January 13, 2026 • 30 mins
Will and Mango are starting the new year strong by counting down their favorite cultural works that just entered the public domain. From cartoon queens and detective stories to Dutch abstract art and one of the most recorded songs in history, this year’s crop has something for everyone. Plus: How the Harlem Globetrotters got their theme song, and the origin of the Dagwood sandwich!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio. Guess what? Well?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
What's that mango?
Speaker 1 (00:25):
So I have a riddle for you. What do h
g Wells? Were the Worlds? The Carry Grant movie, His
Girl Friday, and the Mona Lisa all have in common?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Man?
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Starting this one out with a with a tough one,
I'm gonna go.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
I've got a guess.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
I'm gonna go with things that inspired the musical artist Prince.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Maybe. But the answer I was looking for was that
they're all works that are in the public domain.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
All right, Okay, yeah, that makes sense, which means I
can set up a Mona Lisa stand in my front
yard and sell Prince with out getting sued now right.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Yeah, finally a second career option for you. That what
I've been waiting for. But creative works in the public
domain aren't protected by intellectual property law, So that means
you can take it, you can use it, you can
remix it, you can sell it in your front yard
to all your neighbors, and you don't have to worry
about copyright. So if you want to make a movie
adaptation of War the World's starring the Mona Lisa. It
(01:26):
might be difficult creatively, but you know you can do
it now without getting into any sort of legal trouble.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Well, when you look at it, the World of the
World's version that had ice Cube, but that got something
like I think it was like four percent on rotten tomatoes,
so it's probably due for a remake.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Yeah, And I know these are kind of silly examples,
but public domain is really important for art and culture
because without it we wouldn't have masterpieces like Westside Story,
which was based on Romeo and Juliet, or The Little Mermaid,
which was based on Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tale. And
public domain also helps is archive important cultural works and
make them more accessible so anyone can enjoy them. And
(02:06):
since it is officially twenty twenty six, that means a
whole new crop of works has entered the public domain.
And today we're going to tell you about nine of
our favorites, from an iconic abstract painting to a hard
boiled detective novel to a voluptuous cartoon who began life
as a dog. So let's dive in.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part time Genius. I'm
Will Pearson and as always, I'm here with my good
friend Mangesh hot ticketter and over there in the booth
as our PALIN producer Dylan Fagan. Now I'm gonna be honest, Mengo.
At first, I was very confused by his outfit today
because he's wearing a plain white T shirt and what
looks like two capital l's on it, and I have
(03:07):
to be honest, it's a little bit boring for Dylan's standards.
But then I remembered something he said this before the holidays.
He said, guys, in the new year, I'm coming at
you with more riddles, and I didn't really know what
it meant. So I've been thinking about this one. I'm
glad we had a few minutes before to just sort
of stare and think about this. Those aren't l's. This
this is my theory, Mango. I think they are right angles.
(03:31):
So there's a right angle and then a copy of
a right angle, which would mean can.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
You guess it?
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Ll cool?
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Joe, so close, so close, Mango, But I think it
means copyright, get it.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
There's it, there's a right angle copyright. So well done.
Dylan really started to be off.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
H I love that he started the new year with
a T shirt. Pun I feel like that's an old
Romanian folk tradition.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Definitely, definitely that Dylan always observes. All right, So Mango,
before we get into this, remind me when exactly do
works enter the public domain?
Speaker 1 (04:08):
So that is a tricky question because the timeline isn't
consistent throughout the world. Copyright duration varies from country to country,
and it can depend on the type of work as
well as whether the work was published or unpublished, or
if at some point the copyright laps. Now people actually
have flow charts to figure this stuff out. They also
(04:28):
have copyright lawyers. It's probably a better use of time
and money. But for longtime fans, we did an episode
all about copyright, and this was back in twenty nineteen
and it covers some of this in more detail. But
for our purposes today, we're just going to focus on
the fact that in the United States many works enter
the public domain ninety five years after their publication or
(04:50):
their release date. So this year that includes books, movies,
and music compositions that came out in nineteen thirty plus
sound recordings from nineteen twenty five. And like I said,
different types of works have different timelines.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Okay, that's interesting.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
It's always interesting when they come up with, you know,
numbers like ninety five. But anyway, I'm gonna kick things
off for this episode with a legendary cartoon character, and
that is Betty Boop. Of course, the big eyed, high
voice temptress was introduced to the world in a nineteen
thirty animated short. This was by Fleischer Studios and was
called Dizzy Dishes, which is now in the public domain,
(05:26):
but of course later versions of Betty are still under copyright.
And that's important to note because then its first appearance,
Betty was actually originally a dog.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
That's so weird, like a dog with a tail.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Well, she's on two legs and she's quite human, and
she has that short, curly haircut of black dress and garters,
but for some reason her ears are floppy and kind
of spaniel like, so.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
That is interesting. What happens in this short film.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Well, it centers on another character named Bembo, who's also
a dog, and he's a waiter at a busy jazz
club full of these anthropomorphized and animals, and Betty only
appears briefly, so she's a singer on stage who distracts
Bimbo from his work.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
So, actually you should watch this quick clip.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
Here we come mister right on the way.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
I have roasted up with a greatly year.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Doosional, I have my.
Speaker 5 (06:30):
I have my mom.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Oh that's funny. So so even as a dog, she
was doing the boo boop a dupe line.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Yeah, you nailed at with that. You did it.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
You did it so well then, And that was there
from the very beginning because Betty was based on a
real life anger name Helen Kane, and Helen was famous
for that kind of baby voice scat singing like that.
But you know, soon after Dizzy Dishes came out, the
animators realized that Betty had more potential as a human.
So in nineteen thirty two, she lost those spaniel ears.
(07:15):
They replaced them with her signature hoop earrings, and interestingly,
Bembo remained a dog. So there was this weird moment
where they were in this interspecies relationship, which didn't sit
well with the censor board at the time. So as
a result, Bembo got removed from the franchise and Betty, well,
Betty became a star.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
That is hilarious. But you know, if you look at
like kind of another way. It could be the plot
of I don't know, like a horror movie, right, like
this woman turns into a dog, turns back into a
human and realizes she was dating a dog between.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
It's true, it's true.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
It's actually funny that you mentioned horror because if you
heard of this trend of movie studios turning public domain
characters into these slasher movies like Winnie the Boo, Blood
and Honey, you've seen these before?
