Sybil Bruncheon's Hysterical Histories... The Marcia Blaine School for Girls

We’ve all heard about “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” and her stormy career as a teacher there, but what do we really know about her students? As privileged girls from the well-to-do class, did they have their own scandalous secrets? Let’s investigate…

(front row, left to right)

Gwinneth MacWhorter: youngest daughter of Ebin and Enid MacWhorter, well-known music hall comedians and sidewalk buskers. “The MacWhorter Chortlers” built a reputation as bawdy and often raucous performers who entertained soldiers, sailors, and traveling salespersons with their ribald stories of farm girls, barnyard animals, and amputees’ artificial limbs. Little Gwinnie intended to follow in their footsteps.

Annalee Pooth: Orphaned at 2 years of age but supported by a generous trust fund from her deceased parents whose fortune was made in woolens. Luckily, Annalee didn’t have to dress in anything less than the finest cashmere since ordinary wool made her itch terribly.

Cathrine-Mae Hobtitt: Annalee’s secret girlfriend and soon-to-be “wife”. Cathrine and Annalee feigned complete disinterest in each other despite the fact that they spent seven entire years at private school within 24” of each other… occasionally “accidentally” brushing their hands against each other while talking with other people about Ladies’ Rugby, Ladies’ Lacrosse, and Ladies’ Bare-Fisted Boxing.

Pennelope Fipps-Hatchet: Voted “Most Friendly to Elderly People and Their Pets”… three years in a row.

(middle row, left to right)

Sarrah and Farrah McHugh: Twins (though not identical!), these two girls were as different from each other as they looked! Sarrah was given to studious pursuits, hobbies like collecting bugs and rocks, and obsessively joining clubs more associated with boys’ interests; the chess club, the math club, the astronomy club, etc. Her sister Farrah was more interested in fashion, collecting designer handbags and shoes, and joining clubs where she could meet boys; the chess club, the math club, the astronomy club, and hanging around their mens’ rooms.

Brynne and Glynne Banksden: Thoroughly identical twins who often used their being mistaken for each other to their advantage… sometimes for good-natured mischief, but later on for smash-and-grabs, pickpocketing, Ponzi schemes, and finally abduction and murder.

Kiki Btumbo: One of the few exchange students, in her case from Swazi-Cacaoland where her father was the much loved Prime Minister. Kiki was immensely popular at Marcia Blaine and never bothered or bullied even by the most troublesome girls, probably because the Minister of Propaganda in Swazi-Cacoaland had secretly spread the false rumors that her family were cannibals.

(back row left to right)

Deborah MacNichol: A self-described sorceress and Wiccan nudist, “Debbie-Mack” as she called herself was on a strict herb, twig, and beetle diet which stunned and horrified the faculty… not so much because it offended or frightened them, but because she was responsible for devastating damage to the ornamental gardens and landscaping of the Academy. She usually wore black in keeping with her witchcraft practices… and because it hid grass stains.

Mollie-Margaret Malloy: An Irish student with a lovely soprano singing voice who could accompany herself on the zither, the glockenspiel, the xylophone, and a cello-horn… simultaneously. It helped that she had an extra finger on each hand.

Stephanie Clumpp: A perfectly lovely young girl, mostly a B+/A- student, friendly without being cloying, good at crafts and needlework, and volunteered at the local doll-hospital. Tragically, at 36 years of age, she returned to the quarry where this photo was taken and threw herself into the gravel grinder. Her demise was not discovered until a week later when her suicide note was delivered to the local newspaper. But by then she had been paved into the new M8 highway between Edinburgh and Glasgow.

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Sybil Bruncheon's "Hysterical Hollywood Histories"... the Creamsicle Trio...

(photo of happier times courtesy of Paul Norman)

... ah, yes! The famous Creamsicle Trio! Known for their occasional appearances on the Lawrence Welk Show, Arthur Murray's TV Party Time, and at various county fairs and 4H Club Jamborees, the Creamsicle Trio had an "on-again-off-again" career from 1954 to 1959.

Originally from Pumpa-Pootah, Iowa, the Nesselroth sisters (Brenda Marie, Fiona Fay, and Gert) started singing in the cradle. Their large extended family marveled at their caterwauling, always on key and in three part harmony right around breast-feeding time. It wasn't long before farmhands, mill workers, and traveling salesmen came a-calling to see the triplets, and they soon became the stars of more than one Sunday church service. The Baptists, Methodists, Adventists, and Lutherans all shared the triplets, booking them at staggered hours from 7:30am to late afternoon year after year, Sunday after Sunday... and finally, at 18 years of age, they were auditioned for the Ted Mack Amateur Hour... and, of course, they won! $811.35!!

