February 13, 2025 • 33 mins
Looking for a last-minute idea to impress your valentine? Don’t follow the lead of anyone in this episode! Today we’re celebrating nine of history’s most over-the-top expressions of love… and the epic ways they failed. Raise a glass to the man who surprised his wife with an ancient monument, the legendary political figure whose way with words didn’t prevent him from getting rejected, the Hollywood stars with big diamonds and even bigger problems, and more.
If you have a great (or so-bad-it’s-great) Valentine’s Day gift story, tell us about it on Instagram @parttimegenius.
[Pictured: Catherine the Great, and someone who was NOT the man who gave her a very very fancy diamond.]
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio. Guess what Will?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
What's that Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:14):
So I was commuting this week to the Midtown offices
at iHeart and I read a story that kind of
related to my commute. It's about a guy named Morton Plant.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Morton Plant. What a great name. I feel like you
could just stop right there and I'd be happy. I
think we're done.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
That's it. Well, it is a great name, but it
gets a little better. So Plant was a financier who
had made a fortune from his family's railroad company. And
this was in the early nineteen hundreds. He built himself
a limestone mansion on Fifth Avenue and fifty second Street,
which is obviously a pretty smank area, and then a
(00:51):
decade later he built another mansion on fifth and eighty
sixth Street. Now, when Plant and his wife relocated, he
agreed to lease the fifty second Sat property to a
pair of up and coming jewelers. And they were named
Lewis and Pierre Cardier, and they had been outgrowing a
smaller shop up the street.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
So Cardier like the jewelers we know today, right, Yeah,
that's right.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
And around the same time Plant's wife May she walks
past the Cardier window and she spots this gorgeous double
strand natural pearl necklace, so it is super fancy, and
she tells her husband all about it, and he decides
he's gonna do the romantic thing. He's gonna go out
and get it for her, which is really really sweet,
(01:33):
right it is, But I don't think you'd leave it
just there.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
I feel like there's gonna be a twist to this story.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
We're gonna end this episode twice early Sinday. Right, No,
there is a twist. So this isn't just any necklace.
It is incredibly expensive. So Plant made a deal with
the Cardiers. In exchange for the necklace and one hundred
dollars in cash, he traded them his mansion, his entire mansion.
So he's wait, he traded his mansion for a single necklace. Yeah,
(02:03):
but at the time the necklace was valued at a
million dollars, which is about twenty four million dollars to day,
so it's not like he exactly got ripped off. In fact,
he was thinking quick and figuring out how to purchase
a gift without like, you know, liquidating any funds or
anything like that. He really wanted this for his wife.
The problem was that, unbeknownst to Mordan Plant, at that
(02:23):
very moment, a Japanese entrepreneur was developing technology to produce
cultured pearls at scale, and this changed everything about the
price of pearls. So basically, this new industry caused the
value of natural pearls to plummet, so that by the
time may Plant died in the nineteen fifties, her necklace
was worth just one hundred and fifty one thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Only worth one hundred and fifty one thousand dollars, I mean,
that's not even worth wearing mango. That's almost embarrassing to
have a necklace worth this time.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
But no, I mean like twenty four million dollars.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
True, No, that that is wild. And what we do
know you definitely can't buy a fifth avenue mansion for
that amount of.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Money, definitely, But remember the Plants still had their other
fifth Avenue mentioned, so you don't have to feel too
bad for them. And to this day, more than plants
Old Home is the Cardier's flagship store in New York,
so you can think of him the next time you're
making a reckless purchase to impress someone you love.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
I will keep that in mind. Well, today we've got
eight more stories of romantic gestures gone a little bit
wrong or sometimes a lot wrong, because that is how
we celebrate Valentine's Day around here. Whether you're single, taken,
or it's complicated, this one's for you. So let's dive in. Hey,
(03:53):
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 just sobbing into a pine
of Hogan DAWs. I know he loves Hogan DAWs, but
he's crying into it today. That's our pal and producer
Dylan fag And now I'm no expert Mango, but this
looks to me like a classic case of heartbreak. So
(04:13):
poor Dylan and Valentine's Week, So I don't know, it
just seems like a tough one for him.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Yeah, but actually he's holding up a sign it says
I didn't get dumped. I just did my annual rewatch
of A Walk to Remember, which I believe is a
Mandy Moore movie.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
You know, I've actually never seen it. Mango, I need
to confess that.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
He's making another sign now that says this one says,
I cannot work for people who've never seen a walk
to remember. So we don't want to lose Dylan. So
we'll be streaming that tonight.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Tonight, for sure, I'm on it.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
So this week we thought we'd do something on romantic
gesture has gone wrong. And one of the things I
found in my research were cards known as vinegar Valentine's.
Have you heard of these?
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Will? I don't think I have? What are they?
Speaker 1 (04:59):
So? They're like straight out of middle school mean Kids playbook,
as Atlas Obscura describes them. In the Victorian era, there
was no better way to let someone know they were
unwanted than with the ultimate insult, the vinegar Valentine, also
called comic Valentine's. These unwelcome notes were sometimes crass and
always a bit emotionally damaging end quotes. So essentially they
(05:21):
were these commercially bought postcards that you would like mail
like Valentine's cards, except that they'd contain an insulting poem
or illustration. And I can't imagine a crush walking up
to me like smiling and then handing me one of
these Like. It just feels so devastating because instead of
like I choose you, choose you or whatever, here's what
one reads. It reads quote, you claim you're good at everything,
(05:44):
so come on, show me proof and let me see
how good you are by jumping off a roof.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Oh the horrible. That is insane. Mango.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Yeah, I guess nothing says I hate you like a
vinegar Valentine. The Smithsonian called it an early of trolling.
But it's a little different from what we're talking about today,
which is mostly elaborate romantic gestures that just went wrong.
So will what do you want to start with today?
All right?
Speaker 2 (06:10):
I think we need to go way back, Mango. I
think we should start with Stonehenge. Of course, you know
the big pile of rocks in England.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Or little pile of rocks if you're watching spinal tap.
But this is true, I am familiar.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
All right. Well, archaeologists believe it was arranged in its
current semicircular shape sometime around twenty five hundred BCE, so
a long time ago, and believe it or not, for
a long time it was privately owned. The property was
bought and sold several times finally ended up in the
hands of a family called Antrobus. Now they passed it
down through the generations until Sir Cosmo Antrobus inherited from
(06:45):
his older brother Edmund, who died in early nineteen fifteen.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
I mean, Cosmo Antribus is another amazing name.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
We are racking them up today and there's more here.
So enter our next character, who is a barrister by
the name of Cecil chubb An another great name. It's
just like one after another. Well, anyway, one day in
the fall of nineteen fifteen, Cecil makes plans to attend
an auction in the town of Salisbury. Now, his wife
Mary reportedly had sent him out with one task to
(07:13):
buy a set of curtains for her while he was there,
but instead he buys stonehenge, you know, goes out for curtains,
ends up a stone hinge which their Cosmo had put
up for sale. Now the price on this six thousand pounds,
which is nearly six hundred and fifty thousand dollars in
today's money.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
I feel like I can't imagine the conversation when he
got home, Like, you know, he's talking to his wife
and he's like, sorry, I forgot the curtains, but I
did get you the most expensive pile of rocks in
the world.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Yeah, it's pretty much a big swish there. Well, apparently
Mary Chubb wasn't thrilled with the surprise gift. Sure to
be fair, Cecil's impulse by may have had a more
noble motivation. So at the time there were rumors that
wealthy Americans might want to buy Stonehenge, perhaps to dismantle
it and ship it off to the other side of
the Atlantic. Apparently buying up British antigues had become something
(08:03):
of a sport for American millionaires at the time, and
Cecil Chubb felt Stonehenge should remain in England and of
course be accessible to the public, So in nineteen eighteen
he gave the monument to the British government, saying it
was quote a gift to be held for the nation.