Speaker 1 (08:00):
What? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Yeah, it's a real movie. And it came out in
twenty twenty three. And last year a company called vm
I Worldwide, which brought us Popeye the Slayer Man, they
announced plans to make a Betty Boop slasher now that
she's in a public domain. It's about a group of
horror podcast investigators who break into an abandoned theater and
find themselves face to face with a homicidal Betty Boop.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
You know, it reminds me of pride and prejudices and zombies, right,
Like that idea of taking the old material and reinventing
it in a new way.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
I know we are not horror podcasters, but I kind
of want to tell you, like, how do we make
that happen?
Speaker 2 (08:39):
I have no idea, but I'm with you if we
figure it out.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Well, from one boop to another. Our next public domain
entrant is a comic strip character named Blondie, whose maiden
name was Boop a Doope. Now you don't meet many
Boopa dupes these days, but Blondie, if you're a fan
of the old comic strip, became a bumstead when she
married Dagwood. Now did you ever see the comic strip
growing up in Alabama?
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Not really, to be honest, No.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Yeah, it was definitely in ours growing up both in
New Jersey and then North Carolina and then Delaware too,
so like it was a standard in our house. But
the strip, created by Chick Young, debuted in September nineteen thirty,
and these earliest versions of the characters are the ones
now in the public domain. And you might be surprised
to learn that Blondie was a fun loving flapper, not
(09:27):
a housewife, and Dagwood was the son of an uptight
railroad tycoon. Dagwood is well dressed with sleek black hair
in these early strips, and Blondie is downright glamorous and
It's interesting that as the strip evolved, Dagwood's appearance gets scruffier,
but Blondie always remains youthful and pretty.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Now.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Unfortunately, the strip wasn't a hit at first. This was
during the Great Depression and readers were not interested in
the adventures of like a trust fund kid and his
gorgeous girlfriend. So Chick Young actually pivoted his comic strip.
He had Dagwood and Blondie get married, and crucially, Dagwood's
parents didn't approve their son marrying a lower class woman,
so they disinherited him, and that kind of left the
(10:11):
Bumpsteads on their own to make a living.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
You know, when I think of Dagwood Bumpstead, I actually
don't think about class mobility. I think about sandwiches.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yeah, that's right, and those came later too. So once
Dagwood's character became a clumsy, hungry office worker, Chick Young
explained piling up fridge leftovers between two slices of bread
was the only meal that Dagwood knew how to make,
and the association between the character and the sandwich is
actually so strong that Merriam Webster defines a Dagwood as
(10:41):
a many layered sandwich. That said. Producer Mary told us
that in Maine, her hometown state, a Dagwood is served
in a pitapocket, and I guess that's because you can
stuff a lot of fillings in there. Either way, here's
a bonus back for you. In the mid aus Chick
Young's son actually tried to get a Dagwood restaurant chain
off the gun that was supposed to feature a menu
(11:02):
that had pound and a half sandwiches, but unfortunately that
never happens. So, yeah, its own horror story.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
That's exactly right. All right, Well, here's something I was
surprised to see. So Piet Mandrion's painting composition with red,
blue and yellow. It's now in the public domain. Now,
I'm sure you've seen this before. It's the one with
the large red square in the top right corner, blue
and yellow in the two other corners, and some white
in between there. Now, it's easy to focus on those
(11:30):
rectangles of color, but what really makes it pop is
the black horizontal and vertical lines that outline these. So
it turns out that Mandrion took his straight lines very seriously.
In nineteen seventeen, he actually found that a magazine with
fellow artist Teo von Dusburg. It was called The Style,
which just means you might guess Style and Dutch. It
(11:53):
was a place where they and other like minded artists
could share their ideas about art. But in nineteen twenty three,
after von Dusberg started incorporating these diagonal lines into his art,
Mandrion formally left it in protest of this.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
I love the idea that like two fellow artists could
be so upset over the idea of incorporating something like diagonal.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
Lines, so offensive, so offensive to some people.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Why did Mondrion hate diagonal so much?
Speaker 3 (12:21):
You know, he just felt really strongly that horizontal and
vertical lines were aesthetically better And it's funny, I mean,
like the thing is though he wasn't wrong. Research has
actually shown that people tend to perceive horizontal and vertical
lines more easily than diagonal ones. It's a phenomenon known
as the oblique effect. And in two thousand, psychologists from
(12:42):
the University of Liverpool actually published a study in which
they put Mandrion's lines to the test. So they showed
subject slides of eight different paintings by Mondrian. They also
showed each painting in eight different orientations, so a bunch
of different angles for a total of sixty images. Then
the researchers found that participants preferred paintings where they were
(13:04):
shown in an orientation with horizontal and vertical lines rather
than the diagonal ones. They also preferred the paintings when
they were shown in the way Mandrion intended them to
be oriented. So apparently the guy actually knew what he
was talking about.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
That's incredible that it's like backed by science, but also
like the idea that like you could put a crapozoid
in front of him and you just be furious.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
It's true. It's true. Yeah, it's offensive.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
I do love that, like now that his most famous
work is in the public domain, that it'll be interesting
to see how people play with it, right, you re imagine, Yeah,
so will This next work that's entering the public domain
is both a great book and a great movie. It's
called The Maltese Falcon. It's by Dashal Hammett. Have you
read it or seen it?
Speaker 3 (13:46):
I'm gonna have to confess it's on the list, but
I have neither read nor seen it before.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
How about you?
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Yeah, I've both read it and seen it. But this
is Hammett's third novel. It's a master work, and it
actually started as a serialized story in Black Mask Magazine.
It's the story of a tough detective, Sam Spade, who
gets hired by the mysterious Miss Wonderley to help find
her sister. And as with any great noir, has got
(14:14):
lots of twists and turns, and that's how it ended
up being turned into a hit movie starring Humphrey Bogart
in nineteen forty.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
That's not in the public domain yet.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
No this year is just the novel. But in addition
to being a great story, it totally revolutionized the detective genre.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
And how's that?
Speaker 1 (14:31):
I mean, this is incredible to think about. So before
the Maltese Falcon, it was the British detective story that
sort of ruled mystery stories. Right, Like mystery writers tend
to follow rules set forth by people like Edgar Allan Poe,
Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christine and the basic ingredients
where you've got this genius, eccentric detective and often they
(14:52):
have a steadfast partner and together they solve an unusual crime, right,
and the clues are complicated and they're kind of sub
dropped in through a slow moving plot for the most part.
But Dashel Hammitt, who is an American, gives a detective
who is more of an anti hero. Right. Spade is
hard boiled, he's violent, he follows his own code of ethics.