They put the money towards a publicist, an agent, three prom gowns in their favorite color (bright sunny orange!), and bus tickets to Duluth to premiere at the Yip 'n' Yodel National Songster Championships! They came in 3rd, but out of fifty-eight entries it wasn't too disappointing, and they won $1162.72 (after fees and taxes) and a contract to tour on the Myron Moskowitz Melody Circuit. Within a month, the manufacturers of Creamsicle brand ice cream offered to sponsor them and buy out their contract from the Moskowitz circuit.

The girls continued to tour the country, but added USO shows with Bob Hope, and appearances on various TV series; Perry Mason (as a three-girl ponzi scheme), Alfred Hitchcock (as a three-girl Siamese triplet), and on the Twilight Zone (as a three-girl ventriloquist act that is eventually killed and partially eaten by their dummies). Soon, orange had become the new favorite color for everything... from fashion to food to interior design and convertibles!

Everything seemed to be going oh-so-well, until the beginning of the free-love 1960s. While touring through Berkeley, California, they were introduced to a world of hippies, love beads, fringe-vests, suede mini-skirts, and marijuana laced with hashish and paprika. Brenda Marie started showing up late for rehearsals and sound checks. Fiona Fay would laugh uncontrollably during scheduling meetings (and even drool). And Gert was found to be secretly dating a boy named Chuck or Charlie Manson who claimed he wanted to be "farmer for Jesus".

It all came to a head on the Ed Sullivan Show when the girls were heard backstage through an open mic to laugh that the public "wouldn't touch those damn Creamsicles if they knew they were made from horses' hooves and old cottage cheese." The studio audience was aghast, and between the screaming caught on-air and the network switchboard lighting up, the girls were snatched from their dressing room and spirited away from a gathering mob on West 54th Street. The news was broken to them on the grey Monday morning... they were finished. Everywhere. FINISHED!... even at the 4H Jamborees. Even in the Jams & Jellies tents...

Whenever and wherever they showed up, people pointed and laughed... or told them that "the Prince of Darkness would swallow them for his diabolical delights"! Their poor parents now became pariahs in their own farm community. And radio ministers preached on Sundays that this was "the wages of sin". Creamsicle even sponsored one national Sunday show called Jolly Bob's Hour of Salvation where Robert "Chuckles" Thumbkin harangued the worshippers in his Cathedral of Cheer and the radio audience at home to reject "preverts and dirty Communists" who made up "false lies about wholesome and nutritious American foods like Creamsicles"...

By 1963, the girls had become nearly homeless. Brenda Marie was working long hours at a lady's lingerie sweatshop attached to the Wayward Women's Shelter on the Bowery. Fiona Fay was occasionally seen in an alleyway nearby on Great Jones Street with a bottle of Muscatel or Woolite... and a sailor. And Gert joined the lower end country fair and carnival circuit as a barker at the Guess Your Weight/Guess Your Age tent... her alto voice and her six pack-a-day Chesterfield habit allowed her to disguise herself as a man. Sad. Very sad.

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Sybil Bruncheon's "Biographies in Brief!... Uncle Fuzzy…

Mr. Herbert Limpkin had the distinction at eight years of age of being the only person ever bitten by one of the cute little bunnies at the Oakleyville Presbyterian Petting Zoo… and during their Springtime “Let’s Meet Our Animal Friends Festival”. Imagine how little Herbie must have felt with his pudgy little hand throbbing and bleeding as he looked down at the hissing white bunny with the red eyes!... and there on the office wall of the zoo’s nurse, a poster of the Blesséd Savior in his heavenly white robe, surrounded by little animals and children, extending his crucified palms… and all of them smiling; Jesus, animals, children smiling right at Herbie as he begged Nurse Charmondely NOT to put in the three stitches! Of course she did, and gave him a tetanus shot as well, which hurt like Hell!...

…which also gave him his infernal idea… the idea he employed as an adult when he decided to be the Easter Bunny at the Halloween Holidays-in-Hell Barn in Akron, Ohio. High School and college kids from miles around came to the fabulously scary installation which ran from October 1st through Halloween night itself, ending in a massive costume party and dance and a contest with prizes! Interestingly, no one seemed to notice as the October days went by that Mr. Limpkin was getting weirder and more withdrawn from his fellow “ghouls” and “goblins” during their lunch and dinner breaks in the cafeteria. Authorities found out later that he spent hours every night after work “enhancing” his Easter Bunny costume with finger nails made from actual nails… and teeth made from sharpened bathroom tiles. Scarier and scarier… and finally quite horrifying according to the two managers and the director of the facility, shortly before Herbie brought the ax… and used it. Later, during his seven consecutive life-sentences, he created the Uncle Fuzzy Junior Jammies Company employing his sewing skills, making cozy pajamas for children… and Uncle Fuzzy’s company slogan??... “Sweet Dreams Are Our Business!”…

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Sybil's Hollywood History On This Day... “Formerly Aggie Ann”… January 21st, 1924...

