May 8, 2026 • 32 mins
Cassius Marcellus Coolidge’s name isn’t widely known, but his painting of dogs playing poker (aka “A Friend in Need”) is iconic. Today we discover the truth about one of America’s most forgotten artists, from his early days in banking to his hijinks in the Freemasons. Plus: Why we love dogs and kitsch in art.
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This episode originally aired on November 12, 2024.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Guess what will What's that Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:14):
So you know that painting of dogs playing poker, like
the ones where dogs are drinking and playing cards.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
You know, it's funny. I was at a thrift store
the other day with my son William, and I actually
think I saw a puzzle of that painting right there
in the store, so I should have bought it for.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
This that's amazing. So I don't know if I told
you this, but like when I was in high school,
my dad saw that painting for the first time, and
he was so delighted by it, and he couldn't stop
talking about it. He was like, can you believe that
a bulldog is cheating? It's so ridiculous, it's crazy. He
just kept talking about it for a few weeks. And
(00:51):
then one day I came home and I looked above
my dog Lupinese dogbed, and he had framed a print
of it and put it above her cage because he
won make sure she had some art in the house too.
Just so ludicrous.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Yeah, it's so sweet though, too. I mean, your family's
always been pretty dog obsessed.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Though, right, Yeah, I mean, we always used to joke
that I would have to put a jacket on when
I entered the house because my dog was super fluffy,
and my parents kept the house super cold so that
she was comfortable. Like it didn't matter if my sister
and I were comfortable, but as long as my dog
was comfortable, everything was okay. But thinking about that artwork
(01:29):
over my dog's cage and the fact that apparently it
sold at auction in twenty fifteen for seven hundred thousand
dollars or close to seven hundred thousand dollars like learning,
that made me want to look into the origins of
the painting war and learn more about the artists. So
that's what we're doing this week, talking about dogs playing poker.
Let's dive in.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Hey their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Will Pearson and is always I'm joined by my good
friend Mangesh hot Ticketter and sitting behind that studio booth,
I was looking forward to this one to day. I
couldn't wait to see what Dylan would be doing. And
he is not disappointing. He is dancing like I have
never seen him dance before, and he's blasting the song
(02:28):
poker Face. I have to admit I sort of called this.
He is a huge Lady Gaga fan. But that's our
palain producer, Dylan Fagan.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
I think he said he wanted to play that song
on repeat to inspire us, But I'm pretty sure the
disco ball and the strobe light are more for him
than for us.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
There is no question about that, all right, mego, So,
I know we're both dog lovers, and we both like art,
and so I guess this episode is sort of the
Venn diagram of those interests. So let's talk dogs playing
poker absolutely.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
So. The first thing I wanted to bring up is
that when you hear that phrase dogs playing poker, we
probably pictured the same thing, right, like that picture of
a bunch of dogs at a poker table, this bulldog
cheating by handing an ace under the table to his pal,
another bulldog. But dogs playing Poker isn't actually one painting.
It's kind of the shorthand that's applied to a group
(03:20):
of eighteen paintings, all by a New York artist named
Cassius Marcellus Coolidge or Cash Coolidge, and the painting that
we're most familiar with, though one with that cheating dog
is called a Friend in Need, but the one that
kicked off the whole series is actually called Poker Game.
It depicts four large, brown and white dogs sitting around
(03:41):
a poker table and one is smoking a cigar, one
has a pipe, one has a cigarette, and they've all
got a bottle of whiskey between them.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Which that last part that's why you know it's ridiculous
because most dogs, I'm pretty sure jen drinkers.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Yeah. Well, Poker Game was really well received at the time.
Some cigar companies reproduced it to decorate their cigar boxes,
but this led to even more dog paintings being commissioned.
So in nineteen oh three, the publishing company Brown and
Bigelow from Minnesota actually paid Coolidge to paint sixteen more
dog paintings.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
So, like, why did they need so many paintings of dogs?
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Yeah, that's a good question, But basically they wanted to
slap them on like calendars or ads or posters that
sort of thing. And Coolidge's dogs, it turns out, were
pretty versatile. Like they weren't just hanging out drinking whiskey
and playing cards. Sometimes they were playing baseball, or football
or fixing a car. One painting is even of a
bunch of dogs in the courtroom pleading a case.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
So I guess my next question is what drove Cash
Coolidge to paint all those dogs doing human stuff?
Speaker 1 (04:48):
I mean, obviously, in the case of the sixteen paintings,
it was the money and the commissioning. But ah, the
first one, Poker Game, he just painted that on his own,
and I didn't realize how long ago he started this series.
Poker Game was created in eighteen ninety four. While it's
unknown where he got the idea, it's not just like
thrown together haphazardly. The image is a composition that's inspired
(05:09):
by Caravaggio, George de Latour, and Paul Saisan, all who
have their own depictions of card game scenes, albeit with
you know, humans as their subjects rather than dogs. But
some have compared Coolidge's A Friend in Need with this
English artist Sir Edwin Lancier's painting. He did one called
Laying Down the Law in eighteen forty, and both works
(05:29):
feature dogs gathered around pensively, kind of acting like people,
card players in Coolidge's one, and lawyers and lanciers. However,
if you look at Coolidge's painting. It's kind of lighter
in tone, slightly more comical. And actually, I'm just going
to send you these images so you can see the difference.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Yeah, you know, I mean, I see what you're saying
that Coolidges is slightly more comical. But I mean they're
both kind of silly paintings of dogs doing human stuff.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Yeah, I mean that it's true for sure.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
But now I mean that's what's happening.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Yeah. You know, while Coolidge wasn't the first to do
this type of work, he's definitely the most prolific and
he kind of took the idea and ran with it
in a way that no one else had. So today's
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Speaker 2 (08:57):
I feel like we need to back up, though, because
you know there must be something interesting about the upbringing
of someone who eventually spends a lifetime painting dogs. So
let's look into his background.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
That sounds great. So Cash Coolidge was born September eighteenth,
eighteen forty four to a prosperous Quaker family in Antwerp,
New York. The family had a lot of land. They
were into farming, and so he grows up really well educated.