So today's Stonehenge remains a public property managed by the
English Heritage Charitable Trust.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
I like that, and in a way, I guess making
a gift like that to your country is kind of
a romantic gesture, but maybe not from his wife's perspective. Well,
hopping over to another continent, I want to tell you
about Ishmael Pasha, the viceroy of Egypt under Ottoman rule.
So as a young man, he studied at Broad in Paris,
where he became enamored with all things European. So when
(08:48):
he came to power in eighteen sixty three, one of
his top priorities was making Egypt look more like France.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
I mean nothing against France, but that's kind of a shame.
I feel like being Egypt is sort of one of
Egypt's biggest strengths, don't you.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Yeah, seriously, But Ishmael was obsessed with European architecture. He
also loved the art music, you know, the whole nine yards.
And at the time, the Suez Canal was being built
by a French company and that had been granted a
concession by the Egyptian government. So there were lots of
connections between Egypt and France in the eighteen sixties, including
(09:22):
a rumor that Ishmael had fallen in love with the
French Empress Eugenni, the wife of Napoleon the Third. Napoleon
the Third is the grandson of Napoleon Bonaparte, the first president,
second Emperor, and last monarch of France anyway. So Eugenny,
it turns out, came from a Spanish noble family and
was known for her fine taste in fashion and art
(09:44):
in decor. It said that Ishmael met her during his
time in Paris and he just became incredibly smitten with her.
So when it was time for the Suez Canal's grand opening,
this was in eighteen sixty nine, he invited Eugenny to
attend as a guest of honor.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
He must have been impressed by the canal, because can
you imagine being one of the first people to see
something like that.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Yeah, it must have been incredible. But even more impressive
was the palace that Ishmael had built for the occasion.
He called it the Palace al Jazeera, and it costs
about seven hundred and fifty thousand Egyptian pounds to build,
which was really a fortune at the time. He hired
European architects to build it in this neoclassical style. He
brought a renowned German designer to outfit the interior. Reportedly,
(10:28):
Ishmael even had one of the rooms designed as a
replica of Eugenni's chambers in Paris, so that she'd feel
right at home, like it was this grand, grand gesture.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Wow, So what ended up happening? Did that? Did that
win her over?
Speaker 1 (10:42):
It really wasn't enough, apparently, Like the thing is, Eugennyan
Napoleon didn't have a great relationship that was kind of
widely known. He kept mistresses on the side, but for
whatever reason, whether it was loyalty or not wanting to
cause an international incident, when the Suez Canal festivities ended,
Eugeni just packed bags and went home to France. And
(11:02):
Ishmael of course was super heartbroken. But worse than that,
all that spending meant that he'd racked up millions of
pounds of debt, Like he borrowed so much money from
France and Great Britain that eventually those countries stepped in
to exert control over the Egyptian government. Like that's how
much he borrowed. And Ishmael was deposed spent the rest
of his life in exile. And here's an interesting detail.
(11:25):
Part of the Al Jazeera Palace building was incorporated into
the Cairo Marriott, a five star luxury hotel, So you
can actually book a room there today for yourself and
anyone you're trying to impress.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Well that's a great travel tip. All right. Well, let's
stay on the topic of prominent national leaders, and I'm
going to go to Winston Churchill for my next fact.
I know you've heard lots about Churchill's political life, but
today I want to take a peek at his personal life.
So he married a woman named Clementine Josier. This was
in nineteen oh eight and they remained together until his
death in nineteen sixty five. But before he settled down,
(12:00):
Churchill was a real ladies man. One biographer reported that
he was known for prowling London's theater district, trying to
pick up girls from various music calls. And then he
fell in love with Pamela Plowden. She was the daughter
of a military official he knew from his time in
the service. Now, Pamela had many admirers, so Churchill knew
he'd have to go above and beyond in order to
(12:21):
win her affection.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
So does he buy her like an extravagant gift or
what happens here?
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Not at all? That was actually part of the problem.
So Churchill had wealthy relatives, but he himself wasn't super rich,
and Pamela made it known she wanted to marry someone
with money, since she didn't come from a family of
means either, so Churchill relied on his greatest skill. Those were,
of course words. Now he began writing her this steady
stream of love letters and kept at it for up
(12:47):
to two years. Now. In what might have been my
favorite gesture of all, when he finished his first and
only novel, he had the manuscript delivered to her. He
even came up with a plan to make more money,
and after becoming a member of Parliament, he embarked on
a lecture tour across North America, giving paid speeches that
earned him thousands of pounds.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Wow. So at this time, I'm guessing he's pretty financially secure,
he's employed, he's a good writer. So does she fall
from him now?
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Mega? Remember this is an episode about romantic gestures that
did not work, so of course not in this case.
So Churchill proposed repeatedly and Pamela rejected him every single time,
eventually marrying Victor Bulward Lytton, who went on to have
a prominent political career of his own. But he never
not once gifted her a manuscript of a novel. So
(13:36):
I think it's just just a shame.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Well, at least Churchill figured it out and ended up
in a long and happy marriage of his own. The
same cannot be said of our next hapless Romeo, Count
Gregory Orlov. He was a Russian military officer from a
prominent family, and in seventeen fifty nine he met the
Grand Duke Peter, who later became Emperor Peter I, and
his Prussian wife, Catherine, who was later known as Catherine
(14:01):
the Great. It said that Katherine and Orlov fell deeply
for each other and began a relationship right away. Apparently
she was very unhappy in her marriage. Catherine was an
ambitious reader, a political thinker, and Peter, her husband, was
less intellectual and more interested in drinking.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
I mean, it kind of sounds like they never should
have gotten married in the first place.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
I mean, it was one of these royal things, right,
Like it's an arranged marriage designed to strengthen the ties
between Prussia and Russia. But Peter became an emperor in
seventeen sixty two, and shortly thereafter Orlov and his brother
Alexey helped plan a coup that overthrew him, making Katherine
the Empress of Russia.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
I mean nothing, says, I love you like a coup mango.
Let's be honest.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Yeah, and not only that, Just a week after the coup,
Alexei strangled Peter to death so Catherine would never have
to deal with his poorish behavior again. There's actually no
evidence that she was aware of that part of the plot,
but still it paved the way for her in or Love,
to become Russia's biggest power couple. Accept Catherine's advisors weren't
(15:02):
thrilled about this, and they wouldn't let them marry. She
did give Orlov the title of count and several high
level appointments, and he worked alongside her to reform Russia's
legal code. But in seventeen seventy two the relationship ended.
It turns out that Catherine had fallen in love with
another man, Gregory Petempkin, who'd also been involved in carrying
out the coup. So now Orlov's like shocked. He's trying
(15:26):
to win her back, and he goes out and he
buys one of the most famous diamonds in the world.
