Stranger Than Fiction

More origin stories, because nothing is more curious than unusual beginnings to familiar characters.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet

(00:27):
of Curiosities. If you think about it, each of us
is really two people. There's the side we show to
the outside world each day, and then there's the side
we keep hidden, the side almost no one else knows about,
except for maybe a partner or a close friend. Chris

(00:49):
Cardini was also two people, but he made sure that
everyone was aware of all of his different sides. He
kept nothing secrets. Chris was born in London in May
of nineteen one e two. His father was a World
War One veteran and his mother was an Edwardian beauty
who inspired numerous portraits and sculptures from the greatest artists
of her time. Sadly, his parents were not happily married,

(01:11):
and they divorced by the time he was six years old.
He went to live with his mother and older sister
in Switzerland, where he developed an interest in acting. His
first role was as the title character in a grade
school production of rumpel Stiltskin. As he got older, he
continued to act, but eventually took a break to focus
on his studies. Chris took up fencing and crickets, and
even tried his hand at sports like rugby and boxing,

(01:34):
although he wasn't particularly good at those. Chris was forced
to get a job during his last year at school
when both of his parents lost their incomes. He took
a position at a shipping company as a mail clerk,
and then in nineteen thirty nine, he followed in his
father's footsteps and joined up with the Finnish Army. Their
winter war had begun against the Soviets three months after

(01:55):
the start of World War Two. He didn't serve long,
though he and the other volunteers had been hosted his
guards far from the front lines. They spent two weeks
in Finland before coming home again. Chris went back to
work at the shipping company for a short time and
then enlisted in World War two after his father died
from pneumonia. In this time, Chris joined the Royal Air Force.
He traveled to southern Rhodesia with plans to fly solo,

(02:18):
but those plans crashed and burned after a series of
headaches and I problems forced him to give up his dream.
Despite being grounded, though, Chris found other ways to support
the war effort. For one, he became a reliable intelligence officer,
making a name for himself as a man who could
not only get things done, but also rallied the troops
and keep everyone on task. He spoke several languages as well,

(02:39):
including German, Italian, and French, which made him a valuable
asset to the military. His tour of duty sent him
everywhere South Africa, Libya, Tunicia, Italy, and countless other parts
of the globe during his years with the Royal Air Force.
After the war, he hunted down and interrogated Nazi war criminals.
Chris's time in the Royal Air Force had changed him.

(03:01):
Upon returning home, he no longer felt like the office
life was for him, but he was at a loss
for what to do next. It was his cousin, Niccolo,
who suggested that he'd try his hand at acting. Niccolo
even knew of a producer who could help him break
into the business. Shortly after meeting with the few producers,
Chris signed a seven year contract with an agent named

(03:21):
David Henley. The roles Henley would be able to get
him were small at first, a line here, an unspoken
part there. He performed alongside some of the greatest actors
who had ever graced the screen, including Lawrence Olivier and
Gregory Peck, but hardly said a word. He didn't break
out until the early nineteen fifties. Several years into his career,
he began starring in horror films made by Hammer, British

(03:43):
studio that had cast him as Frankenstein's Monster, as well
as a career defining role as a certain famous vampire.
From there, Chris's roles only got better. He appeared in
critically and commercially successful films, including an installment in the
James Bond franchise, Peter Jackson, Lord of the Rings trilogy,
and the Star Wars prequels. In two thousand and ten,

(04:04):
when he was eighty eight years old, Chris released a
hit heavy metal album. It was the first of several.
He loved to sing and took a particular interest in
metal after hearing Black Sabbath perform in the nineteen seventies.
It seems that there wasn't anything this man could do.
By the time he died in two thousand fifteen, Christopher
Frank Parendini Lee had been an actor, singer, author, audiobook narrator,

(04:28):
voiceover artist, and of course, a war hero. He had
seen and experienced more than most people, perhaps evident best
in an interaction between Lee and director Peter Jackson on
the set of the third Lord of the Rings film,
The Return of the King. Jackson was instructing Lee on
how to act after being stabbed by another character. Lee,
calling back to his time during the war, turned to

(04:50):
Jackson and said, have you any idea what kind of
noise happens when somebody's stabbed in the back? Because I do.

(05:10):
The year is eighteen sixty six and a seven year
old boy walks along a street near his family home
on Street in Lower Manhattan. He's recently been diagnosed with asthma,
and being raised in a world that teaches the superiority
of a manly man, he isn't quite feeling on top
of things. After all, his aspirations lay in doing the
things his father did, all those manly things like hunting, boxing,

(05:33):
and athletics. And while his family has not given up
on curing his asthma, providing him numerous doctor recommended practices,
such as strong coffee and midnight carriage rides. These symptoms
still threatened to hamper the boy's life. As he passes
a small market, he sees a display out front with
the harbor seal carcass on ice. Now this may sound

(05:55):
strange to the modern listener, but at the time, harbor
seals were common in New York Harbor and could be
found at just about any market that sold food goods.
Fascinated by the carcass, the boy asked the vendor how
much for the whole thing. The vendor looked at him quizzically,
perhaps questioning how the boy would even carry it, even
if he could afford it, and then he gave him
a price, a price that is, unfortunately out of the

(06:16):
budgets of the young boy. It's important to point out
at this point that a full grown harbor seal weighs
on average a hundred and thirty pounds, and the average
seven year old, never mind the frailties of an asthmatics,
seven year old ways maybe fifty. Regardless, Determined not to
be defeated yet again, the boy countered how much for
just the head. By this point, the vendor is so

(06:39):
amused by the whole ordeal that he agrees to give
the boy the seal's head as a gift, and promptly
cuts it off and hands it over, Carrying it home
with a gleeful smile, The boy goes straight to the
kitchen and pulls out his mom's cooking pot, filling it
with water and heating it to a rolling boil, before
dropping the seal's head into the pot and waiting as
it slowly boiled off, ski in sinew and gristle. In time,

(07:03):
there was nothing left but the skull, exactly as the
boy had planned. After bearing the brunt of his mother's
frustrations at the soiling of her cookware, the boy begins
his collection in his bedroom, the seal head the first
of what would become many more such items. He enlisted
the help of two cousins and officially formed his own
mini museum of, for lack of a better description, dead

(07:25):
animal parts. Raised in a family with plentiful members and
household staff, many of whom frequented his room to clean
and simply pass through, the boy was often begged to
move his collection to somewhere more out of the way
so they wouldn't have to see all of them a
Cobb pieces anymore, and the boy listened, moving his growing
collection of now twelve items to the less frequented back

(07:46):
stairwell of the three story family home. By the age
of nine, he had codified his collection of insects in
a paper titled The Natural History of Insects, and at
the ripe age of twelve, he donated some of his
items a dozen mice, at a turtle, four birds, eggs,
and the skull of a red squirrel to the Museum
of Natural History. But this was just the beginning for

(08:08):
this asthmatic young man who had suddenly found his calling
in life. Just eleven short years later, he would donate
six hundred and twenty two preserve birds to the Smithsonian.
This young boy would go on to found nearly three
natural preserves, parks and forests during his lifetime, as well
as expanding the reach of the Museum of Natural History,
including making numerous donations to the museum himself. He went

(08:31):
on fabled expeditions into the Amazon, into Africa, and into
the American West. He danced with death more than his
fair share, and even today remains one of the most
fabled characters of American history, not to mention the role
he's best known for being President of the United States.
The boy's name Theodore Roosevelt. I hope you've enjoyed today's

(08:56):
guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free
on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by
visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by
me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I
make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
book series, and television show, and you can learn all

(09:18):
about it over at the World of Lore dot com.
And until next time, stay curious, Ye