(15:15):
His world is gritty, and this isn't a place where
like crime is an outlier. Right, criminals are everywhere. They're
kind of par for the course now. Hammitt also infused
his story with more action and also a colloquial dialogue
than readers had ever seen before, and in doing so,
he created a new template for detective novels, and since
(15:35):
then it's inspired thousands of imitators.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
I love that. All Right, Well, we have to take
a quick break.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
But when we come back, a song that changed blues
forever and the inside scoop on the three Stooges, So
don't go anywhere.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Welcome back to Part Time Genius. We're talking about nine
works of art that are in the public domain as
of January first, and now that we're in twenty twenty six,
I can tell you that we are planning a big
year here on the show. So be sure to subscribe
on your favorite podcast app. We also love hearing from you,
so let us know if you have a question or
idea we should explore, or if you'd like one of
(16:24):
our official membership cards. We do have a few left,
so give us a call at three oh two, four
oh five five nine two five. You can also email
us at high Geniuses at gmail dot com. That's Hi
Geniuses at gmail dot com, or you can find us
on blue Sky and Instagram at part time Genius. Okay, well,
so what is our next public domain work?
Speaker 3 (16:47):
All right, Well, before the break, you've talked about how
the novel The Maltese Falcon is now in the public domain,
but we have to wait another decade for the film
to join it there. But last year Eric Maria remarks,
novel All Quiet on the Western Front On entered the
public domain, and this year it's now joined by the film.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
This is one of those films that I've actually never
seen as much as I've heard about it, just because
I'm not as into war films. But tell me a
little bit about it.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
Well, if you're not into war films, this one actually
became an instant classic because of its realistic depiction of war.
So it is pretty intense it stunned American audiences, who
often had to collect themselves for a moment before quietly
leaving the theater. Critics gave the World War I film
glowing reviews, and All Quiet won the Academy Award for
(17:33):
Outstanding Production, which was the early name for Best Picture.
Director Lewis Milestone also won Best Director. But when it
was released in Germany and December of nineteen thirty, about
seven months after the US premiere, the reaction gave the
world a sense of things to come. Nazi protests broke out,
including one incident in which they released mice and set
(17:54):
off stink bombs during a screening of the film. Yeah
for Real, And they wanted the film banned for what
they claim was slander of German war heroes, and they
felt it was created by a filmmaking industry dominated by
Jewish Americans. So the Variety headline read quote Berlin riot
over all Quiet, as much anti Semitic as anything else,
(18:15):
and the Nazis got what they wanted. The film was
banned in Germany for quote damaging the country's reputation. Two
years later, Hitler became Chancellor and the film wouldn't screen
in Germany again. Until nineteen fifty two.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
That's crazy. I had no idea, but you know, I
do remember hearing about a German remake that came out.
I don't know, just like a few.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Years ago, right, Yeah, it was not long ago at all.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
It was in twenty twenty two, and it won a
ton of awards, including Oscars for Best Cinematography, Best International
Feature Film, and the critical response was overwhelmingly positive, although
some people said basically that nothing could top the nineteen
thirty film or the original novel. They're sort of in
a league of their own.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Okay, so I already told you about one great detective
who's now in the public domain, Sam Spain. But here
is another, the iconic Nancy Drew. Now. The first novels
featuring the teen detective were published in nineteen thirty, The
Secret of the Old Clock, The Hidden Staircase, The Bungalow Mystery,
and the Mystery at Lilac Inn. And there's actually a
(19:15):
bit of mystery behind.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Them, a case fit for Nancy Drew.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Maybe, so for many years the public didn't know who
wrote Nancy Drew. The series was created by a company
called Stratmeier Syndicate, which released the books under pseudonym Carolyn Keene.
Authors who wrote Nancy Drew books had to sign a
contract waiving any rights to talk about their work. But
in nineteen eighty, Stratameier got caught up in a lawsuit
(19:40):
after signing a deal that allowed Simon and Schuster to
publish new Nancy Drew books. The book's hardcover publisher, Grossen Dunlap,
suit to try to prevent this quote unfair competition, and
as a result of that lawsuit, the original author had
to take the stand. So that's how the world learned
that Mildred wert Benson wrote twenty three of the first
(20:01):
thirty Nancy Drew novels. The shame of it is that
she earned just one hundred and twenty five dollars per book,
which is about twenty three hundred dollars in today's term.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Wow. Knowing how many of those have sold, that is
that's crazy.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Yeah, there were fifty six novels in the original Nancy
Drew series, and it's believed they were the work of
several ghostwriters. But Simon and Schuster emerged from that nineteen
eighty lawsuit with the ability to publish Nancy Drew books,
and they're still doing that today all still under the
name Carolyn Keene, of course, but now the first four
novels they actually belong to everyone.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
Well, there are probably as many Nancy Drew books as
there are covers of the popular song Saint Louis Blues,
which was originally composed by W. C.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Handy. This was back in nineteen fourteen.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Yeah, and one of those covers was by my fourth
grade middle school band HB. Du Pont in Delaware. I'm
sure that's the recording that everyone is cleimbed.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
I think it's the first one that comes up when
you look it up online.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
So well, maybe not.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
But there is one that stands out from the rest,
and this is, of course Bessie Smith's nineteen twenty five rendition,
which is now in the public domain. It was inducted
into the Grammy Hall of Fame. It was on Time
Magazine's All Time one hundred Songs, plus NPR's list of
the most important American musical works of the twentieth century.
If you're not familiar with it, or just need a
(21:23):
reminder of what this is, give it a quick listen.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Here make me.
Speaker 4 (21:50):
A for.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
By the way, that's twenty four year old Louis Armstrong
playing the coronet. There By the time Smith recorded it,
the song was already famous, maybe even the most famous
blues song in the world at the time. It had
been performed by dance bands vaudevillians. The sheet music had
sold tens of thousands of copies, and one thing that
really set it apart was the use of the minor key.
(22:21):
So other blues pieces had these minor inflections, or blue
notes as they call them, but this was the first
published piece of music with an entire section and a
minor key. It was an innovation that changed blues music
forever and earn Handy the title of Father of the Blues.
