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 Displaying Insults Anecdotes: 1361 Found

Par For the Course
A young actress was once invited by Ethel Barrymore to dinner - and not only fai...

Win Tony Curtis For A Weekend
Tony Curtis once volunteered to participate in a Win Tony Curtis For A Weekend c...

Likely Toast
"She's not so great," a fellow actress once proclaimed of the legendary Tallulah...

Henry Ward Beecher: Fool's ...
Arriving at Plymouth church one Sunday, Henry Ward Beecher found in his mail a c...

Fighting Words!
During the Civil War, Henry Ward Beecher traveled to England in order to solicit...

Winning Argument?
One day in 1917, the noted playwright Ben Hecht faced off against Maxwell Bodenh...

Turkey Shoot?
Helen Hayes was not noted for her culinary talents. One day, in an experimental ...

Smash Hit
A notoriously vain actor named Dustin Farnum once boasted to Oliver Herford that...

Opportunity Knocks
Despite their position in Boston society, the Cabots were not held in high estee...

Standing O
"Bear Bryant, the winningest coach of his era, had a squad meeting one time and ...

Carl Sagan: BHA
Software designers often bestow pet names upon their projects. When Apple progra...

Peter Falk: Third Eye Blind
At the tender age of three, Peter Falk had his right eye surgically removed (and...

Talk Show
Eddie Fisher once appeared on a television program during which entertainers sou...

Charitable Interpretation?
On a visit to New York, Harpo Marx was bombarded by requests from various charit...

Mrs. H?
Senator George Hoar was once enthusiastically greeted by a man whose face he bar...

Members Only?
F. E. Smith annoyed many patrons of London's exclusive Athenaeum Club (of which ...

Gynecology Final
During one of his final exams, Richard Gordon (famed for his series of "Doctor" ...

Dinner Party
While attending a private dinner party one evening, Alfred Hitchcock, whose famo...

Desert Island Discs
Guests on the BBC program "Desert Island Discs" are asked which records they wou...

Sarcoma?
Evelyn Waugh was no fan of Winston Churchill's obnoxious journalist son, Randolp...

Riot Act
Such was his ineptitude as a public speaker that David Hartley (a member of Parl...

Slit Trench
General George S. Patton never allowed himself to flinch under fire and strongly...

Sophie's Choice
One day during the production of Sophie's Choice, Meryl Streep was requir...

Madonna: Spread-Eagled in H...
While filming Evita in Hungary, Madonna sat for an interview (using an in...

Truman Capote: Autograph Si...
"The late, much-lamented Truman Capote was in a New York restaurant on one of th...

Nasty Belloc
A stranger once approached Hilaire Belloc - a master of the nasty putdown - and ...

The Honor is Mine...
"Legendary teacher Isidore Philipp offered to introduce the young Hungarian comp...

Royal Criticism
A young poet once sent Hermann Bahr a historical tragedy, along with a request f...

Basket Case
Mark Twain once attended a meeting at which one of the speakers was raising mone...

tou·ché
Two ladies once complimented Dr. Johnson on his recently published ...

No Mick Jagger
Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones once slept with a pair of groupies. "He's g...

Hard Lines
Oscar Wilde's legal battle with the Marquis of Queensberry (his lover's father) ...

Wit's Miscellany
Richard Bentley, the publisher of "Bentley's Miscellany" (a magazine in which ma...

Harrison Ford: Aisle of Des...
Harrison Ford was not entirely thrilled with the prospect of turning 60 in 2002....

20th Century-Fox?
Despite his pioneering role as founder of Twentieth Century-Fox, Darryl F. Zanuc...

Figurative Threats
One of Thomas Hart Benton's political rivals, Mississippi Senator Henry S. Foote...

Signature Insults
At the age of twenty-two, Sarah Bernhardt persuaded Felix Duquesnel (the owner o...

Recession
The latter portion of Jimmy Carter's presidency was plagued by recession. The Am...

John Edwards: Power Hungry?
Though touted as a candidate for his party's nomination in the 2004 presidential...

Escargots
Having waited an absurdly long time for a waiter to take his order in a French r...

Previous Engagement
Cher and Sonny Bono were once invited to dinner by Salvador Dali. "Dali must hav...

George Burned
Gracie Allen, offered $750 a week to appear in one of Florenz Ziegfeld's famous ...

Strung Quartet?
One evening George Bernard Shaw attended a performance by an Italian string quar...

92
While attending a cocktail party in Egypt one evening, T. E. Lawrence spotted a ...

Capitol Insult
While serving as chaplain of the U.S. Senate, Edward Hale was once asked, "Dr. H...

Bob Hope: Rats
During a show one evening Bob Hope, to the great amusement of his audience, rela...

Skinner & Shaw
One day in 1935, Cornelia Otis Skinner, enjoying great success in the title role...

Heckler
While delivering a campaign speech one day Theodore Roosevelt was interrupted by...

Open Season?
While hunting one day with director Howard Hawks and William Faulkner, the accla...

W. C. Fields: Persistent Sa...
One day W. C. Fields was accosted by a very persistent insurance salesman. The m...

Tamarack Review
Mazo de la Roche, famed for her Jalna novels, once submitted a short stor...

La Scala
While serving as general manager of New York's Metropolitan Opera, Gatti-Casazza...

Knoblock
"Do you see that man just coming in?" John Gielgud asked his dinner companion in...

Tony Kaye: Alan Smithee Pro...
Tony Kaye, peeved by New Line Cinema's refusal to grant him more time to work on...

Whoopi Goldberg: Young Stri...
Early in her career, Whoopi Goldberg found work as a bricklayer and sheet-rock i...

Yapper?
One day Samuel Butler visited his wife on what he believed to be her deathbed: ...

Rhythm Method?
Sir Thomas Beecham was approached before a concert one evening by the pianist My...

Jed Babbin & the Wimpy French
In the run-up to the war in Iraq in May 2003, President George W. Bush was disma...

Assinine Comment?
One day Clare Boothe Luce, a Republican, was asked by a journalist for her comme...

Timely Excuse
The poet Samuel Rogers once invited the Oxford scholar Richard Porson to dinner....

Steps
During the course of a particularly troubled rehearsal, Herbert Beerbohm Tree di...

Perfectly Agreeable
One afternoon in 1911, Woodrow Wilson, then serving as New Jersey's governor, re...

Lackey Guess?
Despite the charlatanism inherent in his writings, John Taylor cultivated a rema...

Moooo
When newly-crowned Wimbledon champion Roger Federer attended the Swiss Open in G...

Rosalind Russell: Timeless ...
At a luncheon party one day, a snooty young actress fixed Rosalind Russell with ...

Freudian Quip
In his capacity as a comedian on "You Bet Your Life" Groucho Marx interviewed ma...

Hollywood Ending
When the 1957 funeral of the little-loved Hollywood mogul Louis B. Mayer attract...

Great Turnip?
Winston Churchill and fellow British prime minister Stanley Baldwin cultivated a...

Chamberpot?
Winston Churchill vehemently opposed prime minister Neville Chamberlain's policy...

Rather Trenchant?
Dan Rather's first political run-in occurred at a Houston news conference in 197...

Definitely Maybe?
Dorothy Parker and a friend once found themselves gossiping about a mutual acqua...

Divine Wit
One day Bill Moyers, LBJ's press secretary, was called upon to say grace at lunc...

Crafty Reply?
In the course of snooping through their hostess's bathroom one evening, Dorothy ...

Friendly Shor?
One day while visiting one of his restaurants, Toots Shor found himself in conve...

Lightweight?
Famed heavyweight boxer John Sullivan was once challenged to a fight by a scrawn...

Mutual Feeling
While visiting Blenheim Palace (the Churchill family's ancestral home) one day, ...

Boor
One day Alexandre Dumas overheard a woman at a Paris salon describe him as a "bo...

Fitting Reply
Noel Coward once spent a very uncomfortable night at a bug-infested hotel in the...

Geraldo in Iraq
In March 2003, shortly after the beginning of the war in Iraq, Geraldo Rivera wa...

Anag-Rammed?
Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten was once invited by Britain's <...

Steve Spurrier: Auburn
While serving as head coach of the University of Florida Gators, Steve Spurrier ...

Dreadful Performance
Tallulah Bankhead was rather unimpressed by the screen adaptation of Tennessee W...

Dinner Party
Thomas Edison was a workaholic who regarded formal dinners as a waste of time. A...

North Pole
Seeking sponsorship for an expedition, famed Arctic explorer Ernest Shackleton o...

Oscar Levant: Elegy
Shortly after George Gershwin's death, Oscar Levant was approached by a man who ...

George W. Bush: Bush Quiz!
How did Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien respond when his spokeswoman calle...

Wedding Gift?
Shortly after her newly-divorced husband, Louis Calhern, married Julia Hoyt, Ilk...

Resignation
While visiting his club one evening, Oliver Herford was approached by a notoriou...

Waters of Truth
While giving an abolitionist speech one day, Henry Clay found himself struggling...

Lonsdale
"The only deadly sin in the eyes of the membership of the Garrick Club was to be...

Book Clubs?
One day Ezra Pound, offended by a remark which Lascelles Abercrombie, a fellow p...

Pearls of Wisdom?
Dorothy Parker once encountered Clare Boothe Luce in a narrow doorway. "Age befo...

Professional Humorist
Following one of George Ade's legendary after-dinner speeches, a noted lawyer ro...

Oscar Party
"One morning in the summer of 1950, Billy Wilder was sitting alone, eating break...

Punctuated Equilibrium
"After once proclaiming that [Stephen Jay Gould] had brought paleontology back t...

Prodigious Claim
Picasso once fell into an acrimonious conversation with a woman over his so-call...

Sniper
"Geraldo Rivera is over there reporting for us every single night," Jay Leno rep...

Gasbag
One evening, the rival lawyers Joseph Choate and Chauncey M. Depew found themsel...

Eat me, Zappa!
During a concert one evening, Frank Zappa was dismayed to hear someone in the au...