Miss Agnes Ann Abernathy had grown up in the secure privilege of a wealthier suburb of Minneapolis surrounded by golf courses, tennis courts, and private schools for nice young ladies from successful families of Northern European and Scandinavian extraction. Many of the immigrants that migrated to the Midwest and the prairie states had “adjusted” or even replaced their surnames with more standard and “acceptable” American-style names that eliminated controversy or questioning by neighbors. Accents were worked on strenuously so that any trace or memory of a week in Ellis Island faded as quickly as possible before the long treks to the “whiter parts” of the new world were completed. And here they settled in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the Dakotas surrounded mostly by their own kind except for the inconvenient and rapidly being displaced Native Americans who lived on the outskirts of even the most rural areas, their crafts and handiwork a source of passing curiosity, condescension, or hostility by the blonde and blue-eyed interlopers at the middle and close of the 19th century. 

Agnes (or Aggie Ann, as she was known to her large family), was that pretty and popular girl who got excellent grades, was perfect in deportment, and was always asked out to social affairs by equally likable and accomplished young men from good families like her own. Her mother Abigail (née Thompson and formerly Tunfisksmørbrød) never had to worry, and never complained to her lady-friends, about Aggie Ann’s moods, tantrums, or “notions”, because there were none. Aggie Ann’s father, Ed Abernathy (formerly Eadgårdt Aebårnjentørst) always bragged to his golf buddies that his daughter “sailed smooth as a schooner through school” with nary a care or calamity.  

But then came the Summer of 1923 right after Aggie’s graduation from the Wayzata Academy for Gifted Girls. The first sign of a problem had actually been at the graduation ceremony when Aggie was introduced as the valedictorian to the assembled crowd, and she delivered a rather impassioned speech about “A Woman’s Role in the Work World”, the title of her talk that immediately startled some of the more conservative audience members and faculty. There was a smattering of nervous but polite chuckling as she opened, and then a stunned silence punctuated by audible gasps and fevered mumbling as the talk continued on about girls not being satisfied only with typing and secretarial jobs, girls not being reduced to make-up counter careers, girls excelling beyond nursing into full doctoral degrees, and girls leaving nursery school teaching and becoming fully tenured professors… at Ivy League Universities, no less! Aggie’s speech, beautifully edited and presented, took only 15 minutes, but the effect on everyone was galvanic.

Mrs. Gretel Sweeney (formerly Gaertyl Shvenskaå) fainted right after the part about a woman presiding over an orphanage for non-white foundlings. Abigail’s role as the newly elected President of the Women’s Perennials and Deciduous Trees Club was brought into question at the punch bowl and cookies table by Myrtle Cambridge (formerly Mirska Käfer), her arch-rival in many social interactions involving canasta, mahjong, bridge, tango lessons, tea sandwiches, and bulb planting. Fortunately, Abigail ‘s knowledge of gardening, especially of deciduous trees and their diseases, honed by an intelligence as sharp as her daughter’s, precluded her replacement by Myrtle, even at the tempest being stirred at the punch bowl and cookies table by friend and foe alike. At the end of the speech, met by a polite rustle of clapping and program shuffling, Aggie was escorted (almost firmly!) from the dais and herded out with all the other graduates to their waiting families! Her parents and relatives stood stolidly, staring at her or their feet as she approached, at first confidently and then with greater and growing timidity, especially as she focused on her father’s stern face. To say he adored his daughter did not even begin to express it, but now… he was mortified, not so much for himself, but for Aggie Ann and her prospects in their community, especially among potential suitors in the coming years.  

He needn’t have worried much though, for even as Aggie Ann approached them through the giggling, gossiping, or scowling groups, she secretly resolved that she was not going to be defeated… or thwarted. Her passage to her waiting family was perhaps only a hundred feet or so; so much less than the passage her parents, grandparents, and ancestors had made across the wide continent by railroads and wagon trains to this new promised land. By comparison, her crossing to the bustling punch and cookies table was laughably short and silly, and she chuckled at her discomfort in spite of herself (at her discomfort?)… but the journey in those few moments inside her young green psyche would be something too wondrous and terrible to behold, even for her loving parents, for Aggie Anne’s spirit was sailing “smooth as a schooner”… from one world to another. 