But Bessie Smith's version has proved legendary. In nineteen twenty nine,
(22:42):
she made her first and only film appearance, singing the
song in a sixteen minute movie called Appropriate Enough Saint
Louis Blues, and the movie entered the public domain last year,
and if you're curious, you can actually watch it on
the Library of Congress website.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
I'm definitely gonna do that. Speaking of film debuts, the
first three Stooges movie, Soup to Nuts, is now in
the public domain. The seventy minute film is the story
of Ted, who works at a struggling business called the
Schmidt Costume Shop. The Stooges played Ted's firefighter friends, whom
he often visits at work. Now to the Stooges, brothers
(23:17):
Moe and Shemp Howard had been working together in a
vaudeville act since nineteen twenty two. Their friend Ted Healey,
who plays Ted, joined them, as did a comedian slash
violinist Larry Fine, and at the time Ted was the
frontman while Moe, Shemp and Larry provided comedic interruptions. But
after the nineteen thirty film, Shemp quit the group due
(23:38):
to differences with Ted, and another brother, Jerry Howard, took
his place. Now, Jerry's childhood nickname was Curly it's obviously
a nickname that's stuck for the character, and he retired
in nineteen forty six, and then Shemp returned to the
Stooges after fifteen years away. He went on to make
seventy eight three Stooges films.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
Seventy eight films. That's so many bunks on the head Mango.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Yeah, you know I am going to get in trouble
for saying this, but uh were you a three Stooges fan.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
I was a three Stooges fan for like, let's call
it fifteen to twenty second set a time, like to
watch a quick clip of it and be like, Okay,
that's funny that that existed, But it wasn't something I
could really watch for any sort of extended period of time.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
How about you?
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Yeah, I mean I could appreciate what they're doing, I guess,
but like, I really wasn't a fan. When the students
came on TV. That was when I knew it was
time to turn off the television and go outside, like
which is what happened on like Saturday mornings or whatever.
But you know, obviously they're comedy legends and everyone now
can remake their own version of Soup to nuts. But
(24:46):
there's one more fact about the movie that I want
to mention. So remember how I said that the costume
shop where Ted works in the film isn't doing that well? Yeah,
and the reason is that the shop's owner, Auto is
distracted by building these ridiculously complicated inventions, like he makes
an automatic coffee sweetener, which requires putting a sugar cube
on a lever that's attached to a ramp. Then Auto
(25:09):
uses a pool cube to push a marble down the ramp,
which activates the lever to send the cube flying all
the way across the room into a mug of coffee.
And I'm kind of curious. Does that sound like a
familiar contraption to you?
Speaker 3 (25:21):
Actually, as you were describing that, it does sort of
sound like a Rube Goldberg machine, right.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Yeah, So Rube Goldberg co wrote the film No Way,
Auto was apparently playing a version of himself, and Goldberg
even has a cameo in the movie, appearing as a
customer in a restaurant.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Isn't that cool?
Speaker 3 (25:37):
That is such a great fact, and that's going to
be really hard to top. But we do have one
more to talk about, our ninth fact, So I'll finish
our list today with this song, and specifically, it's a
song that's been recorded by Nancy Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and
the Beatles, not all at the same time, though.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Can you guess what this is?
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Yeah? I think I would have known it if they
sang it at the sime time. No, what is it? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (26:02):
It's different versions here, and I'm talking, of course about
Sweet Georgia Brown and the version that's now in the
public domain, was recorded in nineteen twenty five by the
songwriter Ben Bernie and his Hotel Roosevelt Orchestra, and he
wrote the song earlier that same year, and it went
on to become a jazz standard, although these days most
people recognize it as the Harlem Globetrotter's theme song.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Which I love and also I have a sucker for
anything with whistling.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
Well, that's actually a later version from nineteen forty nine
recorded by an Alabama musician named Brother Bones. The original
version that Bernie wrote doesn't have any whistling in it.
Here's what his nineteen twenty five rendition sounds like. So
(27:17):
the song also has lyrics to it, believe it or not,
written by a child actor turned songwriter named Kenneth Casey,
who incidentally appeared in an early Three Stooges film.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Oh it always comes back to the three students.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Exactly right, your heroes.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
Anyway, The lyrics tell the story of sweet Georgia Brown,
who quote has two left feet, but she's neat and
she makes all the fellasigh and want to die. But
you shouldn't feel bad about not knowing all that because
the Globe Charter's popularity has definitely overshadowed Bernie's original work.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
That Globe Tartter song is so good, but I've always
kind of wondered, like, why did they pick that song?
Speaker 3 (27:53):
Yeah, you know, unfortunately that story has been lost to time.
I think we've been looking into this for years, even
back in our mental lost days. I mean, we know
they adopted it in nineteen fifty two, and apparently the
first time it was played it was a surprise to
the players. Former Globetrotter Bobby Milton once explained, quote, we
all started moving about and dancing with the music, and
(28:13):
now it's as much a part of us as the name.
So the song and the organization became so intertwined that
Brother Bones traveled with the Globetrotters for years, not to
play ball, but to sell copies of his record.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
I really liked that, and I think it's kind of
a delightful note to end this episode on. So I
think you deserved today's trophy, but will Before we wrap up,
let's hear a recent call that came into the Part
Time Genius hotline. Because you know how much I love these.
Speaker 6 (28:40):
Hi, I'm Samson, and I really enjoy your podcast. I've
been listening for about eight hours and it's really great
and I've learned a lot. Thank you so much, especially
for the episode about flutes. I found that hilarious. Can
you please keep going and it's amazing. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Wow, eight hours, Mango, I know it's crazy. It's a
very long time to listen to anything. For that matter,
it really is.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Sam said, we are so glad you love the show,
but be careful. That is a lot of information to
consume all at once.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
All right, Well, that does it for today's show, and
if you want to check out some of the works
we've just talked about, we'll put all the links in
the show notes. The episode was written by our good
pal Meredith Danko. Thank you so much, Meredith. We couldn't
have Booby Duped without you. We'll be back next week
with another brand new episode and in the meantime form Mango, Dylan, Gabe,
Mary and Me.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
It is hosted by my good pal Will Pearson, who
I've known for almost three decades now. That is insane
to me. I'm the Utaco host Mangeshatikular aka Mango. Our
producer is Mary Phillips Sandy. She's actually a super producer.
I'm going to fix that in post. Our writer is
(30:13):
Gabe Lucier, who I've also known for like a decade
at this point, maybe more. Dylan Fagan is in the booth.
He is always dressed up, always cheering us on, and
always ready to hit record and then mix the show
after he does a great job. I also want to
shout out the executive producers from iHeart my good pals
Katrina and Norvel and Ali Perry. We have social media
(30:36):
support from Calypso Rallis. If you like our videos, that
is all Calypso's handiwork for more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
Visit the iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
App, Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
Or tune in wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
That's it from us here at Part Time Genius. Thank
you so much for listening.
