Miscellany and Trivia

"Within a few years after his marriage, Cole Porter had written, and had courteously tossed off at one party or another, such songs as 'Two Little Babes in the Wood,' 'Let's Do It,' and 'What Is This Thing Called Love?' He turned a bland eye upon his excited friends when they insisted that these songs should be published. He had plenty of money [much of it inherited] and a vast indifference toward making any more. To one enthusiastic pep-talker, he solemnly explained his fear of commercial success. 'Suppose I had to settle down on Broadway for three months just when I was planning to go to Antibes,' he said."

One day Gustav Mahler and his sister Justi visited a two-story cafe in Budapest's City Park. Mahler, who was in the habit of wiping utensils and rinsing glasses before using them, filled his glass with water and absent-mindedly emptied it over his shoulder, eliciting a cry of alarm from a group of ladies on the terrace below. "So sorry," Mahler gasped, realizing his mistake. As director of the Opera, Mahler was much-loved and his absent-mindedness quickly forgiven. Indeed when, minutes later, he repeated the incident with Justi's glass, the entire restaurant just burst out laughing.

In 2004, Sir Paul McCartney, a vegan and outspoken animal rights activist, confessed that his production of a series of animated films (including Tropic Island Hum, Tuesday, and Rupert and the Frog Song) was motivated in part by childhood guilt. "When I was a kid and I remember thinking as I would have to go into the Army," he explained, "cruelty to frogs seemed justified as a practice for the Army.

"Obviously, now this is something I regret and who knows, I may be trying to make it up to the little dears by putting them in every single one of these films. 

Mozart was once approached by a young man who was interested in Mozart's advice on how to compose a symphony. Since he was still very young, Mozart recommended that he start by composing ballads. Surprised, the young man responded, "But you wrote symphonies when you were only ten years old." "But I didn't have to ask how," countered Mozart.

Joan Rivers (American TV personality) was no great fan of Yoko Ono. "Her voice," Rivers once remarked, "sounded like an eagle being goosed."

Pola Negri was not noted for her modesty. While lying on her deathbed in 1987, she was attended to by a handsome young doctor who looked at her chart and failed to react upon seeing her name. Pola reputedly pulled herself up into a "movie star" pose and asked: "You don't know who I am!?"

While still in her teens, Mia Farrow developed a close friendship with the famed surrealist painter Salvador Dali. One day she complained that her life was in a rut. Fortunately, Dali had a suggestion. A few days later, Farrow ran into the artist and thanked him for his help, explaining that his advice had yielded a fresh perspective. Dali's suggestion? That Farrow wear her shoes on the opposite feet.

Farrow later went through a mystical period during which she claimed to have discovered a "mathematical formula for mind expansion."

As a child, Gillian Anderson dreamed of becoming a marine biologist. By way of preparation, she would spend hours in her parents' back yard... digging up and dissecting earthworms.

No doubt, Agent Scully (her character on "The X-Files") would have sympathized.