Behind the Scenes Minis: Theater and Thrill Rides

Holly and Tracy dig into the role of Augustin Daly's brother in his life, including a legal battle over Augustin's will. Then they talk about roller coaster experiences and the idea of fear as entertainment.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class A production
of iHeartRadio. Happy Friday, Everybody. I'm Holly Fry and I'm
Tracy Bee Wilson. We talked about playwright and theatrical producer

(00:21):
Augustin Daily this week. YEP. One of the things we
didn't talk a whole lot about was his brother, Joseph.
Joseph Francis is an interesting figure in the story because
he was in some instances kind of a business partner

(00:41):
of Augustine Daily. He went on to be a lawyer,
and he wrote kind of what's considered one of the
definitive biographies of Augustine Daily, although it did not publish
in his lifetime. The manuscript was discovered completed after he
had passed, and so it didn't publish until nine seventeen,

(01:02):
which is kind of interesting. It makes sense to me
that Augustine Daily was so very litigious when you consider
that his brother was a lawyer and probably at the
ready to handle any case I want it. Yeah. But
something very interesting happened when Augustine Daily died, which is
that in his will he left that actor Aida Rhian,

(01:24):
who's I'm not confident on pronunciation. There, he left her
a fifth of his estate, and that will had been
made in eighteen ninety eight, and it was because she
had been with him for a long time, like he
considered her part of his success. And his brother Joseph
tried to get that will thrown out because he did
not want it to go outside of the family. Oh gay,

(01:47):
and it turned into a big legal battle. Aida got
her one fifth of the estate, and so she had
a part ownership in all of the existing daily theaters,
which the one in London actually went on for like
forty years under his name, and the others I don't
remember when they all closed down, but like so she
got a part of that business and that income, which

(02:10):
is kind of interesting. But it seemed surprising to me
that Joseph Francis was like, no, you can't have this.
You're an actor. I'm his brother, I should get everything. Yeah, Joe. No.
There is also if you happen to get a copy
or a reprint, that's usually available through reprints of that book.

(02:33):
It is also a product of its times, for there
are some very casual references to things like slavery that
are like very chill about the whole thing. When they're
talking about their early family and how they were in
Jamaica and how all of that worked. He tells a
very interesting story. There's no way to verify it that
their grandmother, their English grandmother, was very much it's a

(02:57):
white savior story of her. Basically like people who were enslaved,
allegedly would come to her for help and she would
advocate on their behalf and according to him, always always
came out successful. And I'm like, really though, yeah, in
a okay, but just not to take those sections with

(03:20):
a grain of salt. Should you go look at this biography?
It is also a very long biography. It's like, yeah, yeah,
it took me a little while to pick through it.
Tracy and I were discussing earlier how there are some
episodes that are just they're not difficult to write, but
they're hard to write, if that makes sense, Like just

(03:41):
you have all of the material, but getting it condensed
and into an outline becomes oddly difficulty. And that was
kind of the case of this, And part of it
was Joe's biography, which is so dense and in the
literary phrase style of the time, which isn't always clear

(04:02):
and direct, and you know, it's a reprint so it's
like basically a copy of a book that like a
photocopy that's been reprinted instead of retype set. So it
was like there were moments where I was like, Okay,
it's late, but should I just throw this out and
come back to it later because I'm losing my mind
trying to sussle. So if you're a big Augustine Daily

(04:23):
fan and I left something out, I'm sorry. There's a lot.
There is a lot, and it is covered in minute detail. Yeah.
It's interesting though that the story of his children dying
is what we read about. It is almost entirely what's
in the book about it. Yeah, And I don't know

(04:43):
if it's just because it was such a painful family
memory that they didn't want to discuss it very much,
or if it really was just kind of a case
of like, well that's done. It's a strange one. Yeah,
And it mostly made me think about like how devastating
diph theory was. M So we have talked about on

(05:06):
the show before, but like two children in thirty minutes
is like I can't imagine. I cannot imagine. I'm not
a parent and I can't imagine it. So I'm sure
parents just feel like the heart paying at that, right.
And he does include the notes that Augustine wrote him,

(05:27):
like basically he was sending a messenger with news and
they're very brief, but like, even in their brevity, they're
incredibly melancholy. Yeah, which is very very sad if you
also go reading the plays of Augustine daily to turn
it around to a slightly more lighthearted note. When I
say melodrama, I'm not joking. Who. That is some stilted language. Yeah. Who.

