Speaker 1: You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
Speaker 1: and iHeartRadio. Guess what Will?
Speaker 2: What's that Mango?
Speaker 1: So I was commuting this week to the Midtown offices
Speaker 1: at iHeart and I read a story that kind of
Speaker 1: related to my commute. It's about a guy named Morton Plant.
Speaker 2: Morton Plant. What a great name. I feel like you
Speaker 2: could just stop right there and I'd be happy. I
Speaker 2: think we're done.
Speaker 1: That's it. Well, it is a great name, but it
Speaker 1: gets a little better. So Plant was a financier who
Speaker 1: had made a fortune from his family's railroad company. And
Speaker 1: this was in the early nineteen hundreds. He built himself
Speaker 1: a limestone mansion on Fifth Avenue and fifty second Street,
Speaker 1: which is obviously a pretty smank area, and then a
Speaker 1: decade later he built another mansion on fifth and eighty
Speaker 1: sixth Street. Now, when Plant and his wife relocated, he
Speaker 1: agreed to lease the fifty second Sat property to a
Speaker 1: pair of up and coming jewelers. And they were named
Speaker 1: Lewis and Pierre Cardier, and they had been outgrowing a
Speaker 1: smaller shop up the street.
Speaker 2: So Cardier like the jewelers we know today, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's right.
Speaker 1: And around the same time Plant's wife May she walks
Speaker 1: past the Cardier window and she spots this gorgeous double
Speaker 1: strand natural pearl necklace, so it is super fancy, and
Speaker 1: she tells her husband all about it, and he decides
Speaker 1: he's gonna do the romantic thing. He's gonna go out
Speaker 1: and get it for her, which is really really sweet,
Speaker 1: right it is, But I don't think you'd leave it
Speaker 1: just there.
Speaker 2: I feel like there's gonna be a twist to this story.
Speaker 1: We're gonna end this episode twice early Sinday. Right, No,
Speaker 1: there is a twist. So this isn't just any necklace.
Speaker 1: It is incredibly expensive. So Plant made a deal with
Speaker 1: the Cardiers. In exchange for the necklace and one hundred
Speaker 1: dollars in cash, he traded them his mansion, his entire mansion.
Speaker 1: So he's wait, he traded his mansion for a single necklace. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but at the time the necklace was valued at a
Speaker 1: million dollars, which is about twenty four million dollars to day,
Speaker 1: so it's not like he exactly got ripped off. In fact,
Speaker 1: he was thinking quick and figuring out how to purchase
Speaker 1: a gift without like, you know, liquidating any funds or
Speaker 1: anything like that. He really wanted this for his wife.
Speaker 1: The problem was that, unbeknownst to Mordan Plant, at that
Speaker 1: very moment, a Japanese entrepreneur was developing technology to produce
Speaker 1: cultured pearls at scale, and this changed everything about the
Speaker 1: price of pearls. So basically, this new industry caused the
Speaker 1: value of natural pearls to plummet, so that by the
Speaker 1: time may Plant died in the nineteen fifties, her necklace
Speaker 1: was worth just one hundred and fifty one thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: Only worth one hundred and fifty one thousand dollars, I mean,
Speaker 2: that's not even worth wearing mango. That's almost embarrassing to
Speaker 2: have a necklace worth this time.
Speaker 1: But no, I mean like twenty four million dollars.
Speaker 2: True, No, that that is wild. And what we do
Speaker 2: know you definitely can't buy a fifth avenue mansion for
Speaker 2: that amount of.
Speaker 1: Money, definitely, But remember the Plants still had their other
Speaker 1: fifth Avenue mentioned, so you don't have to feel too
Speaker 1: bad for them. And to this day, more than plants
Speaker 1: Old Home is the Cardier's flagship store in New York,
Speaker 1: so you can think of him the next time you're
Speaker 1: making a reckless purchase to impress someone you love.
Speaker 2: I will keep that in mind. Well, today we've got
Speaker 2: eight more stories of romantic gestures gone a little bit
Speaker 2: wrong or sometimes a lot wrong, because that is how
Speaker 2: we celebrate Valentine's Day around here. Whether you're single, taken,
Speaker 2: or it's complicated, this one's for you. So let's dive in. Hey,
Speaker 2: their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson,
Speaker 2: and as always, I'm here with my good friend Mangesh
Speaker 2: hot ticketter and over there just sobbing into a pine
Speaker 2: of Hogan DAWs. I know he loves Hogan DAWs, but
Speaker 2: he's crying into it today. That's our pal and producer
Speaker 2: Dylan fag And now I'm no expert Mango, but this
Speaker 2: looks to me like a classic case of heartbreak. So
Speaker 2: poor Dylan and Valentine's Week, So I don't know, it
Speaker 2: just seems like a tough one for him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but actually he's holding up a sign it says
Speaker 1: I didn't get dumped. I just did my annual rewatch
Speaker 1: of A Walk to Remember, which I believe is a
Speaker 1: Mandy Moore movie.