But he's not just a painter. Before he painted dogs,
he'd already done all these other things. In eighteen seventy one,
(09:29):
he founded the first bank in Antwerp. He opened and
then sold several pharmacies in upstate New York. He also
founded his hometown's first newspaper, the Antwerp News. So he's
really got a lot on his resume.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
I mean, the guy is pretty accomplished. I didn't see
the bank thing coming, Like, that's just such an interesting background.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Yeah, finance is really where the dog inspiration goes from.
But in eighteen seventy three, Coolidge went to Europe, and
that's kind of what kicked off his career as a
travel writer but also as an artist. He had a
travel column at the time for the Watertown Times called
Cash's Column two k's weirdly in the alliteration there. But
(10:09):
to supplement his income, he also worked as a cartoonist
for local newspapers, and he also gave penmanship lessons. But
he had this growing side hustle as a lightning sketcher.
And this is the thing they used to do where
people paid up to fifty cents for the privilege of
watching an artist do these super speed sketches of a
series of people sitting for portraits.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
I mean it sounds a little bit like those quick
caricatures you can see and get when you're on a
boardwalk or something like that, where they give you a
huge head and you're on a skateboard for some reason.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Yeah, it's always a skateboard. But one Rochester newspaper from
the time actually wrote about this incredible event that took
place at a local Masonic lodge.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Did you say Masonic lodge?
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Yeah, So we're going to get into that later. But
the paper said, the celebrated artist CM Coolidge, known to
the public under the nom de plume Cash, will give
an entertainment in offhand caricaturing, in which branch of art
he has no superior. We have had the personal pleasure
of witnessing mister Coolige's skilled in this line, and can
most heartily recommend him to the public.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
I mean, it sounds like he was pretty successful. He's
probably the best big head on a skateboard artist around.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Yeah, and this is even before his dog paintings. So
Coolidge had a pretty good career as an artist, doing
illustrations for newspapers and magazines. He was also doing things
like ads for shoe companies. He was making good money,
but none of his other work really sticks in the
American psyche the way those dogs sitting around smoking and
drinking and playing cards do. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
I mean, there's something very funny about the paintings, but
there's also something a little bit dark about them, Like
it looks like the dogs are getting away with something
each time, like they snuck out of their little dog
houses in the middle of the night to blow off
some theme without the supervision of their owners. Like you
get what I'm saying here.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
I do. And the fact that the dogs are gambling
is very illicit, especially for dogs.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Yeah, yeah, yes, that's definitely controversial for dogs and for
humans too. But you know, at the time, gambling was
actually illegal or technically illegal. And according to Lucy Sante's
Low Life, an amazing book about New York's Lower East Side,
in the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds, Tammany
hallback syndicates quote handled protection for gambling establishments, So that
(12:23):
meant the highest ranked city officials in New York City
were facilitating these illegal gambling halls. This included Mayor Robert
Van Wick, and that was obviously controversial because at the
same time, people like the city's DA that was a
man named William Travers. Jerome had made it his personal
mission to end gambling in the city.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Which sounds like a huge conflict. So does that play
out publicly at all?
Speaker 2 (12:47):
It definitely does. So you've got Jerome. He starts staging
raids on these gambling houses and making sure that he
gets as much publicity as possible by inviting reporters to
come along. Also, to make the whole thing extra dramatic,
he personally wields a hatchet to break down doors, So
pretty dramatic. That sounds ridiculous, Yeah, but it was all
(13:09):
over the papers and really in the zeitgeist at the time.
Like this guy named al Adams, he was a widely
disliked policy king. He owned two breweries, one hundred saloons
and two million dollars in real estate. And allegedly had
a stake in every gambling house between Battery and one
hundred and tenth Street, so he was eventually arrested. He
(13:30):
was sentenced to eighteen months in sing Sing. But if
you're an adult in New York at the time, you're
probably reading about these gambling raids every day in the newspaper.
It's kind of like the backdrop of everybody's life at
the time. But also, if you're a man, you're probably
even attending some of these underground card games, and so
Coolidge's works are kind of this wink to the viewer
(13:50):
because the card scenes are both depicting something illegal, but
also playful and absurd, like the games are going to
take place whether you like it or not, whether dog
owners know about it or not.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
I mean, that's interesting. It's like Colig just saying chill
Out is just a card game right.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Well, and by using dogs as a stand in for humans,
it all seems pretty non threatening. I mean, who's going
to raid a late night dog party? Like, let the
dogs be dogs, you know, we always say that.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
We always say that. I like how we're acting like dogs,
drinking whiskey and betting with poker chips. As dogs being dogged.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Yeah, let them dogs. You know.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
It's also worth mentioning that the Dog's Playing Poker series
is very much a boys club, like there's one painting
in the series where a bunch of angry female dogs
storm in to break up their husband's card game like
a marital police raid. And also Coolidge state of bachelor
until his sixties. So as much as this might have
been like a light political statement, he was very much,
(14:48):
as our researcher Mary points out, a dude making art
for his fellow dudes. Speaking of which we should talk
about the Masons. But before we do that, why don't
we take a quick break.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where we're talking about
dogs playing poker and doing other human stuff too. Of course,
so mego, I think you're gonna tell us about the
artist Cash Coolidge's connection to Mason's or Masonic lodges. I
know you'd mentioned earlier that he used to do speed
drawing events at them.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Yeah, so the Masonic stuff mostly goes back to one
of the paintings Coolidge produced as part of his commission
from Brown and Bigelow. It's called Riding the Goat, and
it depicts a blindfolded dog riding a goat in front
of this approving audience of other dogs.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
That's a little weird.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Yeah, just the normal stuff you'd see at a dog park.
But unlike the poker game paintings, which are more obviously relatable,
the details Coolidge included in this painting are pretty odd.
Like some dogs are wearing special circular hats, they're at
high desks, they're recording everything. One dog is wearing a
pointy hat, a masquerade mask, and a cape. And there's
(16:07):
a blindfolded dog riding the goat. He actually has a
rope around his neck which is being held by a
cocker spaniel.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
It's starting to sound a little eyes wide shut to
be honest with you.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Yeah, it wouldn't be out of place in that movie
except for all the dogs. But the part of the
reason this is depicted this way is that Cass Coolidge
was definitely in the Freemason, so that part's not a secret,
but it's possible he included some Mason imagery kind of
as a joke for his friends. There's a site called
dogs Playingpoker dot org, which is actually an amazing resource.