The dinner party (really a banquet!) that her parents threw for the family and a dozen friends continued on without a hitch. Indeed, it may have been even more festive because, as the wine, champagne, whiskey, cherry beer, schnapps, and aquavit flowed, everyone grew more and more tickled at their Aggie Ann’s audacity. The spunk and courage that brought them and their ancestors to new destinies in a strange new land flashed as they saluted their 18 year-old girl with the fiery heart and mind. At one point, Abigail, after making everyone stand and toasting her daughter, burst out laughing as she recounted Mrs. Sweeney’s fainting (and re-enacted it with great flourishes!). Aunt Bertha described in detail how Myrtle Cambridge had button-holed several ladies and corralled them over to the punch and cookie table to stage an impromptu coup for the gardening club, only to be snubbed and mocked by loyal friends of Abigail’s, the telling of which made Abigail blush deeply and turn aside as her eyes filled with grateful tears. Ed caught her as she turned and embraced her tightly, whispering how proud he was of her, and of the daughter they had produced together. One of the cousins eagerly mentioned that he had overheard Mr. Gordon Tomlinson, the highly esteemed mayor of Wayzata, tell a group of city elders over a round of whiskies, that “Old Eadgårdt is right about his Aggie Ann. She sails smooth as a schooner, even in stormy seas!”.

The Mayor then toasted her and Ed, and Ed, hearing that little story felt the warm prick of tears in his own eyes as Abigail threw her arms about his thick neck and planted a passionate kiss on his handsome mustachioed mouth. That brought cheers, and laughter, and deep feelings from everyone watching, broken only by the same cousin following up his telling with the Mayor calling both Gretel Sweeney and Myrtle Cambridge a pair of sows fit only for the County Fair that fall. More laughter and cheers, hugging, toasting, and grateful tears into the night while other households celebrated their daughters’ graduations in polite conversation, sensible and nutritious foods, and the quiet opening of graduation gifts like pin cushions, leather bound journals of household hints, and little silver fountain pens that would be used over the years only for grocery lists and jotting down shared recipes with other nice little wives over back fences.  

A week after graduation, as June unfolded in the glorious way that Summers start in the Minnesota lake and prairie towns, Aggie asked her father if she could travel to New York City accompanied, of course, by her Aunt Bertha, who had already (and secretly!) suggested just such an outing at her elder brother Ed’s expense. Ed, knowing the wiles and charms of all the women in his extended family, pretended to be averse to such an adventure (and the extravagance!), but, unable to contain his delighted laughter, said yes and began making long distance telephone calls to arrange everything, start to finish. Aggie and Bertie (as her friends called her) were ecstatic, and Abigail was tempted to tag along with her daughter and sister-in-law, but Ed reminded her that this trip was a “coming out” for their daughter, and one adult, especially NOT Aggie’s mother would be enough to chaperone without squelching the excitement of seeing what had become one of the greatest and most diverse metropolises in all history. New York City after the Great War was the prosperous, frenetic, and glamorous jewel of industrial civilization, ranked with Paris and London, and compared by historians and novelists to the great capitals of ancient empires as the center of this wondrous new century! Huge ocean liners, rushing automobiles, steel and glass skyscrapers, and the miraculous aeroplanes filled the headlines of major newspapers and the crackling airwaves of the newly-invented radios in people’s homes. 

It was in this atmosphere that Aggie and Bertie boarded the Art Deco Chippewa Zephyr in Minneapolis with only a few stops in Chicago, Toledo, Cleveland, Buffalo, before finishing in New York. Aggie had never been outside of Minneapolis so even Toledo and Cleveland seemed exotic, but Aunt Bertha had had rather scandalous and unspoken of adventures herself as a young girl, and Aggie managed to get her once-glamorous aunt to reveal them one-by-one on the journey as the countryside sped by and turned into a jumble of villages, corn fields, open pastures with cows, and small towns with their public squares and gazebos filled with local bands and waving people. Aggie would stare out of the window as they ate watching the world pass by and listening rapt at her aunt’s stories of big cities, corsets and bustles, street cars and the first “horseless carriages” that would stop people dead in their tracks in the middle of Broadway and Union Square in the theatre district of Manhattan as she was taken to Lüchow’s for a feast of pheasant, caviar, champagne, and mousse made of imported chocolates, currants, and meringue. The meals on the Zephyr were just as elegant, and they inspired Bertie, breakfast, lunch, tea, and dinner to regale the wide-eyed and silent Aggie with increasingly fabulous but true tales of her own youth in Manhattan and up and down the Eastern seaboard. Finally they arrived at the Hudson River side of Manhattan, twinkling with a million lights from its soaring towers as the huge red sun began to sink behind them in the West and on everything that they had known before… The conductors came down the corridors and announced the upcoming arrival in the magnificent Pennsylvania Station which ironically sat in the heart of New York City, a fact that Bertie had to explain to Aggie. And Aggie was profoundly disappointed that they wouldn’t be arriving in Grand Central Station which she had once seen on a post card and was, after all, called The GRAND Central Station because that’s exactly what it was with its vaulted ceiling of stars and constellations floating 12 stories above the marble floors. But all of her doubts or disappointments were squelched when they pulled into the dream-like palace of Pennsylvania Station; impossibly high columns in the Corinthian style, sweeping stairways, and steel tracery supporting a vast sky of glass that dazzled in the sun, and rumbled in the rain… and revealed the real stars and constellations if the night was clear and dark enough, not painted-on ones with Edison light bulbs screwed into them. “Oh, brave new world!” she whispered to herself, remembering her Shakespeare from 7th grade and how Miss Phillips had given her the role of Miranda in the class readings. Bertie watched Aggie’s eyes sparkling in the station’s blazing lights as they gathered their bags and the nice porter helped with their larger luggage and walked them to the waiting cabs. The ride through the bustling streets on a typical weeknight stunned Aggie; she passed more people in just ten city blocks than lived in all of Wayzata, and she remembered that her geography teacher had told her that New York City alone was equivalent to six Minneapolises. She actually got out of breath at the sight of the skyscrapers all aglow in the night air and wondered how all that electricity could be summoned for this radiant display; Times Square lit up as if it was midday!  