(05:55):
When I saw that there had been a production of
Leah in twenty seventeen, my first thought was those poor actors. Yeah,
just because it has to be a lot to pick
through to find like the emotional thread that makes sense
in the modern mind to the modern audience. So it's
incredibly challenging to do melodrama. But he gave us the

(06:21):
mustache twirling villain over the railroad tracks. Somehow that that
has reminded me of being like a theater kid and
going to you know, the regional theater conferences and stuff
like that, and picking up the little little catalogs where
you could order scripts from and they're being a whole

(06:44):
whole category that was melodrama. Yeah, and I think that's
probably where I first heard Augustine Daily's name. Was like
in catalogs to buy scripts of melodrama, if you want

(07:04):
to state it. Yeah, I'm almost certain it would have
been the same for me, because I too was the theater.
I was all up in that competitive theater biz. Yeah,
bring me my superior rating or bring me death. Like
I was, I was very I felt ways about things. Yeah,

(07:25):
and then I majored in college, so you know, yeah,
I um, when I was in you know, high school,
middle and high school age, I had the whole dream
of I was gonna gon, gonna go to New York
and be an actor. And by the time I got
to college, I understood that that was not my greatest skill,

(07:52):
which was not necessarily something I understood about myself in
the many years of elementary, middle and high school and
living for being in the play huh yeah, I don't know,
uh uh. But if it was fun, it was fun,
it was fun. Great. I just realized somewhere in college,

(08:16):
like when I started really auditioning for stuff professionally, I
just realized, like one, I did that thing where you
get a job to survive, and I was like, oh,
surviving is nice. And then I was like, I don't
know that I have a thick enough skin to live
this way from home, term like I will, I will

(08:36):
succumb to all of my genetic predispositions for like addiction
and misery or sure. I did not pursue theater at
all when I was in college. Beyond, I was an
orientation leader and we had these skits that we did
during orientation, and I was always in the orientation skits.

(08:58):
But I did not do theater at all. I did major, though,
in literature and writing, which were two other great passions
of mine. So it was not like I gave up everything.
I was passionate about to go pursue something practical. I
got a degree in English, Yeah, that was my other
I was a double major. And then I had a
dance miner, which was basically like, how can I put

(09:21):
together an assemblage of things that make me look really unemployable? Yeah,
because English on its own would have been fine. You
had the other two. There some potential employers that are
gonna be like for real. Yeah yeah. Anyway, Oh, Augustin Daley,

(09:41):
thank you for this trip down memory lane. I'm so glad.
I googled why our roller coasters called Montanerous in France.
Yes to this whole thing. Our listener in front of

(10:04):
the show, Greg, who has helped us set up some
of our headcount stuff five shows, had texted me about
it like a while years back. At this point it
was like, is Catherine the Great really connected to roller coasters?
You should do a show on that. I was like, hmmmm,
and I have never gotten to it, so I'm glad
you finally did. Yeah, we were talking about this because,

(10:25):
especially if one of us thinks that the other might
have an interest in something that we're looking at researching,
we'll kind of do a check in make sure we're
not about to accidentally show up to record with two
of the same episode. And way back a long time ago,
we were part of a website called how Stuff Works,
and one of the like the classic how stuff Works
articles was how roller coasters work, which had been then

(10:50):
used as an example of like, here's what we try
to do with our articles a whole lot. And I
think that had also led to you thinking that we
had already covered it on the show. I was confident
we had our hed done a roller coaster episode. Yeah,
if you had put me on the stand in court,
I would be like, yes, which just further proof that
memories are faulty. They are also like we haven't acknowledged it.

(11:13):
I mean we've sort of mentioned it in passing, but
like we didn't do anything special to mark the fact
that we have been doing this show for ten solid
years as hosts, Like the show is older, but like
we just had our tenth year as as hosts together,
and that, like we've each been doing an episode a

(11:34):
week for that whole time, and my brain doesn't retain
all of it by any stretch. And sometimes we'll get
emails from listeners about really old episodes and I will
be like, I don't I'm gonna have to do a
lot of refresh research this. And then I'll go look
and I'm like I wrote that and didn't remember. Uh

(11:56):
So anyway, So yeah, roller coaster? How do you feel
about roller coasters? Holly? I just had the most transcendental
roller coaster experience of my life recently. Yeah. Yes, I
had two lucky days in a row. I was in