(16:40):
It's made by a computer programmer named Joe, and he
spoke to an anonymous Mason who actually broke down the
painting symbolism for the audience, and so this is what
the mason said. Quote Riding the goat depicts one of
the first three principal degrees of Freemasonry. The blindfold is
an important part of the first three degrees and has
a specific and symbolic meaning in each degree. The rope
(17:03):
around his neck is called a cable toe, another important
Masonic symbol. The three dogs sitting to the left at
the desk indicate the three principal officers of any Masonic lodge.
The dog to the right is wearing a red cap.
In Scottish right Masonry, this cap is the emblem of
a kcch Mason. I'm not sure exactly what that is,
but clearly something of importance. And some dogs are wearing
(17:25):
blue caps, a symbol that represents a fifty year Mason,
meaning dogs or people I guess who've been initiated fifty
or more years ago.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
I mean, it definitely feels very insidery.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Yeah, but Coolich also might have put in all that
imagery kind of as a joke for his fellow Masons. Basically,
there were old rumors that Mason's rode goats as a
form of initiation, and by Coolidge's time, Mason's had turned
that accusation into an inside joke.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
So I guess he just used this thing he was
getting paid to make as an opportunity to joke around
with his boys.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Basically. But Coolich was a real creative and he did
more than just paint dogs, doing things like he really
enjoyed making all kinds of art, and you know those
like plywood cutouts that you stick your face.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Through, like like the ones you'd see at a carnival
or an amusement park something like that.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Yeah, and boardwalks too, right, cash Coolidge patented those. He
called them comic foregrounds, and he created all these different
drawings to be used as the fake foregrounds. He actually
only patented a very specific version of these cutounds, ones
that had an image of a person with their normal
head but the sketch of a very tiny body. So
there were no strong man or bikini body ones, which
(18:37):
is ridiculous, but it's amazing to me that he's behind those.
And also he illustrated tons of books. He wrote a play,
he wrote a comic opera.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
I mean this guy's all over the place, like from
starting a bank to writing an opera, Like, this guy's
done everything.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
I mean, it's also weird stuff, like the opera was
called King Gallonnipper and it was about the marital and
the morris adventures of human tourists in the realm of
the King of the Mosquitoes.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
No, but it is kind of crazy that Coolidge was
so prolific and has done so many interesting things, but
the only thing he's really remembered for is his dog art.
And actually nobody remembers him. We just remember the dogs.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Yeah, I mean, people do love dogs. But you know,
the nineteenth century was sort of a golden age of
dog art, and so this is the generation before Coolidge.
There's an artist named maud Earl and When Lancier who
we mentioned before, Arthur Wardele and John Sargent Noble, and
they were all artists commissioned by Queen Victoria to make
dog art. Apparently she liked many of us, was really
(19:42):
into dogs and particularly Pomeranians. But Lancier painted dozens of
Queen Victoria's pets and was rewarded with a knighthood for
the work. So, you know, pretty fancy Also, this thing
trickles down because the Queen's into it and royals are
into it, Suddenly the middle classes into it as well,
and by the end of the Victorian era, English homes
(20:04):
were full of reproductions of his dog paintings.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
I feel like this was just the golden age of
dog art. I mean, what a time to be alive. Mango, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
I mean. The DVC review of this twenty twenty three
exhibition of dog art actually shed some light on why
dogs in particular are fascinators so much. This is how
the review puts it. Dogs are borderline creatures on the
threshold of two worlds, the human and the animal. We
see human qualities like faithfulness, empathy, and intelligence mirrored in
(20:34):
canine behavior. But we also admired dog's sensory superpowers, and
they're more instinctive connection with the wild. We've always been
infatuated with dogs because we consider them in betweeners, half
mirrors of our own behavior and half windows into the
mysteries of nature.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
I mean, I do like Coolidge's ability to sort of
tap into this existing human fascination but then put his
own spin on it.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
I mean, his generation of work is more pop culture
in a way. It's made for everyone, and Mason's too.
But the funny thing is that his wife and daughter
were never really into dogs. They were more cat people.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
That's pretty ridiculous. I mean it's funny though. Coolidge's work
have this light hearted element, but he's not painting for
the Queen. And I think a lot of people would
describe Coolidge's Dogs Playing Poker series as kitchy?
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Can you explain that a little more?
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Well, I actually have this in my notes. When you
go to the Wikipedia article for kitch, the first image
at the top of the page is of a friend
in need, and the caption says a common example of
modern kitch.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Oh, that's interesting. So how are we defining kitch exactly? So?
Speaker 2 (21:40):
Merriam Webster defines kitch as something that appeals to popular
or lowbrow taste and is often of poor quality, attacky
or lowbrow quality or condition.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
And you're insulting my dog's art work here.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
But yeah, I know, it's just it's terrible. But it's
also used ironically or enough self awareness that it can
boomerang back around to actually being a compliment.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
How can it be a compliment?
Speaker 2 (22:06):
Well, apparently the word emerged in the art markets of Munich,
and this was in the eighteen sixties and eighteen seventies,
describing cheap and popular pictures and sketches. And it might
derive from the German word kitchen, which means to smear,
or from the German verb vert kitchen, which means to cheapen.
But you know, the most interesting theory is that it
(22:29):
could be an inversion of the French word chic, which
basically means fashionable.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Oh, that's funny that kitch is like cheek backwards.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
And when it's used in certain context, kitch is definitely
an insult and it can definitely feel cheap. And some
examples of classic kitsch are Santa Claus in the supermarket
pictures of poodles with ribbons in their hair, souvenir snow glow.
But then artists kind of inverted the idea and embraced it.
So think about people like Andy Warhol with his Marilyn
(22:59):
Monroe or Chairman Mao Prince or Jeff Khons with his
balloon dog sculptures, those sorts of things.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
So what do we think dogs playing poker is? Like?
Is it Jeff Coons or snow globe?