They arrived at the spectacular Astor Hotel, driving under the enormous porte-cochère, and then it was into the breathtaking lobby with all its side salons, hallways, and passages to beautiful shops, lounges, and cafés. And the people! Aggie had never seen so many beautifully dressed and styled people, strolling, chatting, and laughing, everywhere! Everywhere!… in every corner, at every table, and tucked into cushioned sofas and tapestried armchairs. An orchestra was roaring out Dixie-land dance music in one of the ballrooms, and girls Aggie’s age or thereabouts were dragging chuckling boyfriends in white tie and tails in to do the Charleston! Bertie and Aggie glanced at the dance floor crowd as they passed to the elevators, and the concierge merrily suggested that they come down later after they had changed to join the fun. He could even introduce them to hotel escorts who would accompany “single ladies” as lovely as them for the evening, unless of course, they were comfortable being out on their own and “unattached”. He gave a knowing wink and a warm smile which made them both laugh out loud and filled them with the wild fizziness of children who are about to embark on a new adventure and meet fantastic characters.

And that is exactly what they did; they changed out of their traveling suits, and put on their best evening ensembles with the new “flapper-length” hemlines and dangling necklaces. Bertie wore a midnight blue panné velvet sheath cut on the bias with lace detailing overlays, and Aggie was in a new rose charmeuse dress with panels of dangling bugle-beads that shimmered and swayed with her every step. Both hadn’t “bobbed” their hair yet, (but they would the next morning) so the rhinestone headbands would have to do for now. And then it was back down in the elevator, chatting brightly with the adorable elevator-boy, through the lobbies again, past all sorts of smiling and nodding folks and into the ballroom through it’s 18’ high French doors with the beveled cut-glass panels in leaded swirls and flourishes. Everything was polished mahogany, sculpted marbles, gilded ornaments, twinkling crystals… beautiful men and women, their faces glowing in the amber light of a hundred candelabras, wall sconces, and chandeliers! Had anything ever been this heartbreakingly beautiful, thought Aggie. Her eyes hurt from the glory of it all; hurt in the most wonderful way, and Bertie saw… and knew what her niece was feeling.  

And then the whirl of it all began! That first night, and its adventures. Meeting new people, and spending a single evening with them but feeling the next day that you had known them for years. Breakfast in bed, wheeled in on a silver and rosewood cart with orchids in bud vases mounted on the sides; truffled soufflés, Crepes Marchioness, cherry scones, and imported teas served by a butler. A bubble bath in a marble tub large enough for three, then off to a redo of one’s hair in a famous salon on Fifth Avenue, and the scary but wonderfully freeing feeling of watching as all that hair fell to the floor, and you looked into the three-sided mirror at your sculpted head in the boyish cut! Your ears, always complimented as cute and perfect were now totally visible and ready for the dangling pair of emerald and diamond pendants in the Cartier box that your Dad had secretly tucked into your toilette case. That strangely funny feeling when you’ve been away on a vacation for just one day, but you feel like you’ve been gone for weeks. Life and every moment of it is so vivid and loaded with sights, smells, sounds, and sensation that time seems to both rush by and stand still. And that is how Aggie lived, with Bertie at her side, encouraging her, inspiring her, and only advising her when Aggie asked. Days and nights swept them up and clutched them to the great thumping heart of New York City as it climbed higher and higher, carrying millions of souls into the clouds. The week was gone, yes, but they felt they had lived in New York for a year, and then Ed told them to stay another week, and they did!  