Delano
American observers in World War II monitoring Benito Mussolini's radio addresses...

Wedding Present
One day in November 2000, Elton John was asked to suggest the "perfect wedding p...

Smoot
While working as a cub reporter for the New York World, Heywood Broun was...

Maud
Tennyson's poem "Maud" - which dealt with love, murder, suicide, madness, and hy...

Louis Untermeyer: Speaker's...
Louis Untermeyer once returned his speaker's fee to a small group in obvious nee...

Roastmaster
During a large dinner party one evening, Clarence Kelland, serving as toastmaste...

Shamu
Even Elizabeth Taylor's closest friends made fun of her ballooning weight. "When...

Charles Barkley & Oliver Mi...
Charles Barkley, the shortest player ever to lead the NBA in rebounding (14.6 pe...

Banker's Banker
One day the legendary banker Amadeo Peter Giannini (whose Bank of America Nation...

Eddie Murphy: Career Trajec...
In the 1990s, Eddie Murphy went through a dark period during which his films (mo...

David Lloyd George: Tip of ...
Little love was lost between British prime minister David Lloyd George and Herbe...

Urban Design
In 1905, Evelyn Nesbit married a wealthy businessman named Harry K. Thaw. The fo...

Godfather of Bellies
So much did Marlon Brando's weight balloon during the production of ...

Clark Gable: King of Hollyw...
Clark Gable's wife Carole Lombard once gave him a hand-knitted penis warmer as a...

Mainly on Grass?
Charlie Sheen once produced a collection of poetry (entitled ...

Cheap Shot
During his wild youth, Joe E. Lewis stayed for a time at a boardinghouse whose p...

Hook, Line & Sinker
George Bernard Shaw once found himself at a dinner party, seated beside an attra...

Underwhelmed
Many critics were underwhelmed by Jerry Hall's nude turn as Mrs. Robinson in the...

Bastardization?
George Kaufman once peeked into the theater where the actor William Gaxton was s...

Lady Pianist
One night after a rehearsal with the London Symphony Orchestra, Andre Previn ret...

"Mrs. Personality"
One day in April 2003, Jay Leno watched Monica Lewinsky hosting a reality TV dat...

"Mr. Personality"
In 1998, former White House intern Monica Lewinsky was 'debriefed' by agents wor...

SASE Sentiment
One day during the Civil War Abraham Lincoln received a letter from a female adm...

Nice Compliment
In 1965, Christopher Plummer starred opposite Julie Andrews in Robert Wise's scr...

Gamut
Katharine Hepburn's early performance in "The Lake" was not universally well-rec...

Truman Capote: Autographs
"We were at that backyard restaurant at the other end of the island, in a bar," ...

Margot Asquith: Silent Trea...
While visiting Hollywood one year, Margot Asquith (the second wife of British Li...

Cellist
During a rehearsal one day, Sir Thomas Beecham grew impatient with a female cell...

Baseball Organist
During a minor league baseball game at Jack Russell Stadium in 1985, the organis...

Groucho Martian
While interviewing an unusual woman one day, Groucho Marx was surprised to hear ...

Unprecedented Insult
One day in court, the future Canadian prime minister Richard Bedford Bennett fac...

Rummy and the Pentagon
Upon his appointment as Secretary of Defense in 2000, Donald Rumsfeld began to r...

Phil Cavaretta: Ivy League ...
St. Louis Cardinals catcher Joe Garagiola once recalled playing in a memorable g...

Christopher Meloni: Freakshow
In 2004, Christopher Meloni was cast to play Freakshow in Danny Leiner's "Fast F...

George W. Bush: Bush Quiz!
How did Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien respond when his spokeswoman calle...

David Spade: Calling the Union
"I was pretty young," David Spade once recalled of his most embarrassing date. "...

Alexander McQueen: Custom Job
"Alexander McQueen grew up in East London, the son of a cabbie and the youngest ...

Making a Mountain From a Mo...
The critic Alexander Woollcott was famed for his ample girth. In the midst of a ...

Castlereagh
Castlereagh was not universally admired for his key role in the formation of a p...

Late Rehearsal
During a terrible row at a late rehearsal, John Barrymore told the leading lady ...

Meyer Who?
To ensure continued critical acclaim for his operas, the German composer and pia...

Classic Benchley
While attending a Hollywood party one evening the legendary humorist Robert Benc...

Smoking Insult?
During a rehearsal of one of Oscar Wilde's plays, Sarah Bernhardt quarreled with...

Stomach Turner?
In 2001, Madonna awarded Martin Creed the prestigious Turner prize (for excellen...

Afterthought
The composer Max Reger once received a nasty review from a critic named Rudolf L...

Honourable Member?
"In the House of Commons in 1967, the debate on David Steele's Abortion Bill was...

Ne'er Do Well
Charles Klein's play The Ne'er Do Well was not universally well-received....

Quentin Tarantino & Spike L...
One day during their long-running feud, Spike Lee criticized fellow director Que...

Contempt
William Wordsworth once declared that he had "the greatest contempt for Aristotl...

Trivial Observation
Shaw once found himself seated at a dinner party beside a pompous young bore who...

Royal Toast
John Wilkes, having become a supporter of Pitt's government (in 1786), was often...

Wide Screen
During World War II, the famed magician Jasper Maskelyne was enlisted by the All...

Horace Greeley: Toilet Paper
While traveling by train in New York one day, Tribune founder Horace Gree...

Iranian Cheerleaders
Following America's loss to Iran in the 2002 World Cup, Jay Leno complimented th...

Lang Portrait
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang, once commissioned a portrait fr...

Beating the Drum
In 1966 the famed Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, a passionate dr...

Water Clock
Water clocks were used in Roman courtrooms to ensure that opposing lawyers were ...

Aural Wisdom
Some 50 years after his family had left Germany, Walter Kissinger was asked why ...

Kevin Costner: Directing Joke
One summer evening in 2002, "Late Night" host Conan O'Brien told a joke about Ke...

Eugene O'Neill: Literary Batik
Early in his career, Eugene O'Neill worked as a reporter for the ...

Sidelined?
In 1922, Charles Hawtrey directed the debut production of Ben Travers's farce ...

Sobering Thought
Winston Churchill exchanged heated remarks with a female MP at a dinner party on...

Boneless Wonder
The young Churchill was one day taken to P. T. Barnum's celebrated circus, which...

Ear of the Beholder?
One day Chris Isaak was asked by a female friend to accompany her to a plastic s...

Henry Clay: Clay in His Hands
While Henry Clay's oratorical prowess won him the adulation of much of the House...

Surgical Precision
One day, a witness in Judge Edward Ellenborough's courtroom was asked to identif...

Nemesis
The Greek shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos once commissioned Salvador Dali to p...

Battle of the Sexes
"Much of this talk about feminism is nonsense," Beatrice Webb was told one day. ...

Relatively Speaking...
"Isabella Stewart of New York never thought much about ancestry until she marrie...

Guido Nazzo
In the 1930s the Italian tenor Guido Nazzo performed in New York. The only revie...

Worldly Opinion
Shortly after acquiring the sensational London tabloid newspaper ...

Unpleasant Weather
Sheridan once found himself conversing with an annoying woman who noted that the...

McRevenge
One day S. I. Hayakawa was dismayed to learn that a large American fast-food cha...

Pest Control
In 1992, Mark Singer attended the New York Entomological Society's 100th-anniver...

Margot Asquith: Self-Regard
Shortly after the appearance of Margot Asquith's autobiography, Dorothy Parker r...

Goathead? (long)
Every Fourth of July weekend, between eighty and a hundred thousand bikers and g...

Class Distinction
C. S. Lewis, entering the first-class compartment of a return train after a stre...

Oscar Wilde & Christopher C...
Oscar Wilde was once buttonholed by an American admirer. "Wonderful man, Columbu...

Cosell
"Arrogant, pompous, obnoxious, vain, cruel, verbose, a show-off - I have been ca...

French Beauty?
Early in her career, Bernadette Lafont (soon to become one of France's most orig...

Piano Concerto
Sir Thomas Beecham once found himself conducting a mediocre pianist in a Mozart ...

F. E. Smith: Wise Guy
F. E. Smith was famed for his dry wit. At the close of one particularly lengthy ...

Sally Jesse Raphael
In February 2003, daytime television talk show host Sally Jesse Raphael annouced...

Rock And A Hard Place?
Mme de Stael and the beautiful Mme Recamier once found themselves seated at an e...

King of Kings
"[The famed financier] Otto Kahn went with Cecil de Mille to see his picture ...

Manure Spreader
During one of William Jennings Bryan's numerous presidential campaigns, he was i...

Marginal Note
Though they often disagreed on philosophical matters, Josiah Royce and William J...

Hillbilly Deluxe
To deter the hordes of reporters which descended upon Barbra Streisand's Malibu ...

Grapes
During a guest appearance one evening on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien," Gene P...

Heckler
"As a professional clown," Nancy-Jo Wright once remarked, "I entertain groups at...

Pussycat
"Defense Secretary [James R.] Schlesinger tended to speak his mind, especially w...

Martinelli
One evening, Giovanni Martinelli visited the opera to see a fellow Italian in th...

Hall of Shame
In the third round of a notorious heavyweight boxing match between Mike Tyson an...

George Burned?
"Gracie didn't marry me because I was a sex symbol," George Burns declared after...

Inclement Insult?
Winston Churchill and British Labor leader Clement Atlee cultivated a first-rate...

Lawrence Whelk?
One day Milton Berle sat down at the comedians' Round Table at the Hillcrest Cou...

Bridge Club
While playing bridge at his club one night, George Kaufman expressed his extreme...

Tunnel of Love?
Barry Crimmins, once fell into a discussion concerning the 'struggle for the sou...

Frank Lloyd Wrong?
One day during the filming of L.A. Confidential, Kevin Spacey found himse...

Maugham Lambasted
The success of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth (which drew upon his expe...

