Sybil Bruncheon’s “My Merry Memoirs”… The Pumpkin House…

There I am at "21" having lunch with Pet Harkness as she tells me about the famous "Pumpkin House" going on the auction block... you know the one, right?… way up on the upper West Side of Manhattan overlooking the Hudson River. It was 1936, and it had been built in the 1920s. I'd been at dozens of parties in it and had always wanted to own it even if it WAS a bit far uptown…and cantilevered off the edge of those cliffs up near Inwood! But the views! And the quiet!... oh my God!

Of course, there was the danger of it falling down in an earthquake, but I met a nice seismologist, Dr. Ibrahim McSulzberger at Rockefeller University, and he had reassured me that they were fairly rare in NYC, and he showed me his seismic water displacement theory while we were taking a bubble bath together. No matter how turbulent the water got, it was unlikely that the bath tub would fall off its foundations! …and we tried many times!! I was ever so relieved!… and my goodness, the doctor got so frisky when he was describing tectonics, but I told him I could find "no FAULTS in his technique"! He laughed and laughed at my little joke! Sadly, I lost out on the bidding for the Pumpkin House!! To Pet Harkness!! She used a pseudonym!…"Kitty Walensky"…or… "Pussy Gabor"…. and then she moved into it with Ibrahim!!… (selfish little bitch!)...

[Want to read other fun and funny stories here on SybilSez.com? Just enter any topic that pops into your head in the "search" window on the upper right! Who knows what might come up?...and feel free to share them with your friends!]

Sybil Bruncheon's Hysterical Histories... "The Good Old Days"...

"No, Suzy, Mommy and Daddy are no longer accused of being Communists so we're painting the living room red... and learning Russian... just in time for nice Mr. Khrushchev's visit! Now run outside and play with all your little comrades!"...

[Want to read other stories here on SybilSez.com? Just enter any topic that pops into your head in the "search" window on the upper right! Who knows what might come up?...and feel free to share them with your friends!]

Sybil Bruncheon's "Inadvertent Inventions and Their Inventors... Henny Hiebel"...

Little known fact… In 1921, Austrian actress Henny Hiebel, after years of failed attempts to break into the big time, and a string of unsuccessful plays, failed silent films, trained dog acts, vaudeville magic shows, hootchy-kootch parlors, and burlesque skits finally gave up and joined the carnival circuit as a gypsy fortune teller with “her magic metaphysical turban”... It was on a hot August night during a break in her shift that she accidentally set fire to her turban while making some popcorn in her tent… her descendants to this day continue to make millions of dollars off her Jiffy-Pop patent… and keep her ashes in an aluminum foil bubble-urn…

[Want to read other stories here on SybilSez.com? Just enter any topic that pops into your head in the "search" window on the upper right! Who knows what might come up?...and feel free to share them with your friends!]

Sybil Bruncheon's "My Merry Memoirs... Kabooom!"...

The Hindenburg Disaster: May 6th, 1937; Darlings!!!! Mummie was digging through the attic as she always does right before anniversaries of major events in her life... (I don't know!... they bring out the Miss Havisham in me!)... and while rummaging through my steamer trunks, I found some old photos and treasures, including a photo of a silent film I had done with Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, Fatty Arbuckle, and Hester Xylph about the adventures of a young chanteuse who "Charlestons" her way around the world on a zeppelin! The original book was called THE GIRL WHO DANCED ON AIR! But the movie was retitled THE FLOOZY FLIES ON FRIDAY!! Here's my sterling silver cocktail shaker that L.B. Mayer gave me on opening night and the poster for the film!!!... I got so interested in air travel that I got my aviatrix's license and bought stock in a failing airship company and its fleet of three bi-planes and four old WWI zeppelins. I renamed it AERO-BRUNCHEON... ah, good times... good times!...

... sadly, right after the Hindenburg went down right beside our landing strip... well, you can imagine there was a big fall-off in ticket sales!!... I ended up wallpapering my ballroom with the beautifully engraved stock certificates. They were printed in the loveliest shade of sage-green... to match my eyes!... almost exactly! (ps. I adore Klieg lights for ANY occasion don't you!? That’s the poster for THE FLOOZY FLIES ON FRIDAY!… and look! There I am hanging from the gondola!!!)

[Want to read other fun and funny stories here on SybilSez.com? Just enter any topic that pops into your head in the "search" window on the upper right! Who knows what might come up?...and feel free to share them with your friends!]

Sybil Bruncheon's "Aren't People Fascinating?"... Melanie Cutterbert.