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Yeah, it's kind of tough to say. In nineteen thirty nine,
the art critic Clement Greenberg wrote a famous essay titled
Avant Garde and Kitsch. It was done more to influence
American ideas about kitch than anything else. So he basically
says that urbanization and modern capitalism robs people of the
time and space they need to engage with authentic art,
(23:34):
and that kitsch or commercial art arose as a cheap replacement,
and this was to occupy people's minds and the little
freedom that they do have. And he also says, quote,
kitsch is mechanical and operates by formulas.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
I guess you could argue that, like dogs playing poker
does just that. Like Coolidge hit a nerve with his
first painting poker game and then he basically plugged in
a formula scenes of dogs doing very huge and things
which turned into commerce.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Yeah, no, that's totally it. But Greenberg also says this
about kitch. He says, now and then it produces something
of merit, something that has an authentic folk flavor.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Yeah, these days, Coolidge's dog painting sell for hundreds of
thousands of dollars, so it's kind of safe to say
he's transcended the average flea market level of kitch.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Plus, I feel like dogs playing Poker has worked its
way deep into our consciousness. There are multiple dogs playing
poker references on The Simpsons. There was a two thousand
crime thriller starring Tim Curry called four Dogs Playing Poker.
And you know that old snl sketch where the wild
and crazy guys. Of course, in their very first appearance
(24:45):
on the show, there's a frameprint of a friend in
need that's hanging on their apartment wall.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
God, that's amazing. It's so funny to imagine those guys
whose only interest was quote, getting chicks, buying art for
their apartment, and settling on dogs playing poker to a
tract chick.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Yeah. I feel like women see dogs playing poker and
just swoon.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Oh yeah, does it every time? You know? I actually
love this little anecdote about Gary Larson. Of course, you
know the cartoonist behind the Far Side comics. So he
drew a Far Side cartoon where he imagined the dogs
playing poker. Artist earlier in his career painting giraffes, chickens
and other animals playing poker, but he didn't think the
artist's name was well known, so he randomly named him
(25:27):
Gus Nickerson. And then years later he read an article
about Cash Coolidge and he learned more about them, and
he said, quote, if you think about it, a friend
in need is arguably as famous in this country as
the mona Lisa by what's his name? I just didn't
give Coolidge his proper due. So good.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
That's such a huge endorsement. And I love Gary Larson
so much. I love that, you know, he's this incredible
illustrator and cultural commentator giving big ups to another artist.
But you know one thing I keep thinking about. It
must be hard to shuffle cards with note.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
You know, that's the one detail I've never to be
able to swallow, Like it's just not realistic, mango.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
I know we'll never get over that, But how about
we end on a little.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Fact off, all right, let's do it? All right? So
we mentioned earlier that Coolidge's most famous painting often gets
mistitled as dogs playing poker, but you could just as
easily call it dogs cheating at poker, because if you
look closely, only two of the seven dogs at the
(26:33):
table seem to be playing fair. The rest are either
shiftily glancing at each other's hands or straight up passing
cards under the table.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
One thing I learned this week is that dogs really
do cheat at poker, or at least they can with
the proper training, and this is thanks to a technique
called hand targeting. A dog can be trained to use
his mouth to select a single playing card from someone's
hand and then give that card to another player. So,
in theory, someone could cheat at poker by using dogs
(27:03):
to pass cards under the table, just like in Coolidge's paintings.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
All right, well here's a quick one. In the early
two thousands, value Soft Inc. Released a PC poker game
pattern off of Coolidge's paintings, and it was called, of course,
Dogs Playing Poker. The high stakes poker simulator featured a
cast of eighteen canine opponents for the player to face
off against, including a dalmatian, a mechanical dog, an ancient
(27:28):
dinosaur dog, and what appears to be a cat wearing
a sign that says a dog, which I think is
pretty fun. The game didn't hang around on shelves for long,
but intrepid poker hounds should still be able to sniff
it out online without too much trouble.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
So when I think of Richard Nixon, I think about
the first president to ban soup from the White House dinners,
and also someone who used to call up Christian Latner
when he was a college basketball player to give him
advice at halftime. And of course I guess this watergate too.
But did you know that Richard Nixon was an excellent poker?
Apparently he was so good that most of his first
(28:04):
political campaign was funded by winnings from his time in
the navy.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Ah, that's a good one. Actually, speaking of president's playing poker,
this is a funny one. According to the Lewis and
Sun Paper, President Harding once bet the entire set of
White House China in a poker game to General MacArthur's
wife Louise and lost it to her.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
That's incredible. Did you know that at the Angola Prison
Rodeo there's an event called convict Poker, which is more
like bulls playing poker, but apparently four inmates sit at
a table playing cards in the ring and then a
bull is released and the last man to leave the
table wins, which sounds terrifying.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
Yeah, that's interesting. I didn't know about that, all right,
So getting back a little closer to dogs playing poker.
Here's the fact I've found about cats playing poker. So
it turns out that by the time Coolidge began his
series on dogs playing poker, British illustrator Lewis Wayne had
already spent several years anthropomorphizing cats for the London crowd,
(29:07):
and his fansful style depicted cats walking on their hind legs,
wearing clothes, partaking in all sorts of social activities normally
reserved for humans, like golfing and celebrating Christmas, drinking cocktails,
and yes, even playing cards. So it's worth noting though,
that Wayne's cats didn't restrict themselves to just poker. They
were also avid bridge players too, which feels very cat.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Like and very classy.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
So here's the thing that I learned, which which is
just insane to be. Do you know that there's a
real dog Ashiba you knew, named Peanut Butter, who became
the first dog to speed run a video game as
a twenty twenty four Games Done Quick charity event. Peanut
Butter used a custom made controller. The dog was able
to input commands from his owner and successfully clear all
(29:55):
twenty five levels of the nineteen eighty five NES game
gyro might. It took peanut Butter twenty six minutes and
twenty four seconds to beat the game, which was just
over two minutes slower than the fastest human time on record,
and in the month since the event, both peanut Butter
and a husky named Coda have now surpassed that record,
finishing the game in right around twenty three minutes.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
That is wild and unfortunately, I don't think I can
beat a fact about video game playing dog. So yeah,
I think you win this one, Mango, I fold.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
I love it. Well, that's it for today's Part Time
Genius and next week we're going to be trying something new.
We're going to be putting out a few episodes a week,
but we do need feedback, so writers at Petgenius, moms
at gmail dot com and let us know what you'd like,
what you want to hear, anything else that's on your mind.