Woody Dukakis?
While campaiging for the Vice Presidency in 1988, Dan Quayle fired a surprisingl...

A.S.S. Enterprise?
Leaving the Algonquin Hotel one evening, a well-lubricated Robert Benchley found...

Gods And Monsters
Sergei Koussevitzky, the toast of Boston, was once approached at a reception by ...

Russell Crowe: 40 Odd Foot ...
A hapless journalist once asked Russell Crowe what was happening with his band "...

Fox in the Hole?
Charles Fox once asked George Selwyn whether he had attended the execution of a ...

Edna Ferber
One day Noel Coward encountered the author Edna Ferber, who happened to be weari...

Hoare-Laval
In 1935, British foreign secretary Sir Samuel Hoare reached an agreement with hi...

Whistler & Wilde
Not surprisingly, James Whistler and Oscar Wilde, both notorious attention-lovin...

Stubborn as a Fox?
In November 1779, Charles Fox, having delivered a vitriolic speech attacking gov...

Fire and Ice
One wintry evening, Grant entered a hotel in Galena, Illinois. Sitting by the fi...

Big & Tall
George Bernard Shaw, tall and lanky, stood in marked contrast to his rotund riva...

Courting Jusitce?
When Robert Hutchins was dean of the Yale Law School, he once fell into conversa...

Brain vs Brawn
The celebrated dancer Isadora Duncan once wrote to George Bernard Shaw declaring...

$500
While covering the Russian war in Afghanistan, BBC correspondent John Simpson wa...

Narcissist
"Tell me," Oscar Levant once asked his friend and fellow pianist George Gershwin...

Noble Soul
A Prussian nobleman who had been a revolutionary of sorts in his own country onc...

Bootblack
The great pianist Ignace Jan Paderewski was approached in Boston one day by a bo...

Assinine Report?
When General "Fighting Joe" Hooker was appointed commander in chief of the Union...

Future Prospects
One day shortly after assuming the management of the New York Mets, Casey Stenge...

Bummer
Bob Costas once asked Houston Oilers coach Bum Phillips why he always took his w...

Ode to Posterity
Jean Jacques Rousseau once sent Voltaire a copy of his "Ode to Posterity," seeki...

Reconciliation
While visiting the Garrick Club one New Year's Eve, Freddy Lonsdale was advised ...

Unbalanced Ticket?
Senator Joe Lieberman (Al Gore's running-mate) once jokingly suggested running w...

Lead Zeppelin?
One day the Who's late drummer Keith Moon told Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and the ...

Wonderful Evening
"I have had a perfectly wonderful evening," Groucho Marx once declared as he was...

Classic Kendal
During a rehearsal one day, Dame Madge Kendal asked a manager to bring a kitchen...

Slip Slip Rejection Slip
The style of famed experimental writer Gertrude Stein was not universally admire...

Fool
While attending a party one evening, Dorothy Parker was confronted by an arrogan...

Brief Exchange
One day Heinrich Heine was visited by a friend. Finding him sitting glumly at hi...

Close Harmony
During a particulary dismal dress rehearsal of Dorothy Parker's play ...

Fascist Novel
Dorothy Parker once reviewed a novel by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. "This...

Rural Welcome
France's Henry IV was passing through a small town when a deputation of local bu...

Kennedy Wit
"Caroline's very bright," JFK's father Joseph once remarked of his granddaughter...

Tempo
Merit Rosenthal was once badgered into attending a recital given by a mediocre s...

Girl's Best Friend
The London hostess Mrs. Ronald Greville was noted as much for her vanity as for ...

Overdue Comment?
Walter Sickert was once visited in his studio by two young men who rather overst...

Honorable Member
Sheridan was once asked to apologize for having insulted a fellow Member of Parl...

Ambition
A young man once asked Mozart for advice on composing a symphony. Mozart replied...

Friendly Reply
George Bernard Shaw once sent Winston Churchill a note inviting him to the debut...

Calamity
Benjamin Disraeli was onced asked to define the difference between a calamity an...

Game For Music?
While visiting a restaurant one evening, George Bernard Shaw and a friend found ...

Lambasted?
In the course of a lecture one day, Charles Lamb was rudely interrupted by a his...

Jerkus Maximus?
The sports writer John Kieran was once invited to address a Latin class at an ex...

Social "Science"?
The Nobel-prize winning economist George Stigler was once asked why sociology, p...

Ann Landers: Embassy Reception
While attending an embassy reception one evening, the syndicated columnist Ann L...

Harold Macmillan: Fathers a...
Among Harold Macmillan's fiercest critics was his own son, Maurice, who once sen...

Tedious
While attending the premiere of one of his plays at the Theatre Francais with a ...

Shouts and Murmurs
Alexander Woollcott was once asked to sign a first-edition copy of one of his bo...

Heaven and Hell
Lord Desborough was infuriated one day to find his obituary printed in ...

Osama & Geraldo
"According to the New York Daily News," Jay Leno reported shortly after t...

Tyson Tattoo
Just days before a boxing match in February 2003, Mike Tyson was seen sporting a...

Classy Response
Barbara Cartland was once interviewed for the BBC radio program "Today". The int...

Dorothy Parker: Guest Book
Though William Randolph Hearst frequently invited prominent Hollywood personalit...

Ronald Reagan: Wooden Speaker?
Ronald Reagan, whom Clark Clifford once famously dubbed an amiable dunce, was no...

Head Games
After the first few seasons of "Moonlighting," Bruce Willis and Cybill Sheppard,...

Calling Card
George Bernard Shaw once received a calling card from a certain woman noted for ...

Coolidge
One day in 1933, Dorothy Parker was informed that former president Calvin Coolid...

Faster, Better, Cheaper
One day Jay Leno was surprised to learn that NASA's motto is 'Faster, Better, Ch...

Royal Insult
Famed paparazzo Glenn Harvey once found himself speaking with Lady Diana Spencer...

Fairy Princess
One day Lady Caroline Lamb had a dispute with her cousin, Lord Hartington, while...

Evita
Eva Peron rose from obscurity through a combination of talent, beauty, and oppor...

Wham!
The Guiness Book of World Records once listed Alexander Woollcott's revie...

Hot Ticket?
One day Christopher Atkinson began a lecture by explaining that he would be exam...

King Lear
Eugene Field was once commissioned by the Denver Tribune to review a prod...

Morgan's Yacht
J. P. Morgan once found himself discussing his yacht with a fellow financier. "I...

Classic Bono
Shortly after Jacques Chirac was elected President of France in 1995, U2 frontma...

Going Deaf
One day in April 2003, Jay Leno learned that Bill Clinton was said to be going d...

Heinous Marriage
In 1841, the poet Heinrich Heine married Eugenie Mirat, an uneducated, boorish, ...

Gasbag
At the Oxford Union one day in 1926, Winston Churchill tapped the portly R.B. Ha...

Morley
Robert Morley once bumped into his old friend and fellow actor Llewellyn Rees, w...

Remembrance
While attending one of Paderewski's farewell performances one evening, Merit Ros...

Blithe Spirits
During a difficult rehearsal of Blithe Spirit one day, fellow thespians C...

Asinine Insult
Henry Clay and Massachusetts senator Daniel Webster were chatting outside Washin...

Rudy Giuliani: SNL
After the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington in September 2001, comedy...

Damn Fool
"I see in The Times today," George V's private secretary remarked one day...

Von Trauma?
Shortly after his victory at El Alamein, General Montgomery dined with the captu...

Introducing von Bulow...
While hurrying up a narrow, dimly-lit staircase one day, the conductor Hans von ...

Connoisseur
Johannes Brahms was once invited to dinner by a noted wine connoisseur. In the c...

Bush's Poodle
British Prime Minister Tony Blair was harshly criticized for his support of Geor...

Iron Lady
British prime minister Margaret Thatcher was famed for her domineering manner. D...

Chubb Peabody
According to some of his detractors, Massachusetts Governor Chubb Peabody had ha...

Bennett & Edwards
Before embarking upon a political career future Canadian prime minister Richard ...

John A. Macdonald
While serving as Attorney-General for Upper Canada in the early 1860s, John A. M...

Martin O'Malley: O'Malley's...
Shortly after winning the Baltimore mayoral race (with a 91% mandate) in 2002, M...

Diane Keaton & Jack Nichols...
Shortly after the release of Nancy Meyers's Something's Gotta Give (in 20...

David McNee: Hospital Speech
"When I was Commissioner for Police," Sir David McNee once recalled, "I was invi...

Mick Jagger: Laughter Lines
While attending a party one evening, the jazz singer George Melly was introduced...

John Mayer: Tall Boy
"People do seem surprised at how tall I really am," 6'3" John Mayer once remarke...

Jackie Gleason: Toots Shor'...
While playing golf with Jackie Gleason one day, Toots Shor racked up a brutal sc...

Groucho Marx: Bad Review
"I didn't like the play," Groucho Marx once remarked, "but then I saw it under a...

Groucho Marx: Good Looks
"She got her good looks from her father," Groucho Marx once remarked of an acqua...

Diana Taurasi: Booing?
In 2004, the University of Connecticut Huskies won a hard-fought game against th...

Young Al Franken: First Com...
Al Franken wrote his first comedy sketch one day in the second grade. "To make f...

Simon Cowell: Star in England
"Pop Idol" (from which "American Idol" was later spawned) made its insult-prone ...

Kevin Costner: Neat
After watching Madonna perform one night, Kevin Costner made his way backstage t...

Jack E. Leonard: Let's Play...
During a show one night, comedian Jack E. Leonard was heckled by a man in the au...

Bette Davis: Good Times
While dining in a restaurant one evening, Bette Davis spotted a starlet leaving....

Boston
Oliver Herford was no fan of Boston. "When I go abroad, I always sail from Bosto...

The Powers That Be (long)
Director Andy Tennant anticipated having difficulty obtaining permission to film...

Unearned Increment
Following his marriage to the heiress Grace Joynson in 1895, William Hicks adopt...