Speaker 2: You know, I've actually never seen it. Mango, I need
Speaker 2: to confess that.
Speaker 1: He's making another sign now that says this one says,
Speaker 1: I cannot work for people who've never seen a walk
Speaker 1: to remember. So we don't want to lose Dylan. So
Speaker 1: we'll be streaming that tonight.
Speaker 2: Tonight, for sure, I'm on it.
Speaker 1: So this week we thought we'd do something on romantic
Speaker 1: gesture has gone wrong. And one of the things I
Speaker 1: found in my research were cards known as vinegar Valentine's.
Speaker 1: Have you heard of these?
Speaker 2: Will? I don't think I have? What are they?
Speaker 1: So? They're like straight out of middle school mean Kids playbook,
Speaker 1: as Atlas Obscura describes them. In the Victorian era, there
Speaker 1: was no better way to let someone know they were
Speaker 1: unwanted than with the ultimate insult, the vinegar Valentine, also
Speaker 1: called comic Valentine's. These unwelcome notes were sometimes crass and
Speaker 1: always a bit emotionally damaging end quotes. So essentially they
Speaker 1: were these commercially bought postcards that you would like mail
Speaker 1: like Valentine's cards, except that they'd contain an insulting poem
Speaker 1: or illustration. And I can't imagine a crush walking up
Speaker 1: to me like smiling and then handing me one of
Speaker 1: these Like. It just feels so devastating because instead of
Speaker 1: like I choose you, choose you or whatever, here's what
Speaker 1: one reads. It reads quote, you claim you're good at everything,
Speaker 1: so come on, show me proof and let me see
Speaker 1: how good you are by jumping off a roof.
Speaker 2: Oh the horrible. That is insane. Mango.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess nothing says I hate you like a
Speaker 1: vinegar Valentine. The Smithsonian called it an early of trolling.
Speaker 1: But it's a little different from what we're talking about today,
Speaker 1: which is mostly elaborate romantic gestures that just went wrong.
Speaker 1: So will what do you want to start with today?
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 2: I think we need to go way back, Mango. I
Speaker 2: think we should start with Stonehenge. Of course, you know
Speaker 2: the big pile of rocks in England.
Speaker 1: Or little pile of rocks if you're watching spinal tap.
Speaker 1: But this is true, I am familiar.
Speaker 2: All right. Well, archaeologists believe it was arranged in its
Speaker 2: current semicircular shape sometime around twenty five hundred BCE, so
Speaker 2: a long time ago, and believe it or not, for
Speaker 2: a long time it was privately owned. The property was
Speaker 2: bought and sold several times finally ended up in the
Speaker 2: hands of a family called Antrobus. Now they passed it
Speaker 2: down through the generations until Sir Cosmo Antrobus inherited from
Speaker 2: his older brother Edmund, who died in early nineteen fifteen.
Speaker 1: I mean, Cosmo Antribus is another amazing name.
Speaker 2: We are racking them up today and there's more here.
Speaker 2: So enter our next character, who is a barrister by
Speaker 2: the name of Cecil chubb An another great name. It's
Speaker 2: just like one after another. Well, anyway, one day in
Speaker 2: the fall of nineteen fifteen, Cecil makes plans to attend
Speaker 2: an auction in the town of Salisbury. Now, his wife
Speaker 2: Mary reportedly had sent him out with one task to
Speaker 2: buy a set of curtains for her while he was there,
Speaker 2: but instead he buys stonehenge, you know, goes out for curtains,
Speaker 2: ends up a stone hinge which their Cosmo had put
Speaker 2: up for sale. Now the price on this six thousand pounds,
Speaker 2: which is nearly six hundred and fifty thousand dollars in
Speaker 2: today's money.
Speaker 1: I feel like I can't imagine the conversation when he
Speaker 1: got home, Like, you know, he's talking to his wife
Speaker 1: and he's like, sorry, I forgot the curtains, but I
Speaker 1: did get you the most expensive pile of rocks in
Speaker 1: the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty much a big swish there. Well, apparently
Speaker 2: Mary Chubb wasn't thrilled with the surprise gift. Sure to
Speaker 2: be fair, Cecil's impulse by may have had a more
Speaker 2: noble motivation. So at the time there were rumors that
Speaker 2: wealthy Americans might want to buy Stonehenge, perhaps to dismantle
Speaker 2: it and ship it off to the other side of
Speaker 2: the Atlantic. Apparently buying up British antigues had become something
Speaker 2: of a sport for American millionaires at the time, and
Speaker 2: Cecil Chubb felt Stonehenge should remain in England and of
Speaker 2: course be accessible to the public, So in nineteen eighteen
Speaker 2: he gave the monument to the British government, saying it
Speaker 2: was quote a gift to be held for the nation.