Melanie Cutterbert of Mozelin Falls, Tennessee had come from a large family of extraordinarily gifted musicians. They had attracted attention as early as the 1930s on the local talent shows that were broadcast on the radio stations around that part of the Western Tennessee junction with Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, and Mississippi, and by the 1950s, all of the Eastern Tennessee region knew about them too. They first appeared on Major Bowe's Amateur Hour in 1934, as did their children in the 40s and as their grandchildren did on television on The Ted Mack Amateur Hour. Together over four generations they played over 23 different musical instruments, and most of the Cutterberts played more than one, sometimes simultaneously!!! They were always introduced as the "Mozarts of Mozelin Falls", a title they were so very proud of ...and that was why it was imperative that they kept Melanie's terrible secret... a secret!

You see, although she was as gifted as all her cousins, her maiden aunts, a step-sister, a half-brother, an uncle who was also a third cousin twice removed, etc., etc. She also had a strange idiot-savant thing going on. She had perfect pitch and could play seven different instruments, but she couldn't name them!! And they had to be taught to her as something other than what they were... She learned the contrabassoon as a "floor-to-ceiling piccolo", her balalaika was a "really fat ukulele", and her beloved piano she referred to as her "paralyzed accordion". Melanie went so far as to spend some of her contest winnings on a visiting nurse service which would come by on Wednesday afternoons to take the "patient's" blood pressure, temperature, and other vital signs to make sure it wasn't getting "sicker". The nurses who came knew what was going on and even let Melanie listen on the stethoscope to see that the piano's "lungs" still weren't working...at all. She was heard on occasion though to scold her family if she felt their accordions were making fun of hers because of its handicap, but they loved her dearly and went along with her peculiar obsession. On some evenings, they even wheeled the piano through the garden before dinnertime with a light blanket on it while neighbors came to pay their respects... it all made Melanie very happy... especially if they brought candy and flowers with their "Get Well Soon" cards...

[Want to read other fun and funny stories here on SybilSez.com? Just enter any topic that pops into your head in the "search" window on the upper right! Who knows what might come up?...and feel free to share them with your friends!]

Sybil Bruncheon's Merry Memoirs: Chapter 18, "Funny Friends and Their Funny Ways"....

I knew a Melanie Farkakte on the McFeeney's Burlesque Circuit... she recited dirty haikus, played the trombone, and bent herself into surprisingly suggestive shapes... using oblong vegetables as her inspirations... Sadly, her arms had been paralyzed from a soap-box derby crash... and she'd lost her left leg in a potato-sack race gone-horribly-wrong at the Lucas County Fair... (she also happened to be an orthodox Jewish girl! She left the theatre at 4PM every Friday, did no shows on Saturday, and refused any boxes of chocolates or bouquets of flowers that contained shellfish or bacon! ...foolish girl!) She passed away suddenly at 43 years of age in the deadly Contagious Guilt Epidemic that struck Five Towns, Long Island during a Weight Watchers Convention...

[Want to read other fun and funny stories here on SybilSez.com? Just enter any topic that pops into your head in the "search" window on the upper right! Who knows what might come up?...and feel free to share them with your friends!]

From Sybil Bruncheon’s “My Merry Memoirs”... a fracas at Harry Winston’s!

I ADORE multi-functional jewelry! Imagine! This beautiful little pendant is also a music box! You know, I once had a lovely bejeweled brooch in the shape of an organ grinder monkey, complete with his little red marching-band uniform and cap, and holding a tin cup. One day, the pin on the back came loose, and I took it to Harry Winston for repair. While I was sitting with one of their master-jewelers enjoying my café au lait and croissant at his work-table, he suddenly gave a shout! Did I know that my brooch was a Swiss-made music box from 1805-1810?...I said "no!"...and he pointed out that the works were stuck from all the years of wear and tear. He took out a Q-tip and some solvent and began working around on the back, poking and prodding, and we heard a tiny "ping!" and some gears whirring.

My jeweler friend smiled broadly and sat back very pleased with himself! He pressed the monkey's tail which was hinged!!... and out came a deafening clock-work FART!!!… YES!! DAMMIT! A FART!!.... Harry was sitting nearby and yowled in rage! He barred me from the store for 30 days as a punishment!! "For Upsetting The Sanctity & High Aesthetic Standards of The Harry Winston Establishment in The Marketplace"!!!! That was put on my record there… permanently...

And when I was finally readmitted as a client (a PAYING and HIGHLY EXTRAVAGANT client!) instead of being offered Veuve Clicquot champagne and caviar blintzes at the diamond bracelets counter, a plate of stale fig newtons and a box of old and chipped topaz “friendship rings” was tossed at me… in a broom closet!!! Me! Sybil Bruncheon! Can you imagine!! JEEESH!

[Want to read other fun and funny stories here on SybilSez.com? Just enter any topic that pops into your head in the "search" window on the upper right! Who knows what might come up?...and feel free to share them with your friends!]