Fishy Story
Irked during a performance by a large group of coughing visitors, John Barrymore...

Previous Engagement
A producer's assistant once telephoned John Barrymore and explained that, speaki...

Open Grave
While attending a funeral one day, John Barrymore noticed an elderly gentleman l...

Johnson's Patron
During the eleven years which he spent compiling his famous dictionary, Samuel J...

Cordial Relationship?
Ferenc Molnar was intermittently involved in a variety of lively literary feuds....

Cold Comfort
"On the first night of that unfortunate play Henry James's ...

Fred Allen: Scary Thought
Fred Allen once spotted a haggard, unkempt, long-haired cellist in the orchestra...

Eating Crow?
In the middle of one of Henry Ward Beecher's most potent political speeches, a m...

84th Cousins, Twice Removed?
While touring with the Boston Celtics, Red Auerbach, the team's coach, bumped in...

Minor Omission
One morning while teaching English composition at Yale University, John Berdan r...

Gossip
The famed theater manager Lilian Baylis vehemently discouraged romances between ...

Bracken's Hair
Winston Churchill appointed his closest friend, Brendan Bracken, to serve as Min...

Upstaged
Despite Dirk Benedict's successful roles on such hit programs as "Battlestar Gal...

Gold Digger
Richelieu was once informed that an elderly, rich, rather dim-witted widow of hi...

Rigaudy Portrait?
The French painter Hyacinthe Rigaud was once commissioned to paint the portrait ...

West Wing
Former Attorney General Janet Reno was hardly famous for her feminine charms. Sh...

Wayne Gretzky: Pipe Cleaner
By the time Wayne Gretzky was six years old he was already skating with 10-year-...

Wallensteined?
While conducting the New York Philharmonic, Bruno Walter, noticed that Alfred Wa...

William Wordsworth & Willia...
One day Charles Lamb happened to hear William Wordsworth declare that he could w...

Dingo Starr?
After joining the Beatles, Ringo Starr was treated as a "faithful spaniel." John...

Classic Lemons
With his stellar 599-343 career win-loss record, legendary college basketball co...

GBS
Having spotted George Bernard Shaw standing alone in a corner during her dinner ...

Woods & Griffith
In 1998, Melanie Griffith co-starred with James Woods in a Larry Clark film enti...

Scotsman's Handkerchief
After dining with several sheriffs and judges at a formal Old Bailey banquet (in...

Harvard U?
The eminent Greek scholar Paul Shorey once met Robert Hutchins on the University...

Harp
In 1936, Salvador Dali, a huge fan of the Marx Brothers work, met Harpo Marx in ...

Hopping Mad
Dennis Hopper had a reputation for causing turbulence on the set. Was it deserve...

Bach Specialist
The famed harpsichordist Wanda Landowska once found herself arguing with another...

Celine Dion: Celine Dion Jokes
There is no shortage of jokes about Celine Dion's music. One day in 2002, for ex...

Kiss This!
After her arrest and conviction by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for tax ev...

Patriotism
After he was appointed Slade Professor of Fine Arts at University College, Londo...

Christina Aguilera: Slutty ...
Christina Aguilera once found herself watching her "Lady Marmalade" video - with...

Obliging Johnson
Johnson once found himself engaged in a lengthy argument with a dim-witted gentl...

Nasty and True?
Samuel Johnson, according to legend, once told an aspiring writer that his manus...

Vegetables
In 1965, when the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) opened its doors...

Longfellow & the Queen
"I assure you, Mr. Longfellow," the queen once told the poet, "you are very well...

Pecker
In August 1999, "60 Minutes" did a story on lobbyists in Washington: "The power ...

Mitford & Evans
Dame Edith Evans was once informed that the noted writer Nancy Mitford was stayi...

Thinner Author?
In 1984, bookstores began selling a new novel by Richard Bachman entitled ...

Sad Case?
Frank Case once met a dejected Faulkner in the lobby of New York's Algonquin Hot...

Dim Bulb?
Sheridan's son Tom had no illusions about political corruption. "Many men who ar...

Fontenelle
When various accounting anomalies were discovered at the French Academy, one of ...

Royal Insult
While conversing with the philosopher Bernard de Fontenelle one day, Louis XIV r...

Kate Beckinsale: Like Mothe...
Kate Beckinsale was once asked whether her four-year-old daughter had discovered...

Farcade?
One day during his stay in London, Benjamin Franklin was invited by an English p...

Publisher's Bible
One day Lord Byron gave his publisher, John Murray, a handsomely bound Bible, it...

Cairo Bazaar
"I was walking through the bazaars of Cairo," Sir Ronald Storrs once recalled, "...

Sumner
Little love was lost between Ulysses S. Grant and Massachusetts senator Charles ...

Cupboard
New York Times drama critic Clive Barnes once attended a mediocre play ca...

Jim Carrey: Comic Debut
One day when he was 15 years old, Jim Carrey visited a Yuk Yuk's comedy club in ...

Scribble! Scribble!
Edward Gibbon once presented the Duke of Gloucester (brother of King George III)...

Jacko's Nose
One evening on "The Tonight Show" Jay Leno announced that Michael Jackson had ha...

Grudge Match
While campaigning for the governorship against George Pataki, Andrew Cuomo, a "h...

Wellington: French Officers
When several French officers, embittered by their recent defeat at Waterloo, tur...

George Bush: Mixed Metaphor
George Bush (Sr), famed for his many priceless verbal bloopers, bore the brunt o...

Dark Angel?
"She [black singer and entertainer Lena Horne] had been sent to a camp in the So...

ChEE Pass?
Isabella Gardner, a native New Yorker, was once called upon by a grande dame of ...

Roots
Detlev von Liliencron once spent an evening conversing with a group of local nob...

Lincoln's Boots
Abraham Lincoln was visited one day by an aristocratic young English traveler. W...

Dennis McKinley: Being a Ca...
One day in June 2003, Jay Leno reported that Arizona Cardinals fullback Dennis M...

Dog's Dinner
"Ida Patlanski, a visiting British friend of ours, summed up New York's humour f...

Team Meeting
Shortly after signing Ivan Golac, a Yugoslav international, legendary Southampto...

Self-Made Man
One day during his brief stint as a Congressman, Horace Greeley found himself co...

Catherine Zeta-Jones: Old D...
Many eyebrows were raised when Catherine Zeta-Jones married Michael Douglas, a m...

Twice Shy?
Frank Harris, editor of the Saturday Review, once hosted a gala dinner at...

Half Wit
Paderewski was once invited by an English duchess to perform at one of her dinne...

Palmerston
"If I were not a Frenchman," Lord Palmerston was once gallantly told, "I should ...

Inferiors
A friend of Dorothy Parker's once endeavored to convince her of the fine quality...

Whist
While playing whist (a precursor to the game of bridge) one evening, Samuel Parr...

Hopper & Bennett
The famed Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper once printed a nasty story abo...

Fascist Salute
One day in 1937, Oswald Mosley (the founder of the British Union of Fascists) sp...

Sleeping Cure
The Nobel Prize-winning chemist Emil Fischer was once approached by the novelist...

Orient Pearls
While editing the weekly magazine Household Words one day Charles Dickens...

Sober Thought
Winston Churchill, noted for his fondness for drink and fine cigars, had many ru...

Trash Talk
Like most umpires, Bill Klem took a lot of abuse from angry players. "I just tho...

Beaverbrook
While visiting the washroom in his London club one day, Edward Heath happened to...

High Hopes
"As a boy in Swansea Harry Secombe's English teacher had high hopes for him, dec...

Two Bit Critic
While dining at the Belvedere Hotel with her husband William Howard and his fami...

Comic Insult
The stand-up comic Katie Davis, whose material was largely inspired by her husba...

Red-Hot Stove
In the early 1860s, Secretary of War Simon Cameron was implicated in a scandal i...

Ham Actor
During a scene in Jane Eyre in which Orson Welles was to be burned to dea...

Rent-a-Wreck
After leaving university in 1972, David Schwartz set up Rent-a-Wreck... as a jok...

Sandman
A young dramatist, eager for Carl Sandburg's opinion, once invited the poet to a...

Blowin' in the Wind
1963 marked the appearance of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, and with it the...

Miraculous Performance
One evening Noel Coward and Lady Diana Cooper attended a performance featuring a...

Legal Hell
One day, two cantankerous Massachusetts state senators had an argument which end...

Crappy Architecture?
"Leo Pavia was driving through Hastings with James Agate. Leo stared at the buil...

Louis Philippe
Talleyrand was openly contemptuous of the manner in which Louis Philippe handled...

Expectant Mother
"My first public appearance was not a success," the reporter Leslie Mitchell onc...

War Effort
When America entered World War I in 1917, Columbia University president Nicholas...

Heckler
Irked by the constant interruptions of a noisome heckler one day, A. E. Smith pa...

Boo Hiss
One evening, Oskar Blumenthal and the critic Ludwig Sternaux attended the debut ...

Vice Versa
One New Years Eve, Joan Collins split up with boyfriend Arthur Loew, Jr. "You're...

Mick's Hair
In 1963, David Bowie saw the Rolling Stones open for Little Richard at the Brixt...

Memorable Meeting
An inebriated man once stumbled up to Groucho Marx, slapped him on the back, and...

Good Old Jerry Reuss
In 1988, Chicago White Sox pitcher Jerry Reuss won his 200th career game just sh...

Indecent Proposal?
Paul Newman was once asked by a radio interviewer whether he could be enticed to...

Raw Hatred?
Little love was lost between Irene Sharaff and Faye Dunaway. "Yes, you may enter...

Leo the Lion
Director Marshall Neilan cultivated a first-rate rivalry with MGM chief Louis B....

It's Monday Night - Time fo...
Every Monday night for years, viewers of "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" have b...

Wretched Wither
Dryden once declared of George Wither's verses that "if they rhymed and rattled ...

Churchill's Brandy
Winston Churchill often dined with friends, dignitaries and celebrities at Chart...