This is incredible. It weighs nearly two hundred carrots. It's
an egg shaped stone that was allisurely stolen from a
temple in Mysore in India and smuggled to Europe and
in seventeen seventy four Orlov purchased it for one point
four million Dutch florins. Catherine accepted the gift because you
(15:49):
know who wouldn't, and she had it mounted in her
royal scepter. But she was still in love with Potemkin
and she refused to rekindle her romance with or Love
and this sent to into a tailspin. You know, he
spent all this money he was trying to woo her.
He ends up leaving Russia, rebounds by marrying one of
his cousins, and then dies when he was in his
forties after suffering a mental collapse.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Oh that is a rough story. We'll have another one
about a diamond as well, this one involving movie stars,
a media frenzy, and of course un unhappy ending. So
I'll tell you all about it after we take a
quick break.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Welcome back to Part time Genius. Today. We've got nine
romantic gestures that turned into disasters. Okay, well, so you
said you've gotten another fact about a diamond.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Indeed, I do, and it's not just any diamond. So
the jeweling question is a pear shaped beauty weighing almost
seventy carrots. I love how we're throwing all these talk
about carrots around as though we have any idea what
this means. But that's a lot. So in nineteen sixty
nine it was put up for sale at an auction.
Back then, one of the biggest celebrity couples in the
world was Welsh actor Richard Burton an American superstar Elizabeth Taylor.
(17:11):
Now they were known for their luxurious lifestyle and Burton
often bought Taylor the high end diamonds that she loved
very much. Now they heard about this stone for sale
and actually had the auction house fly it to them
in Switzerland where they were vacationing, just so they could
get a preview before the sale.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
That is incredible.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
It's just just crazy and it's all very relatable at
the same time. But at the auction, Burton got out
bid by Cartier, you know, the jewelry we were talking
about earlier. But Burton was absolutely insistent, saying, no one
but Taylor could wear this diamond, and so he ended
up buying it from Cardier for one point one million
dollars or the equivalent of nine point four million dollars today.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
That's incredible, and Elizabeth Taylor must have been ecstatic about this,
right she was.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
But you know, before the couple took ownership of the diamond,
they allowed Cardia to it on display in their Fifth
Avenue shop, where thousands of people lined up every single
day to see it. And finally the diamond was delivered
to the Burton Taylors on their yacht off the coast
of Monica.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
I feel like it just gets more and more relative.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
It really does. This is wild. So they were there
for Princess Grace's birthday party, and while I'm sure people
were happy for her Highness, the real star of the
event was Elizabeth Taylor wearing this enormous diamond around her neck.
But you know this isn't going to end well. Of course,
Taylor and Burton's marriage fell apart, and they divorced soon after.
They remarried briefly, and then split for good in nineteen
(18:36):
seventy six, at which point Taylor decided to sell the diamond.
But some good did come of it, though she used
the proceeds to help build a hospital in Botswana. You
didn't see that one coming. That went from like crazy
crazy to a nice gesture.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
There, I do like it. Well, here's a story about
a different kind of beautiful ending. Are you familiar with
the artist Marina Abramovich.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Yeah. Actually, she's the one that did the project at
MoMA where she said and stared at people right.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Yeah. It was called the Artist's Present And she's had
a really fascinating career kind of blurring the boundaries between
conceptual art and performance art. And in the seventies and
eighties she was in a relationship with a fellow artist.
His name was Ulai, and they began collaborating. They created
performance pieces together, like one where they plugged their nostrils
(19:25):
and exhaled directly into each other's mouths until they became
faint from lack of oxygen like it's weird but interesting stuff,
and another called rest Energy. This one's crazy. Bramovich held
the handle of a bow with the drawn arrow held
by Ulai, and they leaned back until the bow was
completely taught, with the arrow pointing at Abramovich's heart, and
(19:49):
if Ulai's finger slipped, it would have killed her instantly,
But the tension on the bow was coming from her
way too, so not just his and they wore microphones
to amplify their heartbeats. They stood perfectly still for four minutes.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
My god, that sounds terrifying, yeah, but it's also art,
right of course.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
That's also the level of trust they had in each other.
And in nineteen eighty they decided to get married with
the performance slash romantic gesture that was bigger than anything
they'd done before. Their plan was for each of them
to start at one end of the Great Wall of
China and then they just walked towards each other, a
journey that would take months, and the idea was wherever
they met, they'd marry on the spot. The problem was,
(20:31):
they need a ton of permits from China, right, The
Chinese government wasn't just handing out permits, and it took
eight years to get all the paperwork squared away, and
by then they had broken up. So they had this
grand romantic gesture plan but no reason to do it anymore,
except they decided to do it for a different reason.
They decided to turn the performance into a farewell right.
(20:52):
It was kind of an epic way of ending their relationship.
After all, they had spent all this time getting the permits,
so they wanted to continue through with it, so in
April of nineteen eighty eight, they took their places at
either end of the wall, and they start walking, and
they met near the middle. Later that summer, Abramovich said
that when she saw it live for the first time
in months, quote, first I was angry, then I was sad,
(21:16):
then I cried. They'd been traveling with help from translators
provided by the Chinese government, and at their reunion, Ulai
had devastating news for Abramovich. He'd fallen for his translator,
she was pregnant, and they planned to marry in Beijing.
He and Abramovich didn't speak again for decades.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Isn't that wow? So it was like a romantic gesture
turned romantic breakup, turned really really bad breakup pretty much.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Ulai even sued Abramovich in twenty fifteen in a dispute
over royalties on their collaborative works, but a few years
later they reunited when she spotted him in the audience
at a lecture she was giving at a Copenhagen museum.
He put his arm around her and they laughed like
old friends, and later Abramovich said that in that moment, quote,
(22:01):
I gave up all the anger, all the hate, all
the rest, and I think what's left is the beautiful
work that we left behind, and this is what matters.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Wow. All right, well, speaking of beautiful work, our next
story is all about a watch that's both a technical
marvel and an artistic statement unlike any other. Now, this
all began in Versailles in seventeen eighty three. There was
an admirer of Marie Antoinette's some say it was Swedish
diplomat Axel von Furson. So anyway, decides to dazzle her
(22:30):
with the gift of an extravagant watch. And the only
person who could make a time piece worthy of the
Queen was Abraham Louis Briget, the Parisian watchmaker who invented
many of the mechanisms that became standard in the watchmaking industry.
So Briget was up for the challenge, and he began
devising this pocket watch made of gold and platinum, rubies
(22:51):
and sapphires, all the good stuff. And it was said
that he was given no budget to work with, meaning
in other words, this sky was the limit here.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Which means he was designing a really really stunning watch. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Actually, what made it really special is the number of
complications it had, and watchmaking lingo. A complication is any
function other than just telling time, So like an alarm,
a date display, these are complications. And for this epic watch,
Brigay loaded it with every complication he knew how to make.
He built in a thermometer, a perpetual calendar, a chime,
(23:25):
a display showing how much energy was left so you'd
know when it needed winding, and more. And so when
it was done there were eight hundred and twenty three components,
many of them visible through the watch's transparent crystal face.
Isn't that amazing?
Speaker 1 (23:40):
I love that it tells you the temperature, the date
it's gonna alarm on it. It's like a antiquated iPhone, right.
But what did Marie Antronett think about all this?
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Well, this is of course where the disaster part comes in.
Because the watch was so complicated, it wasn't completed until
eighteen oh two, almost twenty years after the work first began.