You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio. Guess what? Well?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
What's that mango?
Speaker 1 (00:25):
So I have a riddle for you. What do h
g Wells? Were the Worlds? The Carry Grant movie, His
Girl Friday, and the Mona Lisa all have in common?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Man?
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Starting this one out with a with a tough one,
I'm gonna go.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
I've got a guess.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
I'm gonna go with things that inspired the musical artist Prince.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Maybe. But the answer I was looking for was that
they're all works that are in the public domain.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
All right, Okay, yeah, that makes sense, which means I
can set up a Mona Lisa stand in my front
yard and sell Prince with out getting sued now right.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Yeah, finally a second career option for you. That what
I've been waiting for. But creative works in the public
domain aren't protected by intellectual property law, So that means
you can take it, you can use it, you can
remix it, you can sell it in your front yard
to all your neighbors, and you don't have to worry
about copyright. So if you want to make a movie
adaptation of War the World's starring the Mona Lisa. It
(01:26):
might be difficult creatively, but you know you can do
it now without getting into any sort of legal trouble.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Well, when you look at it, the World of the
World's version that had ice Cube, but that got something
like I think it was like four percent on rotten tomatoes,
so it's probably due for a remake.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Yeah, And I know these are kind of silly examples,
but public domain is really important for art and culture
because without it we wouldn't have masterpieces like Westside Story,
which was based on Romeo and Juliet, or The Little Mermaid,
which was based on Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tale. And
public domain also helps is archive important cultural works and
make them more accessible so anyone can enjoy them. And
(02:06):
since it is officially twenty twenty six, that means a
whole new crop of works has entered the public domain.
And today we're going to tell you about nine of
our favorites, from an iconic abstract painting to a hard
boiled detective novel to a voluptuous cartoon who began life
as a dog. So let's dive in.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part time Genius. I'm
Will Pearson and as always, I'm here with my good
friend Mangesh hot ticketter and over there in the booth
as our PALIN producer Dylan Fagan. Now I'm gonna be honest, Mengo.
At first, I was very confused by his outfit today
because he's wearing a plain white T shirt and what
looks like two capital l's on it, and I have
(03:07):
to be honest, it's a little bit boring for Dylan's standards.
But then I remembered something he said this before the holidays.
He said, guys, in the new year, I'm coming at
you with more riddles, and I didn't really know what
it meant. So I've been thinking about this one. I'm
glad we had a few minutes before to just sort
of stare and think about this. Those aren't l's. This
this is my theory, Mango. I think they are right angles.
(03:31):
So there's a right angle and then a copy of
a right angle, which would mean can.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
You guess it?
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Ll cool?
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Joe, so close, so close, Mango, But I think it
means copyright, get it.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
There's it, there's a right angle copyright. So well done.
Dylan really started to be off.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
H I love that he started the new year with
a T shirt. Pun I feel like that's an old
Romanian folk tradition.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Definitely, definitely that Dylan always observes. All right, So Mango,
before we get into this, remind me when exactly do
works enter the public domain?
Speaker 1 (04:08):
So that is a tricky question because the timeline isn't
consistent throughout the world. Copyright duration varies from country to country,
and it can depend on the type of work as
well as whether the work was published or unpublished, or
if at some point the copyright laps. Now people actually
have flow charts to figure this stuff out. They also
(04:28):
have copyright lawyers. It's probably a better use of time
and money. But for longtime fans, we did an episode
all about copyright, and this was back in twenty nineteen
and it covers some of this in more detail. But
for our purposes today, we're just going to focus on
the fact that in the United States many works enter
the public domain ninety five years after their publication or
(04:50):
their release date. So this year that includes books, movies,
and music compositions that came out in nineteen thirty plus
sound recordings from nineteen twenty five. And like I said,
different types of works have different timelines.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Okay, that's interesting.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
It's always interesting when they come up with, you know,
numbers like ninety five. But anyway, I'm gonna kick things
off for this episode with a legendary cartoon character, and
that is Betty Boop. Of course, the big eyed, high
voice temptress was introduced to the world in a nineteen
thirty animated short. This was by Fleischer Studios and was
called Dizzy Dishes, which is now in the public domain,
(05:26):
but of course later versions of Betty are still under copyright.
And that's important to note because then its first appearance,
Betty was actually originally a dog.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
That's so weird, like a dog with a tail.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Well, she's on two legs and she's quite human, and
she has that short, curly haircut of black dress and garters,
but for some reason her ears are floppy and kind
of spaniel like, so.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
That is interesting. What happens in this short film.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Well, it centers on another character named Bembo, who's also
a dog, and he's a waiter at a busy jazz
club full of these anthropomorphized and animals, and Betty only
appears briefly, so she's a singer on stage who distracts
Bimbo from his work.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
So, actually you should watch this quick clip.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
Here we come mister right on the way.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
I have roasted up with a greatly year.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Doosional, I have my.
Speaker 5 (06:30):
I have my mom.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Oh that's funny. So so even as a dog, she
was doing the boo boop a dupe line.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Yeah, you nailed at with that. You did it.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
You did it so well then, And that was there
from the very beginning because Betty was based on a
real life anger name Helen Kane, and Helen was famous
for that kind of baby voice scat singing like that.
But you know, soon after Dizzy Dishes came out, the
animators realized that Betty had more potential as a human.
So in nineteen thirty two, she lost those spaniel ears.
(07:15):
They replaced them with her signature hoop earrings, and interestingly,
Bembo remained a dog. So there was this weird moment
where they were in this interspecies relationship, which didn't sit
well with the censor board at the time. So as
a result, Bembo got removed from the franchise and Betty, well,
Betty became a star.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
That is hilarious. But you know, if you look at
like kind of another way. It could be the plot
of I don't know, like a horror movie, right, like
this woman turns into a dog, turns back into a
human and realizes she was dating a dog between.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
It's true, it's true.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
It's actually funny that you mentioned horror because if you
heard of this trend of movie studios turning public domain
characters into these slasher movies like Winnie the Boo, Blood
and Honey, you've seen these before?
Speaker 1 (08:00):
What? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Yeah, it's a real movie. And it came out in
twenty twenty three. And last year a company called vm
I Worldwide, which brought us Popeye the Slayer Man, they
announced plans to make a Betty Boop slasher now that
she's in a public domain. It's about a group of
horror podcast investigators who break into an abandoned theater and
find themselves face to face with a homicidal Betty Boop.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
You know, it reminds me of pride and prejudices and zombies, right,
Like that idea of taking the old material and reinventing
it in a new way.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
I know we are not horror podcasters, but I kind
of want to tell you, like, how do we make
that happen?