And you can also find us on Instagram at part
(30:50):
Time Genius. Again, we reopened that account and are taking
messages there. So from Mary Gabe, Dylan Will and myself,
thank you so much for listening. Part Time Genius is
(31:13):
a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted
by Will Pearson and me Mongish Heatikler, and 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 Norvel and Ali Perry, with social media support from
(31:36):
Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shorey. For more
podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Guess what will What's that Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:14):
So you know that painting of dogs playing poker, like
the ones where dogs are drinking and playing cards.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
You know, it's funny. I was at a thrift store
the other day with my son William, and I actually
think I saw a puzzle of that painting right there
in the store, so I should have bought it for.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
This that's amazing. So I don't know if I told
you this, but like when I was in high school,
my dad saw that painting for the first time, and
he was so delighted by it, and he couldn't stop
talking about it. He was like, can you believe that
a bulldog is cheating? It's so ridiculous, it's crazy. He
just kept talking about it for a few weeks. And
(00:51):
then one day I came home and I looked above
my dog Lupinese dogbed, and he had framed a print
of it and put it above her cage because he
won make sure she had some art in the house too.
Just so ludicrous.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Yeah, it's so sweet though, too. I mean, your family's
always been pretty dog obsessed.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Though, right, Yeah, I mean, we always used to joke
that I would have to put a jacket on when
I entered the house because my dog was super fluffy,
and my parents kept the house super cold so that
she was comfortable. Like it didn't matter if my sister
and I were comfortable, but as long as my dog
was comfortable, everything was okay. But thinking about that artwork
(01:29):
over my dog's cage and the fact that apparently it
sold at auction in twenty fifteen for seven hundred thousand
dollars or close to seven hundred thousand dollars like learning,
that made me want to look into the origins of
the painting war and learn more about the artists. So
that's what we're doing this week, talking about dogs playing poker.
Let's dive in.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Hey their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Will Pearson and is always I'm joined by my good
friend Mangesh hot Ticketter and sitting behind that studio booth,
I was looking forward to this one to day. I
couldn't wait to see what Dylan would be doing. And
he is not disappointing. He is dancing like I have
never seen him dance before, and he's blasting the song
(02:28):
poker Face. I have to admit I sort of called this.
He is a huge Lady Gaga fan. But that's our
palain producer, Dylan Fagan.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
I think he said he wanted to play that song
on repeat to inspire us, But I'm pretty sure the
disco ball and the strobe light are more for him
than for us.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
There is no question about that, all right, mego, So,
I know we're both dog lovers, and we both like art,
and so I guess this episode is sort of the
Venn diagram of those interests. So let's talk dogs playing
poker absolutely.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
So. The first thing I wanted to bring up is
that when you hear that phrase dogs playing poker, we
probably pictured the same thing, right, like that picture of
a bunch of dogs at a poker table, this bulldog
cheating by handing an ace under the table to his pal,
another bulldog. But dogs playing Poker isn't actually one painting.
It's kind of the shorthand that's applied to a group
(03:20):
of eighteen paintings, all by a New York artist named
Cassius Marcellus Coolidge or Cash Coolidge, and the painting that
we're most familiar with, though one with that cheating dog
is called a Friend in Need, but the one that
kicked off the whole series is actually called Poker Game.
It depicts four large, brown and white dogs sitting around
(03:41):
a poker table and one is smoking a cigar, one
has a pipe, one has a cigarette, and they've all
got a bottle of whiskey between them.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Which that last part that's why you know it's ridiculous
because most dogs, I'm pretty sure jen drinkers.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Yeah. Well, Poker Game was really well received at the time.
Some cigar companies reproduced it to decorate their cigar boxes,
but this led to even more dog paintings being commissioned.
So in nineteen oh three, the publishing company Brown and
Bigelow from Minnesota actually paid Coolidge to paint sixteen more
dog paintings.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
So, like, why did they need so many paintings of dogs?
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Yeah, that's a good question, But basically they wanted to
slap them on like calendars or ads or posters that
sort of thing. And Coolidge's dogs, it turns out, were
pretty versatile. Like they weren't just hanging out drinking whiskey
and playing cards. Sometimes they were playing baseball, or football
or fixing a car. One painting is even of a
bunch of dogs in the courtroom pleading a case.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
So I guess my next question is what drove Cash
Coolidge to paint all those dogs doing human stuff?
Speaker 1 (04:48):
I mean, obviously, in the case of the sixteen paintings,
it was the money and the commissioning. But ah, the
first one, Poker Game, he just painted that on his own,
and I didn't realize how long ago he started this series.
Poker Game was created in eighteen ninety four. While it's
unknown where he got the idea, it's not just like
thrown together haphazardly. The image is a composition that's inspired
(05:09):
by Caravaggio, George de Latour, and Paul Saisan, all who
have their own depictions of card game scenes, albeit with
you know, humans as their subjects rather than dogs. But
some have compared Coolidge's A Friend in Need with this
English artist Sir Edwin Lancier's painting. He did one called
Laying Down the Law in eighteen forty, and both works
(05:29):
feature dogs gathered around pensively, kind of acting like people,
card players in Coolidge's one, and lawyers and lanciers. However,
if you look at Coolidge's painting. It's kind of lighter
in tone, slightly more comical. And actually, I'm just going
to send you these images so you can see the difference.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Yeah, you know, I mean, I see what you're saying
that Coolidges is slightly more comical. But I mean they're
both kind of silly paintings of dogs doing human stuff.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Yeah, I mean that it's true for sure.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
But now I mean that's what's happening.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Yeah. You know, while Coolidge wasn't the first to do
this type of work, he's definitely the most prolific and
he kind of took the idea and ran with it
in a way that no one else had. So today's
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Speaker 2 (08:57):
I feel like we need to back up, though, because
you know there must be something interesting about the upbringing
of someone who eventually spends a lifetime painting dogs. So
let's look into his background.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
That sounds great. So Cash Coolidge was born September eighteenth,
eighteen forty four to a prosperous Quaker family in Antwerp,
New York. The family had a lot of land. They
were into farming, and so he grows up really well educated.
But he's not just a painter. Before he painted dogs,
he'd already done all these other things. In eighteen seventy one,
(09:29):
he founded the first bank in Antwerp. He opened and
then sold several pharmacies in upstate New York. He also
founded his hometown's first newspaper, the Antwerp News. So he's
really got a lot on his resume.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
I mean, the guy is pretty accomplished. I didn't see
the bank thing coming, Like, that's just such an interesting background.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Yeah, finance is really where the dog inspiration goes from.
