165 | Tragedy Plus Time

Today's tour of the Cabinet features a man who refused to quit, and a project that did nothing but stall over and over. You'll love the journey of each, though.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
is an open book, all of these amazing tales right
there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome
to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Mark Twain, Orson Welles, and

(00:29):
Will Rogers were all beloved entertainers with razor sharp minds,
but they were also captivating rack and tours. They knew
how to tell a story that would hold an audience's
attention so tightly that nothing could break it. They lived
fascinating lives and channel their experiences into books, films, songs,
and even the occasional dinner party conversation. But one man

(00:50):
stands above them all in more than a few ways.
His accomplishments would have been enough for ten men, but
there was only one. Peter Frauken. Peter was born in
Denmark in eighteen eighty six. His average childhood was all
because his father insisted on him having a normal life.
Peter's father had quite the influence on him, urging him
to pursue academics and get a medical decree at the

(01:13):
University of Copenhagen. But Peter wanted more. There was a
whole world out there, waiting to be discovered. He craved
the outdoors, not a stuffy classroom, so not long after
beginning his schooling, Peter dropped out. He joined the Denmark
Expedition of nineteen oh six on a voyage to Greenland's
northeastern coast, alongside the famous explorer canoe Ressmussen. He and

(01:36):
Rasmussen became partners. Once they traveled as far north as
the frigid waters would allow, they abandoned their ship and
rode a dog sled for the rest of their journey.
They traded with the local Inuit, who were both grateful
for the goods they brought, as well as Peter's imposing stature.
You see, polar bears were a particular threat in the area,
and Peter, all six ft seven inches of him, looked

(01:58):
like he could have taken one on with his bare hands.
In fact, he used the fur from one that he
had killed to make himself a new coat. Peter learned
the Inuit native language with the help of Rasmussen, setting
up a trading post which he named Tuli. It would
be a base of operations for many of their expeditions
Between nineteen twelve and nineteen thirty three. He didn't start

(02:20):
small with his life of independent exploration either. He and
Rasmussen chose to test the theory that a channel separated
Greenland from perie Land Peninsula just off the coast. They
traveled across six d twenty miles of ice to find out.
During their trip, the men were hit by a massive blizzard.
Peter tried to avoid its wrath by waiting it out

(02:40):
under his dog sled, but the snow was coming down
too strong and too quickly. Before he knew it, he
was entombed under a mountain of snow that soon hardened
into ice. Peter hadn't bothered to grab the knives and
daggers out of his pack before he got snowed in.
Death was creeping in on him, and then he got
a brilliant and gross idea. He sharpened his frozen feces

(03:03):
into a dagger and dug his way to freedom. Unfortunately,
his time in the ice had done considerable damage to
one of his legs, and frost bite had begun to
set in. He didn't seek medical attention once he'd returned
to camp, though, he chose to handle the problem himself
by cutting off his blackened toes and amputating his own leg,

(03:23):
all without anesthesia. In its place, he fitted himself with
a wooden peg leg. After that, Peter took a break
from his Arctic exploration and settled down with a local
Linuk woman named Makupo Luke, who accompanied him home to Denmark.
He and Rasmussen started lecturing Danish audiences on their travels,
and Peter got involved in politics. He and his wife

(03:45):
even had two children during his time there. Sadly, she
passed away from the Spanish flew in n one, but
Peter remarried, this time to a fellow Dane named Magdalen
van Luredson. He continued to write, now focusing on books
about his life, and took a job as an editor
in chief of a magazine that his wife's family owned.
He also became a film producer, together with MGM Studios

(04:08):
in America. He adapted one of his books into an
Oscar winning film. In nineteen thirty three, Peter appeared on
screen in the role of a ship captain, perhaps one
of the earliest known instances of typecasting. He and his
second wife remained together for twenty years before they split
during World War Two. It probably wasn't easy being married

(04:29):
to a man who was running off to fight injustice
wherever he went. Despite the peg leg and his advanced age,
Peter joined the underground Danish resistance movement against the Nazi
occupation in Denmark. Anytime he witnessed an active anti Semitism,
Peter would step forward and claim to be Jewish. No
one wanted to mess with a six foot seven pegg
leg Jewish explorer who had made his own coat out

(04:51):
of a polar bear skin, But the truth was he
couldn't beat everybody. His work with a Danish resistance got
him noticed by Hitler himself, and he was shared by
the Nazis in France. He was set to be executed
until he broke out of prison and escaped to Sweden.
Just before the war ended. Peter got married for a
third and final time and moved to New York. His