Planes, Trains, and Automob...
While traveling on a train one day, Sir Thomas Beecham was joined in his non-smo...

Hermann Goering Apology
While shuffling along a crowded railroad platform in Rome one day, Hermann Goeri...

Guess?
One day Arnold Schwarzenegger passed a heavy woman and noticed that she was wear...

To a Schweiger...
Hungarian author and playwright Ferenc Molnar was once pestered for a loan by a ...

Dim Bulbs
The court of James I boasted a rather dim envoy from France, of whom the king on...

Aaaaawwwwwoooooo!
One Saturday, a stray dog stopped by the Benny family home and began howling ben...

Cool Calculation
One day, Samuel Johnson informed his former Oxford tutor that he planned to comp...

Superb Compliment
In 1930, the novelist Rex Stout, having built (with his own hands) an immense fo...

Gary --itter?
Many celebrities were not amused when, in 2002, an updated list of Cockney const...

Raquel Belch?
Many celebrities were not amused when, in 2002, an updated list of Cockney const...

Emma Freuds?
Many celebrities were not amused when, in 2002, an updated list of Cockney const...

D'Oyly -arte?
Many celebrities were not amused when, in 2002, an updated list of Cockney const...

Timeless Question
"A man whom we had never seen before was wished on us for luncheon one day... He...

Pas de Deux
After the debut performance of Billy Rose's "The Seven Lively Arts" on Broadway,...

Russell Crowe: Reverse Anat...
Russell Crowe was once upset to learn that Joan Collins had previously been a re...

Drinkin' Lincoln?
Abraham Lincoln's political nemesis, Stephen Douglas, attempting to discredit hi...

P. G. Wodehouse: Heavy Duty?
P. G. Wodehouse once observed of a large woman that "she looked as if she had be...

Theatre of Imagination
Actress Ruth Gordon once enthusiastically told George Kaufman about her latest p...

Timeless Insult
Legedary director Billy Wilder was once asked what he thought a certain new film...

Fish Dish
"Invited - with wife, Rachel - to join friends for dinner, I duly arrived, dined...

Punishment for Bigamy
British prime minister John Russell was once asked his opinion vis-a-vis the pro...

Gasbag
While taunting Gordon Hewart one day about his sizable girth, F. E. Smith asked ...

Going Down?
Shortly after the creation of the Actors' Equity Association (in 1913), George M...

Irons in the Fire
After her first manuscript was rejected by several publishing houses, Elinor Gly...

Pshaw?
One evening, a young George Bernard Shaw met the celebrated Oscar Wilde at the L...

Augean Stables
Morris Cohen was once approached by a student at the end of his introductory phi...

Ingratitude
Gerald Du Maurier once sent Charles Laughton a glowing letter, along with a gift...

Courtney Cock?
During a guest appearance on Howard Stern's notoriously rude radio show one day ...

Fritz Kreisler
The noted violinist Fritz Kreisler was once asked by a society hostess how much ...

Merde
One evening, Erik Satie attended the debut performance of Debussy's "La Mer" (th...

Rossini Roast
Rossini was visited one day by a man seeking his opinion of a pair of oratorios ...

Crossini?
Rossini was in the habit of marking errors in his students' compositions with sm...

Rock Journalism
Frank Zappa was not always delighted by his coverage in the music press. "I stil...

Attack of the Clones
While Hayden Christensen loved playing the role of Luke Skywalker in the Star Wa...

Critical Reception(ist)
Jack Kerouac's beatnik writing was not universally well-received. "That's not wr...

Conspiracy of Silence
When, following Tennyson's death, the mediocre poet Sir Lewis Morris was not amo...

Yapper
A typically talkative barber once asked King Archelaus how he wished to have his...

Broken Windows?
"Bill Gates and the president of General Motors have met for lunch, and Bill is ...

Idiot Producer
"Akira Kurosawa was no stick-in-the-mud. When a production company proposed to s...

Rochester
George Kaufman, while walking along Fifth Avenue in New York with his wife one d...

Nuclear Family?
At a social function one evening Lord North found himself conversing with a cert...

Million Monkeys
"We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will ev...

Violinist
While attending a musical party one day, George Bernard Shaw was asked by his ho...

Tom Arnold & Roseanne Barr
Tom Arnold and Roseanne Barr exchanged many nasty insults following their divorc...

Farrah Fawcett Situation
One evening George W. Bush appeared as a guest on "The Late Show with David Lett...

Speeding Harpo
One day Harpo Marx was stopped for speeding on his way to a matinee Marx Brother...

Paula Trashed
In July 2003, Paula Jones, famed for her allegations (of sexual misconduct) agai...

Don Rickles: Enter Sinatra
Few comics dared to make jokes at Frank Sinatra's expense. Richard Belzer, howev...

$urrealist
Salvador Dali - who produced shirts, hats, ashtrays, postage stamps, brandy bott...

Porcupine
Notoriously cantankerous, Warner Bros. chief Jack Warner fought with practically...

Aussie English
Carl Laemmle once asked a new scriptwriter from Australia how long he had been i...

Peephole
While touring with Nine Inch Nails (NIN) in 1994, Courtney Love developed a seri...

Passerby
At a party one evening James Whistler found himself buttonholed by a notorious b...

Edison's Phonograph
One day the famed journalist Henry Morton Stanley - having witnessed a demonstra...

American Dream
"Where else but in America," Red Buttons once mused, "can a poor black man like ...

Legeipsnelue?
Pierre Monteux once suddenly stopped the Philadelphia Orchestra during a rehears...

Quadroon
A reporter once asked Alexandre Dumas whether it was true that he was a quadroon...

Cream of Ulster
One day during his brief tenure at Campbell College in Belfast, Samuel Beckett w...

Scoundrels
John Randolph of Roanoke and Henry Clay - deadly rivals - once found themselves ...

Davy Crockett
While visiting a menagerie exhibition in Washington one day, Davy Crockett amuse...

Tatu
In March 2003, Julia Volkova and Lena Katina (the lesbian pop duo better known a...

Parting Shot
Johannes Brahms was not without his critics. Philip Hale, for example, once sugg...

Guantanamo Bay
"Some human rights groups are complaining that the al Qaeda detainees in Guantan...

Grrrr
One day before the war, Winston Churchill was dismayed to learn that his daughte...

Wellington's Victory
Wellington was once obliged to sit through a Viennese performance of Beethoven's...

Devilish Insult
While out campaigning one day, John Wilkes was confronted by a nasty voter: "I'd...

Demonic Wit
Lord Brougham was not noted for his virtues. One evening the clergyman and autho...

Going, Going, Gone
The composer Maria Cherubini once granted an audition to a man with such a power...

Raisin Cake?
"Toots once argued his dear friend Leo Durocher into a delicate trap that looked...

Gray-Blue
At a party one evening, someone remarked of G. K. Chesterton's brother Cecil tha...

Hellion?
Sir Robert Menzies was once interrupted by a heckler while addressing a politica...

Berned?
"A snooty woman of Lord Berners's acquaintance once complained when a head waite...

Westinghouse
Although Westinghouse's automatic air brake (patented in 1872) promised a dramat...

Merchant of Venom
One day the legendary insult comic Don Rickles was introduced to Ernest Borgnine...

Egalitarian Brahms
Johannes Brahms could be insufferably sarcastic and rude - even to his friends. ...

Big Mouth?
One evening, Jacqueline Susann and her husband were invited to a dinner party at...

Lukewarm Relief
Benjamin Disraeli once served as the guest of honor at a public dinner. The kitc...

Handkerchief
Samuel Foote once popped into the exclusive White's Club in London with a friend...

Pointed Comment
"On the surrender of [John Burgoyne's] British army to General Gates, at Saratog...

Unfortunate Client
A young lawyer was once called upon to make his first appearance in a courtroom ...

ASUC
"I was in the audience at Ohio State when Frank Zappa spoke to the American Soci...

Dismal Science?
Like many economists, Carlos Bonilla (an advisor to George Bush, Sr.), was disma...

Honeymoon
Lord Wodehouse, a notorious skirt-chaser who was once caught naked by an irate h...

Harry Situation
Despite (or because of) his brilliance, Herman J. Mankiewicz had a difficult tim...

Shakespearean Insult
Shakespeare's plays are thought by many scholars to have been written by Francis...

Splendid Ass
Someone once tactlessly remarked upon Georg Lichtenberg's enormous ears. "Well, ...

The Beach
One day in 1999, Leonardo DiCaprio attended the premiere of ...

Jinxed
Ken Wahl once appeared opposite Bette Midler in Don Siegel's widely panned 1982 ...

Yoko Ono: Slamming Yoko
Like her creative endeavors, Yoko Ono herself was often critically lambasted. "I...

Professional Windfall
Ronald Reagan's victory in the 1980 presidential election was welcomed by many p...

Cold War
"I believe Ronald Reagan can make this country what it once was," Steve Martin d...

Trudeau's Victory
Pierre Elliott Trudeau's victory in Canada's 1968 election was not universally w...

Comic Timing
Mae West once found herself acting opposite Alison Skipworth. Skipworth, suspect...

Halter or the Pox
While dining one evening with John Wilkes at London's famous Beef Steak Club (in...

Pearl of Wisdom
"Mrs. Havemeyer, whose collection of paintings is today the pride of New York's ...

Hellmesberger
Joseph Hellmesberger was notoriously suspicious, often accusing other composers ...

Egyptian Insult
Little love was lost between British prime ministers Benjamin Disraeli and John ...

Bottom Line
In 1999, Jennifer Lopez insured her body for a billion dollars. "How does that w...

MacBeth
While contemplating a possible revival of "Macbeth" on Broadway, Alexander Wooll...

Snubbed
Some time after the restoration of Napoleon III, Lady Blessington was forced by ...

Majestic Forgiveness
Shortly after Elizabeth came to the throne, a knight who had treated her rudely ...

Dan McQuayle
How Dan Quayle managed to become America's 44th vice-president is as much a myst...