Speaker 2: So today's Stonehenge remains a public property managed by the
Speaker 2: English Heritage Charitable Trust.
Speaker 1: I like that, and in a way, I guess making
Speaker 1: a gift like that to your country is kind of
Speaker 1: a romantic gesture, but maybe not from his wife's perspective. Well,
Speaker 1: hopping over to another continent, I want to tell you
Speaker 1: about Ishmael Pasha, the viceroy of Egypt under Ottoman rule.
Speaker 1: So as a young man, he studied at Broad in Paris,
Speaker 1: where he became enamored with all things European. So when
Speaker 1: he came to power in eighteen sixty three, one of
Speaker 1: his top priorities was making Egypt look more like France.
Speaker 2: I mean nothing against France, but that's kind of a shame.
Speaker 2: I feel like being Egypt is sort of one of
Speaker 2: Egypt's biggest strengths, don't you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, seriously, But Ishmael was obsessed with European architecture. He
Speaker 1: also loved the art music, you know, the whole nine yards.
Speaker 1: And at the time, the Suez Canal was being built
Speaker 1: by a French company and that had been granted a
Speaker 1: concession by the Egyptian government. So there were lots of
Speaker 1: connections between Egypt and France in the eighteen sixties, including
Speaker 1: a rumor that Ishmael had fallen in love with the
Speaker 1: French Empress Eugenni, the wife of Napoleon the Third. Napoleon
Speaker 1: the Third is the grandson of Napoleon Bonaparte, the first president,
Speaker 1: second Emperor, and last monarch of France anyway. So Eugenny,
Speaker 1: it turns out, came from a Spanish noble family and
Speaker 1: was known for her fine taste in fashion and art
Speaker 1: in decor. It said that Ishmael met her during his
Speaker 1: time in Paris and he just became incredibly smitten with her.
Speaker 1: So when it was time for the Suez Canal's grand opening,
Speaker 1: this was in eighteen sixty nine, he invited Eugenny to
Speaker 1: attend as a guest of honor.
Speaker 2: He must have been impressed by the canal, because can
Speaker 2: you imagine being one of the first people to see
Speaker 2: something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it must have been incredible. But even more impressive
Speaker 1: was the palace that Ishmael had built for the occasion.
Speaker 1: He called it the Palace al Jazeera, and it costs
Speaker 1: about seven hundred and fifty thousand Egyptian pounds to build,
Speaker 1: which was really a fortune at the time. He hired
Speaker 1: European architects to build it in this neoclassical style. He
Speaker 1: brought a renowned German designer to outfit the interior. Reportedly,
Speaker 1: Ishmael even had one of the rooms designed as a
Speaker 1: replica of Eugenni's chambers in Paris, so that she'd feel
Speaker 1: right at home, like it was this grand, grand gesture.
Speaker 2: Wow, So what ended up happening? Did that? Did that
Speaker 2: win her over?
Speaker 1: It really wasn't enough, apparently, Like the thing is, Eugennyan
Speaker 1: Napoleon didn't have a great relationship that was kind of
Speaker 1: widely known. He kept mistresses on the side, but for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, whether it was loyalty or not wanting to
Speaker 1: cause an international incident, when the Suez Canal festivities ended,
Speaker 1: Eugeni just packed bags and went home to France. And
Speaker 1: Ishmael of course was super heartbroken. But worse than that,
Speaker 1: all that spending meant that he'd racked up millions of
Speaker 1: pounds of debt, Like he borrowed so much money from
Speaker 1: France and Great Britain that eventually those countries stepped in
Speaker 1: to exert control over the Egyptian government. Like that's how
Speaker 1: much he borrowed. And Ishmael was deposed spent the rest
Speaker 1: of his life in exile. And here's an interesting detail.
Speaker 1: Part of the Al Jazeera Palace building was incorporated into
Speaker 1: the Cairo Marriott, a five star luxury hotel, So you
Speaker 1: can actually book a room there today for yourself and
Speaker 1: anyone you're trying to impress.
Speaker 2: Well that's a great travel tip. All right. Well, let's
Speaker 2: stay on the topic of prominent national leaders, and I'm
Speaker 2: going to go to Winston Churchill for my next fact.
Speaker 2: I know you've heard lots about Churchill's political life, but
Speaker 2: today I want to take a peek at his personal life.
Speaker 2: So he married a woman named Clementine Josier. This was
Speaker 2: in nineteen oh eight and they remained together until his
Speaker 2: death in nineteen sixty five. But before he settled down,
Speaker 2: Churchill was a real ladies man. One biographer reported that
Speaker 2: he was known for prowling London's theater district, trying to
Speaker 2: pick up girls from various music calls. And then he
Speaker 2: fell in love with Pamela Plowden. She was the daughter
Speaker 2: of a military official he knew from his time in
Speaker 2: the service. Now, Pamela had many admirers, so Churchill knew
Speaker 2: he'd have to go above and beyond in order to
Speaker 2: win her affection.