And it was over lunch at the Algonquin that Bertie reminded Aggie of her valedictorian speech at the graduation ceremony… was it only a couple of weeks earlier? How was that possible? How could that even be possible? For you see, Aggie had said all those things and believed them too, from the deepest places in her heart, but her heart had expressed only what it suspected, and guessed at, and hoped for, but had never experienced. It was instinct, but not fact. And here she was, still just barely 18, but so much older. She had met so many people from different towns, different countries, different continents; they had accents and complexions of different colors. They worshipped differently, ate exotic foods, knew exotic music, lived in exotic architecture, and many of their names had remained unchanged from their homelands. They mixed in the presence of each other, figuring out how to manage and even enjoy the differences in each other… millions of them, jumbling, jostling, and even joking about the frantic life they were sharing. And Aggie loved it. She LOVED IT!... as if she had always been made for it, perhaps in some former life or other world that her soul had known. She adored the Italian food they ate down on Mulberry Street. She lived for the new ragtime music that was playing uptown in Harlem. She roared at the Vaudeville shows with their Jewish comedians. And she knew what she wanted… and who she suspected she was. As she told Aunt Bertie what she was feeling, the table next to hers, filled with raucous chatter, bickering, and laughter quieted and started to eavesdrop… Aggie had noticed them when they first came in, eccentric in look and deportment, even comical in some cases, and totally different from the sameness one found in the small-town Midwest where conformity and “normalcy” were considered virtues.

Here in New York City, it seemed that people tried everything they could to be different from their six million neighbors, and they often succeeded! Certainly, the round table beside hers was as quirky as she had ever seen. And then the tall gentleman with the round spectacles and frizzy hair turned and spoke to the two. His name was Kaufman, and he asked about them while the rest of his guests turned in their seats to listen and ask their own questions. Although they were clearly city sophisticates and had sharp senses of humor, which they used on each other, they were gracious and encouraging to the two adventurers from little Wayzata, Minnesota. A woman named Dorothy complimented Aggie on her green eyes and her naturally platinum blond hair, so fashionable now, and a Mr. Connelly asked if she had ever acted in school. He said he knew people in the theatre and film business, and maybe she’d like to meet them. More exciting people that simply turned and started chatting with Aunt Bertie and Aggie, with none of the reserve that was daily life in Midwest small towns. People of all types in the city just spoke to you, without even an introduction. It all was happening so quickly, and Aggie had no idea how important or famous these funny people were, which seemed to delight them! As charming and entertaining as she and Bertie found them, the circle of diners at the next table found the two even more so.  

And that was that! Telephone calls to photographers, a stylist and a modeling agency, a casting director in the Ziegfeld office, a few more to a movie company still stationed in New Jersey, and of course, several calls to Ed and Abigail explaining what was unfolding day by day with Bertie staying on as a chaperone and eventually as Aggie’s manager… Dinners for planning, luncheons for conferring, afternoons of script-reading and acting classes, weekends of photo shoots for magazine ads of expensive soaps, silk stockings, luxury automobiles, and then the theatre at night. Aggie was cast in lines of gorgeous girls coming down great rotating staircases dressed as flowers, or jewels, or months of the year, or heavenly creatures. It was about six months later that Bertie and Aggie were sitting with her agent and a couple of producers discussing her casting in a new show that would open at the Winter Garden Theatre in Time Square, and then be filmed by the Metro Goldwyn Studio. But her name, “Agnes Ann Abernathy”, would no longer work really for the star she was becoming… there was a pause, a beat, and then Aggie and Bertie began to chuckle, then laugh, more and more heartily, rising from their guts, and even deeper, roaring now with hot tears running down their cheeks, their hysterical laughing making them laugh even harder, and their companions began too, not knowing what was so funny, but weeping with laughter at the abandon of Bertie’s and Aggie’s, all of them gasping and rolling now. How big life was. How huge the journey. How much can the heart and the soul hold. From a little town and out into the wide world. How many lives can a single life hold… named one thing or another. How many lives can a single lifetime hold… if one wants to.

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Sybil Bruncheon's 31 Days of Halloween... Zelda reinvents herself...

Zelda Plotnitz was one of those sweet girls who daydreamed all through childhood of handsome princes, fairytale castles, dragons, ogres, wicked witches, magic potions, and of finally being recognized as a beautiful princess! But her life through grade school, high school, and the cosmetology academy was mundane at best. She was proficient enough at skin-sciences, at facials and masques, at make-up application, and she went on to study hair extensively, both cutting and coloring, and at the deeply complex arts of perming and straightening. Her finger waves and marcelles merited her an A++. But still she longed for something more than the twittering gossip of a beauty salon on a Friday night with its dead coffee cups and the extinguished, lipstick stained cigarette butts drowning in them.

So when the Halloween Ball was announced at the local Masonic Temple and Veterans Hall, she was thrilled! She would create something as a costume that would dazzle and amaze; and not some princess or fairy tale creature. She would truly electrify all of her friends and any single young men who might be there. Her hair and make-up would be just right of course, but her costume! HER COSTUME!... she thought at first of being a shooting star... or perhaps the planet Saturn. Or maybe she should be the Lady in the Moon... and then just eight nights before the ball, a huge thunderstorm hit the town, and Zelda got her idea. Zelda Plotnitz, daughter of Abner and Ethel Plotnitz in Aberdeen, South Dakota would come to the ball as “ZAPRINA The Dazzling!”