Sober Question
While visiting a night club one evening, Ring Lardner observed a particularly fl...

Just Desserts
While riding in a carriage one day, Lord Norbury and John Parsons (another Irish...

Violin Lessons
One evening at the height of his career, George M. Cohan took his father for din...

Writer's Insult
An author one day endeavored to extract a compliment from fellow writer William ...

Philanthropist
One day Lord Norbury was asked to contribute to a fund for the funeral an impove...

House Heckler
Virginia congressman John Randolph was once heckled in the House by a colleague ...

Tongue and Lips?
In January 2003, KISS and Aerosmith announced plans to join forces and tour toge...

Standard Quip
Heywood Broun once composed a review describing the performance of Geoffrey Stey...

Spector Insult
Legendary producer Phil Spector was once asked whether he enjoyed the work of An...

Depede Mode
Martin Gore and his Depeche Mode bandmates drew their name from a French express...

Always Axl
One day in 1988, Guns 'n' Roses frontman Axl Rose, shocked by his worsening repu...

Backbone?
In October 1973, Vice President Spiro Agnew was forced to resign in the wake o...

Languages
The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V was once asked which languages he typically use...

Pink Feud
During the 1980s, Pink Floyd frontmen Roger Waters and David Gilmour engaged in ...

Rock Star
During one of the band's early gigs, U2 frontman Bono Vox spotted two young ladi...

Calvin Coolidge: Medical Ha...
A smooth-talking salesman once persuaded the wife of President Calvin Coolidge t...

Woodstock Moment
At Woodstock in 1969, the radical student leader Abbie Hoffman (famed for writin...

Charles Laughton: Amateur I...
The actor Charles Laughton was once invited to a dinner party by the celebrated ...

Skyscraper
While British Prime Minister A. J. Balfour was visiting America one year, his ho...

Coward
One day Noel Coward was informed that a certain dim-witted impressario had shot ...

Shaggadelic Notion?
"In the 1930s Winston Churchill's critics called him rash, impetuous, tactless, ...

Buttonhole
Randolph Churchill was once buttonholed on the stairs of his club by a notorious...

Estimable Quadruped
"During a rehearsal at His Majesty's Theatre of Die Meistersinger, Sir Th...

Broadly Speaking
Dame Edna Everage often engaged audience members during performances of her Broa...

Dame Edna
Dame Edna Everage (who once introduced Zsa Zsa Gabor to a BBC audience as "The M...

Poster Boy
Pat Buchanan, noted for his political extremism, naturally bore the brunt of man...

Al Bore
Jokes abound about Al Gore's wooden personality. A sampling: ...

W. H. Auden: Houseguest
"Rex Warner's parents thought W. H. Auden had charming manners: that he was give...

Old Fool
"After breakfast King George V would telephone his sister, Princess Victoria. Th...

After the Fall
"Noel Coward was in New York with Claudette Colbert after Arthur Miller's autobi...

Rakes's Progress
After a performance of Igor Stravinsky's The Rakes's Progress one evening...

Plays for the Ages
George Bernard Shaw was not without his critics. "Shaw writes plays for the ages...

Icy Reception
At the debut performance of Arnold Schoenberg's first song cycle (in 1900), a fi...

Gag Test
Groucho Marx often remarked that the only sure way to test a gag was to try it o...

American Legend
In 1974, John Wayne agreed, in exchange for publicity for one of his films, to s...

Majestically Rising?
Marc Connelly was once invited to a lecture on the recently completed bridge ove...

Temperamental Singer
In 1897, the financier John Chaloner was declared certifiably insane and incarce...

Classic Coward
Raymond Massey: "Hannen Swaffer, a critic and theatre writer on the ...

Arrogant Pauli
As a teenager, Wolfgang Pauli wrote an article on relativity (for a scientific e...

Chi Son?
During a rehearsal one day, Puccini was dismayed to find Enrico Caruso dragging ...

Dickens' Bookshelf
Before moving into Tavistock House, Charles Dickens installed a secret door to h...

Lunch Break
Every day on the set before breaking for lunch, director Cecil B. De Mille would...

Ali's Children
Even in the United States, surveys often reveal a distinct preference for male b...

"In junior high," Pamela Ander
"In junior high," Pamela Anderson once recalled, "a boy poured water down my shi...

Kentucky Roads
One day in October 2003, fellow actors (and Kentucky natives) George Clooney and...

Bishop's Palace
Some time after resigning his post as Archbishop of Dublin in 1884, Richard Tren...

Tie Domi Anagram
Your correspondent once had the pleasure of bumping into Toronto Maple Leafs rig...

Mike Scioscia
Mike Scioscia's talent as a catcher were not exactly matched by his running abil...

X-Files Revenge
Roland Emmerich's blockbuster film Independence Day (1996) features a sar...

Synged
John Synge's The Playboy of the Western World was not universally well-re...

Yodelling Idiot
Famed CBC broadcaster Max Ferguson once recalled the genesis (in December 1946) ...

Mortimer J. Adler
One day Mortimer J. Adler stopped in a jewelry store to pick up a gift. The jewe...

Reagan Wit
"Mr. President," Ronald Reagan was asked during a press conference one day, "in ...

Montgomery's Mixmaster
Montgomery Clift's gifts as an actor were not universally appreciated. "He acts ...

Faldo
Nick Faldo was not immune to verbal bloopers. "The only time he opens his mouth,...

Bad Review
Prince was no great fan of Michael Jackson's later work. "Michael Jackson's albu...

Vidal & Capote
Gore Vidal was no great fan of Truman Capote's work. "A great zircon," he once d...

Farrah Fawcett Situation
One evening George W. Bush appeared as a guest on "The Late Show with David Lett...

Andy Roddick: On-Court Antics
Andy Roddick earned a John McEnroe-worthy reputation for his on-court antics. "H...

George W. Bush & Jean Poutine
One day during the 2000 presidential election race, George W. Bush was asked by ...

Seventeen Bras
One day in 2003, a Canadian Guinness World record-holder appeared on the "Tonigh...

Everybody Loves Raymond
At the 2000 Golden Globes, Ray Romano was named best actor in a comedy for his r...

Calvin Klein & Joan Rivers
"Fashion mogul Calvin Klein made it quite clear he's not a fan of Joan Rivers," ...

Simon Cowell & Paula Abdul:...
Though Paula Abdul gave her "American Idol" judge Simon Cowell the cold shoulder...

All Fired Up
The newspaper editor Horace Greeley was not a fan of the lowly stogie. Indeed, a...

Wayne Gretzky: Pipe Cleaner
By the time Wayne Gretzky was six years old he was already skating with 10-year-...

Theodore Roosevelt & The Ir...
In 1912, George Newett, the owner of a small town newspaper in Ishpeming, Michig...

Garth Brooks & Waylon Jennings
Waylon Jennings was no great fan of Garth Brooks' music. "It's like my dad once ...

Tom DeLay:
Following the Texas state House elections in 2002 (when the Republicans put an e...

Joe Eszterhas & Michael Ovitz
One day in 1989, star screenwriter Joe Eszterhas told Creative Artists Agency (C...

Boomer Esiason: Good Samaritan
While driving home after a disappointing 28-24 loss to the Miami Dolphins one da...

Arnold Palmer & Frank Sinatra
Arnold Palmer once shot a friendly round with Frank Sinatra. "How you like my ga...

Harold Nicolson: Nicolsonia...
"A young man invited to lunch with Sir Harold Nicolson strove for a Nicolsonian ...

Al Sharpton: Presidential H...
"The Washington Post says that, of the nine Democratic candidates, Wesley...

Muammar Qaddafi: Body Language
In March 2004, Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi met with British Prime Minister T...

Steven Spielberg: Drink to ...
Steven Spielberg did not always see eye to eye with his father, an emotionally d...

Ice-T & Hassle the Hoff
During an appearance on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" in mid-June 2004, Ice-T ...

Jacques Cousteau: Bathtubog...
"It was recently revealed that underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau shot some of...

Bruce Grobbelaar: Six-Nil Up
"Bruce Grobbelaar was the classic [goalkeeper]," England's David James once rema...

Brad Pitt: Feet on the Ground
"I telephoned my grandparents the other day," Brad Pitt once recalled, "and my g...

Neil Simon: Prolific Playwr...
"Once Neil Simon finally got his first play Come Blow Your Horn, produced...

John Kerry: Something Nice ...
"I want to start by saying something nice about President Bush," John Kerry decl...

Peter Worrell: Thug on Ice
6'7" Florida Panthers left winger Peter Worrell was not drafted for his goal-sco...

Dinah Washington: Noisy Lis...
Obnoxious concert-goers and hecklers ranked among Dinah Washington's major peeve...

Harold Snepsts: Brain Damage
Vancouver Canucks defenseman Harold Snepsts was once advised by his doctor to we...

Michael Moore & Jay Leno: U...
During an appearance on the "Tonight Show" in 2004, Michael Moore was asked abou...

Ashton Kutcher: Ashton's Li...
During a talk show appearance in October 2004, Brittany Murphy (who dated Ashton...

Pope Benedict: Prayer of Gr...
"It is said that Pope Benedict XIV had a good sense of humour and this lasted un...

Stephen Hawking & Edward Te...
"[Stephen Hawking] is famous for using his wheelchair to run over the toes of th...

Stephen King: Titanic Revel...
In 1999, Stephen King was hit by a van. Fortunately, he survived and made a comp...

Michael Moore: Champagne, B...
Michael Moore once recalled the first words he heard after leaving the stage aft...

Robert Mitchum: Prison Life
In 1948, Robert Mitchum was arrested for marijuana possession and spent several ...

Liam Neeson: Dance in Belfast
Dancing was never Liam Neeson's strongest suit: "I remember, when I started seri...

Napoleon Bonaparte & Counte...
"[After his second conquest of Milan from the Austrians] Napoleon arranged a gra...

Dorothy Parker: Bored
Dorothy Parker did not suffer boredom, or bores, gladly. ("He's the type of man,...