But in eighteen seventy three, Coolidge went to Europe, and
that's kind of what kicked off his career as a
travel writer but also as an artist. He had a
travel column at the time for the Watertown Times called
Cash's Column two k's weirdly in the alliteration there. But
(10:09):
to supplement his income, he also worked as a cartoonist
for local newspapers, and he also gave penmanship lessons. But
he had this growing side hustle as a lightning sketcher.
And this is the thing they used to do where
people paid up to fifty cents for the privilege of
watching an artist do these super speed sketches of a
series of people sitting for portraits.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
I mean it sounds a little bit like those quick
caricatures you can see and get when you're on a
boardwalk or something like that, where they give you a
huge head and you're on a skateboard for some reason.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Yeah, it's always a skateboard. But one Rochester newspaper from
the time actually wrote about this incredible event that took
place at a local Masonic lodge.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Did you say Masonic lodge?
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Yeah, So we're going to get into that later. But
the paper said, the celebrated artist CM Coolidge, known to
the public under the nom de plume Cash, will give
an entertainment in offhand caricaturing, in which branch of art
he has no superior. We have had the personal pleasure
of witnessing mister Coolige's skilled in this line, and can
most heartily recommend him to the public.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
I mean, it sounds like he was pretty successful. He's
probably the best big head on a skateboard artist around.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Yeah, and this is even before his dog paintings. So
Coolidge had a pretty good career as an artist, doing
illustrations for newspapers and magazines. He was also doing things
like ads for shoe companies. He was making good money,
but none of his other work really sticks in the
American psyche the way those dogs sitting around smoking and
drinking and playing cards do. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
I mean, there's something very funny about the paintings, but
there's also something a little bit dark about them, Like
it looks like the dogs are getting away with something
each time, like they snuck out of their little dog
houses in the middle of the night to blow off
some theme without the supervision of their owners. Like you
get what I'm saying here.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
I do. And the fact that the dogs are gambling
is very illicit, especially for dogs.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Yeah, yeah, yes, that's definitely controversial for dogs and for
humans too. But you know, at the time, gambling was
actually illegal or technically illegal. And according to Lucy Sante's
Low Life, an amazing book about New York's Lower East Side,
in the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds, Tammany
hallback syndicates quote handled protection for gambling establishments, So that
(12:23):
meant the highest ranked city officials in New York City
were facilitating these illegal gambling halls. This included Mayor Robert
Van Wick, and that was obviously controversial because at the
same time, people like the city's DA that was a
man named William Travers. Jerome had made it his personal
mission to end gambling in the city.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Which sounds like a huge conflict. So does that play
out publicly at all?
Speaker 2 (12:47):
It definitely does. So you've got Jerome. He starts staging
raids on these gambling houses and making sure that he
gets as much publicity as possible by inviting reporters to
come along. Also, to make the whole thing extra dramatic,
he personally wields a hatchet to break down doors, So
pretty dramatic. That sounds ridiculous, Yeah, but it was all
(13:09):
over the papers and really in the zeitgeist at the time.
Like this guy named al Adams, he was a widely
disliked policy king. He owned two breweries, one hundred saloons
and two million dollars in real estate. And allegedly had
a stake in every gambling house between Battery and one
hundred and tenth Street, so he was eventually arrested. He
(13:30):
was sentenced to eighteen months in sing Sing. But if
you're an adult in New York at the time, you're
probably reading about these gambling raids every day in the newspaper.
It's kind of like the backdrop of everybody's life at
the time. But also, if you're a man, you're probably
even attending some of these underground card games, and so
Coolidge's works are kind of this wink to the viewer
(13:50):
because the card scenes are both depicting something illegal, but
also playful and absurd, like the games are going to
take place whether you like it or not, whether dog
owners know about it or not.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
I mean, that's interesting. It's like Colig just saying chill
Out is just a card game right.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Well, and by using dogs as a stand in for humans,
it all seems pretty non threatening. I mean, who's going
to raid a late night dog party? Like, let the
dogs be dogs, you know, we always say that.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
We always say that. I like how we're acting like dogs,
drinking whiskey and betting with poker chips. As dogs being dogged.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Yeah, let them dogs. You know.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
It's also worth mentioning that the Dog's Playing Poker series
is very much a boys club, like there's one painting
in the series where a bunch of angry female dogs
storm in to break up their husband's card game like
a marital police raid. And also Coolidge state of bachelor
until his sixties. So as much as this might have
been like a light political statement, he was very much,
(14:48):
as our researcher Mary points out, a dude making art
for his fellow dudes. Speaking of which we should talk
about the Masons. But before we do that, why don't
we take a quick break.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where we're talking about
dogs playing poker and doing other human stuff too. Of course,
so mego, I think you're gonna tell us about the
artist Cash Coolidge's connection to Mason's or Masonic lodges. I
know you'd mentioned earlier that he used to do speed
drawing events at them.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Yeah, so the Masonic stuff mostly goes back to one
of the paintings Coolidge produced as part of his commission
from Brown and Bigelow. It's called Riding the Goat, and
it depicts a blindfolded dog riding a goat in front
of this approving audience of other dogs.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
That's a little weird.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Yeah, just the normal stuff you'd see at a dog park.
But unlike the poker game paintings, which are more obviously relatable,
the details Coolidge included in this painting are pretty odd.
Like some dogs are wearing special circular hats, they're at
high desks, they're recording everything. One dog is wearing a
pointy hat, a masquerade mask, and a cape. And there's
(16:07):
a blindfolded dog riding the goat. He actually has a
rope around his neck which is being held by a
cocker spaniel.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
It's starting to sound a little eyes wide shut to
be honest with you.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Yeah, it wouldn't be out of place in that movie
except for all the dogs. But the part of the
reason this is depicted this way is that Cass Coolidge
was definitely in the Freemason, so that part's not a secret,
but it's possible he included some Mason imagery kind of
as a joke for his friends. There's a site called
dogs Playingpoker dot org, which is actually an amazing resource.