Speaker 1: So does he buy her like an extravagant gift or
Speaker 1: what happens here?
Speaker 2: Not at all? That was actually part of the problem.
Speaker 2: So Churchill had wealthy relatives, but he himself wasn't super rich,
Speaker 2: and Pamela made it known she wanted to marry someone
Speaker 2: with money, since she didn't come from a family of
Speaker 2: means either, so Churchill relied on his greatest skill. Those were,
Speaker 2: of course words. Now he began writing her this steady
Speaker 2: stream of love letters and kept at it for up
Speaker 2: to two years. Now. In what might have been my
Speaker 2: favorite gesture of all, when he finished his first and
Speaker 2: only novel, he had the manuscript delivered to her. He
Speaker 2: even came up with a plan to make more money,
Speaker 2: and after becoming a member of Parliament, he embarked on
Speaker 2: a lecture tour across North America, giving paid speeches that
Speaker 2: earned him thousands of pounds.
Speaker 1: Wow. So at this time, I'm guessing he's pretty financially secure,
Speaker 1: he's employed, he's a good writer. So does she fall
Speaker 1: from him now?
Speaker 2: Mega? Remember this is an episode about romantic gestures that
Speaker 2: did not work, so of course not in this case.
Speaker 2: So Churchill proposed repeatedly and Pamela rejected him every single time,
Speaker 2: eventually marrying Victor Bulward Lytton, who went on to have
Speaker 2: a prominent political career of his own. But he never
Speaker 2: not once gifted her a manuscript of a novel. So
Speaker 2: I think it's just just a shame.
Speaker 1: Well, at least Churchill figured it out and ended up
Speaker 1: in a long and happy marriage of his own. The
Speaker 1: same cannot be said of our next hapless Romeo, Count
Speaker 1: Gregory Orlov. He was a Russian military officer from a
Speaker 1: prominent family, and in seventeen fifty nine he met the
Speaker 1: Grand Duke Peter, who later became Emperor Peter I, and
Speaker 1: his Prussian wife, Catherine, who was later known as Catherine
Speaker 1: the Great. It said that Katherine and Orlov fell deeply
Speaker 1: for each other and began a relationship right away. Apparently
Speaker 1: she was very unhappy in her marriage. Catherine was an
Speaker 1: ambitious reader, a political thinker, and Peter, her husband, was
Speaker 1: less intellectual and more interested in drinking.
Speaker 2: I mean, it kind of sounds like they never should
Speaker 2: have gotten married in the first place.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was one of these royal things, right,
Speaker 1: Like it's an arranged marriage designed to strengthen the ties
Speaker 1: between Prussia and Russia. But Peter became an emperor in
Speaker 1: seventeen sixty two, and shortly thereafter Orlov and his brother
Speaker 1: Alexey helped plan a coup that overthrew him, making Katherine
Speaker 1: the Empress of Russia.
Speaker 2: I mean nothing, says, I love you like a coup mango.
Speaker 2: Let's be honest.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and not only that, Just a week after the coup,
Speaker 1: Alexei strangled Peter to death so Catherine would never have
Speaker 1: to deal with his poorish behavior again. There's actually no
Speaker 1: evidence that she was aware of that part of the plot,
Speaker 1: but still it paved the way for her in or Love,
Speaker 1: to become Russia's biggest power couple. Accept Catherine's advisors weren't
Speaker 1: thrilled about this, and they wouldn't let them marry. She
Speaker 1: did give Orlov the title of count and several high
Speaker 1: level appointments, and he worked alongside her to reform Russia's
Speaker 1: legal code. But in seventeen seventy two the relationship ended.
Speaker 1: It turns out that Catherine had fallen in love with
Speaker 1: another man, Gregory Petempkin, who'd also been involved in carrying
Speaker 1: out the coup. So now Orlov's like shocked. He's trying
Speaker 1: to win her back, and he goes out and he
Speaker 1: buys one of the most famous diamonds in the world.
Speaker 1: This is incredible. It weighs nearly two hundred carrots. It's
Speaker 1: an egg shaped stone that was allisurely stolen from a
Speaker 1: temple in Mysore in India and smuggled to Europe and
Speaker 1: in seventeen seventy four Orlov purchased it for one point
Speaker 1: four million Dutch florins. Catherine accepted the gift because you
Speaker 1: know who wouldn't, and she had it mounted in her
Speaker 1: royal scepter. But she was still in love with Potemkin
Speaker 1: and she refused to rekindle her romance with or Love
Speaker 1: and this sent to into a tailspin. You know, he
Speaker 1: spent all this money he was trying to woo her.
Speaker 1: He ends up leaving Russia, rebounds by marrying one of
Speaker 1: his cousins, and then dies when he was in his
Speaker 1: forties after suffering a mental collapse.
