Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to short stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck
Speaker 1: and this is short stuff. And as I say, sometimes
Speaker 1: getty up, but in this case it'd be getty up,
Speaker 1: you horse with pants on that was smooth as sandpaper.
Speaker 1: Oh that hurts, Chuck. Uh, this is pretty good. You
Speaker 1: dug this one up. The Society for indecent indecency to
Speaker 1: naked animals, that's right, which is kind of which is
Speaker 1: kind of like the the finest example of the the
Speaker 1: stodgy kind of morality. Um that that was characteristic of
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties. Like, this is the apex of that.
Speaker 1: That's right. It was a group of people that got
Speaker 1: together and said, you know what, we can't have anymore
Speaker 1: in our society. Are these naked animals walking around in
Speaker 1: their disgusting parts. We need to put clothing on animals
Speaker 1: on anything over four inches tall or six inches long.
Speaker 1: Our children are at steak. Get the clothed. Yes, they
Speaker 1: were offended by naked animals, this group, and they wanted
Speaker 1: to clothe animals. That was their purpose, that was their drive.
Speaker 1: And at first it was a very little known group.
Speaker 1: But then in May of nineteen nine, the president of
Speaker 1: Sina ge Clifford Pruite, Jr. Uh appeared on the Today
Speaker 1: Show and basically explaining what SINA was all about and
Speaker 1: calling for all animals to be clothed um and he
Speaker 1: said a lot of weird things, not just in this interview,
Speaker 1: but in multiple interviews that came over the following years,
Speaker 1: where he said things like um zoos were peep shows
Speaker 1: for kids. One of his favorite phrases was a nude
Speaker 1: horse is a rude horse, m hmm. And basically called
Speaker 1: for support and membership. And after that Today Show appearance
Speaker 1: in nineteen nine, membership swelled like almost overnight. Yes, believe
Speaker 1: it or not, there were more than fifty thousand people
Speaker 1: in the United States. They said, I agree, we need
Speaker 1: to get clothing on all animals. Here's some money. I
Speaker 1: was a woman in Santa Barbara, California. You sent a
Speaker 1: forty thousand dollar check in nine in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: This was about three fifty dollars today to help fund
Speaker 1: clothing for animals. And they basically said, all right, get involved.
Speaker 1: To get your community involved issue UH sign us sub
Speaker 1: summons is to your neighbors, if you see them walking
Speaker 1: their dog without pants on, you need to give them
Speaker 1: a summons, They picketed the White House. They sent letters
Speaker 1: to President Kennedy that said, you need to get pants
Speaker 1: on your horses, sir, cover private parts. Yeah, cover those
Speaker 1: horse penises. And it was kind of see that one.
Speaker 1: Yeah have you seen? Have you seen? Um? What's it called?
Speaker 1: I think you should leave? What is that? How do
Speaker 1: I know that? I can't remember? The guy's name is hilarious.
Speaker 1: He's like best friends with Andy Samberg's Tim something sounds
Speaker 1: really familiar. Anyway, It's on Netflix and they have this
Speaker 1: one kind of fake ad and it was for a
Speaker 1: ranch um where they bred horses to have very very
Speaker 1: small penises so that men don't have to be ashamed
Speaker 1: of their own penis size when they ride these horses
Speaker 1: around this dude ranch. Oh and that that guy Tim Robinson. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: because I have not seen that though. It's wonderful. Uh,
Speaker 1: but I am seeing now that Adie Bryant's husband, Connor
Speaker 1: O'Malley is on their Connor Listen to Stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know at one point, and he is one of the
Speaker 1: great weirdo comedians ever. Yeah, it's like a magnet for
Speaker 1: weirdo comedians. This year was Uh, that's pretty funny. So
Speaker 1: Americans are getting involved, like I said, they're petitioning the
Speaker 1: president there uh um picketting the White House, and then
Speaker 1: it culminates in eighteen I'm sorry, in nineteen sixty two. Uh,
Speaker 1: it feels like it should be eighteen sixty two when
Speaker 1: ge Clifford Prut appears with none other than Walter Cronkite,
Speaker 1: most trusted news person in the country, and he was
Speaker 1: interviewed on CBS News Prime Time. He sang the Sena's
Speaker 1: anthem called Wings of Decency with a ukulele, and it
Speaker 1: was a very very big deal and sort of the
Speaker 1: apex of this movement. Can we sing the wings of decency?
