used to be is still called the Denny Hill Regrade. And I wonder, yeah, even though there's no hill and it's been, you know, many, many decades now since it was done. So I wonder if like the residents, if some of them don't even know what that means. Yeah. Well, I was thinking when you said this took so many decades,

I guess that meant there was maybe a whole generation. You could live most of your life in Seattle while this whole project was going on. Right, and it was just almost apparently just almost continuous construction of some sort or another. So thanks so much to Mika and Bob for sending those in to us, and thanks to everyone who writes to us. If you have any questions or comments for us, please send them to podcast at futilitycloset.com. I'm going to be trying to solve a lateral thinking puzzle today. Greg is going to give me an interesting sounding situation, and I have to try to work out what's going on asking only yes or no questions. This is from the 2000 book Lateral Mind Trap Puzzles.

In 1936, 16-year-old Pittsburgh native Jane Chester Bartholomew boarded a bus for Hollywood to fulfill her dream of becoming a movie star. Incredibly, she managed to appear in more than 1,700 films produced by Columbia Pictures, but she never received a penny for these appearances. Why not? Oh, interesting. Is she somebody that I might have heard of? Like she changed her name to somebody that I would recognize?

No. Just curious. Okay. So you're saying she appeared in the films. Yes. Meaning she was visible in the films yes but she didn't receive any credit that's right was she just an extra in all of these films no for some reason were they a specific type of film would you say no they had something

did she have some interesting physical characteristic that would help me to know about no 1700 films she appeared in but didn't get credit for it didn't appear in the credits you're saying never received a penny for the oh never received a penny i'm sorry she never received a penny oh did she marry somebody and and she was uh somebody's wife and so she was just always in the films with him? No. Oh, drat. I thought maybe they got paid as a couple, or she was just in her husband's films or something.

Is it something similar to that? No, actually it's not. No. She never received a penny. Was she in the credits? No. Um, she never received a penny. Was she in the credits?

No. Did, it, bleh. And you're saying it doesn't matter what kind of film it was. That's right. But you would physically see her in the film? Yes. In a role of an actor? No.

In the role of a prop or scenery? Uh, I'd almost say yes to that um uh and you're saying she didn't have any specific physical characteristics that are important that's right okay so did she play something specifically okay was she would she have been recognizable as herself like if her friends and family watched the movie would they have been able to say, oh, there's Jane? Yes. Okay, so she wasn't like dressed up like a monkey or something. No, that's right. So they would have seen her, but you're saying she would have been playing something closer to like a prop or scenery than an actor.

Yes. Presumably she didn't speak in the films? That's right. Okay. Oh,ably she didn't speak in the films? That's right. Okay. Oh, did she do something? Would you say that there was some verb that she did that was important in these movies? Like she swam or she danced or she juggled or did somersaults or something? And she was just known for doing that.

Okay. So would you say that her role in these movies was primarily to stand still? Yes. Okay. Hmm. Did she play the same character or role in each film? Yes. So she was, hmm. Okay. Would it help me to figure out what that character or role is? Yes. Is it a specific identity with, like, you know, the goddess Hera as opposed to an angel?

Is it a specific identity with a name? It is, actually. It is a specific identity with a name. Okay. Those can be hard to guess, so you don't have to go after it. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Those can be hard to guess, so you don't have to go after it. Yeah.

Was the specific identity a human being that has existed? No. No. A mythical creature like a god or goddess or the Easter Bunny or something? I think I'd say yes to that. Yes. Okay. So a mythical, she was playing a mythical creature, a mythical humanoid creature?

Yes. Having to do humanoid creature? Yes. Having to do with any religion? No. Is this going to be difficult for me to guess, so I should try a different line of inquiry? Probably. I mean, it might be useful, but those are really hard to guess. Can I give you a hint? Yeah.

All she appeared in, all of the 1700 films she appeared in were produced by Columbia Pictures. That's my hint. That's important. Oh, was she the, no, she wasn't. Well, Columbia Pictures. Do I need to know like what their, their. Oh, oh, oh gosh. I'm trying to think of Columbia Pictures.

I was confusing it with the lion. That's the one where the woman stands holding the statue. She's the woman holding the torch i mean they called her the statue of liberty the character she was was columbia which is a personification of the united states oh that's really interesting i don't think i would have guessed that though in 1936 uh they called up dozens of women including her to post her image they just called it a promotional idea and they never told her whether she got the part so she stuck it out in hollywood

for a while and finally gave up acting and went back to pennsylvania and they never paid her for any of this got married and moved to chicago and was just sitting in a theater movie theater one day when she saw herself for the first time quote i yelled oh my god that's my picture she said later i found out columbia had been using my picture since 1937 but it didn't bother me i was just happy and thrilled to know they had picked me over all the other tryouts. I'm surprised that that's legal, that they could do that without paying her ever. She said in 1975 her daughter tried to go find out the truth of this, and she couldn't apparently get Columbia to admit on the record that they had used her likeness,

presumably because they thought they'd owe her a lot of money for this. Wow. But they invited her to a party they were giving for one of their executives, and apparently she was just so happy to be chosen that it kind of has a happy ending. Oh, good for her. If anybody out there has a puzzle that they'd like to send in for us to use, please send that to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. That wraps up another episode for us.

If you're looking for more Futility Closet, you can check out our books on Amazon or visit the website at futilitycloset.com, where you can sample more than 8,000 singular distractions. At the website, you can see the show notes for the podcast and listen to previous episodes. Just click podcast in the sidebar. If you'd like to support Futility Closet, please consider becoming a patron to help keep us going. You can find more information at patreon.com slash futilitycloset. You can also help us out by telling your friends about us or by clicking the donate button on the sidebar of the website.

If you have any questions or comments about the show, you can reach us by email at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was written and produced by Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.