Speaker 2: Oh that is a rough story. We'll have another one
Speaker 2: about a diamond as well, this one involving movie stars,
Speaker 2: a media frenzy, and of course un unhappy ending. So
Speaker 2: I'll tell you all about it after we take a
Speaker 2: quick break.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Part time Genius. Today. We've got nine
Speaker 1: romantic gestures that turned into disasters. Okay, well, so you
Speaker 1: said you've gotten another fact about a diamond.
Speaker 2: Indeed, I do, and it's not just any diamond. So
Speaker 2: the jeweling question is a pear shaped beauty weighing almost
Speaker 2: seventy carrots. I love how we're throwing all these talk
Speaker 2: about carrots around as though we have any idea what
Speaker 2: this means. But that's a lot. So in nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: nine it was put up for sale at an auction.
Speaker 2: Back then, one of the biggest celebrity couples in the
Speaker 2: world was Welsh actor Richard Burton an American superstar Elizabeth Taylor.
Speaker 2: Now they were known for their luxurious lifestyle and Burton
Speaker 2: often bought Taylor the high end diamonds that she loved
Speaker 2: very much. Now they heard about this stone for sale
Speaker 2: and actually had the auction house fly it to them
Speaker 2: in Switzerland where they were vacationing, just so they could
Speaker 2: get a preview before the sale.
Speaker 1: That is incredible.
Speaker 2: It's just just crazy and it's all very relatable at
Speaker 2: the same time. But at the auction, Burton got out
Speaker 2: bid by Cartier, you know, the jewelry we were talking
Speaker 2: about earlier. But Burton was absolutely insistent, saying, no one
Speaker 2: but Taylor could wear this diamond, and so he ended
Speaker 2: up buying it from Cardier for one point one million
Speaker 2: dollars or the equivalent of nine point four million dollars today.
Speaker 1: That's incredible, and Elizabeth Taylor must have been ecstatic about this,
Speaker 1: right she was.
Speaker 2: But you know, before the couple took ownership of the diamond,
Speaker 2: they allowed Cardia to it on display in their Fifth
Speaker 2: Avenue shop, where thousands of people lined up every single
Speaker 2: day to see it. And finally the diamond was delivered
Speaker 2: to the Burton Taylors on their yacht off the coast
Speaker 2: of Monica.
Speaker 1: I feel like it just gets more and more relative.
Speaker 2: It really does. This is wild. So they were there
Speaker 2: for Princess Grace's birthday party, and while I'm sure people
Speaker 2: were happy for her Highness, the real star of the
Speaker 2: event was Elizabeth Taylor wearing this enormous diamond around her neck.
Speaker 2: But you know this isn't going to end well. Of course,
Speaker 2: Taylor and Burton's marriage fell apart, and they divorced soon after.
Speaker 2: They remarried briefly, and then split for good in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy six, at which point Taylor decided to sell the diamond.
Speaker 2: But some good did come of it, though she used
Speaker 2: the proceeds to help build a hospital in Botswana. You
Speaker 2: didn't see that one coming. That went from like crazy
Speaker 2: crazy to a nice gesture.
Speaker 1: There, I do like it. Well, here's a story about
Speaker 1: a different kind of beautiful ending. Are you familiar with
Speaker 1: the artist Marina Abramovich.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Actually, she's the one that did the project at
Speaker 2: MoMA where she said and stared at people right.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It was called the Artist's Present And she's had
Speaker 1: a really fascinating career kind of blurring the boundaries between
Speaker 1: conceptual art and performance art. And in the seventies and
Speaker 1: eighties she was in a relationship with a fellow artist.
Speaker 1: His name was Ulai, and they began collaborating. They created
Speaker 1: performance pieces together, like one where they plugged their nostrils
Speaker 1: and exhaled directly into each other's mouths until they became
Speaker 1: faint from lack of oxygen like it's weird but interesting stuff,
Speaker 1: and another called rest Energy. This one's crazy. Bramovich held
Speaker 1: the handle of a bow with the drawn arrow held
Speaker 1: by Ulai, and they leaned back until the bow was
Speaker 1: completely taught, with the arrow pointing at Abramovich's heart, and
Speaker 1: if Ulai's finger slipped, it would have killed her instantly,
Speaker 1: But the tension on the bow was coming from her
Speaker 1: way too, so not just his and they wore microphones
Speaker 1: to amplify their heartbeats. They stood perfectly still for four minutes.
Speaker 2: My god, that sounds terrifying, yeah, but it's also art,
Speaker 2: right of course.
Speaker 1: That's also the level of trust they had in each other.