(12:18):
Disney World and I had been lucky enough to get
invited by a Disney cast member to do the cast
member preview of the Neutron roller coaster that's there, which
is a duplicate of the one that's in Shanghai, and
that was lovely and super fun and beautiful. But then
the next day, finally we're a little slow to get
on this one. Brian and I got a virtual que

(12:38):
reservation for Guardians of the Galaxy Cosmic rewind. I had
been slightly nervous about it because somebody had told me like, oh, well,
it spins you and tips you sideways and stuff, and
I was like, oh, because I love roller coasters, but
like you, as I get older, I can't tolerate them
the way I always have. I need not have worried.
It's incredibly smooth. It's the most beautiful feeling I have

(13:02):
ever had in my life. It is like dancing in space.
And to top it all off, it's a dark ride
and they are playing very great nostalgic music, so like
ours was, you get to get a different track. It
shuffles up randomly and like so we're doing all of
this beautiful dancing in a black space thing. It's kind
of like if Space Mountain were like super high tech.

(13:24):
While Tears for Fears sings, everybody wants to rule the world.
And I literally wow, cried like an infant the whole time,
Like it was just so oddly moving. And it was
so moving that like later in the day when I
would think about it, I would burst into tears like
a new like fresh Like it was very, very an
oddly moving experience. It wasn't like I felt sad or

(13:47):
I mean, it was joyous, sure, but I couldn't even
understand exactly how it was targeting my emotional response at
that deep of a level. It was amazing. Highly recommend Yeah,
I do it every day in my life, can't there
There was there was a quote that came up in
the research for this, and I don't remember who said it,
but they said something to the effect of, you don't

(14:09):
need a degree in engineering to design a roller coaster,
you need a degree in psychology. And I was like,
I would argue both of those things would be great. Well,
you need the engineering degree to execute it for sure.
Yeah yeah, um, But like there's a lot of writing
about sort of what makes roller coasters thrilling, um, And

(14:31):
that's that's what that was alluding to. You're so your
a description of that kind of makes me wonder I
have not been on a roller coaster. I've been on
other rides, but I have not been on a like
a roller coaster in many years. And part of the
reason for that has been like being more prone to
emotion sickness as I've gotten older. But then also I

(14:51):
just realized as you were talking, like a lot of
the roller coasters that I have written are roller coasters
that my i'd have been built before I was born, right, um,
and like the technology has evolved, like the um. One
of the one of the coasters that we mentioned was
the Lockness Monster, which like I've ridden the Lochness Monster.

(15:13):
There was a I think a suspended coaster because I
think it was one of the ones that would swing.
That was also in bush Gardens at that same time.
That was called the Big Bad Wolf, which is not
there anymore. Um, and that was like a that was
on uh you know, both of those had steel rails,
so um. Some of the other ones that I've ridden
were wooden roller coasters, and wooden roller coasters, by their

(15:34):
nature are are generally rougher to ride on knock you around, yes, yeah,
and like the that was part of why I was, like,
I don't think I need to do this anymore, because
one of the reasons that I had been riding on
them was that a lot of this was when I
was in my teens, right, and I didn't want my
peers to think I was afraid of doing it, you know,
um and like I and so I would do it,

(15:56):
and I did not enjoy the being knocked around part.
And I'm like, you know, what if, like what if
it was a something that's more like what Holly just described,
I wonder how I would feel about that. Yeah, that
smoothness is a game changer for me, because yeah, I
love them. I also am not one of those people
who loves the ones that like ratchet you up to
a shocking height and then drop you. Like that's a
little too much panic for me. Yeah, I don't even

(16:20):
know if it's like the physiological response of falling or
if it's just like all of the adrenaline and acid
tummy of panic all the way up that. I don't
know what happens after that. I'm just like, I didn't
have that much fun over the last whatever, however many

(16:43):
years of pandemic. There's just a part of me that's like,
I don't think I need to be scared for fun anymore. Yeah. Yeah,
I kind of would just rather not be scared. And
there's been a couple of like movies that have come
out that are really scary, and people have talked about
how incredibly good they are, and I'm like that that

(17:04):
does sound incredibly good, but also I don't think I
need to do that to myself. Yeah, so, I mean
there are some ways in which I like to engage
with fear, but I know my limits and I often
have that anxiety before I get on a new roller coaster,
but like I said, on this one, I need not
have because it was pure joy. Tron is also super

(17:27):
duper fun, and I mean, if you're into the Tron franchise, listen,
light cycles are great, So that's super fun. I I
remember so distinctly the first time I wrote a roller
coaster and I was just filled with wonder, which was
like at a fair and I think I was only