Terry Broadshaw Construction
During an appearance on the "Tonight Show" one evening, Terry Bradshaw announced...

Jeremy Thorpe: Miss Bag
"Jeremy Thorpe was once hard put to remember the name of the constituent whose h...

Lady Diana: Financial Times
"Chatting to a Financial Times journalist on her Japanese tour, the Princ...

Jimmy Kimmel: Star Apology
During a guest appearance on "The Jimmy Kimmel Show," Joy Behar was invited (alo...

Simon Cowell: Priceless Insult
In February 2005, Simon Cowell made a guest appearance on "The Tonight Show with...

Alan King: Hotel Gradus
The legendary comedian Alan King was fired from one of his earliest jobs, at the...

Dennis Miller: Pardon Me
Dennis Miller was often irked by born-again Christians. "I'm a little indignant ...

Ian Fleming: Likely Story
James Bond creator Ian Fleming was once invited to speak at a lunchtime function...

Will Rogers: Patriotic Heckler
"Will Rogers was delivering one of his famous topical monologues in the great Zi...

U2: Meeting Sinatra
In April 1987, U2 went to see Frank Sinatra perform in Las Vegas. Sinatra introd...

Uwe Boll: Alone in the Dark
Uwe Boll might have chosen a different name for his first film of 2005. Despite ...

A Horse! A Horse!
One evening the great tragedian Barry Sullivan was performing in "Richard III" i...

Robert Novak: Instant Dislike
Robert Novak, best known for his role on CNN's Crossfire (and in the Karl...

Cate Blanchett: Meet the Press
In 2005, Cate Blanchett won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role as Kath...

Barry Manilow: Dental Surgery
"Barry Manilow is recovering from an infection after dental surgery," Conan O'Br...

Caroline Rhea: Sorry About ...
Upon landing aboard a delayed flight one day, portly comedienne Caroline Rhea fo...

Alexander Woollcott: And I ...
Alexander Woollcott once reviewed a self-published volume of amateurish poetry e...

Jay Leno: The Parakeet
Jay Leno: "Michael Caine and I hit it off from the start. More than anything els...

Robert Mitchum: Winds of War
New York Post Page Six writer Susan Mulcahy: "Robert Mitchum was smoking ...

Ben Disraeli and the Temple...
In 1835, the Irish Roman Catholic leader Daniel O'Connell attacked Benjamin Disr...

In Search of...
Consuelo Balsan, daughter of financier William Henry Vanderbilt, was rather spoi...

Mia Furrow?
Ava Gardner was not impressed with ex-husband Frank Sinatra's involvement with t...

Clean Conscience
Cassandra Peterson was once asked about Monica Lewinsky's habit of drawing compa...

Audacious Insult
W. H. Auden was surprised one day to learn that a sculptor friend named Mike De ...

Harpsichord
During a rehearsal of his opera Flavio one day, Handel, accompanying the ...

Christ of the Andes
In March 1904, a large statue of Jesus Christ was erected in the Uspallata Pass ...

Fine Distinction
Paul Scarron once dedicated a collection of his poems to his sister's dog: "A Gu...

Buddha
Gautama Buddha's preaching was interrupted one day by a man unleashing a flurry ...

Lizard of Oz?
A dull country magistrate once belabored Samuel Johnson with a tedious account o...

Billy Connolly - Heckler
During a performance one evening, comedian Billy Connolly was interrupted by an ...

Julian Street
In 1914, the travel writer Julian Street wrote an article about Cripple Creek, C...

Louis Sherwin: Hollywood Sc...
Like many screenwriters with literary leanings, Louis Sherwin was often reluctan...

Fine Catch?
Prince Conti was not noted for his physical beauty. One day, while planning to d...

Novel Insult
A young composer once asked for Hans von Bulow's opinion of his latest compositi...

Sextortion
It was said of studio chief Louis B. Mayer that any actress who wished to appear...

Bright Remark
John Bright was once buttonholed by one of Benjamin Disraeli's admirers bent on ...

Screw Turner?
James Whistler was once invited to offer his opinion of whether a certain painti...

Jenna Bush: DWI
In 2001, Jenna Bush made headlines when she was arrested for drunk driving. Jenn...

Derek Jarman's Wittgenstein
One day in 1993, a group of undergraduates (this writer among them) attended a s...

Heat of the Moment?
While speaking with the Duchess of Inverness at a party one evening, John Russel...

Oxymoron?
Tom Selleck, who took after his father and studied business in college, left bus...

Bully For Taft
When the son of a bombastic businessman was expelled from the exclusive Taft Sch...

Arf!
Little love was lost between Joan Crawford and Bette Davis - who once said of he...

Loving Fame?
Richard Linklater's first feature, 1991's Slacker - an aptly rambling exa...

Forgotten Quip?
In the midst of a murder trial one day, Sir John Maynard challenged the judge on...

Appointment with the President
Comedian Will Rogers was once invited by president Harding to visit the White Ho...

Earth Mother
In 1810, while negotiating with Tecumseh to prevent open hostilities, William He...

Tunnel Vision?
At the tender age of three, Peter Falk had his right eye surgically removed (and...

Reyer & Massenet
After generously singing the praises of Ernest Reyer at a dinner party one eveni...

Skaneateles
Barry Crimmins was often asked where he was from. "I'm from the Midwest," he onc...

¿qué el infierno?
Tallulah Bankhead once dropped a fifty-dollar bill into a Salvation Army player'...

Apolitical (long)
Shortly after Empire Falls won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize, its author, Richa...

Don't Drink the Water
Commenting on the British Tory conference in 1999, Guardian columnist Jer...

Southey
The noted classical scholar Richard Porson was once asked what he thought of the...

Alcibiades
One day Alcibiades and Pericles, the older man by forty years, found themselves ...

Woody Favreau?
Jon Favreau, who once remarked that his perception of romance had been "misshape...

GumTargets
In 2002, plastic-covered posters called GumTargets began to appear in Bournemout...

O Pygmy
Despite Richard Busby's diminutive frame, an Irish baronet of enormous stature o...

Secret of Life
In 1971, Cher and her husband, Sonny Bono, began hosting their classic variety s...

Protectors
"I [Henry David Thoreau] went to the store the other day to buy a bolt for our f...

Roundabout Reply
A vain actress once confessed to Abbe Mugnier that she often gazed at her nude f...

Skirting the Issue
An acquaintance of the French playwright Georges Feydeau whose wife was famed fo...

Tummy Time
Winston Churchill and Tonga's Queen Salote Tupou were among the esteemed guests ...

Piggy
One day "Armour and Company" founder Philip Armour decided to reward several emp...

Christian Socialists
One day during his tenure as Warden of New College (at Oxford), William Spooner ...

Dirty Insult
While talking with Charles Brookfield one day, a fellow actor began to sense tha...

Parlor Game
At Ferney (Voltaire's model village near Geneva) one evening, someone proposed a...

Una voce?
A singer once gave a glorious rendition of Rossini's famous aria "Una voce," emb...

Professional Abandon
Sam Snead was a no-nonsense professional. "I won a lot of tournaments because I ...

Doug Perkins & Specsavers
Following his retirement from Welsh rugby, Doug Perkins, the famed former Llanel...

Axl
Guns 'n' Roses frontman Axl Rose often vented his anger at presumptuous photogra...

Dummy
Though director John Boorman proposed sending a dummy over a waterfall for a sce...

Cardinal Red
One day while he was busy at work on some frescoes in the papal apartments in th...

Stutterer
Erasmus Darwin was once asked by an impertinent young man whether he found his n...

Paderewski
While attending the 1919 Paris Peace Conference as Poland's new leader, Paderews...

Dick Tracy
Some time after his affair with Madonna had ended, Warren Beatty sent his former...

Thank You India?
When Thomas Babington Macaulay returned from a trip to India one year, Sydney Sm...

Windbag
Cornell University president Andrew White, famed for his emphasis on academics, ...

Misdemeanor
"Edward VII was once riding in a state carriage with the Kaiser [Kaiser Wilhelm ...

Mouth of the Potomac
"Monica Lewinsky's lost a lot of weight," Jay Leno said of Monica Lewinsky in No...

Disco Sucks
On July 12, 1979, Chicago radio DJ Steve Dahl and baseball promoter Mike Veeck o...

Bohemian King
During a performance at Covent Garden one evening, Sir Thomas Beecham met King G...

Groucho & Garbo
Greta Garbo was extremely reserved and became coldly indignant if someone sought...

Wood & Groucho
Though he directed some of their films, the Marx Brothers frequently clashed wit...

Butkus's Eye
During a rough game against the San Francisco 49ers one rainy day, Chicago Bears...

Quentin Tarantino: Stick to...
Quentin Tarantino's gifts as an actor were not universally appreciated. "He has,...

Omaha
Joan Rivers was no fan of Omaha. "Omaha is a little like Newark," she once decla...

Flying Ants
One day theatrical producer David N. Morton received a telegram informing him th...

Katharine Hepburn & John Ba...
During the production of A Bill of Divorcement, Katharine Hepburn frequen...

The Masses Are Asses?
Christopher Hitchens once expressed dismay that, whereas many university student...

Philadelphia
Like W.C. Fields, David Lynch was ambivalent about Philadelphia. "I've said many...

Il Trovatore
In 2000, Argentine tenor Jose Cura outraged Spanish opera buffs during a perform...

What's Bugging Lonsdale
Margot Asquith once overheard someone praising the riding prowess of famed Briti...

BS Autograph
A rural clergyman, apprised of George Bernard Shaw's reputation as an expert cof...

Marvellous Insult?
Tallulah Bankhead's father, William Brockman Bankhead, was once elected Speaker ...

Black Humor
Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black was once required to attend the funeral of a di...

Vegetarian Surprise?
Peter Pan author James Barrie was once seated beside George Bernard Shaw ...

Barrow & Rochester
One day at the court of Charles II, Isaac Barrow (then serving as the king's cha...

Lost?
"'Are you lost, or eternally saved?' This was on a sandwich board being carried ...

