January 17, 2020 • 30 mins
In a Mobits first, Mo takes the show on the road! Mo shares his love of obituaries; investigates why we confuse certain dead celebrities; and interviews former New York Times obituary writer Margalit Fox about what it's like to write about the dead for a living. This episode was recorded in Asbury Park, NJ and Fairfield, CT.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello, Mobituaries listeners. As you know, this podcast is about
my favorite dead people and things. But for this episode,
we wanted to well liven things up, so we decided
to tape in front of a live audience. What follows
is a compilation of two appearances I made in Asbury Park,
New Jersey and Fairfield, Connecticut. There was plenty of fun
(00:25):
and games, plus I interviewed legendary New York Times obituary
writer Margatite Fox. Just a few times, you're going to
hear the audience reacting to images displayed on a screen,
but I'm pretty sure you'll get the joke. So without
further ado from CBS Sunday Morning and Simon and Schuster,
(00:45):
I'm Morocca and this is Mobituaries. Ladies and gentlemen. Please
welcome to the stage. Mo Rocca. Hello, good evening. Thank
(01:13):
you very much. I am so happy to be here
in Asbury Park for the first Obituaries live. I inherited
my love of obituaries from my father. My father always
said that the obits was his favorite section of the newspaper,
and I think it's because my father had a real
(01:34):
sense of the romance of life. And I'm not being cute.
When I say that romance of life and obits, I
think he appreciated the sort of the dramatic sweep of
an obituary, seeing a person's life the highs and lows
kind of reduced to a few inches of newsprint. It's
sort of like a movie trailer for an Oscar winning biopic,
(01:56):
right It's which is usually much better than the full movie,
but kind of the the lows. It's so dramatic, and
to read a good one, you're like you're really swept away.
For instance, W J. Sidas not a famous person, but
boy what a story. X Prodigy and obscure clerk the
all important first line. William James Sidis, who was a
(02:18):
child prodigy, completed seven years of public schooling in six
months and astounded Harvard University professors with his original theories
on the fourth dimension, died today a lonely obscure clerk,
one of whose last jobs was operating an adding machine
at fifteen dollars a week. I mean, you just know
that the kid who plays young Sheldon is going to
(02:40):
win an Oscar playing that role. One of the things
that I kind of like to do is imagine certain
people with very eventful lives. What the first line of
their obituary will be. Um, someone likes say Bill Cosby,
I'm not saying I like him. His life is eventful.
So so this is the line I came up with
(03:01):
what would be sort of a first line that could
pack it all in Bill Cosby, the Philadelphia born legendary
stand up comedian who broke barriers when he became the
first black actor to star in an American television drama
before going on to star in his own blockbuster Upon
Him as Sitcom, but whose legacy was eclipsed by a
torrent of accusations of drug facilitated sex crimes, and who
(03:24):
was two thousand eighteen conviction of aggravated and decent assault
sent him to prison, where he lived out his days
in disgrace. Died today. Now, when I was in the
third grade, I loved diagramming sentences. I don't know how
the heck you could diagram that sentence. Actually I do.
(03:50):
I want to roll to see it. This is where
Twitter is so great. I went on Twitter and I said,
I have a sentence diagramming emergency. Can someone helped me?
And a guy named Matthew Brown helped me out so
any good obituary writer, and we have a great one
coming out later, will tell you that someone's obituary is
not about their death, but really about their life, which
is what I'm interested in. I've been a correspondent on
(04:12):
CBS Sunday Morning for about thirteen years now, thinking much,
thank you, and I've done probably over a hundred different profiles,
and I love doing them of all different types of people.
One sobering thing that I've learned from this whole experience
is that basically everybody will be forgotten. You probably knew
(04:33):
that already. My colleague gets CBS Sunday Morning and my
friend Rita Braver was profiling Nora Fron, the writer, producer
and the wit in two thousand two, Yeah, and um
profiling her. She had, what's that, No Fron? Well, okay,
but let me tell you something that I don't want
(04:54):
to either. I mean, but and I'm not not going to.
But Rita Braver was was profile telling her about a
musical that she had written, called Imaginary Friends, about the
vicious feud between the great writers and intellectuals Lillian Hellman
and Mary McCarthy. And Rita at one point asked Nora Efron.
She said, you know, how do you want to be remembered?
(05:17):
And Nora Efron said, to her, remembered. Lilian Helman and
Mary McCarthy were the biggest names in America at one point,
and they've been dead for ten or twelve years now
and no one knows their names. And I kind of thought, well, yeah, right, whatever.
But when we were doing this podcast, I wanted in
(05:37):
the Audrey Hepburn episode to put in a line from
Nora Efron. She had talked to me about Audrey Hepburn
at one point, and on our staff all the people
under the age of thirty had no idea who Nora
Efron was. I'm telling and these are really look, I
don't know who Cardi b is, so I'm not judging,
but like, like so it was so brain These are
(05:59):
really whip smart with the kids because they're very young.
But it tells you something. So this next segment kind
of comes out of that. It's sort of a public service.
People are dying all the time, which means that the
list of dead people keeps growing, which means that it's
harder and harder to keep track of people, and it's
easier to just confuse different people from the past. So
(06:22):
I called this segment disambiguation. You know, it's important to
point out that Audrey Hepburn was not related in any
way to Katherine Heppern, not related at all. I am
forever confusing Tennessee frontiersman Davy Crockett with Kentucky pioneer Daniel Boone.
