Brokering a box office hit
QUESTION Was Tyrone Power’s starring role in the film Lloyds Of London a marketing ploy?
Turner Classic Movies described Lloyds Of London as: ‘A young man’s love for a married woman leads him to help found an insurance company.’ This is surely one of the less appealing ideas in movie history yet it was a box office success and made a star out of Tyrone Power.
The film wasn’t a marketing ploy, but was based on a short story called The Bell ringers by u. S. author Curtis Kenyon. It refers to the Lutine Bell that was rung once when a ship was wrecked, twice when an overdue ship reached port. It was commissioned by Fox studio head Darryl Zanuck, a fan of costume drama.
Despite a credit stating ‘We acknowledge with appreciation the assistance of the official historian of Lloyds of London in the preparation of the historical background for this production’, the film was wildly inaccurate, not least in dropping the apostrophe in the name of the insurer.
The main character, Jonathan Blake, was fictional and the film took many liberties with historical events.
Set in england before and during the napoleonic Wars, Jonathan Blake, a boyhood friend of Horatio nelson, goes to work for Lloyd’s of London.
He uses chicanery to help his old friend, now an admiral, keep his fleet intact and win the Battle of Trafalgar.
Despite the lack of accuracy, Lloyd’s sent Zanuck a letter praising the film for ‘its excellence’. In a nice tie-in, it insured the production for $1 million.
Dennis Wills, Bath, Somerset.
QUESTION How long does it take to rear a farm-bred chicken for consumption?
CHICKENS reared for meat are called broilers. Intensive breeding has led to a rapid increase in the weight of the breast muscle. Commercial chickens are bred to gain weight at more than 1.75 lb a day.
unlike laying hens, which live for about a year, broilers are slaughtered when they are only a few weeks old.
In the eu, the average slaughter age is 42 days at a weight of 5.5 lb. In the u.S., it is 47 days at a weight of 6.26 lb. In stark contrast, a free-range hen kept as a family pet and egg layer can live for more than ten years — 75 times as long.
Justine Thomas, St Andrews, Fife.
QUESTION Why is a mushroom so called?
THE most widely accepted etymology is that mushroom comes from the French word mousseron, ultimately from the word mousse, meaning moss, a common habitat for edible fungi.
In his 1627 natural History, Francis Bacon, quoting French naturalist Salmasius, says: ‘ They are so- called because they grow . . . where herbage is very short, and scarcely aught except moss.’
Mousse also means foam or froth and this ties in with the early belief recorded by roman author Pliny that fungi developed from a ‘ kind of glutinous foam or froth’. Sponges were thought to originate in a similar way and this association may be at the root of the word fungus, from the Greek sphonggis, meaning a sponge.
Various 19th- century authors popularised an alternative etymology, which is not widely accepted, that mushroom comes from the French mouche-eron or mousseron, meaning flykilling fungus. This is an Old French name for fly agaric ( Amanita muscaria), right, which is most people’s idea of a classic toadstool.
From a scientific perspective, there’s no difference between a toadstool and mushroom, though people tend to use toadstool to distinguish toxic or inedible fungi from edible mushrooms.
The earliest British reference to toadstool is the word tadstole in 1398, followed by toodys hatte in the 15th century. This relates to a folk belief toads sat on fungi. The fact toads not frogs lent their name may be due to their venomous nature.
In 1953, naturalist John ramsbottom coaxed a toad onto a toadstool to prove the etymology photographically with the caption: ‘ A typical toadstool obviously might serve as a resting place for a sedentary batrachian (frog or toad).’
Dr Ken Bristow, Glasgow.
QUESTION In Ramsgate, a multi-storey car park was built the wrong way round. Are there other buildings where the plans were misread?
FURTHER to earlier answers, a town was built back to front. In March 1947, Frederick Gibberd was appointed to design the new town at Harlow.
He was advised that the planned new arterial road to Cambridge would run up the Lea valley to the west. As a result, he put the industrial area on the western side to avoid having heavy traffic passing through the town.
However, the M11 runs up the roding Valley to the east of the town, thus ensuring heavy traffic destined for the M25 had to pass through residential areas.
As Gibberd commented: ‘It’s like someone being asked to design a seaside town only to find that the sea had been placed at the back of it!’
Les Stitson, Barkingside, Essex.
PALMERSTON’S forts overlooking Portsmouth were not the wrong way round, as has been claimed.
Britain’s security lay in the royal navy and its main base at Portsmouth had to be defended at all costs. The advent of long-range artillery meant an outer ring of defence was needed. A series of sea forts were built in the Solent backed up by a ring of land forts including those on Portsdown Hill.
There was a fear the French could land on the undefended beaches of Sussex and march inland to seize the high ground of Portsdown Hill, from where they could threaten the dockyard.
A measure of the success of any deterrent is whether it is ever called into action. By that standard, Palmerston’s forts were a success.
Roderick Stewart, Dronley, Angus.
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