(05:12):
adventuring days behind him. He focused his attention on his
film career and continued to write novels and memoirs about
his travels. He even made an appearance on the nineteen
fifties game show The sixty four thousand Dollar Question, becoming
the fifth person in the show's history to win the jackpot.
Peter grew older and just kept adding more items to

(05:34):
his seemingly endless list of accomplishments. Sadly, Peter Freukan passed
away on August thirty, nineteen fifty seven, of a heart attack.
His ashes were scattered back Intouly, his home away from home,
and where he had met his first wife. The world
lost a living legend that day, an Arctic explorer who
had cut off his own limb, bought the Nazis, acted

(05:55):
in and produced his own movies, and always had a
story to tell no matter where he went. Peter's father
had always wanted a quiet, stable life for his son,
but I think we can all agree that his failure
as a parent turned out to be a wonderful thing.

(06:25):
They call it development hell. When a studio buys the
rights to a movie, it often takes years before a
single shot has ever filmed. However, if development goes through
numerous screenplays, writers, and even directors on the way to production,
it's said to be caught in development hell, and for
many of those films they just never make it out. Sadly,

(06:46):
that list of films is long, and many of them
are well known, but way at the bottom is a
film that few have heard about, called the incomparable A Took,
It was a fish out of Water satire written in
nineteen sixty three by Mordecai Richler. It follows the story
of a Took, an Inuit from Baffin Island off the
coast of Canada. In the film, he finds his way

(07:06):
to the mainland and soon becomes the fascination of Toronto's elite.
The more time he spends with them, the more famous
he becomes, and eventually it comes to embody the same
greed and excess of his hosts forgetting where he originally
came from. In the nineteen seventies, the book caught the
attention of Norman Jewison, a Canadian director who launched a
fame after directing Judy Garland's famous Comeback Special in nineteen

(07:29):
sixty one. He went on to direct several award winning
motion pictures, including In the Heat of the Night and
Fiddler on the Roof. It took several years to put
together a screenplay and get the project greenlit by a studio,
but by the early nineteen eighties Jewison was ready to
begin casting. His first choice to play A Took had
been Saturday Night live alum John Belushi. This was around

(07:51):
January or February of nineteen eighty two. However, on March
five of that year, Belushi was found dead of a
drug overdose in a Los Angeles This hotel with their
star tragically lost, The film sat in limbo. Then in
six stand up comic superstar Sam Kinison jumped on board,
insisting on playing the title character. According to people involved

(08:14):
in the production, Kinnison didn't even read the script before
accepting the role. He showed up two sets and managed
eight days of shooting in full costume, but he didn't
like the script and stopped production to perform rewrites. Naturally,
the studio wasn't happy about that, and they filed the lawsuit,
which put the project on hold for another several years

(08:34):
before it could resume. Though, Kinnison died in a tragic
car accident, but the Hollywood machine kept churning looking for
a lead actor for the film. Next in line was
John Candy, who was interested in the role but needed
time to read the script before he would accept. A
few months later, he died of a heart attack without
ever having made a decision. He'd also given friend and

(08:55):
screenwriter Michael O'Donohue a look at the script. O'donahue had
been to have chronic migraines, but suddenly passed away of
a cerebral hemorrhage the same year. It seemed like any
actor who approached the role of A Took met a
tragic end, but every few years the script would surface
again and make another attempt at production. In it felt

(09:16):
like the right year to try, as another former SNL
cast member found himself on the top of the casting list.
Chris Farley had become a comedy icon by the time
he had turned thirty three, but died of a drug
overdose only months after reading the script. Just like John
Belushi and just like John Candy before him, Farley had
sent the script to a friend and fellow SNL cast

(09:38):
member named Phil Hartman. Hartman died five months later. Since then,
no one has tried to revive the A Took project
for production, which is probably a good idea since no
director was looking to cast an actual Inuit for the
role anyway. But beyond that, it appeared as though the
film was cursed from the start, what with comedy legends

(09:58):
suddenly dying after coming in contact with the script. There
are a lot of unanswered questions surrounding the entire ordeal,
but one thing is certainly clear. For everyone involved adapting
the incomparable A Took was no laughing matter. I hope

(10:19):
you've enjoyed today's 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 Manky in partnership with how
Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and

(10:41):
you can learn all about it over at the World
of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.