Zelda asked Jim-Bob at the local gas station to help weld together scrap metal pieces for her ensemble based on her rather good sketches. Her bodice was made from silver sequined lamé that she found in a remainder bin at the local ladies' notions store. And she had Jim-Bob's uncle Ned wire the whole thing to a dry cell battery that she could conceal in a back pocket behind one of her lightning bolts.

And it worked! IT ALL WORKED! PERFECTLY!... and Zelda, or rather ZAPRINA THE DAZZLING was going to the ball. She arrived just 20 minutes after it started to make sure that everyone else was already there (Aberdeen folks are notoriously punctual and don't know the meaning of "fashionably late"!). She was announced by the nice man on the microphone as she stepped onto the unrolled red carpet that Havenmetyer's Furniture and Furnishings had loaned the Masons to give the night some swank! And the minute that all her friends heard her name, ZAPRINA THE DAZZLING, and recognized that it was indeed their Zelda, they ran up to her screaming, laughing, jumping up and down, and cheering! She really WAS the most glamorous at the ball...

... sadly, Zelda stumbled backwards into the huge punch bowl. She and three of the girls on the refreshments committee were instantly electrocuted, and the ballroom incinerated when the 130 proof rum exploded...

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Sybil Bruncheon's "LET'S MOVE TO CANADA!" Series on PBS. Part One...

Hello, my fellow ex-Americans! In preparation for our migration (or should I say "exodus"?) to our oh-so-friendly neighbor to the North, I am doing a series with Ken Burns on PBS about Canadian culture and history! Twelve episodes that will help us as Americans and grateful immigrants acclimate smoothly and courteously to our new hosts and their splendid nation! Tonight's episode is "Famous Canadians In Fact & Fiction".

Seen here is the notorious, the mysterious, the provocative, the insatiable, but the always polite "Poutine Sulque, Ecdysiast Extraordinaire du Québec"! Poutine (born Gerbyline Frieberger of Powahattan City, Saskatchewan) built her career on her amazing "hour-glass figure" which drove men wild with rapturous desire during her strip-tease performances involving a string quartet (plus oboe and bassoon), an assortment of thoughtfully recited poems (usually haikus and Italian sonnets), and Monsieur LaPoot, a myna bird of indeterminate age (kept securely in his cage due to an unfortunate eye-pecking tragedy to the mayor of Vancouver.) She was hailed from coast to coast and fabulously wealthy. Her notoriety was so great and her talent and beauty such a source of pride (though modestly expressed) that she was received by His Majesty King George V and given some sort of Order or Dame-hood during a capricious weekend with various theatre and music hall persons at Kensington Palace while Queen Mary was away at a Ladies-Only spa in Baden Baden.

Poutine's career was long and extremely successful until, sadly, she made a joke about a third grade geography teacher named Winifred O'Hevlin of Winnipeg who had been in a train wreck as a teen-ager. She had lost her left leg in the tragedy, but had triumphed over her affliction with great aplomb and was an inspiration to her neighbors and war veterans coming back from the front. Unfortunately, Poutine made a meant-to-be-harmless joke during one of her “strip-teasettes” about Winnie-Peg-Leg sitting in the front row. The audience members were too kind to scream or even gasp, but management (regretfully!) informed Poutine after the third show that her services  “would no longer be required”.

Poutine was devastated and later informed the public through the newspapers in her full-page apologies, that she herself had been a young victim of a railway accident. It seems when she was an eleven-year old Canadienne Girl Guide (First Class!) she was hit by the Grand Trunk Railway express during its 3:15 run from Hescotte Heights to Consultanacusca. She was demonstrating elaborate knot-tying in front of her entire troop for her merit badge and somehow found herself on the rails during the Peril’s-Of-Pauline-Half-Hitch-Back-And-Under-Wrap-Around-Noodler! The train broke 13 of her ribs, but the doctors didn’t have to reset anything since she was already encased in 40’ of rope. It took her six months to recover, but “How do you think I got my gorgeous 17 inch waistline?”, she stated defiantly. Interestingly, after she retired from the hurly-burly of the burlesque, she created a line of luxury corsets and “ladies’ dainties”. Her big money came from the line of hernia trusses that she provided to the Canadian Men’s Rugby Association!!!… (This program was produced in part by generous grants from the Maple Syrup Corporation of North America, the Purline Trudeau Charitable Trust, the Gabriella and Hiram Smoot Family, and by viewers like you!.... Thank you!)