Speaker 2 (08:39):
I have no idea, but I'm with you if we
figure it out.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Well, from one boop to another. Our next public domain
entrant is a comic strip character named Blondie, whose maiden
name was Boop a Doope. Now you don't meet many
Boopa dupes these days, but Blondie, if you're a fan
of the old comic strip, became a bumstead when she
married Dagwood. Now did you ever see the comic strip
growing up in Alabama?
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Not really, to be honest, No.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Yeah, it was definitely in ours growing up both in
New Jersey and then North Carolina and then Delaware too,
so like it was a standard in our house. But
the strip, created by Chick Young, debuted in September nineteen thirty,
and these earliest versions of the characters are the ones
now in the public domain. And you might be surprised
to learn that Blondie was a fun loving flapper, not
(09:27):
a housewife, and Dagwood was the son of an uptight
railroad tycoon. Dagwood is well dressed with sleek black hair
in these early strips, and Blondie is downright glamorous and
It's interesting that as the strip evolved, Dagwood's appearance gets scruffier,
but Blondie always remains youthful and pretty.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Now.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Unfortunately, the strip wasn't a hit at first. This was
during the Great Depression and readers were not interested in
the adventures of like a trust fund kid and his
gorgeous girlfriend. So Chick Young actually pivoted his comic strip.
He had Dagwood and Blondie get married, and crucially, Dagwood's
parents didn't approve their son marrying a lower class woman,
so they disinherited him, and that kind of left the
(10:11):
Bumpsteads on their own to make a living.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
You know, when I think of Dagwood Bumpstead, I actually
don't think about class mobility. I think about sandwiches.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yeah, that's right, and those came later too. So once
Dagwood's character became a clumsy, hungry office worker, Chick Young
explained piling up fridge leftovers between two slices of bread
was the only meal that Dagwood knew how to make,
and the association between the character and the sandwich is
actually so strong that Merriam Webster defines a Dagwood as
(10:41):
a many layered sandwich. That said. Producer Mary told us
that in Maine, her hometown state, a Dagwood is served
in a pitapocket, and I guess that's because you can
stuff a lot of fillings in there. Either way, here's
a bonus back for you. In the mid aus Chick
Young's son actually tried to get a Dagwood restaurant chain
off the gun that was supposed to feature a menu
(11:02):
that had pound and a half sandwiches, but unfortunately that
never happens. So, yeah, its own horror story.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
That's exactly right. All right, Well, here's something I was
surprised to see. So Piet Mandrion's painting composition with red,
blue and yellow. It's now in the public domain. Now,
I'm sure you've seen this before. It's the one with
the large red square in the top right corner, blue
and yellow in the two other corners, and some white
in between there. Now, it's easy to focus on those
(11:30):
rectangles of color, but what really makes it pop is
the black horizontal and vertical lines that outline these. So
it turns out that Mandrion took his straight lines very seriously.
In nineteen seventeen, he actually found that a magazine with
fellow artist Teo von Dusburg. It was called The Style,
which just means you might guess Style and Dutch. It
(11:53):
was a place where they and other like minded artists
could share their ideas about art. But in nineteen twenty three,
after von Dusberg started incorporating these diagonal lines into his art,
Mandrion formally left it in protest of this.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
I love the idea that like two fellow artists could
be so upset over the idea of incorporating something like diagonal.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
Lines, so offensive, so offensive to some people.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Why did Mondrion hate diagonal so much?
Speaker 3 (12:21):
You know, he just felt really strongly that horizontal and
vertical lines were aesthetically better And it's funny, I mean,
like the thing is though he wasn't wrong. Research has
actually shown that people tend to perceive horizontal and vertical
lines more easily than diagonal ones. It's a phenomenon known
as the oblique effect. And in two thousand, psychologists from
(12:42):
the University of Liverpool actually published a study in which
they put Mandrion's lines to the test. So they showed
subject slides of eight different paintings by Mondrian. They also
showed each painting in eight different orientations, so a bunch
of different angles for a total of sixty images. Then
the researchers found that participants preferred paintings where they were
(13:04):
shown in an orientation with horizontal and vertical lines rather
than the diagonal ones. They also preferred the paintings when
they were shown in the way Mandrion intended them to
be oriented. So apparently the guy actually knew what he
was talking about.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
That's incredible that it's like backed by science, but also
like the idea that like you could put a crapozoid
in front of him and you just be furious.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
It's true. It's true. Yeah, it's offensive.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
I do love that, like now that his most famous
work is in the public domain, that it'll be interesting
to see how people play with it, right, you re imagine, Yeah,
so will This next work that's entering the public domain
is both a great book and a great movie. It's
called The Maltese Falcon. It's by Dashal Hammett. Have you
read it or seen it?
Speaker 3 (13:46):
I'm gonna have to confess it's on the list, but
I have neither read nor seen it before.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
How about you?
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Yeah, I've both read it and seen it. But this
is Hammett's third novel. It's a master work, and it
actually started as a serialized story in Black Mask Magazine.
It's the story of a tough detective, Sam Spade, who
gets hired by the mysterious Miss Wonderley to help find
her sister. And as with any great noir, has got
(14:14):
lots of twists and turns, and that's how it ended
up being turned into a hit movie starring Humphrey Bogart
in nineteen forty.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
That's not in the public domain yet.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
No this year is just the novel. But in addition
to being a great story, it totally revolutionized the detective genre.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
And how's that?
Speaker 1 (14:31):
I mean, this is incredible to think about. So before
the Maltese Falcon, it was the British detective story that
sort of ruled mystery stories. Right, Like mystery writers tend
to follow rules set forth by people like Edgar Allan Poe,
Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christine and the basic ingredients
where you've got this genius, eccentric detective and often they
(14:52):
have a steadfast partner and together they solve an unusual crime, right,
and the clues are complicated and they're kind of sub
dropped in through a slow moving plot for the most part.
But Dashel Hammitt, who is an American, gives a detective
who is more of an anti hero. Right. Spade is
hard boiled, he's violent, he follows his own code of ethics.