(06:49):
Don't ask me the difference between the frontiersman and a pioneer.
I don't know, but I know they're different. The reason
they're always confused is that Bess Parker played both of
them and a coon skin cap, and only Dave Crockett
wore a coon skin cap. And now I can't tell
(07:10):
which one is which. Chef Paul Prudome is not all together. Now,
oh my god, I just got a whole audience to say,
Don Delouise and Judison they have nothing to do with
each other. They went to the same hat shop. I
(07:32):
guess Paul Berdome was a chef. Don Deloise was an
actor who cooked. Gore Vittall was a stylist of prose
beat also Soon was a stylist of hair. Neither had
anything to do with us on jeans. This is Joan
of Arc the Sainted French heroine of the Hundred Years War.
(07:57):
This is Joan van Arc, who started on Not So
Landing for fourteen years. Unless I get sued, I want
to be really clear. Joan van Arc is alive. At
least she was right before the show started. Anyways, I
want to be really clear. Okay. Oh, Molly Pitcher is
(08:18):
one of the twelve service areas on the New Jersey Turnpike.
Molly Hatchett is not. John Paul Jones is the father
of the American Navy. John Paul Jones was the basis
for led Zeppelin. John Paul Jones is a contestant on
(08:40):
The Bachelorette. They're all named John Paul Jones. And finally,
this is so important because people are constantly getting confused.
The Norman Conquest was in ten sixty six when England
fell to the Norman's, which should not be confused with
Norman Bell Love Mr Roper Stanley. Okay, and now I
(09:12):
am pleased to introduce this evening's special guests. I have
a special guest for the first Mobituaries Live. Margalite Fox
has written over four hundred obituaries for The New York Times.
Margalite is also the author of three books. Her new
newest release, Excuse Me, should win an Award for Best Title.
(09:33):
It's called Conan Doyle for the Defense, the true story
of a sensational British murder, a quest for justice and
the world's most famous detective writer, Ladies and Gentlemen, margin
Elite Fox. So, Margarlie, I said that you're retired from
(09:56):
the New York Times, But in a sense you you'll
never be retired, because your byline is going to appear
for a good long while. Because when I retired, very
very early, I should point out in June I left
behind in the can I left behind while a case
(10:20):
of Scotch under my desk. But we're not going to
talk about that, which I gave to my colleagues because
they'll need it more than I. But I left behind
probably between seventy and eighty advents O bits, O bits
that are written for the undead when they run. Is
in the lap of the gods. But they I've been
(10:40):
averaging maybe one by line a month, and so it
may well be the case, because of course I could
get hit by a bus tomorrow, that my byelines will
outlive me. Now, are you allowed to tell us who
any of the advanced obits are before they've been released. No,
and then I really would have to kill you all,
and you all seem like lovely people, so I think
(11:00):
I won't do that. And is it true that the
first oh bit you wrote was an advanced O bit?
The very first advance O bit I wrote was in
for a very major American scholar and thinker. I can't
tell you more than that, and blessed him. Not only
(11:23):
is he still alive, but he's still fiendishly productive. So
every time he came I had to go into the
computer and update is obit? Oh? Is it? Is it?
David McCullough, Mo, did you hear what I just said? So?
I know that it used to be that the obituary
(11:45):
section was where you were put out to pasture, but
that was long ago. Right to tell me about how
you even got to be an obituary writer? Well, the
child has not been born, And if anyone has such
a child, please raise your hands and stand up and
test of I, because I want to hear it. But
I'm firmly convinced the child has not been born. Who
comes home from primary school clutching a theme that says
(12:09):
when I grow up. I want to be an obituary writer.
That's never going to happen, and so journalists, including me,
stumble into it quite by accident. And as most said,
until maybe twenty years ago, the open department on any
American newspaper was Siberia. It was where they put you
(12:30):
if they didn't like you but didn't quite have enough
dirt on you to fire you out right. And it
was where they put you as the last stop before
you needed to know that yourself. But why, I mean,
it seems so satisfying, and I think I've heard you
say that it's the most purely kind of narrative writing.
You're reading someone's life from wound to tomb. Absolutely, and
(12:52):
the dirty little secret is it's the best beat in
American journalism. I want to ask about the paid oh bit.
We'll be paying attention to the paid o bits, yes
and no. But the first thing, and now I'm gonna
to invoke a pop culture reference. I feel like Bert
Lancaster talking to um Tony Curtis and sweet smell of
(13:13):
success come here. I want to chestise you. First thing
you must learn is not to call them moments. I'm
so sorry you did a very bad thing. Um. They
are paid death notices, so they are completely un journalistic
in that if you read them, basically everyone who died
(13:33):
was a saint. He died doing what he loved, and
he died surrounded by his adoring family. Could I so,
could I have a paid a bit excuse me, a
paid death notice for myself that says that I was
the president of Gambia. I suspect that would be fact checked.
The capital is Banjo, by the way. But seriously, the
(13:56):
paid notices are invaluable to reporters, and we scan that page.
I have to do it with a magnifying glass now,
but we scan it like a forty nin prospector panning
for gold because sometimes, surprisingly often actually families don't quite
know what they have tell us about alan Abel. Alan
(14:16):
Abel gave my colleagues and me many a sleepless night.