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Sybil Bruncheon's "31 DAYS OF HALLOWEEN!".... what is that, there in the shadows?...

....the tradition had always been to make a wonderful costume either with your friends in the weeks before the big night, or do it all separately from them all so you could surprise them on Halloween night at the parties before everyone went out Trick-or-Treating. That was the tradition... and it was a good one... and one that everyone trusted, generation to generation... father to son, mother to daughter... on and on... Until the Bad Time came.... when children were no longer safe to go out into the night and only play at being scared, and to gather candies in exchange for facing their childhood fears.

True, in the past, there were occasions, rare, very rare occasions when a child might go missing, but those were very few and far between. But NOW... in the Bad Time, no one would dream of sending a child off into the night, not in the neighborhood, not even into the gentle countryside to celebrate the merriment and mystery of Halloween without watchful, even fearful adults, hovering, questioning, fretting.... And that was why, when she appeared out of nowhere... well, so much upheaval. Rumors whispered, compounded on more rumors... wild, strange terrifying stories about horrible, horrible... too horrible to even name. Grown-ups spent sleepless nights…or else endless nights of strange, heated sleep, sweating but frozen too till they shivered and ached in their soaking wet sheets...tangled and twisted with dreadful visions... to wake exhausted into flat gray mornings. Too gray to even know if it was morning..

She was nameless, so someone, unnamed themselves, called her The Melon Lady because of that... was it a face? ...At some point, she became The Melon Lady. And her reputation was instantly known far and wide because she had been named. Her .... "proclivities"...and "habits" had been witnessed...from "remains".... but it was the naming that made everything so final. And so factual. There was the fact now of what she could do...and might do.. and how much farther and more grotesque it might get...if she wasn't stopped...She had to be stopped. But how? The banal powers of the "modern world" were useless...stupid and clumsy.

You see, the Bad Time had created her ...and made her necessary... in an odd irony. The Bad Time had brought her here...and she was created out of the great mystery of the thing known as Balance. And that Balance was what was both a horror…and a comfort. For you see The Melon Lady was the one who did the bad things… to the bad people. It started out only as rumors… a person would be found perhaps days after being reported missing… well parts of them would be found..in various places where many people would find what she had left behind. There would sometimes be writing …on the pieces.. or if fire was involved, then on a wall nearby.. or a note pinned to a doorway. As the acts became more hideous, a sort of humor would be injected… the notes would be scrawled on fine stationery… in blood… or ..No!... it was lipstick… It started out as a word or two, a phrase, but eventually they turned into short poems with deliberately bad punctuation, misspellings, dangling modifiers… split infinitives… or… “provocative” drawings… drawings that sneered at the victim, and insulted his or her family… and even threatened them as well…

And so, she became bolder, more brazen in her daring… the Balance required that, as the Bad Time worsened, she had to be more… thorough. Because she was the Protector of children. The Avenger. The Terrible Price. Her names became manifold…. So it was easier, more expedient… and more terrible just to say that The Melon Lady had come. The Melon Lady had been there. The Melon Lady had left.. that… behind. The Melon Lady would punish you. And she did. She always did. …and …gradually the Bad Time and its friends began to be burned away… She was never wrong. The Balance was infallible… She was The Melon Lady… and children everywhere grew to love her… love her very much.

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Sybil Bruncheon's "Aren't People Funny?"...episode #212 : Myron Karblonsky.....

Myron Karblonsky had always been a fabulously entertaining person, even as an infant! Musical, with nearly perfect pitch, he quickly surprised his parents by picking up the piano at 3 years of age singing along with his talented relatives and neighbors in the Lower East Side neighborhoods around Rivington, Mott, and Hester Streets in NYC. By the time he was six, he had already become a featured performer in the Yiddish Theatres and music halls. He could tap dance, play the ukulele and piano, juggle, do acrobatics, and had learned how to do elaborate tricks with ventriloquism. His voice finally changed at 15, and he came upon the great gimmick that made him a major star in Vaudeville, landing him onstage as one of Florenz Ziegfeld's biggest draws. He created an act where he and his dummy were from different social classes!!... a source of great humor and satire for the audience's entertainment! ...and he still managed to honor his father and grandfather before him! He performed onstage as a kosher deli owner dressed in his Papa's butcher's apron! ...and his dummy was named Lord Sneedleton, a rich customer from 5th Avenue!!! For years, audience members couldn't get over how ridiculously funny Lord Sneedleton was, or how "lifelike"!! Myron Karblonsky retired at 67 years of age and moved to Boca Raton with his lovely wife Molly (formerly Melinda Shlemeister of the Shlemeister's Mahtzo Maker Company) They had no children, but kept Lord Sneedleton in a glass case in his original tuxedo with mothballs in the pockets... and the key to his old trunk on a silver chain around his neck... 

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