Poking fun at the Nazis
QUESTION Did The Three Stooges make a film mocking Hitler long before Charlie Chaplin did?
THE slapstick comedy team The Three Stooges first started in vaudeville in 1923 with original members Moe Howard and his brother Shemp.
Together with Ted Healy, they were known as Ted Healy And His Stooges. In 1928, Larry Fine joined to become one of the Three Stooges, but within a few years Shemp left to be replaced by ‘Curly’ (Jerome Howard).
Their first feature film was Soup To Nuts (1930), when they were billed as ‘The Racketeers’. Between 1934 and 1958, more than 200 shorts were made featuring the Stooges, making film history as the longest series of two-reel sound comedy. The film You Nazty Spy! was released on January 19, 1940, and was the group’s 44th short film. Moe Howard played Moe Hailstone (the Adolf Hitler role) with Curly as Field Marshall Gallstone (Herman Goering) and Larry Fine as Minister of Propaganda Pebble (Joseph Goebbels).
The film starts with a disclaimer: ‘Any resemblance between the characters in this picture, and any persons living or dead, is a miracle.’
You Nazty Spy! satirised the Nazis in a period when the US was still neutral about World War II.
The Charlie Chaplin film The Great Dictator, in which he played Adenoid Hynkel (Hitler), was directed, produced and written by Chaplin and released in America on October 15, 1940. The Three Stooges continued with the war theme when, in 1941, they made I’ll Never Heil Again, followed by Back From The Front in 1943.
Curly Howard suffered a stroke in 1946 and his brother Shemp returned to take his place. He continued until his death in 1955 when actor Joe DeRita joined as ‘Curly Joe’ in 1956.
They carried on until their last film in 1970, called Kook’s Tour.
Clive Gill, Wimborne, Dorset.
QUESTION Is it true that one-tenth of all Icelanders are published authors?
ICELAND is a nation of bibliophiles but the idea that one in ten of its population has published a book is fanciful. Such claims have been around for a while, and were given credence in a BBC magazine article from 2013 entitled: ‘Iceland: Where one in 10 people will publish a book.’
There are simply no statistics to back this up. The International Publishers Association is a nonprofit organisation based in Geneva that studies and promotes global book publishing. In a 2015 study, the IPA showed Iceland published roughly 900 new titles (ignoring translations) in 2015. This is in line with similar figures from the Iceland Review in 2010. While this isn’t bad for a country of 330,000, it equates to only 0.3% of the population. In an IPA league table, Iceland came a creditable second in terms of new titles published per million people (2,628), second only to that most erudite nation – the UK, with 2,710 titles per million people.
Iceland’s love of books is traced to a tradition called Jolabokaflod, or ‘Christmas book flood’. This began once Iceland had gained its independence from Denmark in 1944. Paper was one of the few commodities not rationed during the war, so books became the principal Christmas gift. Every year since 1944, the Icelandic book trade has published a catalogue – called Bókatíðindi (‘Book Bulletin’) – that is sent to every household in mid-November during the Reykjavik Book Fair. People use it to order books to give to friends and family for Christmas.
J. P. Daniels, Birmingham.
QUESTION In numerology, the number 888 is said to correspond to the name Jesus. How was this calculated?
NUMEROLOGY is the disparaging term now applied to the practice of calculating a value for a word or name, by summing values attaching to each of its constituent letters.
It is most commonly associated with the biblical Hebrew (Old Testament) and Greek (New Testament) languages, both of which were familiar to Jesus of Nazareth. Typically, values are allocated sequentially to the letters of an alphabet from the ranges 1 to 9 (zero is never utilised), then ten to 90 and, finally, 100, 200, etc.
The method can even be overlaid on the English language, whereupon, by pure chance, the word FOX takes a value of 6+60+600 = 666. The practice first arose before a separate set of numerals had been invented, to meet the pragmatic needs of commerce to represent numbers for performing arithmetic.
Thus, a letter from the units group might be combined with another from the tens and, where necessary, one or more from the hundreds.
Inevitably, such combinations would occasionally produce a valid word, prompting those of an inquisitive nature to dabble in the reverse process, converting any word or expression to a number.
The results would be compared, in the hope of finding numerical connections that might reinforce a corresponding literary relationship.
The predictable next step saw words and names invented, or their spellings modified, to enhance their mystical, numerical properties.
It is this outlook that led to the reference to the number 666 in the New Testament book of Revelation, with the prelude, ‘...so that no-one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name’ (Rev 13:17, RSV).
Koine Greek was the language in which all parts of the New Testament were originally written. It is the Greek form of the name Jesus (IESOUS) that produces a value of 888. On the same basis, the Greek form of Christ (XRISTOS) takes a value of 1480, sharing a highest common factor (HCF) of 296 with 888.
So, a target of 888 in the spelling of Jesus may be the best explanation for the universal adoption of that name, despite the Gospel according to Matthew announcing that ‘his name shall be called Emmanuel’ (Matt 1:23). David Bradford, Belmonte, Portugal.
QUESTION What are the worst lines of poetry written by a great poet?
FURTHER to the earlier examples, Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s narrative poem The Lady Of Shalott contains what must be the worst lines by any great poet. In part three of the poem, we have: ‘Tirra lirra, tirra lirra: Sang Sir Lancelot.’ I wince every time I read them. Sue Cooke, Warwick.
IS THERE a question to which you have always wanted to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question raised here? Send your questions and answers to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Irish Daily Mail, Embassy House, Herbert Park Lane, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4. You can also fax them to 0044 1952 510906 or you can email them to charles.legge@dailymail.ie. A selection will be published but we are not able to enter into individual correspondence.