By that point, Marie Antoinette was long gone. Now, if
you recall French history one oh one, she got sent
to the guillotine in seventeen ninety three, so she never
got a glimpse of this amazing watch. And once more,
(24:14):
Brigue himself died four years before the watch was finished.
His son, who took over his father's business, had to
step in and finish the job.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
So if Marie Antrnette wasn't alive to receive the gift,
what happened to the watch?
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Well, the Brigue company held onto it for a while,
and then they sold it to a private collector, changed
hands a few times, eventually landing in a museum in Jerusalem.
Was actually stolen from there in the nineteen eighties and
disappeared for decades. Finally, in two thousand and seven, it
was recovered, along with several others stolen time pieces, and
returned to that same museum. Oh that's incredible.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Well, we have one last story today, and this one
doesn't involve jeweles, watches or any physical objects at all,
because there's a whole other category of romantic gestures out there.
I'm talking about, do do something for someone you love.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
I like that Love Languages book. Have you read that?
It talks all about like acts of service.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
I haven't read it, but I imagine that's exactly what
this is. So back in the nineteen forties, in the
golden age of Hollywood, Rita Hayworth was one of the
biggest movie stars in the world. Right she was a
trained dancer. She worked her way up the studio system,
going from bit parts to a starring role opposite Fred
Astaire in the nineteen forty one musical You'll Never Get Rich,
and she became an icon, appearing in hit movies and
(25:28):
on magazine covers. She landed this high profile contract with
Columbia Pictures as well. Now, her personal life was much rockier.
She had left an abusive first husband to Mary Orson Wells,
but that relationship fell apart a few years later. And
then in nineteen forty eight, at a glamorous party on
the French Riviera, Hayworth meets a gentleman named Ali Khan.
(25:51):
And Khan is a fantastically wealthy social ae and he's
a prince whose father was the Aga Khan, or head
of the Ismaili Muslim community.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Sounds like it's straight from a plot of a nineteen
forties Hollywood.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Movie exactly so. Ali Khan was actually married at the time,
and he had a reputation for being a playboy, but
Hayworth found him really charming, and after just a few
days of courtship, she moved into his villa in the
south of France. He organized parties to introduce her to
his society friends, but it was kind of awkward, right, Like,
she doesn't speak French. So anyway, he whists her off
(26:24):
to Spain and proposes, and she says no because she
has to get home to Hollywood to start work on
a new film, and besides, she actually has a young
daughter in the States from her marriage with wells Now.
Ali Khan was undeterred. He pursues her to the Los Angeles,
where he showers her with gifts. The relationship gets into
the press, and, in addition to some casual racism at
(26:45):
the time related to Ali's Pakistani heritage, people were outraged
at the flamboyance of their affair, especially because he was
still married.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
This is good stuff, magatherre like lots of good components. Here,
I got my bucket a popcorn, like, keep keep going.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
This is really good, right. So Ali Khan's father wanted
him to break it off because it was making the
whole family look bad, and instead he gets a divorce
and he and Hayworth finally marry in nineteen forty nine.
But their lives are so different, right. He is a
jet setter who keeps us safe full of various currencies
so you can dash off to any corner of the
(27:20):
globe at any moment's notice. And he was also expected
to make official visits to the Ismaili communities in Africa
and Asia. You know, this is all part of their
tradition and as part of the service, he wants his
wife to join him. But here's where the sacrifice comes in.
So Hayworth actually gives up her film career to be
with him. And this is a really, really costly decision.
(27:42):
Columbia Pictures Suser for one point two million dollars for
breaking her contract.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Oh that is a huge leap to make. So tell me, Mengo,
unlike every other story we've heard so far, tell me
they lived happily ever after.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
I mean, you know where this is headed. So they
had a daughter shortly after their marriage. But from that
point on, it's just a disaster. Hayworth was totally out
of her element on these diplomatic trips. Ali Khon didn't
change his Playwroy ways, and Hayworth ends up going home
to the US and initiating divorce proceedings. But the worst
part is her reputation wasn't tatters her over the top
(28:16):
lifestyle with Ali, not not to mention the fact that
she'd taken up with a married man while being the
mother of a young child from her first marriage. All
of this prompted a ton of outrage at the time, and.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
Of course this was aimed at her, not him.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
I'm guessing right, yeah, I mean, he did get a
little bit of blowback, but yeah, of course it was
aimed at her. And in nineteen forty nine, an American
women's club actually organized a boycott of her films, with
one woman saying, quote Rita Hayworth's studio shitsacker, her trapesing
around is an insult to American womanhood.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
So did her career ever recover from this?
Speaker 1 (28:50):
I mean, that is the good part. So she finally
returned to the screen in nineteen fifty two. It was
with a movie called Affair in Trinidad, and she went
on to make several more hit films, but her relationship
with Columbia execs remained tricky, partially because of her decision
to quit the movies for love.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
Wow, Well that's the lesson for today. I guess, don't
abandon a lucrative Hollywood career to galivan around with a prince.
Just write that down, always put that in your back pocket. Well,
I know, we said nine mango. We love to do
our nine facts. But how about we end the day
with the story of a tryhard who actually did win
his crushover in the end.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
I'm for it. So who are we talking about?
Speaker 2 (29:27):
And I remember us talking about this back in our
mental loss days. This was, of course President Richard Milhouse Nixon. Now,
from the outside, the Nixon's marriage wasn't one that most
people envy. The New York Times referred to the love
between the couple as quote dry as dust. Ben Bradley
of The Washington Post called it sort of a dingy marriage.
I have a feeling they never touched each other in
(29:49):
any way, you know, not great, But anyway, the letters
between them over the course of their marriage actually show
quite a bit of affection and passion and understanding between
the two of them. Whatever their marriage would become, the
initial dating period was not great. Apparently, the first time
he met her, he said, I'd like to have a
date with you. She responded, I'm busy. Then he said
(30:11):
I'd like to marry you, and she laughed in his face.
But as Politico puts it, he pursued Pat with the
same determination and persistence he would later use to win
seven elections. He hated ice skating, but bloodied himself repeatedly
to learn so he could go skating with Pat and
her friends. On weekends. In order to spend time with her,
he drove her to Los Angeles, where she went on
(30:34):
dates with other men. He would return on Sunday afternoons
and wait until she was ready for him to drive
her home. Six months after they met, Pat went to
Michigan to buy a car and did not contact Dick
for three months. Apparently it took him three years, but
eventually all that hanging around her convinced her of his charms,
and so, as Pat wrote to her parents after he'd
(30:55):
enrolled in the service, Dick looked so different, younger, real, tan, thinner,
and of course very handsome. She made it clear she
missed him, and it wasn't long before they were married.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
I don't know that proposing marriage on your first meeting
after someone has just turned you down for a date
is the right way to go about winning someone's affections, mon,
But I'm glad it worked out. But what about gifts?
Was there anything tricky to got for Pat that we
know about?
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Let me think about as well, pandas. Of course, when
Pat went to China with President Nixon, she was totally
taken with the pandas, and President Nixon gifted China too Muskox,
which they reciprocated with pandas. So in a way, the
fact that we have giant pandas in this country is
because of their love.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Oh that's when I had never thought of that. Well,
I guess it's pretty romantic. But that does it for
this very On Valentine's Day episode of Part Time Genius,
don't forget to follow us on Instagram at part Time Genius.