Speaker 1: And in nineteen eighty they decided to get married with
Speaker 1: the performance slash romantic gesture that was bigger than anything
Speaker 1: they'd done before. Their plan was for each of them
Speaker 1: to start at one end of the Great Wall of
Speaker 1: China and then they just walked towards each other, a
Speaker 1: journey that would take months, and the idea was wherever
Speaker 1: they met, they'd marry on the spot. The problem was,
Speaker 1: they need a ton of permits from China, right, The
Speaker 1: Chinese government wasn't just handing out permits, and it took
Speaker 1: eight years to get all the paperwork squared away, and
Speaker 1: by then they had broken up. So they had this
Speaker 1: grand romantic gesture plan but no reason to do it anymore,
Speaker 1: except they decided to do it for a different reason.
Speaker 1: They decided to turn the performance into a farewell right.
Speaker 1: It was kind of an epic way of ending their relationship.
Speaker 1: After all, they had spent all this time getting the permits,
Speaker 1: so they wanted to continue through with it, so in
Speaker 1: April of nineteen eighty eight, they took their places at
Speaker 1: either end of the wall, and they start walking, and
Speaker 1: they met near the middle. Later that summer, Abramovich said
Speaker 1: that when she saw it live for the first time
Speaker 1: in months, quote, first I was angry, then I was sad,
Speaker 1: then I cried. They'd been traveling with help from translators
Speaker 1: provided by the Chinese government, and at their reunion, Ulai
Speaker 1: had devastating news for Abramovich. He'd fallen for his translator,
Speaker 1: she was pregnant, and they planned to marry in Beijing.
Speaker 1: He and Abramovich didn't speak again for decades.
Speaker 2: Isn't that wow? So it was like a romantic gesture
Speaker 2: turned romantic breakup, turned really really bad breakup pretty much.
Speaker 1: Ulai even sued Abramovich in twenty fifteen in a dispute
Speaker 1: over royalties on their collaborative works, but a few years
Speaker 1: later they reunited when she spotted him in the audience
Speaker 1: at a lecture she was giving at a Copenhagen museum.
Speaker 1: He put his arm around her and they laughed like
Speaker 1: old friends, and later Abramovich said that in that moment, quote,
Speaker 1: I gave up all the anger, all the hate, all
Speaker 1: the rest, and I think what's left is the beautiful
Speaker 1: work that we left behind, and this is what matters.
Speaker 2: Wow. All right, well, speaking of beautiful work, our next
Speaker 2: story is all about a watch that's both a technical
Speaker 2: marvel and an artistic statement unlike any other. Now, this
Speaker 2: all began in Versailles in seventeen eighty three. There was
Speaker 2: an admirer of Marie Antoinette's some say it was Swedish
Speaker 2: diplomat Axel von Furson. So anyway, decides to dazzle her
Speaker 2: with the gift of an extravagant watch. And the only
Speaker 2: person who could make a time piece worthy of the
Speaker 2: Queen was Abraham Louis Briget, the Parisian watchmaker who invented
Speaker 2: many of the mechanisms that became standard in the watchmaking industry.
Speaker 2: So Briget was up for the challenge, and he began
Speaker 2: devising this pocket watch made of gold and platinum, rubies
Speaker 2: and sapphires, all the good stuff. And it was said
Speaker 2: that he was given no budget to work with, meaning
Speaker 2: in other words, this sky was the limit here.
Speaker 1: Which means he was designing a really really stunning watch. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Actually, what made it really special is the number of
Speaker 2: complications it had, and watchmaking lingo. A complication is any
Speaker 2: function other than just telling time, So like an alarm,
Speaker 2: a date display, these are complications. And for this epic watch,
Speaker 2: Brigay loaded it with every complication he knew how to make.
Speaker 2: He built in a thermometer, a perpetual calendar, a chime,
Speaker 2: a display showing how much energy was left so you'd
Speaker 2: know when it needed winding, and more. And so when
Speaker 2: it was done there were eight hundred and twenty three components,
Speaker 2: many of them visible through the watch's transparent crystal face.
Speaker 2: Isn't that amazing?
Speaker 1: I love that it tells you the temperature, the date
Speaker 1: it's gonna alarm on it. It's like a antiquated iPhone, right.
Speaker 1: But what did Marie Antronett think about all this?
Speaker 2: Well, this is of course where the disaster part comes in.
Speaker 2: Because the watch was so complicated, it wasn't completed until
Speaker 2: eighteen oh two, almost twenty years after the work first began.
Speaker 2: By that point, Marie Antoinette was long gone. Now, if
Speaker 2: you recall French history one oh one, she got sent
Speaker 2: to the guillotine in seventeen ninety three, so she never
Speaker 2: got a glimpse of this amazing watch. And once more,
Speaker 2: Brigue himself died four years before the watch was finished.
Speaker 2: His son, who took over his father's business, had to
Speaker 2: step in and finish the job.
Speaker 1: So if Marie Antrnette wasn't alive to receive the gift,
Speaker 1: what happened to the watch?
Speaker 2: Well, the Brigue company held onto it for a while,
Speaker 2: and then they sold it to a private collector, changed
Speaker 2: hands a few times, eventually landing in a museum in Jerusalem.