Alan Abel, who died last year at the age of
ninety four, was a professional hoaxer. And he's he started
early enough that one could at least make a kind
of scanty living at it. Well, woe betide the New
York Times in we ran his obituary, and he knew
(14:43):
exactly the kind of fact checking that The Times would
be doing, and he anticipated their every move. He had
a woman weeping playing the part of the grieving widow
because we're applied to call the family, so she answered
the phone. He created a fake funeral parlor with its
(15:04):
own business directory information listing, and had a fake under
tech taker who answered the phone when the reporter called
to do that bit of fact checking. He was a
step ahead of us every inch of the way. And
so the day after we ran his news over in nineteen,
we had to run a retraction of that open amazing.
(15:25):
Now he lived, as you know, America's self appointed court jester.
He lived into his nineties, and so this was one
of the people on my dance card about whom I
needed to do and advance over. You can imagine how
nervous that made me feel. And I wrote it. I
(15:46):
did every possible bit of checking that I could at
the time, and then, because I didn't want to deal
with it when he actually did die, I retired. But
he happened to die maybe it's six months after I retired.
But had I still been on staff then and had
it fallen to me too, as we say, put a
(16:09):
top on the story, get the where and the when,
and the all important confirmation that Mr Smith is really dead.
I had this fantasy that when the Undertaker's back was turned,
I would take out a hat, pim lean over the coffin,
and we have to decide who is playing you in
(16:30):
the movie, because this has to be a movie. I'm
more concerned with the placement of obits. Margaretie knows that
I still have not gotten over the fact that Richard
Rogers was above the fold on the front page of
the New York Times, but Oscar Hammerstein was below the fold.
And this is the long history of the New York Times.
(16:51):
Anti lyrics bias is just unacceptable. It's we've got to
put a stop to it. But as you well know,
these judgments are never absolute. They were only relatives. So
of course it depended on who and what else was
on page one on those respective days. Okay, um, Judy
(17:12):
Garland was below the fold. That really bothered me. Don't
look at me, moo, it's not on me. When Judy
Carlin died, I was seven years old. Okay, well, all right,
Dear Abbey and her sister Anne Landers were both below
the fold. Do you think they did that intentionally so
that they would you know his sibling rivalry. They wanted
(17:33):
to make sure they were treated the same. No, they
did it to hurt me because they were both mined.
They were okay, No, dear Abby and Anne Landers, as
you all know that two dueling advice columnists were identical twins,
and they had great love for each other, but also
tremendous rivalry as can happen. So born obviously on the
same day, married on the same day in a double ceremony.
(17:57):
They had a double wedding. Yes, I loved weddings. Yeah,
I remember when remember does anybody remember? It was really
bad the Brady girls get married. They had like a
special and I always thought they should like continue with it,
and when they got to the end of their lives
they could have the Brady Girls get buried. It has
real possibilities, but they're the natural constituency audience will probably
(18:18):
be themselves buried by then, so who's going to watch it? Right?
A good point I need to work on. The marketing
of this should go back to and and Abbey. Yes,
Um and Landers died first, and in fact that was
my first page one. So my husband got the paper
and said, you know, you're on page one. I said,
what the hell are you talking about? And indeed that
(18:39):
was uh and Landers and then dear Abbey died quite
a number of years later, fairly recently. But that must
have been a thrill your first page one. It's a
big deal. It was a lot of fun, high studio
mo butting in here for a second. Turns out that
mark Elite's favorite oh bits weren't the ones she wrote
for the movers and shakers, but for who she calls histories,
(19:03):
backstage players, the unsung heroes and heroines who changed our
world in large, small, and almost always delightful ways. To
honor them, we played a little game with Margarlite that
involved my producer, Harry would dressing up as the Grim
Reaper and bringing props on stage two. Well, you'll figure
(19:24):
it out. Consider this as this is your life and
oh Bitt's Margalite Fox, you're scaring me, Harry, who is
the subject of Margalite's first oh bit flashback? Indeed, it
(19:48):
is stovetop stuffing. It is Ruth scenes right, that is
Ruth SAMs. And why ordinarily would be we be interested
in doing the news oh bit, Thank you death? Why
would the New York Times be interested in doing the
(20:10):
news oh bit of a relatively unknown home economist from
Indiana who worked in quite an anonymity for General Foods
for thirty years. Indeed, Ruth Seems invented a product whose
patents had the thrilling name of dehydrated bread product or
(20:32):
something like that, stovetop stuffing, and bless her heart, she
died in November, so we were able to run the
story Wednesday of Thanksgiving week. Perfect timing. And as you
wrote in that two thousand five oh bit, today, Craft Foods,
which now owns the brand, sells about sixty million boxes
(20:54):
of it at Thanksgiving. And I had to tell you,
I am a fan. I love I'm stand. That's what
they used to say in the ad right soap top.
I'm staying. Would she have gotten in oh bit had
she died in July? Absolutely, But we were so giddy
with the excitement. There are only two times I've run
around the news room in high excitement, shrieking to anyone
(21:18):
I knew about the subject of the next day's o bit,
and this Ruth Seems was one of them. Harry, who
is the subject of Margalite's next oh bit flashback, It's
(21:42):
Don Featherstone Adventure of the Pink Flamingo. Thanks, Harry. As
most said, I've done well over bits, and this is
one of the ones that made me the most deliriously
have be And this is what I mean by the
(22:04):
unsung backstage players. We all know about pink plastic lawn
flamingos and every bit. All right, let's be honest here.