We have some exciting stuff coming up later this month,
including a whole bunch of listener prize giveaways, so stay
tuned for that, and in the meantime, Will, Mary, Gabe Dylan,
(32:02):
and myself thank you so much for listening. Part Time
Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show
is hosted by Will Pearson and me Mongaish Heatikler and
(32:25):
research by our good pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode
was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with
support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced for
iHeart by Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry, with social media
support from Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shorey.
For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
(32:49):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio. Guess what Will?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
What's that Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:14):
So I was commuting this week to the Midtown offices
at iHeart and I read a story that kind of
related to my commute. It's about a guy named Morton Plant.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Morton Plant. What a great name. I feel like you
could just stop right there and I'd be happy. I
think we're done.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
That's it. Well, it is a great name, but it
gets a little better. So Plant was a financier who
had made a fortune from his family's railroad company. And
this was in the early nineteen hundreds. He built himself
a limestone mansion on Fifth Avenue and fifty second Street,
which is obviously a pretty smank area, and then a
(00:51):
decade later he built another mansion on fifth and eighty
sixth Street. Now, when Plant and his wife relocated, he
agreed to lease the fifty second Sat property to a
pair of up and coming jewelers. And they were named
Lewis and Pierre Cardier, and they had been outgrowing a
smaller shop up the street.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
So Cardier like the jewelers we know today, right, Yeah,
that's right.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
And around the same time Plant's wife May she walks
past the Cardier window and she spots this gorgeous double
strand natural pearl necklace, so it is super fancy, and
she tells her husband all about it, and he decides
he's gonna do the romantic thing. He's gonna go out
and get it for her, which is really really sweet,
(01:33):
right it is, But I don't think you'd leave it
just there.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
I feel like there's gonna be a twist to this story.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
We're gonna end this episode twice early Sinday. Right, No,
there is a twist. So this isn't just any necklace.
It is incredibly expensive. So Plant made a deal with
the Cardiers. In exchange for the necklace and one hundred
dollars in cash, he traded them his mansion, his entire mansion.
So he's wait, he traded his mansion for a single necklace. Yeah,
(02:03):
but at the time the necklace was valued at a
million dollars, which is about twenty four million dollars to day,
so it's not like he exactly got ripped off. In fact,
he was thinking quick and figuring out how to purchase
a gift without like, you know, liquidating any funds or
anything like that. He really wanted this for his wife.
The problem was that, unbeknownst to Mordan Plant, at that
(02:23):
very moment, a Japanese entrepreneur was developing technology to produce
cultured pearls at scale, and this changed everything about the
price of pearls. So basically, this new industry caused the
value of natural pearls to plummet, so that by the
time may Plant died in the nineteen fifties, her necklace
was worth just one hundred and fifty one thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Only worth one hundred and fifty one thousand dollars, I mean,
that's not even worth wearing mango. That's almost embarrassing to
have a necklace worth this time.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
But no, I mean like twenty four million dollars.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
True, No, that that is wild. And what we do
know you definitely can't buy a fifth avenue mansion for
that amount of.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Money, definitely, But remember the Plants still had their other
fifth Avenue mentioned, so you don't have to feel too
bad for them. And to this day, more than plants
Old Home is the Cardier's flagship store in New York,
so you can think of him the next time you're
making a reckless purchase to impress someone you love.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
I will keep that in mind. Well, today we've got
eight more stories of romantic gestures gone a little bit
wrong or sometimes a lot wrong, because that is how
we celebrate Valentine's Day around here. Whether you're single, taken,
or it's complicated, this one's for you. So let's dive in. Hey,
(03:53):
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 just sobbing into a pine
of Hogan DAWs. I know he loves Hogan DAWs, but
he's crying into it today. That's our pal and producer
Dylan fag And now I'm no expert Mango, but this
looks to me like a classic case of heartbreak. So
(04:13):
poor Dylan and Valentine's Week, So I don't know, it
just seems like a tough one for him.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Yeah, but actually he's holding up a sign it says
I didn't get dumped. I just did my annual rewatch
of A Walk to Remember, which I believe is a
Mandy Moore movie.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
You know, I've actually never seen it. Mango, I need
to confess that.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
He's making another sign now that says this one says,
I cannot work for people who've never seen a walk
to remember. So we don't want to lose Dylan. So
we'll be streaming that tonight.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Tonight, for sure, I'm on it.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
So this week we thought we'd do something on romantic
gesture has gone wrong. And one of the things I
found in my research were cards known as vinegar Valentine's.
Have you heard of these?
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Will? I don't think I have? What are they?
Speaker 1 (04:59):
So? They're like straight out of middle school mean Kids playbook,
as Atlas Obscura describes them. In the Victorian era, there
was no better way to let someone know they were
unwanted than with the ultimate insult, the vinegar Valentine, also
called comic Valentine's. These unwelcome notes were sometimes crass and
always a bit emotionally damaging end quotes. So essentially they
(05:21):
were these commercially bought postcards that you would like mail
like Valentine's cards, except that they'd contain an insulting poem
or illustration. And I can't imagine a crush walking up
to me like smiling and then handing me one of
these Like. It just feels so devastating because instead of
like I choose you, choose you or whatever, here's what
one reads. It reads quote, you claim you're good at everything,
(05:44):
so come on, show me proof and let me see
how good you are by jumping off a roof.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Oh the horrible. That is insane. Mango.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Yeah, I guess nothing says I hate you like a
vinegar Valentine. The Smithsonian called it an early of trolling.
But it's a little different from what we're talking about today,
which is mostly elaborate romantic gestures that just went wrong.
So will what do you want to start with today?
All right?
Speaker 2 (06:10):
I think we need to go way back, Mango. I
think we should start with Stonehenge. Of course, you know
the big pile of rocks in England.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Or little pile of rocks if you're watching spinal tap.
But this is true, I am familiar.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
All right. Well, archaeologists believe it was arranged in its
current semicircular shape sometime around twenty five hundred BCE, so
a long time ago, and believe it or not, for
a long time it was privately owned. The property was
bought and sold several times finally ended up in the
hands of a family called Antrobus. Now they passed it
down through the generations until Sir Cosmo Antrobus inherited from
(06:45):
his older brother Edmund, who died in early nineteen fifteen.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
I mean, Cosmo Antribus is another amazing name.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
We are racking them up today and there's more here.
So enter our next character, who is a barrister by
the name of Cecil chubb An another great name. It's
just like one after another. Well, anyway, one day in
the fall of nineteen fifteen, Cecil makes plans to attend
an auction in the town of Salisbury. Now, his wife
Mary reportedly had sent him out with one task to
(07:13):
buy a set of curtains for her while he was there,
but instead he buys stonehenge, you know, goes out for curtains,
ends up a stone hinge which their Cosmo had put
up for sale. Now the price on this six thousand pounds,
which is nearly six hundred and fifty thousand dollars in
today's money.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
I feel like I can't imagine the conversation when he
got home, Like, you know, he's talking to his wife
and he's like, sorry, I forgot the curtains, but I
did get you the most expensive pile of rocks in
the world.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Yeah, it's pretty much a big swish there. Well, apparently
Mary Chubb wasn't thrilled with the surprise gift. Sure to
be fair, Cecil's impulse by may have had a more
noble motivation. So at the time there were rumors that
wealthy Americans might want to buy Stonehenge, perhaps to dismantle
it and ship it off to the other side of
the Atlantic. Apparently buying up British antigues had become something
(08:03):
of a sport for American millionaires at the time, and
Cecil Chubb felt Stonehenge should remain in England and of
course be accessible to the public, So in nineteen eighteen
he gave the monument to the British government, saying it
was quote a gift to be held for the nation.