(15:15):
His world is gritty, and this isn't a place where
like crime is an outlier. Right, criminals are everywhere. They're
kind of par for the course now. Hammitt also infused
his story with more action and also a colloquial dialogue
than readers had ever seen before, and in doing so,
he created a new template for detective novels, and since
(15:35):
then it's inspired thousands of imitators.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
I love that. All Right, Well, we have to take
a quick break.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
But when we come back, a song that changed blues
forever and the inside scoop on the three Stooges, So
don't go anywhere.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Welcome back to Part Time Genius. We're talking about nine
works of art that are in the public domain as
of January first, and now that we're in twenty twenty six,
I can tell you that we are planning a big
year here on the show. So be sure to subscribe
on your favorite podcast app. We also love hearing from you,
so let us know if you have a question or
idea we should explore, or if you'd like one of
(16:24):
our official membership cards. We do have a few left,
so give us a call at three oh two, four
oh five five nine two five. You can also email
us at high Geniuses at gmail dot com. That's Hi
Geniuses at gmail dot com, or you can find us
on blue Sky and Instagram at part time Genius. Okay, well,
so what is our next public domain work?
Speaker 3 (16:47):
All right, Well, before the break, you've talked about how
the novel The Maltese Falcon is now in the public domain,
but we have to wait another decade for the film
to join it there. But last year Eric Maria remarks,
novel All Quiet on the Western Front On entered the
public domain, and this year it's now joined by the film.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
This is one of those films that I've actually never
seen as much as I've heard about it, just because
I'm not as into war films. But tell me a
little bit about it.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
Well, if you're not into war films, this one actually
became an instant classic because of its realistic depiction of war.
So it is pretty intense it stunned American audiences, who
often had to collect themselves for a moment before quietly
leaving the theater. Critics gave the World War I film
glowing reviews, and All Quiet won the Academy Award for
(17:33):
Outstanding Production, which was the early name for Best Picture.
Director Lewis Milestone also won Best Director. But when it
was released in Germany and December of nineteen thirty, about
seven months after the US premiere, the reaction gave the
world a sense of things to come. Nazi protests broke out,
including one incident in which they released mice and set
(17:54):
off stink bombs during a screening of the film. Yeah
for Real, And they wanted the film banned for what
they claim was slander of German war heroes, and they
felt it was created by a filmmaking industry dominated by
Jewish Americans. So the Variety headline read quote Berlin riot
over all Quiet, as much anti Semitic as anything else,
(18:15):
and the Nazis got what they wanted. The film was
banned in Germany for quote damaging the country's reputation. Two
years later, Hitler became Chancellor and the film wouldn't screen
in Germany again. Until nineteen fifty two.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
That's crazy. I had no idea, but you know, I
do remember hearing about a German remake that came out.
I don't know, just like a few.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Years ago, right, Yeah, it was not long ago at all.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
It was in twenty twenty two, and it won a
ton of awards, including Oscars for Best Cinematography, Best International
Feature Film, and the critical response was overwhelmingly positive, although
some people said basically that nothing could top the nineteen
thirty film or the original novel. They're sort of in
a league of their own.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Okay, so I already told you about one great detective
who's now in the public domain, Sam Spain. But here
is another, the iconic Nancy Drew. Now. The first novels
featuring the teen detective were published in nineteen thirty, The
Secret of the Old Clock, The Hidden Staircase, The Bungalow Mystery,
and the Mystery at Lilac Inn. And there's actually a
(19:15):
bit of mystery behind.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Them, a case fit for Nancy Drew.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Maybe, so for many years the public didn't know who
wrote Nancy Drew. The series was created by a company
called Stratmeier Syndicate, which released the books under pseudonym Carolyn Keene.
Authors who wrote Nancy Drew books had to sign a
contract waiving any rights to talk about their work. But
in nineteen eighty, Stratameier got caught up in a lawsuit
(19:40):
after signing a deal that allowed Simon and Schuster to
publish new Nancy Drew books. The book's hardcover publisher, Grossen Dunlap,
suit to try to prevent this quote unfair competition, and
as a result of that lawsuit, the original author had
to take the stand. So that's how the world learned
that Mildred wert Benson wrote twenty three of the first
(20:01):
thirty Nancy Drew novels. The shame of it is that
she earned just one hundred and twenty five dollars per book,
which is about twenty three hundred dollars in today's term.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Wow. Knowing how many of those have sold, that is
that's crazy.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Yeah, there were fifty six novels in the original Nancy
Drew series, and it's believed they were the work of
several ghostwriters. But Simon and Schuster emerged from that nineteen
eighty lawsuit with the ability to publish Nancy Drew books,
and they're still doing that today all still under the
name Carolyn Keene, of course, but now the first four
novels they actually belong to everyone.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
Well, there are probably as many Nancy Drew books as
there are covers of the popular song Saint Louis Blues,
which was originally composed by W. C.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Handy. This was back in nineteen fourteen.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Yeah, and one of those covers was by my fourth
grade middle school band HB. Du Pont in Delaware. I'm
sure that's the recording that everyone is cleimbed.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
I think it's the first one that comes up when
you look it up online.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
So well, maybe not.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
But there is one that stands out from the rest,
and this is, of course Bessie Smith's nineteen twenty five rendition,
which is now in the public domain. It was inducted
into the Grammy Hall of Fame. It was on Time
Magazine's All Time one hundred Songs, plus NPR's list of
the most important American musical works of the twentieth century.
If you're not familiar with it, or just need a
(21:23):
reminder of what this is, give it a quick listen.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Here make me.
Speaker 4 (21:50):
A for.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
By the way, that's twenty four year old Louis Armstrong
playing the coronet. There By the time Smith recorded it,
the song was already famous, maybe even the most famous
blues song in the world at the time. It had
been performed by dance bands vaudevillians. The sheet music had
sold tens of thousands of copies, and one thing that
really set it apart was the use of the minor key.
(22:21):
So other blues pieces had these minor inflections, or blue
notes as they call them, but this was the first
published piece of music with an entire section and a
minor key. It was an innovation that changed blues music
forever and earn Handy the title of Father of the Blues.
