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Show Snapshots of Big Shots: (This is what cttrnes from reading booki!) t.dgar Allan Poe was a dollar-a-year-man too. ... He spent 10 years writing and rewriting "The Raven" and gut 10 bucks for It. . . . The original manuscript sold the last time for $10,000. . . . Poe paid $3 a month rent for his honeymoon cottage cot-tage on Grand Concourse (in the Bronx), which is now a New York state historical shrine. If it hadn't been a grand neighborhood for dandelions he and his bride would have starved. Murcoaf, son of an Italian father and Irish mother, was 27 when he invented radio, and even then there were people who wanted to kill him. . . . These cranks said electrical waves were passing through their bodies, destroying their nerves and making it Impossible for them to sleep. Riirrram, who said "there's one born every minute," was one himself. lie lost a fortune on a bear's grease hair tonic, was swindled out of another selling illustrated il-lustrated bibles, trimmed again on a fire extinguisher that wouldn't extinguish, went Into bankruptcy for half a million milking alarm clocks. . . . Without With-out a dime to his name he wrote a lecture on "How to Make Money," grossing $1,000 a night. . . . And that's how the famous Barnmism was born. Alexander Dumas, one-fourth Negro, whose book, "The Three Musketeers," was a best seller for almost 100 years, used to boast that he had more than 500 children and swore he would never marry. . . . He changed his mind when a smart sweetheart bought up all his debts and gave him a choice between marriage and jail. ... He wrote novels en blue paper, poetry on yellow, yel-low, articles on red, and nothing else would do. . . . He wrote more than 1.200 volumes of plays, novels i and histories, made over 5 million dollars and died broke, living off the chority of his son. i Woolworth started his five-1 five-1 an d-d i me stores on a capital of $300, and his first three failed. Thirty years later he was able to pay $14,000,000 cash for the building bearing his name, then the world's highest effice building. build-ing. George Gershwin sold his first song for $5; nine years later a Hollywood studio paid $50,000 just to use "Rhapsody in Blue," which he wrote in his spare time, in a single picture. Sir Ivaao Newton was so absent-minded he once rammed his niece's Angers into his pipe. . . . Trying to fix himself a three-minute three-minute egg, he boiled his watch while watching the egg. . . . When he went to fetch anything he usually came back without it. . . . He was usually last in his class at school. . . . He was a woman hater and never married. mar-ried. ... He always claimed he solved many of his mathematical mathemati-cal problems in his sleep. Dr. Samuel Johnson continually distorted his face by violent grimaces. grim-aces. . . . When walking in the street he touched every post he passed and if he missed one he always al-ways returned. He always made a point f entering or leaving a door on a certain foot, but his biographer, biograph-er, Boswell. wasn't sure which one. Lord Byron was so emotional that , :nce a theatrical performance put iim tnto convulsions. ... In a fit if temper he threw his watch into he fire and hammered it to pieces vith the poker. ... He also fired a jistol in the bedroom of hi-s wife, vho left him after a year of mar-iage. mar-iage. ... So he went to Venice and Knight a harem. Schiller liked to keep his feet i ice while working. ... He once rrote a full and perfect description f the Swiss land and people al- j lough he knew neither. . . . Cole- ! dge. who wrote "Kubla Khan" un- ' er the influence of an opiate, could J member only 54 lines when he ! ltTiciently recovered to wrke. . . . j ichelieu at times imagined himself i be a horse and neighed, trotted ' id jumped like one. . . . Beau t rummel, the fashion plate (who ught the Prince of Wales how to 1 ess), died in rags in an insane i ylum. ! Beethoven had a passion for j moving and sometimes was paying pay-ing rent on two or three places it once, but Mozart, who died ! it 35, starved and frozen, lever coald pay rent on one. 'hopin rfed ont on the biggest e of his .iie because she didn't ?r him a c.air before she offered , : to others r the room. ... In his 1 he ordered himself buried in ite tie, dress shoes and silken , e breeches. j |