So today's Stonehenge remains a public property managed by the
English Heritage Charitable Trust.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
I like that, and in a way, I guess making
a gift like that to your country is kind of
a romantic gesture, but maybe not from his wife's perspective. Well,
hopping over to another continent, I want to tell you
about Ishmael Pasha, the viceroy of Egypt under Ottoman rule.
So as a young man, he studied at Broad in Paris,
where he became enamored with all things European. So when
(08:48):
he came to power in eighteen sixty three, one of
his top priorities was making Egypt look more like France.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
I mean nothing against France, but that's kind of a shame.
I feel like being Egypt is sort of one of
Egypt's biggest strengths, don't you.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Yeah, seriously, But Ishmael was obsessed with European architecture. He
also loved the art music, you know, the whole nine yards.
And at the time, the Suez Canal was being built
by a French company and that had been granted a
concession by the Egyptian government. So there were lots of
connections between Egypt and France in the eighteen sixties, including
(09:22):
a rumor that Ishmael had fallen in love with the
French Empress Eugenni, the wife of Napoleon the Third. Napoleon
the Third is the grandson of Napoleon Bonaparte, the first president,
second Emperor, and last monarch of France anyway. So Eugenny,
it turns out, came from a Spanish noble family and
was known for her fine taste in fashion and art
(09:44):
in decor. It said that Ishmael met her during his
time in Paris and he just became incredibly smitten with her.
So when it was time for the Suez Canal's grand opening,
this was in eighteen sixty nine, he invited Eugenny to
attend as a guest of honor.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
He must have been impressed by the canal, because can
you imagine being one of the first people to see
something like that.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Yeah, it must have been incredible. But even more impressive
was the palace that Ishmael had built for the occasion.
He called it the Palace al Jazeera, and it costs
about seven hundred and fifty thousand Egyptian pounds to build,
which was really a fortune at the time. He hired
European architects to build it in this neoclassical style. He
brought a renowned German designer to outfit the interior. Reportedly,
(10:28):
Ishmael even had one of the rooms designed as a
replica of Eugenni's chambers in Paris, so that she'd feel
right at home, like it was this grand, grand gesture.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Wow, So what ended up happening? Did that? Did that
win her over?
Speaker 1 (10:42):
It really wasn't enough, apparently, Like the thing is, Eugennyan
Napoleon didn't have a great relationship that was kind of
widely known. He kept mistresses on the side, but for
whatever reason, whether it was loyalty or not wanting to
cause an international incident, when the Suez Canal festivities ended,
Eugeni just packed bags and went home to France. And
(11:02):
Ishmael of course was super heartbroken. But worse than that,
all that spending meant that he'd racked up millions of
pounds of debt, Like he borrowed so much money from
France and Great Britain that eventually those countries stepped in
to exert control over the Egyptian government. Like that's how
much he borrowed. And Ishmael was deposed spent the rest
of his life in exile. And here's an interesting detail.
(11:25):
Part of the Al Jazeera Palace building was incorporated into
the Cairo Marriott, a five star luxury hotel, So you
can actually book a room there today for yourself and
anyone you're trying to impress.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Well that's a great travel tip. All right. Well, let's
stay on the topic of prominent national leaders, and I'm
going to go to Winston Churchill for my next fact.
I know you've heard lots about Churchill's political life, but
today I want to take a peek at his personal life.
So he married a woman named Clementine Josier. This was
in nineteen oh eight and they remained together until his
death in nineteen sixty five. But before he settled down,
(12:00):
Churchill was a real ladies man. One biographer reported that
he was known for prowling London's theater district, trying to
pick up girls from various music calls. And then he
fell in love with Pamela Plowden. She was the daughter
of a military official he knew from his time in
the service. Now, Pamela had many admirers, so Churchill knew
he'd have to go above and beyond in order to
(12:21):
win her affection.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
So does he buy her like an extravagant gift or
what happens here?
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Not at all? That was actually part of the problem.
So Churchill had wealthy relatives, but he himself wasn't super rich,
and Pamela made it known she wanted to marry someone
with money, since she didn't come from a family of
means either, so Churchill relied on his greatest skill. Those were,
of course words. Now he began writing her this steady
stream of love letters and kept at it for up
(12:47):
to two years. Now. In what might have been my
favorite gesture of all, when he finished his first and
only novel, he had the manuscript delivered to her. He
even came up with a plan to make more money,
and after becoming a member of Parliament, he embarked on
a lecture tour across North America, giving paid speeches that
earned him thousands of pounds.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Wow. So at this time, I'm guessing he's pretty financially secure,
he's employed, he's a good writer. So does she fall
from him now?
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Mega? Remember this is an episode about romantic gestures that
did not work, so of course not in this case.
So Churchill proposed repeatedly and Pamela rejected him every single time,
eventually marrying Victor Bulward Lytton, who went on to have
a prominent political career of his own. But he never
not once gifted her a manuscript of a novel. So
(13:36):
I think it's just just a shame.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Well, at least Churchill figured it out and ended up
in a long and happy marriage of his own. The
same cannot be said of our next hapless Romeo, Count
Gregory Orlov. He was a Russian military officer from a
prominent family, and in seventeen fifty nine he met the
Grand Duke Peter, who later became Emperor Peter I, and
his Prussian wife, Catherine, who was later known as Catherine
(14:01):
the Great. It said that Katherine and Orlov fell deeply
for each other and began a relationship right away. Apparently
she was very unhappy in her marriage. Catherine was an
ambitious reader, a political thinker, and Peter, her husband, was
less intellectual and more interested in drinking.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
I mean, it kind of sounds like they never should
have gotten married in the first place.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
I mean, it was one of these royal things, right,
Like it's an arranged marriage designed to strengthen the ties
between Prussia and Russia. But Peter became an emperor in
seventeen sixty two, and shortly thereafter Orlov and his brother
Alexey helped plan a coup that overthrew him, making Katherine
the Empress of Russia.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
I mean nothing, says, I love you like a coup mango.
Let's be honest.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Yeah, and not only that, Just a week after the coup,
Alexei strangled Peter to death so Catherine would never have
to deal with his poorish behavior again. There's actually no
evidence that she was aware of that part of the plot,
but still it paved the way for her in or Love,
to become Russia's biggest power couple. Accept Catherine's advisors weren't
(15:02):
thrilled about this, and they wouldn't let them marry. She
did give Orlov the title of count and several high
level appointments, and he worked alongside her to reform Russia's
legal code. But in seventeen seventy two the relationship ended.
It turns out that Catherine had fallen in love with
another man, Gregory Petempkin, who'd also been involved in carrying
out the coup. So now Orlov's like shocked. He's trying
(15:26):
to win her back, and he goes out and he
buys one of the most famous diamonds in the world.
This is incredible. It weighs nearly two hundred carrots. It's
an egg shaped stone that was allisurely stolen from a
temple in Mysore in India and smuggled to Europe and
in seventeen seventy four Orlov purchased it for one point
four million Dutch florins. Catherine accepted the gift because you
(15:49):
know who wouldn't, and she had it mounted in her
royal scepter. But she was still in love with Potemkin
and she refused to rekindle her romance with or Love
and this sent to into a tailspin. You know, he
spent all this money he was trying to woo her.