It doesn't leave this room. What happens in Anthebury Park
stays in Athebury Park. Hands up. If your family had
one on their lawn, I wish we had. Yeah we didn't,
(22:24):
but my parents were Communists, they had red flamingos. But
so it was a phenomenon that literally defined the landscape
of mid century America. And it comes from somewhere. It
(22:46):
came from one guy with the perfect name of Don Featherstone,
who was a sculptor for a plastics company in Massachusetts,
and in nineteen fifty seven he decided, let's make this fun,
pink summary product. It was put on the market the
next year and took off like a pink flamingo. Harry,
(23:12):
bring out the next subject of Margalite's oh Bit flashback.
(23:32):
That's right, you're applauding. Andre Cassan, the inventor of the
etch a sketch. Thank you, Harry. I can't believe I
just tickled the grim Reekbert. That was really fun. It
may buy me an extra few years, or it may
have the reverse effect. That just sketch was invented by
a French engineer named Andre Casson. Again invented totally by accident.
(23:55):
He was working in a factory that made something else.
There were metal filings in the air. They note. He
noticed the metal filings stuck to a plastic decale for
a light switch cover he was installing. And if you
moved your finger or a pencil point on the underside,
you got a pattern in those metal filings and that
was all it took. You had a great line. And
(24:17):
this just you right, so beautifully. First marketed in nineteen sixty,
the toy, with its rectangular gray screen, red frame and
two white knobs, quickly became one of the brightest stars
in the constellation of mid century childhood amusements that included
Lincoln Logs and the Slinky. And it just takes you back.
It places it so beautiful, like really beautifully written. Um well, Margolie,
(24:42):
thank you so much. I'm gonna ask you if you'll
stay for one more. We ended the show by taking
questions from the audience. Um, first of all, this was fascinating,
Thank you both. So I was certainly aware of the
fact that, oh, bits for famous people are written in advance.
But is there some sort of pattern that gets followed? Um,
(25:03):
you mentioned her earlier Cardi b gets famous. Do they
at the New York Times then decide we need to
have something on file about her? Or do you wait
until someone is of a certain age. Well, the rather
dark joke and open departments across america's that if you're
a rocker, you're going to be dead at seven from
(25:24):
an odor a plane crash. Sadly, but since our departments
are small, newsroom budgets are shrinking by the minute, we
have the resources only to do People who am an
actuary would also be looking at so it's seriously, we
there's no hard and fast rule. If we hear someone
(25:44):
as ill, then of course we will drop everything and
start in advance. But under normal circumstances, people have long
lives now, so we wouldn't look at anyone much under
eight unless they were excellent things going on. Um, well,
I'm curiously whether you'd want to write your own or
are you there's somebody that you chose to have right,
(26:04):
like a doctor, cheating family member? How the hell old
do you think I am? I guess I would think
that would be something, you know. I'm like maybe others
that you would you know, you would think about whead.
(26:26):
I think at this moment, I'm more likely to commit
homicide than this will push the podcast back to number one,
because we wanted it to be true crime, and that's
where it's all that. I would love if you wrote
my O bed, I already have the headline selected. It's
(26:48):
just gonna say, no, Mo, that is so good. I
will oblige you right now. Thank you to Margalite Fox
(27:13):
so much. Oh no, oh, I write I forgot, I forgot,
not that this is the reason I'm here. But there's
also a mobituaries book, everything from the death of dragons
to the death of different diagnoses. People used to believe
the dragons were real until and some guy came along
and said, no, they're made up, and then everyone went,
(27:35):
holy crap, we thought dragons were real. Sorry. That should
have issued a spoiler alert for Game of Thrones fans
on that one, so don't don't let your Game of
Thrones fans read that chapter. I hope that you will
get the book or read someone else's copy, and most
of all, enjoy it and continue listening to the podcast.
(27:56):
And thank you all for being part of this first
Mobituaries Live. Next time on Mobituaries. Anna May Wong Hollywood's
first Chinese American superstar. She was a true pioneer in
(28:18):
that she couldn't look to anyone and say I want
to be like this person. She really had to u
forge her own path. I certainly hope you enjoyed this Mobituary. May.
I ask you to please rate and review our podcast.
You can also follow Mobituaries on Facebook and Instagram, and
(28:39):
you can follow me on Twitter at Morocca. You can
subscribe to Mobituaries wherever you get your podcasts. This episode
of Mobituaries was produced by Megan Marcus, Harry Wood, Christopher Kentner,
and me Morocca. He was edited by Harry Wood and
engineered by Dan de Zula. Indispensable support from Christina Tompkins,
(29:02):
Genius Doneski, Richard Rohr, Don Epstein, and everyone at CBS
News Radio. Special thanks to Jim Norton at the Asbury
Park House of Independence and Robert Martineau at the Fairfield
Theater Company for their hospitality and technical support. Our theme
music is written by Daniel Hart and as always, undying
(29:22):
thanks to Rand Morrison and John Carp without whom Mobituaries
couldn't live. Hi, It's mo. If you're enjoying Mobituaries the podcast,
may I invite you to check out Mobituaries the book.