But Bessie Smith's version has proved legendary. In nineteen twenty nine,
(22:42):
she made her first and only film appearance, singing the
song in a sixteen minute movie called Appropriate Enough Saint
Louis Blues, and the movie entered the public domain last year,
and if you're curious, you can actually watch it on
the Library of Congress website.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
I'm definitely gonna do that. Speaking of film debuts, the
first three Stooges movie, Soup to Nuts, is now in
the public domain. The seventy minute film is the story
of Ted, who works at a struggling business called the
Schmidt Costume Shop. The Stooges played Ted's firefighter friends, whom
he often visits at work. Now to the Stooges, brothers
(23:17):
Moe and Shemp Howard had been working together in a
vaudeville act since nineteen twenty two. Their friend Ted Healey,
who plays Ted, joined them, as did a comedian slash
violinist Larry Fine, and at the time Ted was the
frontman while Moe, Shemp and Larry provided comedic interruptions. But
after the nineteen thirty film, Shemp quit the group due
(23:38):
to differences with Ted, and another brother, Jerry Howard, took
his place. Now, Jerry's childhood nickname was Curly it's obviously
a nickname that's stuck for the character, and he retired
in nineteen forty six, and then Shemp returned to the
Stooges after fifteen years away. He went on to make
seventy eight three Stooges films.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
Seventy eight films. That's so many bunks on the head Mango.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Yeah, you know I am going to get in trouble
for saying this, but uh were you a three Stooges fan.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
I was a three Stooges fan for like, let's call
it fifteen to twenty second set a time, like to
watch a quick clip of it and be like, Okay,
that's funny that that existed, But it wasn't something I
could really watch for any sort of extended period of time.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
How about you?
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Yeah, I mean I could appreciate what they're doing, I guess,
but like, I really wasn't a fan. When the students
came on TV. That was when I knew it was
time to turn off the television and go outside, like
which is what happened on like Saturday mornings or whatever.
But you know, obviously they're comedy legends and everyone now
can remake their own version of Soup to nuts. But
(24:46):
there's one more fact about the movie that I want
to mention. So remember how I said that the costume
shop where Ted works in the film isn't doing that well? Yeah,
and the reason is that the shop's owner, Auto is
distracted by building these ridiculously complicated inventions, like he makes
an automatic coffee sweetener, which requires putting a sugar cube
on a lever that's attached to a ramp. Then Auto
(25:09):
uses a pool cube to push a marble down the ramp,
which activates the lever to send the cube flying all
the way across the room into a mug of coffee.
And I'm kind of curious. Does that sound like a
familiar contraption to you?
Speaker 3 (25:21):
Actually, as you were describing that, it does sort of
sound like a Rube Goldberg machine, right.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Yeah, So Rube Goldberg co wrote the film No Way,
Auto was apparently playing a version of himself, and Goldberg
even has a cameo in the movie, appearing as a
customer in a restaurant.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Isn't that cool?
Speaker 3 (25:37):
That is such a great fact, and that's going to
be really hard to top. But we do have one
more to talk about, our ninth fact, So I'll finish
our list today with this song, and specifically, it's a
song that's been recorded by Nancy Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and
the Beatles, not all at the same time, though.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Can you guess what this is?
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Yeah? I think I would have known it if they
sang it at the sime time. No, what is it? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (26:02):
It's different versions here, and I'm talking, of course about
Sweet Georgia Brown and the version that's now in the
public domain, was recorded in nineteen twenty five by the
songwriter Ben Bernie and his Hotel Roosevelt Orchestra, and he
wrote the song earlier that same year, and it went
on to become a jazz standard, although these days most
people recognize it as the Harlem Globetrotter's theme song.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Which I love and also I have a sucker for
anything with whistling.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
Well, that's actually a later version from nineteen forty nine
recorded by an Alabama musician named Brother Bones. The original
version that Bernie wrote doesn't have any whistling in it.
Here's what his nineteen twenty five rendition sounds like. So
(27:17):
the song also has lyrics to it, believe it or not,
written by a child actor turned songwriter named Kenneth Casey,
who incidentally appeared in an early Three Stooges film.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Oh it always comes back to the three students.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Exactly right, your heroes.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
Anyway, The lyrics tell the story of sweet Georgia Brown,
who quote has two left feet, but she's neat and
she makes all the fellasigh and want to die. But
you shouldn't feel bad about not knowing all that because
the Globe Charter's popularity has definitely overshadowed Bernie's original work.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
That Globe Tartter song is so good, but I've always
kind of wondered, like, why did they pick that song?
Speaker 3 (27:53):
Yeah, you know, unfortunately that story has been lost to time.
I think we've been looking into this for years, even
back in our mental lost days. I mean, we know
they adopted it in nineteen fifty two, and apparently the
first time it was played it was a surprise to
the players. Former Globetrotter Bobby Milton once explained, quote, we
all started moving about and dancing with the music, and
(28:13):
now it's as much a part of us as the name.
So the song and the organization became so intertwined that
Brother Bones traveled with the Globetrotters for years, not to
play ball, but to sell copies of his record.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
I really liked that, and I think it's kind of
a delightful note to end this episode on. So I
think you deserved today's trophy, but will Before we wrap up,
let's hear a recent call that came into the Part
Time Genius hotline. Because you know how much I love these.
Speaker 6 (28:40):
Hi, I'm Samson, and I really enjoy your podcast. I've
been listening for about eight hours and it's really great
and I've learned a lot. Thank you so much, especially
for the episode about flutes. I found that hilarious. Can
you please keep going and it's amazing. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Wow, eight hours, Mango, I know it's crazy. It's a
very long time to listen to anything. For that matter,
it really is.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Sam said, we are so glad you love the show,
but be careful. That is a lot of information to
consume all at once.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
All right, Well, that does it for today's show, and
if you want to check out some of the works
we've just talked about, we'll put all the links in
the show notes. The episode was written by our good
pal Meredith Danko. Thank you so much, Meredith. We couldn't
have Booby Duped without you. We'll be back next week
with another brand new episode and in the meantime form Mango, Dylan, Gabe,
Mary and Me.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
It is hosted by my good pal Will Pearson, who
I've known for almost three decades now. That is insane
to me. I'm the Utaco host Mangeshatikular aka Mango. Our
producer is Mary Phillips Sandy. She's actually a super producer.
I'm going to fix that in post. Our writer is
(30:13):
Gabe Lucier, who I've also known for like a decade
at this point, maybe more. Dylan Fagan is in the booth.
He is always dressed up, always cheering us on, and
always ready to hit record and then mix the show
after he does a great job. I also want to
shout out the executive producers from iHeart my good pals
Katrina and Norvel and Ali Perry. We have social media
(30:36):
support from Calypso Rallis. If you like our videos, that
is all Calypso's handiwork for more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
Visit the iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
App, Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
Or tune in wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
That's it from us here at Part Time Genius. Thank
you so much for listening.
Part-Time Genius News
Hosts And Creators
Will Pearson
Mangesh Hattikudur
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