He ends up leaving Russia, rebounds by marrying one of
his cousins, and then dies when he was in his
forties after suffering a mental collapse.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Oh that is a rough story. We'll have another one
about a diamond as well, this one involving movie stars,
a media frenzy, and of course un unhappy ending. So
I'll tell you all about it after we take a
quick break.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Welcome back to Part time Genius. Today. We've got nine
romantic gestures that turned into disasters. Okay, well, so you
said you've gotten another fact about a diamond.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Indeed, I do, and it's not just any diamond. So
the jeweling question is a pear shaped beauty weighing almost
seventy carrots. I love how we're throwing all these talk
about carrots around as though we have any idea what
this means. But that's a lot. So in nineteen sixty
nine it was put up for sale at an auction.
Back then, one of the biggest celebrity couples in the
world was Welsh actor Richard Burton an American superstar Elizabeth Taylor.
(17:11):
Now they were known for their luxurious lifestyle and Burton
often bought Taylor the high end diamonds that she loved
very much. Now they heard about this stone for sale
and actually had the auction house fly it to them
in Switzerland where they were vacationing, just so they could
get a preview before the sale.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
That is incredible.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
It's just just crazy and it's all very relatable at
the same time. But at the auction, Burton got out
bid by Cartier, you know, the jewelry we were talking
about earlier. But Burton was absolutely insistent, saying, no one
but Taylor could wear this diamond, and so he ended
up buying it from Cardier for one point one million
dollars or the equivalent of nine point four million dollars today.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
That's incredible, and Elizabeth Taylor must have been ecstatic about this,
right she was.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
But you know, before the couple took ownership of the diamond,
they allowed Cardia to it on display in their Fifth
Avenue shop, where thousands of people lined up every single
day to see it. And finally the diamond was delivered
to the Burton Taylors on their yacht off the coast
of Monica.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
I feel like it just gets more and more relative.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
It really does. This is wild. So they were there
for Princess Grace's birthday party, and while I'm sure people
were happy for her Highness, the real star of the
event was Elizabeth Taylor wearing this enormous diamond around her neck.
But you know this isn't going to end well. Of course,
Taylor and Burton's marriage fell apart, and they divorced soon after.
They remarried briefly, and then split for good in nineteen
(18:36):
seventy six, at which point Taylor decided to sell the diamond.
But some good did come of it, though she used
the proceeds to help build a hospital in Botswana. You
didn't see that one coming. That went from like crazy
crazy to a nice gesture.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
There, I do like it. Well, here's a story about
a different kind of beautiful ending. Are you familiar with
the artist Marina Abramovich.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Yeah. Actually, she's the one that did the project at
MoMA where she said and stared at people right.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Yeah. It was called the Artist's Present And she's had
a really fascinating career kind of blurring the boundaries between
conceptual art and performance art. And in the seventies and
eighties she was in a relationship with a fellow artist.
His name was Ulai, and they began collaborating. They created
performance pieces together, like one where they plugged their nostrils
(19:25):
and exhaled directly into each other's mouths until they became
faint from lack of oxygen like it's weird but interesting stuff,
and another called rest Energy. This one's crazy. Bramovich held
the handle of a bow with the drawn arrow held
by Ulai, and they leaned back until the bow was
completely taught, with the arrow pointing at Abramovich's heart, and
(19:49):
if Ulai's finger slipped, it would have killed her instantly,
But the tension on the bow was coming from her
way too, so not just his and they wore microphones
to amplify their heartbeats. They stood perfectly still for four minutes.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
My god, that sounds terrifying, yeah, but it's also art,
right of course.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
That's also the level of trust they had in each other.
And in nineteen eighty they decided to get married with
the performance slash romantic gesture that was bigger than anything
they'd done before. Their plan was for each of them
to start at one end of the Great Wall of
China and then they just walked towards each other, a
journey that would take months, and the idea was wherever
they met, they'd marry on the spot. The problem was,
(20:31):
they need a ton of permits from China, right, The
Chinese government wasn't just handing out permits, and it took
eight years to get all the paperwork squared away, and
by then they had broken up. So they had this
grand romantic gesture plan but no reason to do it anymore,
except they decided to do it for a different reason.
They decided to turn the performance into a farewell right.
(20:52):
It was kind of an epic way of ending their relationship.
After all, they had spent all this time getting the permits,
so they wanted to continue through with it, so in
April of nineteen eighty eight, they took their places at
either end of the wall, and they start walking, and
they met near the middle. Later that summer, Abramovich said
that when she saw it live for the first time
in months, quote, first I was angry, then I was sad,
(21:16):
then I cried. They'd been traveling with help from translators
provided by the Chinese government, and at their reunion, Ulai
had devastating news for Abramovich. He'd fallen for his translator,
she was pregnant, and they planned to marry in Beijing.
He and Abramovich didn't speak again for decades.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Isn't that wow? So it was like a romantic gesture
turned romantic breakup, turned really really bad breakup pretty much.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Ulai even sued Abramovich in twenty fifteen in a dispute
over royalties on their collaborative works, but a few years
later they reunited when she spotted him in the audience
at a lecture she was giving at a Copenhagen museum.
He put his arm around her and they laughed like
old friends, and later Abramovich said that in that moment, quote,
(22:01):
I gave up all the anger, all the hate, all
the rest, and I think what's left is the beautiful
work that we left behind, and this is what matters.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Wow. All right, well, speaking of beautiful work, our next
story is all about a watch that's both a technical
marvel and an artistic statement unlike any other. Now, this
all began in Versailles in seventeen eighty three. There was
an admirer of Marie Antoinette's some say it was Swedish
diplomat Axel von Furson. So anyway, decides to dazzle her
(22:30):
with the gift of an extravagant watch. And the only
person who could make a time piece worthy of the
Queen was Abraham Louis Briget, the Parisian watchmaker who invented
many of the mechanisms that became standard in the watchmaking industry.
So Briget was up for the challenge, and he began
devising this pocket watch made of gold and platinum, rubies
(22:51):
and sapphires, all the good stuff. And it was said
that he was given no budget to work with, meaning
in other words, this sky was the limit here.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Which means he was designing a really really stunning watch. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Actually, what made it really special is the number of
complications it had, and watchmaking lingo. A complication is any
function other than just telling time, So like an alarm,
a date display, these are complications. And for this epic watch,
Brigay loaded it with every complication he knew how to make.
He built in a thermometer, a perpetual calendar, a chime,
(23:25):
a display showing how much energy was left so you'd
know when it needed winding, and more. And so when
it was done there were eight hundred and twenty three components,
many of them visible through the watch's transparent crystal face.
Isn't that amazing?
Speaker 1 (23:40):
I love that it tells you the temperature, the date
it's gonna alarm on it. It's like a antiquated iPhone, right.
But what did Marie Antronett think about all this?
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Well, this is of course where the disaster part comes in.
Because the watch was so complicated, it wasn't completed until
eighteen oh two, almost twenty years after the work first began.
By that point, Marie Antoinette was long gone. Now, if
you recall French history one oh one, she got sent
to the guillotine in seventeen ninety three, so she never
got a glimpse of this amazing watch. And once more,
(24:14):
Brigue himself died four years before the watch was finished.
His son, who took over his father's business, had to
step in and finish the job.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
So if Marie Antrnette wasn't alive to receive the gift,
what happened to the watch?
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Well, the Brigue company held onto it for a while,
and then they sold it to a private collector, changed
hands a few times, eventually landing in a museum in Jerusalem.
