The Saturday briefing
IS THERE anything you are desperately yearning to know? Are there any pressing factual disputes you would like us to help resolve? This is the page where we shall do our best to answer any questions you throw at us, whatever the subject.
YEARS ago I saw a film of Porgy And Bess starring, among others, Sidney Poitier. I have never seen this on TV, can you tell me why? I believe there was a fire in a studio somewhere.
Edwin Bourne, Hailsham, East Sussex THE film you refer to was made in 1959 with a great cast including Sidney Poitier, Dorothy Dandridge and Sammy Davis Jr, directed by Otto Preminger. The reason it has very rarely been shown for the past 40 years or more is because the rights reverted back to the estate of George Gershwin in 1974 for contractual reasons.
And to complicate matters further there are still legal tussles over that estate and the film’s ownership. It has therefore only been shown on a few special occasions when everyone agrees.
WHY are Roman numerals used at the end of most TV programmes to denote the year they were made?
Andy Savage, Crawley, West Sussex THE year is included for legal reasons connected with copyright. It has been suggested that film studios started using Roman numerals because it looked classier but soon appreciated the advantages it gave when most people could not understand them quickly.
It’s a great way of disguising the year a film or TV programme was first made so they can get away with repeats of old programmes without people noticing.
MY sister in the USA told me there was a town in West Virginia called “6”. Can you tell me anything about this?
C Pope, Isle of Wight THE town of “6” in West Virginia was a mining community that took its name from the nearby Carter Coal Company Mine No 6. It was briefly listed in the Guinness Book Of World Records as the place with the shortest name, before it changed its name to “Six”.
There was also a community near Mine No 8 which was called “Eight” situated less than 10 miles from “6”. I RECENTLY watched a TV programme about the Channel ports and was amazed to see the docking of a huge shipment of Christmas trees from China. Are there not enough sources nearer where such trees could be bought?
Jacqui Bloxham, Wolverhampton I HAVEN’T seen the programme you mention but I strongly suspect they were artificial Christmas trees. China leads the world in producing these from recycled plastic.
Worldwide, the largest producers of natural Christmas trees are the US, Canada and Mexico. In Europe, Denmark leads the way. AS a small child in the 1930s I listened to Children’s Hour on the radio which featured stories about a little African boy who was forever getting into trouble. The stories always ended with his exasperated mother saying: “Eepamandorous! You ain’t got the sense you was born with!” Do you have any information about the stories and if there is still a book of them?
Angela Stevens, Manchester THE stories about a boy called Epaminondas (that’s the right spelling) were by American children’s writer Sara Cone Bryant but fell out of favour due to changing tastes.
However Epaminondas And His Auntie was reissued this year in the Forgotten Books Classic Reprint Series so should be widely available. WHAT is the reasoning behind the expression “neck of the woods” referring to where one lives or one’s place of origin? Alan J Underwood, Rhyl, Denbighshire THERE’S a bit of a mystery about this. When “neck” was first used as a geographical term in the 17th century, it referred to a narrow, neck-like strip of land.
The earliest references were to a “neck of meadow”. In the 19th century the first known references to a “neck of the woods” came from the US.
Bill Bryson, in his book Made In America, suggests it came from the Algonquian word “naiack” meaning a point or corner.
Others have suggested a connection with the German word “ecke” meaning “corner” with “meine ecke” (my corner) sounding very much like “my neck”.
The US explanation however is the only one that is consistent with the expression being linked so strongly with woodland.
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