Speaker 2: Was actually stolen from there in the nineteen eighties and
Speaker 2: disappeared for decades. Finally, in two thousand and seven, it
Speaker 2: was recovered, along with several others stolen time pieces, and
Speaker 2: returned to that same museum. Oh that's incredible.
Speaker 1: Well, we have one last story today, and this one
Speaker 1: doesn't involve jeweles, watches or any physical objects at all,
Speaker 1: because there's a whole other category of romantic gestures out there.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about, do do something for someone you love.
Speaker 2: I like that Love Languages book. Have you read that?
Speaker 2: It talks all about like acts of service.
Speaker 1: I haven't read it, but I imagine that's exactly what
Speaker 1: this is. So back in the nineteen forties, in the
Speaker 1: golden age of Hollywood, Rita Hayworth was one of the
Speaker 1: biggest movie stars in the world. Right she was a
Speaker 1: trained dancer. She worked her way up the studio system,
Speaker 1: going from bit parts to a starring role opposite Fred
Speaker 1: Astaire in the nineteen forty one musical You'll Never Get Rich,
Speaker 1: and she became an icon, appearing in hit movies and
Speaker 1: on magazine covers. She landed this high profile contract with
Speaker 1: Columbia Pictures as well. Now, her personal life was much rockier.
Speaker 1: She had left an abusive first husband to Mary Orson Wells,
Speaker 1: but that relationship fell apart a few years later. And
Speaker 1: then in nineteen forty eight, at a glamorous party on
Speaker 1: the French Riviera, Hayworth meets a gentleman named Ali Khan.
Speaker 1: And Khan is a fantastically wealthy social ae and he's
Speaker 1: a prince whose father was the Aga Khan, or head
Speaker 1: of the Ismaili Muslim community.
Speaker 2: Sounds like it's straight from a plot of a nineteen
Speaker 2: forties Hollywood.
Speaker 1: Movie exactly so. Ali Khan was actually married at the time,
Speaker 1: and he had a reputation for being a playboy, but
Speaker 1: Hayworth found him really charming, and after just a few
Speaker 1: days of courtship, she moved into his villa in the
Speaker 1: south of France. He organized parties to introduce her to
Speaker 1: his society friends, but it was kind of awkward, right, Like,
Speaker 1: she doesn't speak French. So anyway, he whists her off
Speaker 1: to Spain and proposes, and she says no because she
Speaker 1: has to get home to Hollywood to start work on
Speaker 1: a new film, and besides, she actually has a young
Speaker 1: daughter in the States from her marriage with wells Now.
Speaker 1: Ali Khan was undeterred. He pursues her to the Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: where he showers her with gifts. The relationship gets into
Speaker 1: the press, and, in addition to some casual racism at
Speaker 1: the time related to Ali's Pakistani heritage, people were outraged
Speaker 1: at the flamboyance of their affair, especially because he was
Speaker 1: still married.
Speaker 2: This is good stuff, magatherre like lots of good components. Here,
Speaker 2: I got my bucket a popcorn, like, keep keep going.
Speaker 1: This is really good, right. So Ali Khan's father wanted
Speaker 1: him to break it off because it was making the
Speaker 1: whole family look bad, and instead he gets a divorce
Speaker 1: and he and Hayworth finally marry in nineteen forty nine.
Speaker 1: But their lives are so different, right. He is a
Speaker 1: jet setter who keeps us safe full of various currencies
Speaker 1: so you can dash off to any corner of the
Speaker 1: globe at any moment's notice. And he was also expected
Speaker 1: to make official visits to the Ismaili communities in Africa
Speaker 1: and Asia. You know, this is all part of their
Speaker 1: tradition and as part of the service, he wants his
Speaker 1: wife to join him. But here's where the sacrifice comes in.
Speaker 1: So Hayworth actually gives up her film career to be
Speaker 1: with him. And this is a really, really costly decision.
Speaker 1: Columbia Pictures Suser for one point two million dollars for
Speaker 1: breaking her contract.
Speaker 2: Oh that is a huge leap to make. So tell me, Mengo,
Speaker 2: unlike every other story we've heard so far, tell me
Speaker 2: they lived happily ever after.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know where this is headed. So they
Speaker 1: had a daughter shortly after their marriage. But from that
Speaker 1: point on, it's just a disaster. Hayworth was totally out
Speaker 1: of her element on these diplomatic trips. Ali Khon didn't
Speaker 1: change his Playwroy ways, and Hayworth ends up going home
Speaker 1: to the US and initiating divorce proceedings. But the worst
Speaker 1: part is her reputation wasn't tatters her over the top
Speaker 1: lifestyle with Ali, not not to mention the fact that
Speaker 1: she'd taken up with a married man while being the
Speaker 1: mother of a young child from her first marriage. All
Speaker 1: of this prompted a ton of outrage at the time, and.