Was actually stolen from there in the nineteen eighties and
disappeared for decades. Finally, in two thousand and seven, it
was recovered, along with several others stolen time pieces, and
returned to that same museum. Oh that's incredible.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Well, we have one last story today, and this one
doesn't involve jeweles, watches or any physical objects at all,
because there's a whole other category of romantic gestures out there.
I'm talking about, do do something for someone you love.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
I like that Love Languages book. Have you read that?
It talks all about like acts of service.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
I haven't read it, but I imagine that's exactly what
this is. So back in the nineteen forties, in the
golden age of Hollywood, Rita Hayworth was one of the
biggest movie stars in the world. Right she was a
trained dancer. She worked her way up the studio system,
going from bit parts to a starring role opposite Fred
Astaire in the nineteen forty one musical You'll Never Get Rich,
and she became an icon, appearing in hit movies and
(25:28):
on magazine covers. She landed this high profile contract with
Columbia Pictures as well. Now, her personal life was much rockier.
She had left an abusive first husband to Mary Orson Wells,
but that relationship fell apart a few years later. And
then in nineteen forty eight, at a glamorous party on
the French Riviera, Hayworth meets a gentleman named Ali Khan.
(25:51):
And Khan is a fantastically wealthy social ae and he's
a prince whose father was the Aga Khan, or head
of the Ismaili Muslim community.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Sounds like it's straight from a plot of a nineteen
forties Hollywood.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Movie exactly so. Ali Khan was actually married at the time,
and he had a reputation for being a playboy, but
Hayworth found him really charming, and after just a few
days of courtship, she moved into his villa in the
south of France. He organized parties to introduce her to
his society friends, but it was kind of awkward, right, Like,
she doesn't speak French. So anyway, he whists her off
(26:24):
to Spain and proposes, and she says no because she
has to get home to Hollywood to start work on
a new film, and besides, she actually has a young
daughter in the States from her marriage with wells Now.
Ali Khan was undeterred. He pursues her to the Los Angeles,
where he showers her with gifts. The relationship gets into
the press, and, in addition to some casual racism at
(26:45):
the time related to Ali's Pakistani heritage, people were outraged
at the flamboyance of their affair, especially because he was
still married.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
This is good stuff, magatherre like lots of good components. Here,
I got my bucket a popcorn, like, keep keep going.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
This is really good, right. So Ali Khan's father wanted
him to break it off because it was making the
whole family look bad, and instead he gets a divorce
and he and Hayworth finally marry in nineteen forty nine.
But their lives are so different, right. He is a
jet setter who keeps us safe full of various currencies
so you can dash off to any corner of the
(27:20):
globe at any moment's notice. And he was also expected
to make official visits to the Ismaili communities in Africa
and Asia. You know, this is all part of their
tradition and as part of the service, he wants his
wife to join him. But here's where the sacrifice comes in.
So Hayworth actually gives up her film career to be
with him. And this is a really, really costly decision.
(27:42):
Columbia Pictures Suser for one point two million dollars for
breaking her contract.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Oh that is a huge leap to make. So tell me, Mengo,
unlike every other story we've heard so far, tell me
they lived happily ever after.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
I mean, you know where this is headed. So they
had a daughter shortly after their marriage. But from that
point on, it's just a disaster. Hayworth was totally out
of her element on these diplomatic trips. Ali Khon didn't
change his Playwroy ways, and Hayworth ends up going home
to the US and initiating divorce proceedings. But the worst
part is her reputation wasn't tatters her over the top
(28:16):
lifestyle with Ali, not not to mention the fact that
she'd taken up with a married man while being the
mother of a young child from her first marriage. All
of this prompted a ton of outrage at the time, and.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
Of course this was aimed at her, not him.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
I'm guessing right, yeah, I mean, he did get a
little bit of blowback, but yeah, of course it was
aimed at her. And in nineteen forty nine, an American
women's club actually organized a boycott of her films, with
one woman saying, quote Rita Hayworth's studio shitsacker, her trapesing
around is an insult to American womanhood.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
So did her career ever recover from this?
Speaker 1 (28:50):
I mean, that is the good part. So she finally
returned to the screen in nineteen fifty two. It was
with a movie called Affair in Trinidad, and she went
on to make several more hit films, but her relationship
with Columbia execs remained tricky, partially because of her decision
to quit the movies for love.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
Wow, Well that's the lesson for today. I guess, don't
abandon a lucrative Hollywood career to galivan around with a prince.
Just write that down, always put that in your back pocket. Well,
I know, we said nine mango. We love to do
our nine facts. But how about we end the day
with the story of a tryhard who actually did win
his crushover in the end.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
I'm for it. So who are we talking about?
Speaker 2 (29:27):
And I remember us talking about this back in our
mental loss days. This was, of course President Richard Milhouse Nixon. Now,
from the outside, the Nixon's marriage wasn't one that most
people envy. The New York Times referred to the love
between the couple as quote dry as dust. Ben Bradley
of The Washington Post called it sort of a dingy marriage.
I have a feeling they never touched each other in
(29:49):
any way, you know, not great, But anyway, the letters
between them over the course of their marriage actually show
quite a bit of affection and passion and understanding between
the two of them. Whatever their marriage would become, the
initial dating period was not great. Apparently, the first time
he met her, he said, I'd like to have a
date with you. She responded, I'm busy. Then he said
(30:11):
I'd like to marry you, and she laughed in his face.
But as Politico puts it, he pursued Pat with the
same determination and persistence he would later use to win
seven elections. He hated ice skating, but bloodied himself repeatedly
to learn so he could go skating with Pat and
her friends. On weekends. In order to spend time with her,
he drove her to Los Angeles, where she went on
(30:34):
dates with other men. He would return on Sunday afternoons
and wait until she was ready for him to drive
her home. Six months after they met, Pat went to
Michigan to buy a car and did not contact Dick
for three months. Apparently it took him three years, but
eventually all that hanging around her convinced her of his charms,
and so, as Pat wrote to her parents after he'd
(30:55):
enrolled in the service, Dick looked so different, younger, real, tan, thinner,
and of course very handsome. She made it clear she
missed him, and it wasn't long before they were married.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
I don't know that proposing marriage on your first meeting
after someone has just turned you down for a date
is the right way to go about winning someone's affections, mon,
But I'm glad it worked out. But what about gifts?
Was there anything tricky to got for Pat that we
know about?
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Let me think about as well, pandas. Of course, when
Pat went to China with President Nixon, she was totally
taken with the pandas, and President Nixon gifted China too Muskox,
which they reciprocated with pandas. So in a way, the
fact that we have giant pandas in this country is
because of their love.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Oh that's when I had never thought of that. Well,
I guess it's pretty romantic. But that does it for
this very On Valentine's Day episode of Part Time Genius,
don't forget to follow us on Instagram at part Time Genius.
We have some exciting stuff coming up later this month,
including a whole bunch of listener prize giveaways, so stay
tuned for that, and in the meantime, Will, Mary, Gabe Dylan,
(32:02):
and myself thank you so much for listening. Part Time
Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show
is hosted by Will Pearson and me Mongaish Heatikler and
(32:25):
research by our good pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode
was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with
support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced for
iHeart by Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry, with social media
support from Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shorey.
For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
(32:49):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Part-Time Genius News
Hosts And Creators
Will Pearson
Mangesh Hattikudur
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