No Worries?
While addressing the House of Representatives one day, Illinois Senator William ...

Simple Distinction
When, in his later years, Renoir became so crippled with arthritis that he could...

Repplier
Agnes Repplier was once visited by a young woman who rather overstayed her welco...

We, We, We...
Mark Twain was peeved by Walt Whitman's habitual use of 'we' when he spoke about...

Radio Luddite
National Broadcasting Company chief David Sarnoff once delivered a speech lioniz...

Prussian Ironie?
So infuriated was the French ethnologist Armand de Quatrefages by the damage don...

Wake Up Call
During the reading of a lengthy speech at a rehearsal of Voltaire's latest play ...

McCarthy vs Hellman
Mary McCarthy crusaded against inaccuracy, pretension, equivocation, dishonesty ...

Passing Notion
John Randolph was once approached by an admirer, who declared, "I have had the p...

San Diego Chicken
"Some players are born to give you the red ass," Ted Giannoulas (the San Diego C...

John Cooksey: Turban Terrorism
Louisiana politicians are not noted for their cultural sensitivity. Shortly afte...

House of Lords
"Did you get any reactions in the House of Lords to your Buggers' [Homosexuals']...

Political Tumult?
President Woodrow Wilson once categorically refused to welcome a deputation of I...

Israel Zangwill & Miss Piggy
Israel Zangwill once absentmindedly yawned in the face of the woman seated besid...

Engelbert Humperdinck & Tom...
British songwriter and impressario Gordon Mills gave many rock stars their stage...

Henry James: Puppet Show
While invitations to Sir Edmund Gosse's literary parties were greatly coveted by...

Photographic Memory?
Shortly after the publication of his acclaimed photo book, Inferno, James...

House of Bollocks
"Jack Jones, the Labour member for Silvertown always has something to say, and s...

Nancy Pelosi
Dennis Miller was no fan of California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi. "Nancy Pelosi...

Fine Company
Tristan Bernard was once invited to a dinner party by a socialite famed for her ...

Louise Redknapp: Sexy Wife
Though she was named the sexiest woman of the decade by FHM magazine, pop...

CKY
CKY guitarist-producer Chad Ginsburg was once asked whether he thought other ban...

Droopy
Diana Ross was once arrested for assaulting a female airport security guard who,...

Baby Steps?
Little love was lost between Tom Dewey and FDR's New Deal Secretary of the Inter...

Parsifal
Richard Wagner was not without his critics. "Parsifal," fellow composer D...

So They Say...
One day toward the end of his long life, Winston Churchill paid a visit to his o...

Berry Nasty
Max Beerbohm was having tea with his biographer, S. N. Behrman, one day when Eli...

Brokedown Country
After shooting some of Brokedown Palace in the Philippines, Claire Danes ...

Two Bit President?
Woodrow Wilson, America's 28th president (1913-21), was not without his critics....

Harry Benson
For photographer Harry Benson, the road to success was not exactly paved with go...

Political Ambition
Adlai Stevenson once told Joan Fontaine that, because he entertained political a...

Page Turner
The famed violinist Georges Enesco was once called upon to tutor the son of a Ro...

Vienna Opera
"Once [Birgit Nilsson] was negotiating a contract with Herbert von Karajan, at t...

George W. Bush: Yalie Crawfish
In September 2002, President George W. Bush declared that the United States woul...

Country Music
Don Chamberlain, a professional pitcher of horseshoes, was once asked why he kep...

Janet Reno
In 2002, Former Attorney General Janet Reno announced tentative plans to run for...

Whiz Kid?
In 2001, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld put Andrew Marshall in charge of an a...

Basha! Basha!
While studying rainforest plants in the Amazon one day, noted ethnobotanist Mark...

Made In Japan
"When... [former Vice President John] Garner visited Tokyo en route to the Phili...

Yapper
The French actor Lucien Guitry was once accosted by a boring but talkative woman...

Ali Baba
One evening Berlioz attended the debut performance of Ali Baba, an opera ...

Lowther
James William Lowther, Speaker of the British House of Commons between 1905 and ...

Supposed Designer?
"[In the early 1990s] car designers started to be influenced by an Italian-sound...

Talleyrand's Death
"Talleyrand was, by any standard, a miserable character. He was a remarkably cap...

James Stockdale: Presidenti...
Admiral James Stockdale was Ross Perot's running mate in the 1992 presidential e...

Liebermann
In the early 1930s, despite the growing anti-Semitism in Germany, emissaries wer...

No Worries?
When Lady Astor won election to the British House of Commons in 1929, Winston Ch...

Whistling Insult
In 1888, having alienated most of its members with his autocratic manner, James ...

Steinitz
Like every World Chess champion, William Steinitz was frequently riddled with an...

Tracy Smith's Glasses
One day Tracy Smith's boyfriend told her that he tought she looked better withou...

Oldenburg
Claes Oldenburg once donated, to Yale University, a sculpture comprising a 24-fo...

Maeterlinck Tragedy
One evening Tallulah Bankhead accompanied Alexander Woollcott to see one of Maet...

Snubs
Beau Brummell once famously engaged in a nasty row with his former friend, the p...

Young Kid Rock
As a rebellious young high school student, Kid Rock often skipped football pract...

Sage Advice
"When Major Gwilym Lloyd George was looking round for men to run his plan for th...

Jim Schoenfeld & Don Koharski
On May 5th, 1988, the New Jersey Devils suffered a crushing 6-1 defeat in the co...

Hollywood Moment
At the Academy Awards dinner in 1942, the legendary director Cecil B. De Mille a...

Roker & Koppel
In July 2002, "Today" show weatherman Al Roker was treated to the sight of Ted K...

History Writer
One day following the publication of Napoleon III's history of Julius Caesar, Th...

Pearls and Swine
Beatrice Lillie (Lady Peel) was once accosted by a haughty old dowager who scrut...

Silverheels
Jay Silverheels was once the highest paid, highest scoring professional lacrosse...

On Guardian
Sir Boyle Roche (a staunch supporter of the union of England and Ireland in 1800...

Louis D'Or
A fellow actor once sent Lucien Guitry a manuscript copy of his latest play, alo...

Social Caffe?
During his days as a student at Harvard, the American publisher William Jovanovi...

Contempt of Court
One day in court, Wilson Mizner fell into a heated argument with the presiding m...

Sound of Music
Most of those involved in the production of The Sound of Music were thril...

Scotchman
A Scot, perhaps unaware of Dr. Johnson's intense distaste for all things Scottis...

Johnson & Boswell
Samuel Johnson's biographer James Boswell first met the good doctor in Tom Davie...

National Sport?
In 1995, Russian center Alexei Zhamnov saw his first (minor league) baseball gam...

British Army
German chancellor Otto von Bismarck was once asked what he would do if the Briti...

Head of State
One day in 2003, the controversial Russian artist Alexander Kosolapov erected a ...

Phocion
While Demosthenes is generally considered the greatest orator of the classical p...

Wolf & Brahms
Hugo Wolf so detested his fellow Viennese composer Johannes Brahms that he refus...

Crant Grant: Meeting Mother
When Cary Grant was nine years old, his mother suffered a nervous breakdown and ...

Monks of Nashdom
"At the beginning of the war," Colin Stephenson once recalled, "the monks of Nas...

Bad Biography
"My former friend Charles Spencer of The Daily Telegraph," Michael Covene...

Disraelist?
A political realist, Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli had little regard for John...

Reddening?
While visiting the Isle of Wight one day, Tennyson was approached by a notorious...

Judicial Consultation
While presenting a particularly convoluted argument before the court one day, Jo...

Tragedy of a Virgin Wedding...
In 1999, Peter Stein, one of Germany's most celebrated directors, undertook the ...

Victor Mature: Bust
Groucho Marx was once invited to a private screening of Cecil B. De Mille's 1949...

Hitler
Unlike many of his colleagues, Winston Churchill was quick to comprehend the thr...

Dubious Distinction
In 1993, Australian-born broadcaster Clive James assisted with the preparation o...

Kindergarten Class
ollowing his arrival in the United States, Arnold Schoenberg was forced to teach...

Mavor Blooper
The great political economist James Mavor once recalled a faux pas which he comm...

Babe Ruth: Contract
One day at the height of the Great Depression, Babe Ruth was asked to take a pay...

Flat Verse
"When I was in Ireland, I received a letter from Alfred Austin, the Poet Laureat...

Cranky Critic
Elliot Carter's work was not universally well received. "I would like to hear El...

Flauting Convention?
Among C. P. E. Bach's responsibilities as court musician to Frederick the Great ...

Fork You?
Though Kenneth Branagh once called himself a "short-assed, fat-faced Irishman," ...

Blooming Feminism
Amy Bloom once reviewed Phillip Roth's Sabbath Theater. "If you didn't kn...

Home Rule
One day early in his political career, Lloyd George delivered an address at a ra...

Bit Nasty
Longtime New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael was not beloved by all of he...

George %&#$! Carlin
The radio broadcast of an uncensored version of George Carlin's routine "Seven D...

Parting Shot
One day during a meeting, Krupps director general Berthold Beitz had a heated ar...

Dan Quayle & Lloyd Bentsen
During a memorable Vice-Presidential debate in Omaha, Nebraska, during the 1988 ...

Penny Pinchers
"In a speech to the Press Club William Blackwood replied to a jocular proposal b...

Ernest Hemingway & William ...
Ernest Hemingway won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954, five years after it...

Cary Grant & Ginger Rogers
"A fellow actor made a picture with her," Cary Grant once recalled of Ginger Rog...

Bishop & Goering
While visiting Berlin one day between the wars, legendary Canadian flying ace Bi...

Classic Lemons
Legendary University of Texas basketball coach Abe Lemons was never at a loss fo...

OK With Cosell?
Though he grew up in a small town, legendary University of Texas basketball coac...

Bear Emotion?
During their historic tour of Scotland, James Boswell and Samuel Johnson visited...

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