(29:43):
It's chock full of stories not in the podcast. Celebrities
who put their butts on the line, sports teams that
threw in the towel for good, forgotten fashions, defunct diagnoses,
presidential candidacies that cratered whole countries that went to put
and dragons, Yes, dragons, you see. People used to believe
the dragons will real until just get the book. You
(30:07):
can order Mobituaries the Book from any online bookseller, or
stop by your local bookstore and look for me when
I come to your city. Tour information and lots more
at mobituaries dot com
Hello, Mobituaries listeners. As you know, this podcast is about
my favorite dead people and things. But for this episode,
we wanted to well liven things up, so we decided
to tape in front of a live audience. What follows
is a compilation of two appearances I made in Asbury Park,
New Jersey and Fairfield, Connecticut. There was plenty of fun
(00:25):
and games, plus I interviewed legendary New York Times obituary
writer Margatite Fox. Just a few times, you're going to
hear the audience reacting to images displayed on a screen,
but I'm pretty sure you'll get the joke. So without
further ado from CBS Sunday Morning and Simon and Schuster,
(00:45):
I'm Morocca and this is Mobituaries. Ladies and gentlemen. Please
welcome to the stage. Mo Rocca. Hello, good evening. Thank
(01:13):
you very much. I am so happy to be here
in Asbury Park for the first Obituaries live. I inherited
my love of obituaries from my father. My father always
said that the obits was his favorite section of the newspaper,
and I think it's because my father had a real
(01:34):
sense of the romance of life. And I'm not being cute.
When I say that romance of life and obits, I
think he appreciated the sort of the dramatic sweep of
an obituary, seeing a person's life the highs and lows
kind of reduced to a few inches of newsprint. It's
sort of like a movie trailer for an Oscar winning biopic,
(01:56):
right It's which is usually much better than the full movie,
but kind of the the lows. It's so dramatic, and
to read a good one, you're like you're really swept away.
For instance, W J. Sidas not a famous person, but
boy what a story. X Prodigy and obscure clerk the
all important first line. William James Sidis, who was a
(02:18):
child prodigy, completed seven years of public schooling in six
months and astounded Harvard University professors with his original theories
on the fourth dimension, died today a lonely obscure clerk,
one of whose last jobs was operating an adding machine
at fifteen dollars a week. I mean, you just know
that the kid who plays young Sheldon is going to
(02:40):
win an Oscar playing that role. One of the things
that I kind of like to do is imagine certain
people with very eventful lives. What the first line of
their obituary will be. Um, someone likes say Bill Cosby,
I'm not saying I like him. His life is eventful.
So so this is the line I came up with
(03:01):
what would be sort of a first line that could
pack it all in Bill Cosby, the Philadelphia born legendary
stand up comedian who broke barriers when he became the
first black actor to star in an American television drama
before going on to star in his own blockbuster Upon
Him as Sitcom, but whose legacy was eclipsed by a
torrent of accusations of drug facilitated sex crimes, and who
(03:24):
was two thousand eighteen conviction of aggravated and decent assault
sent him to prison, where he lived out his days
in disgrace. Died today. Now, when I was in the
third grade, I loved diagramming sentences. I don't know how
the heck you could diagram that sentence. Actually I do.
(03:50):
I want to roll to see it. This is where
Twitter is so great. I went on Twitter and I said,
I have a sentence diagramming emergency. Can someone helped me?
And a guy named Matthew Brown helped me out so
any good obituary writer, and we have a great one
coming out later, will tell you that someone's obituary is
not about their death, but really about their life, which
is what I'm interested in. I've been a correspondent on
(04:12):
CBS Sunday Morning for about thirteen years now, thinking much,
thank you, and I've done probably over a hundred different profiles,
and I love doing them of all different types of people.
One sobering thing that I've learned from this whole experience
is that basically everybody will be forgotten. You probably knew
(04:33):
that already. My colleague gets CBS Sunday Morning and my
friend Rita Braver was profiling Nora Fron, the writer, producer
and the wit in two thousand two, Yeah, and um
profiling her. She had, what's that, No Fron? Well, okay,
but let me tell you something that I don't want
(04:54):
to either. I mean, but and I'm not not going to.
But Rita Braver was was profile telling her about a
musical that she had written, called Imaginary Friends, about the
vicious feud between the great writers and intellectuals Lillian Hellman
and Mary McCarthy. And Rita at one point asked Nora Efron.
She said, you know, how do you want to be remembered?
(05:17):
And Nora Efron said, to her, remembered. Lilian Helman and
Mary McCarthy were the biggest names in America at one point,
and they've been dead for ten or twelve years now
and no one knows their names. And I kind of thought, well, yeah, right, whatever.
But when we were doing this podcast, I wanted in
(05:37):
the Audrey Hepburn episode to put in a line from
Nora Efron. She had talked to me about Audrey Hepburn
at one point, and on our staff all the people
under the age of thirty had no idea who Nora
Efron was. I'm telling and these are really look, I
don't know who Cardi b is, so I'm not judging,
but like, like so it was so brain These are
(05:59):
really whip smart with the kids because they're very young.
But it tells you something. So this next segment kind
of comes out of that. It's sort of a public service.
People are dying all the time, which means that the
list of dead people keeps growing, which means that it's
harder and harder to keep track of people, and it's
easier to just confuse different people from the past. So
(06:22):
I called this segment disambiguation. You know, it's important to
point out that Audrey Hepburn was not related in any
way to Katherine Heppern, not related at all. I am
forever confusing Tennessee frontiersman Davy Crockett with Kentucky pioneer Daniel Boone.
(06:49):
Don't ask me the difference between the frontiersman and a pioneer.