(16:40):
It's made by a computer programmer named Joe, and he
spoke to an anonymous Mason who actually broke down the
painting symbolism for the audience, and so this is what
the mason said. Quote Riding the goat depicts one of
the first three principal degrees of Freemasonry. The blindfold is
an important part of the first three degrees and has
a specific and symbolic meaning in each degree. The rope
(17:03):
around his neck is called a cable toe, another important
Masonic symbol. The three dogs sitting to the left at
the desk indicate the three principal officers of any Masonic lodge.
The dog to the right is wearing a red cap.
In Scottish right Masonry, this cap is the emblem of
a kcch Mason. I'm not sure exactly what that is,
but clearly something of importance. And some dogs are wearing
(17:25):
blue caps, a symbol that represents a fifty year Mason,
meaning dogs or people I guess who've been initiated fifty
or more years ago.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
I mean, it definitely feels very insidery.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Yeah, but Coolich also might have put in all that
imagery kind of as a joke for his fellow Masons. Basically,
there were old rumors that Mason's rode goats as a
form of initiation, and by Coolidge's time, Mason's had turned
that accusation into an inside joke.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
So I guess he just used this thing he was
getting paid to make as an opportunity to joke around
with his boys.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Basically. But Coolich was a real creative and he did
more than just paint dogs, doing things like he really
enjoyed making all kinds of art, and you know those
like plywood cutouts that you stick your face.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Through, like like the ones you'd see at a carnival
or an amusement park something like that.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Yeah, and boardwalks too, right, cash Coolidge patented those. He
called them comic foregrounds, and he created all these different
drawings to be used as the fake foregrounds. He actually
only patented a very specific version of these cutounds, ones
that had an image of a person with their normal
head but the sketch of a very tiny body. So
there were no strong man or bikini body ones, which
(18:37):
is ridiculous, but it's amazing to me that he's behind those.
And also he illustrated tons of books. He wrote a play,
he wrote a comic opera.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
I mean this guy's all over the place, like from
starting a bank to writing an opera, Like, this guy's
done everything.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
I mean, it's also weird stuff, like the opera was
called King Gallonnipper and it was about the marital and
the morris adventures of human tourists in the realm of
the King of the Mosquitoes.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
No, but it is kind of crazy that Coolidge was
so prolific and has done so many interesting things, but
the only thing he's really remembered for is his dog art.
And actually nobody remembers him. We just remember the dogs.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Yeah, I mean, people do love dogs. But you know,
the nineteenth century was sort of a golden age of
dog art, and so this is the generation before Coolidge.
There's an artist named maud Earl and When Lancier who
we mentioned before, Arthur Wardele and John Sargent Noble, and
they were all artists commissioned by Queen Victoria to make
dog art. Apparently she liked many of us, was really
(19:42):
into dogs and particularly Pomeranians. But Lancier painted dozens of
Queen Victoria's pets and was rewarded with a knighthood for
the work. So, you know, pretty fancy Also, this thing
trickles down because the Queen's into it and royals are
into it, Suddenly the middle classes into it as well,
and by the end of the Victorian era, English homes
(20:04):
were full of reproductions of his dog paintings.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
I feel like this was just the golden age of
dog art. I mean, what a time to be alive. Mango, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
I mean. The DVC review of this twenty twenty three
exhibition of dog art actually shed some light on why
dogs in particular are fascinators so much. This is how
the review puts it. Dogs are borderline creatures on the
threshold of two worlds, the human and the animal. We
see human qualities like faithfulness, empathy, and intelligence mirrored in
(20:34):
canine behavior. But we also admired dog's sensory superpowers, and
they're more instinctive connection with the wild. We've always been
infatuated with dogs because we consider them in betweeners, half
mirrors of our own behavior and half windows into the
mysteries of nature.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
I mean, I do like Coolidge's ability to sort of
tap into this existing human fascination but then put his
own spin on it.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
I mean, his generation of work is more pop culture
in a way. It's made for everyone, and Mason's too.
But the funny thing is that his wife and daughter
were never really into dogs. They were more cat people.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
That's pretty ridiculous. I mean it's funny though. Coolidge's work
have this light hearted element, but he's not painting for
the Queen. And I think a lot of people would
describe Coolidge's Dogs Playing Poker series as kitchy?
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Can you explain that a little more?
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Well, I actually have this in my notes. When you
go to the Wikipedia article for kitch, the first image
at the top of the page is of a friend
in need, and the caption says a common example of
modern kitch.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Oh, that's interesting. So how are we defining kitch exactly? So?
Speaker 2 (21:40):
Merriam Webster defines kitch as something that appeals to popular
or lowbrow taste and is often of poor quality, attacky
or lowbrow quality or condition.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
And you're insulting my dog's art work here.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
But yeah, I know, it's just it's terrible. But it's
also used ironically or enough self awareness that it can
boomerang back around to actually being a compliment.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
How can it be a compliment?
Speaker 2 (22:06):
Well, apparently the word emerged in the art markets of Munich,
and this was in the eighteen sixties and eighteen seventies,
describing cheap and popular pictures and sketches. And it might
derive from the German word kitchen, which means to smear,
or from the German verb vert kitchen, which means to cheapen.
But you know, the most interesting theory is that it
(22:29):
could be an inversion of the French word chic, which
basically means fashionable.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Oh, that's funny that kitch is like cheek backwards.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
And when it's used in certain context, kitch is definitely
an insult and it can definitely feel cheap. And some
examples of classic kitsch are Santa Claus in the supermarket
pictures of poodles with ribbons in their hair, souvenir snow glow.
But then artists kind of inverted the idea and embraced it.
So think about people like Andy Warhol with his Marilyn
(22:59):
Monroe or Chairman Mao Prince or Jeff Khons with his
balloon dog sculptures, those sorts of things.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
So what do we think dogs playing poker is? Like?
Is it Jeff Coons or snow globe?
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Yeah, it's kind of tough to say. In nineteen thirty nine,
the art critic Clement Greenberg wrote a famous essay titled
Avant Garde and Kitsch. It was done more to influence
American ideas about kitch than anything else. So he basically
says that urbanization and modern capitalism robs people of the
time and space they need to engage with authentic art,
(23:34):
and that kitsch or commercial art arose as a cheap replacement,
and this was to occupy people's minds and the little
freedom that they do have. And he also says, quote,
kitsch is mechanical and operates by formulas.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
I guess you could argue that, like dogs playing poker
does just that. Like Coolidge hit a nerve with his
first painting poker game and then he basically plugged in
a formula scenes of dogs doing very huge and things
which turned into commerce.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Yeah, no, that's totally it. But Greenberg also says this
about kitch. He says, now and then it produces something
of merit, something that has an authentic folk flavor.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Yeah, these days, Coolidge's dog painting sell for hundreds of
thousands of dollars, so it's kind of safe to say
he's transcended the average flea market level of kitch.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Plus, I feel like dogs playing Poker has worked its
way deep into our consciousness. There are multiple dogs playing
poker references on The Simpsons. There was a two thousand
crime thriller starring Tim Curry called four Dogs Playing Poker.