Speaker 2: Of course this was aimed at her, not him.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing right, yeah, I mean, he did get a
Speaker 1: little bit of blowback, but yeah, of course it was
Speaker 1: aimed at her. And in nineteen forty nine, an American
Speaker 1: women's club actually organized a boycott of her films, with
Speaker 1: one woman saying, quote Rita Hayworth's studio shitsacker, her trapesing
Speaker 1: around is an insult to American womanhood.
Speaker 2: So did her career ever recover from this?
Speaker 1: I mean, that is the good part. So she finally
Speaker 1: returned to the screen in nineteen fifty two. It was
Speaker 1: with a movie called Affair in Trinidad, and she went
Speaker 1: on to make several more hit films, but her relationship
Speaker 1: with Columbia execs remained tricky, partially because of her decision
Speaker 1: to quit the movies for love.
Speaker 2: Wow, Well that's the lesson for today. I guess, don't
Speaker 2: abandon a lucrative Hollywood career to galivan around with a prince.
Speaker 2: Just write that down, always put that in your back pocket. Well,
Speaker 2: I know, we said nine mango. We love to do
Speaker 2: our nine facts. But how about we end the day
Speaker 2: with the story of a tryhard who actually did win
Speaker 2: his crushover in the end.
Speaker 1: I'm for it. So who are we talking about?
Speaker 2: And I remember us talking about this back in our
Speaker 2: mental loss days. This was, of course President Richard Milhouse Nixon. Now,
Speaker 2: from the outside, the Nixon's marriage wasn't one that most
Speaker 2: people envy. The New York Times referred to the love
Speaker 2: between the couple as quote dry as dust. Ben Bradley
Speaker 2: of The Washington Post called it sort of a dingy marriage.
Speaker 2: I have a feeling they never touched each other in
Speaker 2: any way, you know, not great, But anyway, the letters
Speaker 2: between them over the course of their marriage actually show
Speaker 2: quite a bit of affection and passion and understanding between
Speaker 2: the two of them. Whatever their marriage would become, the
Speaker 2: initial dating period was not great. Apparently, the first time
Speaker 2: he met her, he said, I'd like to have a
Speaker 2: date with you. She responded, I'm busy. Then he said
Speaker 2: I'd like to marry you, and she laughed in his face.
Speaker 2: But as Politico puts it, he pursued Pat with the
Speaker 2: same determination and persistence he would later use to win
Speaker 2: seven elections. He hated ice skating, but bloodied himself repeatedly
Speaker 2: to learn so he could go skating with Pat and
Speaker 2: her friends. On weekends. In order to spend time with her,
Speaker 2: he drove her to Los Angeles, where she went on
Speaker 2: dates with other men. He would return on Sunday afternoons
Speaker 2: and wait until she was ready for him to drive
Speaker 2: her home. Six months after they met, Pat went to
Speaker 2: Michigan to buy a car and did not contact Dick
Speaker 2: for three months. Apparently it took him three years, but
Speaker 2: eventually all that hanging around her convinced her of his charms,
Speaker 2: and so, as Pat wrote to her parents after he'd
Speaker 2: enrolled in the service, Dick looked so different, younger, real, tan, thinner,
Speaker 2: and of course very handsome. She made it clear she
Speaker 2: missed him, and it wasn't long before they were married.
Speaker 1: I don't know that proposing marriage on your first meeting
Speaker 1: after someone has just turned you down for a date
Speaker 1: is the right way to go about winning someone's affections, mon,
Speaker 1: But I'm glad it worked out. But what about gifts?
Speaker 1: Was there anything tricky to got for Pat that we
Speaker 1: know about?
Speaker 2: Let me think about as well, pandas. Of course, when
Speaker 2: Pat went to China with President Nixon, she was totally
Speaker 2: taken with the pandas, and President Nixon gifted China too Muskox,
Speaker 2: which they reciprocated with pandas. So in a way, the
Speaker 2: fact that we have giant pandas in this country is
Speaker 2: because of their love.
Speaker 1: Oh that's when I had never thought of that. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess it's pretty romantic. But that does it for
Speaker 1: this very On Valentine's Day episode of Part Time Genius,
Speaker 1: don't forget to follow us on Instagram at part Time Genius.
Speaker 1: We have some exciting stuff coming up later this month,
Speaker 1: including a whole bunch of listener prize giveaways, so stay
Speaker 1: tuned for that, and in the meantime, Will, Mary, Gabe Dylan,
Speaker 1: and myself thank you so much for listening. Part Time
Speaker 1: Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show
Speaker 1: is hosted by Will Pearson and me Mongaish Heatikler and
Speaker 1: research by our good pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode
Speaker 1: was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with
Speaker 1: support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced for
Speaker 1: iHeart by Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry, with social media
Speaker 1: support from Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shorey.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.