I don't know, but I know they're different. The reason
they're always confused is that Bess Parker played both of
them and a coon skin cap, and only Dave Crockett
wore a coon skin cap. And now I can't tell
(07:10):
which one is which. Chef Paul Prudome is not all together. Now,
oh my god, I just got a whole audience to say,
Don Delouise and Judison they have nothing to do with
each other. They went to the same hat shop. I
(07:32):
guess Paul Berdome was a chef. Don Deloise was an
actor who cooked. Gore Vittall was a stylist of prose
beat also Soon was a stylist of hair. Neither had
anything to do with us on jeans. This is Joan
of Arc the Sainted French heroine of the Hundred Years War.
(07:57):
This is Joan van Arc, who started on Not So
Landing for fourteen years. Unless I get sued, I want
to be really clear. Joan van Arc is alive. At
least she was right before the show started. Anyways, I
want to be really clear. Okay. Oh, Molly Pitcher is
(08:18):
one of the twelve service areas on the New Jersey Turnpike.
Molly Hatchett is not. John Paul Jones is the father
of the American Navy. John Paul Jones was the basis
for led Zeppelin. John Paul Jones is a contestant on
(08:40):
The Bachelorette. They're all named John Paul Jones. And finally,
this is so important because people are constantly getting confused.
The Norman Conquest was in ten sixty six when England
fell to the Norman's, which should not be confused with
Norman Bell Love Mr Roper Stanley. Okay, and now I
(09:12):
am pleased to introduce this evening's special guests. I have
a special guest for the first Mobituaries Live. Margalite Fox
has written over four hundred obituaries for The New York Times.
Margalite is also the author of three books. Her new
newest release, Excuse Me, should win an Award for Best Title.
(09:33):
It's called Conan Doyle for the Defense, the true story
of a sensational British murder, a quest for justice and
the world's most famous detective writer, Ladies and Gentlemen, margin
Elite Fox. So, Margarlie, I said that you're retired from
(09:56):
the New York Times, But in a sense you you'll
never be retired, because your byline is going to appear
for a good long while. Because when I retired, very
very early, I should point out in June I left
behind in the can I left behind while a case
(10:20):
of Scotch under my desk. But we're not going to
talk about that, which I gave to my colleagues because
they'll need it more than I. But I left behind
probably between seventy and eighty advents O bits, O bits
that are written for the undead when they run. Is
in the lap of the gods. But they I've been
(10:40):
averaging maybe one by line a month, and so it
may well be the case, because of course I could
get hit by a bus tomorrow, that my byelines will
outlive me. Now, are you allowed to tell us who
any of the advanced obits are before they've been released. No,
and then I really would have to kill you all,
and you all seem like lovely people, so I think
(11:00):
I won't do that. And is it true that the
first oh bit you wrote was an advanced O bit?
The very first advance O bit I wrote was in
for a very major American scholar and thinker. I can't
tell you more than that, and blessed him. Not only
(11:23):
is he still alive, but he's still fiendishly productive. So
every time he came I had to go into the
computer and update is obit? Oh? Is it? Is it?
David McCullough, Mo, did you hear what I just said? So?
I know that it used to be that the obituary
(11:45):
section was where you were put out to pasture, but
that was long ago. Right to tell me about how
you even got to be an obituary writer? Well, the
child has not been born, And if anyone has such
a child, please raise your hands and stand up and
test of I, because I want to hear it. But
I'm firmly convinced the child has not been born. Who
comes home from primary school clutching a theme that says
(12:09):
when I grow up. I want to be an obituary writer.
That's never going to happen, and so journalists, including me,
stumble into it quite by accident. And as most said,
until maybe twenty years ago, the open department on any
American newspaper was Siberia. It was where they put you
(12:30):
if they didn't like you but didn't quite have enough
dirt on you to fire you out right. And it
was where they put you as the last stop before
you needed to know that yourself. But why, I mean,
it seems so satisfying, and I think I've heard you
say that it's the most purely kind of narrative writing.
You're reading someone's life from wound to tomb. Absolutely, and
(12:52):
the dirty little secret is it's the best beat in
American journalism. I want to ask about the paid oh bit.
We'll be paying attention to the paid o bits, yes
and no. But the first thing, and now I'm gonna
to invoke a pop culture reference. I feel like Bert
Lancaster talking to um Tony Curtis and sweet smell of
(13:13):
success come here. I want to chestise you. First thing
you must learn is not to call them moments. I'm
so sorry you did a very bad thing. Um. They
are paid death notices, so they are completely un journalistic
in that if you read them, basically everyone who died
(13:33):
was a saint. He died doing what he loved, and
he died surrounded by his adoring family. Could I so,
could I have a paid a bit excuse me, a
paid death notice for myself that says that I was
the president of Gambia. I suspect that would be fact checked.
The capital is Banjo, by the way. But seriously, the
(13:56):
paid notices are invaluable to reporters, and we scan that page.
I have to do it with a magnifying glass now,
but we scan it like a forty nin prospector panning
for gold because sometimes, surprisingly often actually families don't quite
know what they have tell us about alan Abel. Alan
(14:16):
Abel gave my colleagues and me many a sleepless night.