(17:48):
seven and I was with my dad and he was like,
is this something you want to do? And I was like,
I don't know, what is it like? And he's like, well,
you so we'll do the kiddie coaster and I was
just like sold. I was like yes, throw me around,
Let's do that forever. But I was seven, and I
didn't know that I would lose my ability to be
thrown around without discomfort. Sure, when I was a child,

(18:14):
we had a you know, a county fair every autumn,
and we always went as a family, and we were
not allowed to ride, Like we could ride the kiddie rides,
but we were not allowed to ride the big roller
coaster at the county fair because my mother was convinced
that we would immediately be killed. She did not trust

(18:36):
like the portable nature of any of those rides, and like, nope,
not doing it. You remind me that I wanted to mention,
you know, we talked about how hard it is to
get actual numbers on injuries and fatalities and roller coasters,
and one of the things that I think comes up

(18:57):
that causes part of that problem. And I know this
has been something that's reported several times where it's like
someone will ride a ride, it functions perfectly, there has
not been any accident, nothing has gone wrong, but they
have either knowingly or unknowingly gotten on that ride, like
with a heart condition or issue, and that has led

(19:18):
to either an illness or Yeah, haven forbid a loss
of life, and so I think that further makes it
difficult to really assess those numbers for amusement parks. Yeah,
I originally was like, I should put in a part
in here that's about the big disasters. And when I
started looking at them, like in earlier eras when there

(19:40):
just wasn't a lot of safety equipment, or the safety
equipment that there was was like pretty rudimentary, like of
course people got hurt or killed on roller bass a
lot more. But then when it came to ones that
were more recently a lot of them, Like there occasionally
there would be one that was because of someone's next
agents or someone's or some you know, operator's lack of maintenance,

(20:06):
but really often it just seemed like such a random accident.
Then I was like, I don't feel like reading about
all of these random accidents, many of which were pretty tragic, Like,
I don't feel like that's adding to this episode meaningful way.
I can tell you that I do want a switchback

(20:30):
gravity pleasure railway shirt, okay, which also I think gets
listed with those words in different orders sometimes. Oh sure, yeah,
I've seen it, gravity pleasure switchback railway. As long as
they're all there. I just want a shirt. Yeah, we
need to design a fun shirt, a retro souvenir T shirt. Yeah.

(20:53):
I'm still very curious about like some of the things
that were authoritatively said about LaMarcus Thompson's reasons for making
roller coasters, and I was just like, I started like
trying to look for obituaries, like any kind of account
where somebody might have said something personal about him. I

(21:13):
was like, where are you getting this information about why
he decided to do this? But there were places also
that it was just like wrong. Like there was one
thing that I read that described one of the scenic
railways that he had built as being devoted to pictures
of Bible stories. But it's like, there are photos of
that railway and they were not Bible stories. And I

(21:34):
was just like, where is this information coming from. I
don't know, maybe he did have a Bible story railway
that was a different one, but like it was that
was not the one that was referenced there. So yeah, anyway,
this is a pretty fun one to research, in spite
of just the baffling and frustrating number of total contradictions

(21:58):
and things that were just straightforwardly stated in research. It
was pretty fun. So look at I love it. Now
I want to go ride a roller coaster. Okay, I
don't think I get to for another month and a half. Yeah,
I think a lot of the places that you go
operate year round. A lot of the places that are
closer to me are like seasonal in there, and they

(22:20):
have not opened for the season yet. So which is
when I stopped going? Right, totally makes sense. Nope, not visiting, man, No,
that's it is super busy. This is absolutely unrelated to anything.
But the last time that I went to Disney as
an adult was when we were in Orlando for podcast Movement. Yeah,
and I was like, oh, I'm just gonna stay through

(22:41):
the weekend. I'm gonna go to Disney. I myself a
little trip, and then I just like, I don't I
forgot what summer was. And the first the first like
Friday and Saturday that I was there, it worked out okay,
But on Sunday it was so hot and so crowded
that I was just like, this was not how I
should of planned my life. Yeah. So anyway, you know,

(23:04):
maybe you're going to go to an amusement park this weekend.
Maybe you're working at an amusement park this weekend. If
you're not having any amusement parks, I hope that's going
okay too. We'll be back with a Saturday Classic tomorrow
and something brand new on Monday. Stuff you Missed in

(23:26):
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