And you know that old snl sketch where the wild
and crazy guys. Of course, in their very first appearance
(24:45):
on the show, there's a frameprint of a friend in
need that's hanging on their apartment wall.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
God, that's amazing. It's so funny to imagine those guys
whose only interest was quote, getting chicks, buying art for
their apartment, and settling on dogs playing poker to a
tract chick.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Yeah. I feel like women see dogs playing poker and
just swoon.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Oh yeah, does it every time? You know? I actually
love this little anecdote about Gary Larson. Of course, you
know the cartoonist behind the Far Side comics. So he
drew a Far Side cartoon where he imagined the dogs
playing poker. Artist earlier in his career painting giraffes, chickens
and other animals playing poker, but he didn't think the
artist's name was well known, so he randomly named him
(25:27):
Gus Nickerson. And then years later he read an article
about Cash Coolidge and he learned more about them, and
he said, quote, if you think about it, a friend
in need is arguably as famous in this country as
the mona Lisa by what's his name? I just didn't
give Coolidge his proper due. So good.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
That's such a huge endorsement. And I love Gary Larson
so much. I love that, you know, he's this incredible
illustrator and cultural commentator giving big ups to another artist.
But you know one thing I keep thinking about. It
must be hard to shuffle cards with note.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
You know, that's the one detail I've never to be
able to swallow, Like it's just not realistic, mango.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
I know we'll never get over that, But how about
we end on a little.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Fact off, all right, let's do it? All right? So
we mentioned earlier that Coolidge's most famous painting often gets
mistitled as dogs playing poker, but you could just as
easily call it dogs cheating at poker, because if you
look closely, only two of the seven dogs at the
(26:33):
table seem to be playing fair. The rest are either
shiftily glancing at each other's hands or straight up passing
cards under the table.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
One thing I learned this week is that dogs really
do cheat at poker, or at least they can with
the proper training, and this is thanks to a technique
called hand targeting. A dog can be trained to use
his mouth to select a single playing card from someone's
hand and then give that card to another player. So,
in theory, someone could cheat at poker by using dogs
(27:03):
to pass cards under the table, just like in Coolidge's paintings.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
All right, well here's a quick one. In the early
two thousands, value Soft Inc. Released a PC poker game
pattern off of Coolidge's paintings, and it was called, of course,
Dogs Playing Poker. The high stakes poker simulator featured a
cast of eighteen canine opponents for the player to face
off against, including a dalmatian, a mechanical dog, an ancient
(27:28):
dinosaur dog, and what appears to be a cat wearing
a sign that says a dog, which I think is
pretty fun. The game didn't hang around on shelves for long,
but intrepid poker hounds should still be able to sniff
it out online without too much trouble.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
So when I think of Richard Nixon, I think about
the first president to ban soup from the White House dinners,
and also someone who used to call up Christian Latner
when he was a college basketball player to give him
advice at halftime. And of course I guess this watergate too.
But did you know that Richard Nixon was an excellent poker?
Apparently he was so good that most of his first
(28:04):
political campaign was funded by winnings from his time in
the navy.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Ah, that's a good one. Actually, speaking of president's playing poker,
this is a funny one. According to the Lewis and
Sun Paper, President Harding once bet the entire set of
White House China in a poker game to General MacArthur's
wife Louise and lost it to her.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
That's incredible. Did you know that at the Angola Prison
Rodeo there's an event called convict Poker, which is more
like bulls playing poker, but apparently four inmates sit at
a table playing cards in the ring and then a
bull is released and the last man to leave the
table wins, which sounds terrifying.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
Yeah, that's interesting. I didn't know about that, all right,
So getting back a little closer to dogs playing poker.
Here's the fact I've found about cats playing poker. So
it turns out that by the time Coolidge began his
series on dogs playing poker, British illustrator Lewis Wayne had
already spent several years anthropomorphizing cats for the London crowd,
(29:07):
and his fansful style depicted cats walking on their hind legs,
wearing clothes, partaking in all sorts of social activities normally
reserved for humans, like golfing and celebrating Christmas, drinking cocktails,
and yes, even playing cards. So it's worth noting though,
that Wayne's cats didn't restrict themselves to just poker. They
were also avid bridge players too, which feels very cat.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Like and very classy.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
So here's the thing that I learned, which which is
just insane to be. Do you know that there's a
real dog Ashiba you knew, named Peanut Butter, who became
the first dog to speed run a video game as
a twenty twenty four Games Done Quick charity event. Peanut
Butter used a custom made controller. The dog was able
to input commands from his owner and successfully clear all
(29:55):
twenty five levels of the nineteen eighty five NES game
gyro might. It took peanut Butter twenty six minutes and
twenty four seconds to beat the game, which was just
over two minutes slower than the fastest human time on record,
and in the month since the event, both peanut Butter
and a husky named Coda have now surpassed that record,
finishing the game in right around twenty three minutes.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
That is wild and unfortunately, I don't think I can
beat a fact about video game playing dog. So yeah,
I think you win this one, Mango, I fold.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
I love it. Well, that's it for today's Part Time
Genius and next week we're going to be trying something new.
We're going to be putting out a few episodes a week,
but we do need feedback, so writers at Petgenius, moms
at gmail dot com and let us know what you'd like,
what you want to hear, anything else that's on your mind.
And you can also find us on Instagram at part
(30:50):
Time Genius. Again, we reopened that account and are taking
messages there. So from Mary Gabe, Dylan Will and myself,
thank you so much for listening. Part Time Genius is
(31:13):
a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted
by Will Pearson and me Mongish Heatikler, and 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 Norvel and Ali Perry, with social media support from
(31:36):
Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shorey. For more
podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, 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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