From Sybil's "MY MERRY MEMOIRS - Hollywood's Hysterical Histories"...

About six years after Otto Preminger made LAURA (1944) with Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, Judith Anderson, and Vincent Price, he approached me with a sequel! I was so excited. And I was being offered the lead! But I asked him, "What about Tierney?"... he said that she would have to pass. She was busy with WHIRLPOOL... and Dana Andrews was doing MY FOOLISH HEART... and the others weren't "available" either. But I was still excited. It was a job, a real job, and right when the Hollywood blacklisting was picking up speed.

There were two great things about the project! One was the song, "Laura" by Raskin and Mercer. They were rewriting the lyrics to make it fit with the sequel. And the other great thing was that Vincent Price had agreed to be in it. And then I got the script over the weekend... it was set on the planet Neptune, Price was playing a mad-scientist who experimented in his garden, and I was to play his newest creation... LARVA!… and the new lyrics? JEEESH! (by the way, Vincent insisted that it could NOT be set on Uranus!!)

Larva is the face in the misty light, she flits here and there in the hall. You see her alone on a summer night as she crawls along the wall. Eight eyes and oh, how they twinkle so, eight arms to give you a hug. She gave your very first kiss to you, that was Larva, but she's only a bug.

[Want to read other fun and funny stories here on SybilSez.com? Just enter any topic that pops into your head in the "search" window on the upper right! Who knows what might come up?...and feel free to share them with your friends!]

Sybil Bruncheon’s “My Merry Memoirs”… Chapter 26;... Twinsies!...

Yes, it’s true. We were identical twins… with all the merriment, mischief, and baggage that goes with being identical twins. Everything about our lives was influenced and weighed by that prank that Nature played on us… and oh, how we paid. I’ve written many stories about how we managed, starting as small children, nearly infants really, and then how we adapted to our lives and our looks as we grew through the decades and in to adulthood; sometimes happy, sometimes not. There were many times… long times that we didn’t even speak. We might be at the same dinner party, the same wedding or funeral, the same café within a few feet of each other and not even look in each other’s direction… and our family and friends would know not to intercede…or interfere. Separately, our tempers could be impressive; together, whether in combat or united, our fury could be scorching. And woe to our adversaries or peacemakers alike…

Every once in a while though, we might be experiencing a sunny patch. Sisterly affection like a Summer breeze; a pleasant lunch at Rumpelmeyer’s or cocktails at the St. Regis. Gossip at “21”, a late night snack at the Stork Club with theatre friends. Or perhaps running into each other out window shopping on 5th Avenue. People everywhere would stop and stare at us, pointing, “Look, there they are! The Bruncheon sisters… Sybil and Dagmar! Sybil and Dagmar!”… We’d been written up in the society columns and seen on the movie newsreels. All of New York City knew or thought they knew us… and complete strangers would wave and say HI!... ask for our autographs, or our advice on which lipstick was the best color, which little chapeau was the most stylish, which cantaloupe was the freshest… and we would smile… and say! So it wasn’t so surprising, when finances got especially lean as the Depression ground on and on and on, and we found ourselves on fairly friendly footing, that we took a job… together. Kind of strange job, although some of our girlfriends in show business were doing it too, when they weren’t exactly in a show… but they were pretty enough and still wanted to be paid for being looked at. Yep. That was us; Sybil and Dagmar, standing in the window at Bergdorf Goodman modeling the latest luncheon outfits. Fashion mannequins nodding to passersby, winking at the sailors, waving to little children, smiling at our girlfriends who might be doing well enough NOT to have to work… lucky, lucky them!

We never let on that we needed the money. One thing that joined us through thick and thin was our ability to float! We were made out of cork. We could make a dollar look like a hundred dollars. We could make standing in a window for hours on end modeling any season’s fashions look like it was lark! A caprice! “Look! There they are! Sybil and Dagmar… or is it Dagmar and Sybil!... whichever!”…

[Want to read other fun and funny stories here on SybilSez.com? Just enter any topic that pops into your head in the "search" window on the upper right! Who knows what might come up?...and feel free to share them with your friends!]

From Sybil Bruncheon's "MY MERRY MEMOIRS!"... a hide-away for Dagmar...

This is my twin sister Dagmar's "Tryst House"... she would sneak out at night and meet her various beaus at all hours (and sometimes in BUNCHES! Can you imagine!) They'd row up underneath (no motors running to wake the grounds keepers!) and bring entire baskets full of delicacies and expensive booze for marathons with Dagmar who seems to have been positively Olympian in her endurance... like Augustus Caesar's daughter, Julia!!!

[Want to read other fun and funny stories here on SybilSez.com? Just enter any topic that pops into your head in the "search" window on the upper right! Who knows what might come up?...and feel free to share them with your friends!]