Alan Abel, who died last year at the age of
ninety four, was a professional hoaxer. And he's he started
early enough that one could at least make a kind
of scanty living at it. Well, woe betide the New
York Times in we ran his obituary, and he knew
(14:43):
exactly the kind of fact checking that The Times would
be doing, and he anticipated their every move. He had
a woman weeping playing the part of the grieving widow
because we're applied to call the family, so she answered
the phone. He created a fake funeral parlor with its
(15:04):
own business directory information listing, and had a fake under
tech taker who answered the phone when the reporter called
to do that bit of fact checking. He was a
step ahead of us every inch of the way. And
so the day after we ran his news over in nineteen,
we had to run a retraction of that open amazing.
(15:25):
Now he lived, as you know, America's self appointed court jester.
He lived into his nineties, and so this was one
of the people on my dance card about whom I
needed to do and advance over. You can imagine how
nervous that made me feel. And I wrote it. I
(15:46):
did every possible bit of checking that I could at
the time, and then, because I didn't want to deal
with it when he actually did die, I retired. But
he happened to die maybe it's six months after I retired.
But had I still been on staff then and had
it fallen to me too, as we say, put a
(16:09):
top on the story, get the where and the when,
and the all important confirmation that Mr Smith is really dead.
I had this fantasy that when the Undertaker's back was turned,
I would take out a hat, pim lean over the coffin,
and we have to decide who is playing you in
(16:30):
the movie, because this has to be a movie. I'm
more concerned with the placement of obits. Margaretie knows that
I still have not gotten over the fact that Richard
Rogers was above the fold on the front page of
the New York Times, but Oscar Hammerstein was below the fold.
And this is the long history of the New York Times.
(16:51):
Anti lyrics bias is just unacceptable. It's we've got to
put a stop to it. But as you well know,
these judgments are never absolute. They were only relatives. So
of course it depended on who and what else was
on page one on those respective days. Okay, um, Judy
(17:12):
Garland was below the fold. That really bothered me. Don't
look at me, moo, it's not on me. When Judy
Carlin died, I was seven years old. Okay, well, all right,
Dear Abbey and her sister Anne Landers were both below
the fold. Do you think they did that intentionally so
that they would you know his sibling rivalry. They wanted
(17:33):
to make sure they were treated the same. No, they
did it to hurt me because they were both mined.
They were okay, No, dear Abby and Anne Landers, as
you all know that two dueling advice columnists were identical twins,
and they had great love for each other, but also
tremendous rivalry as can happen. So born obviously on the
same day, married on the same day in a double ceremony.
(17:57):
They had a double wedding. Yes, I loved weddings. Yeah,
I remember when remember does anybody remember? It was really
bad the Brady girls get married. They had like a
special and I always thought they should like continue with it,
and when they got to the end of their lives
they could have the Brady Girls get buried. It has
real possibilities, but they're the natural constituency audience will probably
(18:18):
be themselves buried by then, so who's going to watch it? Right?
A good point I need to work on. The marketing
of this should go back to and and Abbey. Yes,
Um and Landers died first, and in fact that was
my first page one. So my husband got the paper
and said, you know, you're on page one. I said,
what the hell are you talking about? And indeed that
(18:39):
was uh and Landers and then dear Abbey died quite
a number of years later, fairly recently. But that must
have been a thrill your first page one. It's a
big deal. It was a lot of fun, high studio
mo butting in here for a second. Turns out that
mark Elite's favorite oh bits weren't the ones she wrote
for the movers and shakers, but for who she calls histories,
(19:03):
backstage players, the unsung heroes and heroines who changed our
world in large, small, and almost always delightful ways. To
honor them, we played a little game with Margarlite that
involved my producer, Harry would dressing up as the Grim
Reaper and bringing props on stage two. Well, you'll figure
(19:24):
it out. Consider this as this is your life and
oh Bitt's Margalite Fox, you're scaring me, Harry, who is
the subject of Margalite's first oh bit flashback? Indeed, it
(19:48):
is stovetop stuffing. It is Ruth scenes right, that is
Ruth SAMs. And why ordinarily would be we be interested
in doing the news oh bit, Thank you death? Why
would the New York Times be interested in doing the
(20:10):
news oh bit of a relatively unknown home economist from
Indiana who worked in quite an anonymity for General Foods
for thirty years. Indeed, Ruth Seems invented a product whose
patents had the thrilling name of dehydrated bread product or
(20:32):
something like that, stovetop stuffing, and bless her heart, she
died in November, so we were able to run the
story Wednesday of Thanksgiving week. Perfect timing. And as you
wrote in that two thousand five oh bit, today, Craft Foods,
which now owns the brand, sells about sixty million boxes
(20:54):
of it at Thanksgiving. And I had to tell you,
I am a fan. I love I'm stand. That's what
they used to say in the ad right soap top.
I'm staying. Would she have gotten in oh bit had
she died in July? Absolutely, But we were so giddy
with the excitement. There are only two times I've run
around the news room in high excitement, shrieking to anyone
(21:18):
I knew about the subject of the next day's o bit,
and this Ruth Seems was one of them. Harry, who
is the subject of Margalite's next oh bit flashback, It's
(21:42):
Don Featherstone Adventure of the Pink Flamingo. Thanks, Harry. As
most said, I've done well over bits, and this is
one of the ones that made me the most deliriously
have be And this is what I mean by the
(22:04):
unsung backstage players. We all know about pink plastic lawn
flamingos and every bit. All right, let's be honest here.
