The Little World

Whenever I sit in on a group of experts and listen to them tell each other stories I reflect that some of these are probably being retailed with advantage. In fact a few of the tale-tellers are probably advantaging through their teeth.

None more so than The People Who Weren’t There. This is because the stories being told happened a long time ago and a long way away, and it’s safe to retell them…with advantage. Books and websites may have been read, and scientific studies carried out by the story-tellers…or not. But advantage is right there for the taking.

I can counter this easily, as I have seen movies, too. Some I paid for on Saturday mornings and some I saw on television, but as they were on there at the same time I was watching, they must be true. Otherwise I wouldn’t have seen them. You can understand that, can’t you?

Anyway, there are a number of questions that have arisen from these films, and I think we need to clear them up.

a. Was John Wayne the commander of the American Army Marines or not? I’ve seen him riding stagecoaches at the same time he is seen on Guadalcanal and it’s a long way from New Mexico to the Solomon Islands, particularly in wartime. Did they use twin doubles?

b. If the American Army under Andrew Jackson defeated the British at New Orleans in 1815, why did the Canadians bring out a version of the song in 1959 that reverses the winner/loser equation. Did they know something about it before the original song was written in Arkansas in 1936? Or were they just being pissy little colonial brits?

c. Did General Sherman invent the tank or was he just the head of the company that made them? Was his second name Motors? Because that would explain a lot.

d. Did Erich Maria Remarque write ” Even Quieter On the Eastern Front ” but it never sold as well?

e. In all the movies that the British make, their officers are seen with stiff upper lips. But you can still hear them talking. Is it all just dubbed?

f. Who is the chap seen on frame 450 of the film taken as the HINDENBURG crashes and why is he carrying a stick and a bag of marshmallows?