It doesn't leave this room. What happens in Anthebury Park
stays in Athebury Park. Hands up. If your family had
one on their lawn, I wish we had. Yeah we didn't,
(22:24):
but my parents were Communists, they had red flamingos. But
so it was a phenomenon that literally defined the landscape
of mid century America. And it comes from somewhere. It
(22:46):
came from one guy with the perfect name of Don Featherstone,
who was a sculptor for a plastics company in Massachusetts,
and in nineteen fifty seven he decided, let's make this fun,
pink summary product. It was put on the market the
next year and took off like a pink flamingo. Harry,
(23:12):
bring out the next subject of Margalite's oh Bit flashback.
(23:32):
That's right, you're applauding. Andre Cassan, the inventor of the
etch a sketch. Thank you, Harry. I can't believe I
just tickled the grim Reekbert. That was really fun. It
may buy me an extra few years, or it may
have the reverse effect. That just sketch was invented by
a French engineer named Andre Casson. Again invented totally by accident.
(23:55):
He was working in a factory that made something else.
There were metal filings in the air. They note. He
noticed the metal filings stuck to a plastic decale for
a light switch cover he was installing. And if you
moved your finger or a pencil point on the underside,
you got a pattern in those metal filings and that
was all it took. You had a great line. And
(24:17):
this just you right, so beautifully. First marketed in nineteen sixty,
the toy, with its rectangular gray screen, red frame and
two white knobs, quickly became one of the brightest stars
in the constellation of mid century childhood amusements that included
Lincoln Logs and the Slinky. And it just takes you back.
It places it so beautiful, like really beautifully written. Um well, Margolie,
(24:42):
thank you so much. I'm gonna ask you if you'll
stay for one more. We ended the show by taking
questions from the audience. Um, first of all, this was fascinating,
Thank you both. So I was certainly aware of the
fact that, oh, bits for famous people are written in advance.
But is there some sort of pattern that gets followed? Um,
(25:03):
you mentioned her earlier Cardi b gets famous. Do they
at the New York Times then decide we need to
have something on file about her? Or do you wait
until someone is of a certain age. Well, the rather
dark joke and open departments across america's that if you're
a rocker, you're going to be dead at seven from
(25:24):
an odor a plane crash. Sadly, but since our departments
are small, newsroom budgets are shrinking by the minute, we
have the resources only to do People who am an
actuary would also be looking at so it's seriously, we
there's no hard and fast rule. If we hear someone
(25:44):
as ill, then of course we will drop everything and
start in advance. But under normal circumstances, people have long
lives now, so we wouldn't look at anyone much under
eight unless they were excellent things going on. Um, well,
I'm curiously whether you'd want to write your own or
are you there's somebody that you chose to have right,
(26:04):
like a doctor, cheating family member? How the hell old
do you think I am? I guess I would think
that would be something, you know. I'm like maybe others
that you would you know, you would think about whead.
(26:26):
I think at this moment, I'm more likely to commit
homicide than this will push the podcast back to number one,
because we wanted it to be true crime, and that's
where it's all that. I would love if you wrote
my O bed, I already have the headline selected. It's
(26:48):
just gonna say, no, Mo, that is so good. I
will oblige you right now. Thank you to Margalite Fox
(27:13):
so much. Oh no, oh, I write I forgot, I forgot,
not that this is the reason I'm here. But there's
also a mobituaries book, everything from the death of dragons
to the death of different diagnoses. People used to believe
the dragons were real until and some guy came along
and said, no, they're made up, and then everyone went,
(27:35):
holy crap, we thought dragons were real. Sorry. That should
have issued a spoiler alert for Game of Thrones fans
on that one, so don't don't let your Game of
Thrones fans read that chapter. I hope that you will
get the book or read someone else's copy, and most
of all, enjoy it and continue listening to the podcast.
(27:56):
And thank you all for being part of this first
Mobituaries Live. Next time on Mobituaries. Anna May Wong Hollywood's
first Chinese American superstar. She was a true pioneer in
(28:18):
that she couldn't look to anyone and say I want
to be like this person. She really had to u
forge her own path. I certainly hope you enjoyed this Mobituary. May.
I ask you to please rate and review our podcast.
You can also follow Mobituaries on Facebook and Instagram, and
(28:39):
you can follow me on Twitter at Morocca. You can
subscribe to Mobituaries wherever you get your podcasts. This episode
of Mobituaries was produced by Megan Marcus, Harry Wood, Christopher Kentner,
and me Morocca. He was edited by Harry Wood and
engineered by Dan de Zula. Indispensable support from Christina Tompkins,
(29:02):
Genius Doneski, Richard Rohr, Don Epstein, and everyone at CBS
News Radio. Special thanks to Jim Norton at the Asbury
Park House of Independence and Robert Martineau at the Fairfield
Theater Company for their hospitality and technical support. Our theme
music is written by Daniel Hart and as always, undying
(29:22):
thanks to Rand Morrison and John Carp without whom Mobituaries
couldn't live. Hi, It's mo. If you're enjoying Mobituaries the podcast,
may I invite you to check out Mobituaries the book.
(29:43):
It's chock full of stories not in the podcast. Celebrities
who put their butts on the line, sports teams that
threw in the towel for good, forgotten fashions, defunct diagnoses,
presidential candidacies that cratered whole countries that went to put
and dragons, Yes, dragons, you see. People used to believe
the dragons will real until just get the book. You
(30:07):
can order Mobituaries the Book from any online bookseller, or
stop by your local bookstore and look for me when
I come to your city. Tour information and lots more
at mobituaries dot com
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