Speaker 1: Um sign an anthem? You can high on the wings
Speaker 1: of sign Uh we fight for the future. Now let's
Speaker 1: close every pet and and um mole weather, dog, cat,
Speaker 1: horse or cow. Ge Clifford Prue our president. He works
Speaker 1: for you and me, so clothed all your pets in
Speaker 1: joined the march for worldwide decency. So he's playing this
Speaker 1: anna ukulele on uh CBS News with Walter Cronkite interviewing him.
Speaker 1: Ge Clifford Prout Jr. Is the president of SIGNA and
Speaker 1: there's a There's a guy who is operating the camera
Speaker 1: for CBS News that says, hey, wait a minute, that
Speaker 1: guy looks awfully familiar, doesn't n Chuck, that's right, and
Speaker 1: perhaps here's where we should take our break. Right, that's right, agreed.
Speaker 1: If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just
Speaker 1: listen to Chuck. Alright, we're back. Cameraman at CBS News
Speaker 1: sits up and says, wait a minute, I recognized that guy,
Speaker 1: and what did he say? He said, that's no g
Speaker 1: Clifford Prute. That man's name is Buck Henry and in
Speaker 1: the future he's going to be a very famous screenwriter
Speaker 1: and actor for comedy. That's right. There was no g
Speaker 1: Clifford Prute. There was no Society for Indecency to Naked
Speaker 1: Animals tally Well, technically there was, but it was just
Speaker 1: a big put on. It was just a big joke. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a guy named Alan Abel who would go on
Speaker 1: to become one of America's most famous and prolific and
Speaker 1: successful hoaxters. And I think like he's got half a
Speaker 1: dozen short stuffs coming down the pike himself. He was
Speaker 1: just that prolific. But this was the first time America
Speaker 1: was introduced to alan Abel, and they had been had
Speaker 1: that for four years. I saw in some places six years.
Speaker 1: Buck Henry kept up this this ruse at the behest
Speaker 1: of alan Abel and went on Cronkite, went on The
Speaker 1: Today Show, went on tons of national interview shows, and
Speaker 1: earnestly professed a need for animals to be clothed. So
Speaker 1: he must not have been known by face at all
Speaker 1: at that point. Hard but Henry, Yeah, no, his crew
Speaker 1: is just starting out. It's astounding that he was ever
Speaker 1: recognized at all. And even when he was, it was
Speaker 1: a good three years into the hoax to that cameraman.
Speaker 1: Cameraman was deep on the independent comedy circuit. I think exactly.
Speaker 1: That's how I take it. That's pretty great. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was all a hoax, um he you know, And
Speaker 1: as is many times with hoaxes like this, there is
Speaker 1: a a statement being made. And the statement here was
Speaker 1: Able was really turned off by the moral, uh the
Speaker 1: moral majority of the United States in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: and how put off they would be about everything. And
Speaker 1: he said, maybe a good way to to take the
Speaker 1: the p out of this thing would would be two
Speaker 1: become one of them. And he said he's been hired
Speaker 1: by uh. Something he saw in Texas in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: He was driving on a highway and saw like traffic
Speaker 1: was stopped and everyone was kind of standing around. And
Speaker 1: when he got out, he saw that traffic had stopped
Speaker 1: because two cows were having sex in the middle of
Speaker 1: the highway. And he said he he just saw the
Speaker 1: looks on these piece faces, at these people's faces. Some
Speaker 1: of them were clearly disgusted. Some of them wouldn't couldn't
Speaker 1: even bear to look at it and cover their eyes.
Speaker 1: One woman was angry, and he he was just like,
Speaker 1: what is going on? These cows? They don't know morality,
Speaker 1: They're just doing what cows do. And these Americans are
Speaker 1: so stuffy that they're literally upset about this, right, they're
Speaker 1: offended by this. It's yeah. So he at first tried
Speaker 1: out some low hanging fruit and he um wrote a
Speaker 1: letter to the editor of the Saturday Evening Post, um,
Speaker 1: you know, professing for the first time signa and the
Speaker 1: it's it's goals and aims as a joke um And
Speaker 1: he got a rejection like her, but the tone of
Speaker 1: the rejection letter kind of spurred him to keep going.
Speaker 1: The editor you know, wrote indignantly that he really disagreed
Speaker 1: with this and he thought it was a terrible idea.
Speaker 1: And Um alan Able realized that this guy had had
Speaker 1: failed to take it as a joke that he thought
Speaker 1: was really and he's like, well, who else can I fool?
Speaker 1: Let's see where else we can take this. And he
Speaker 1: went to his friend Buck Henry and said, hey, no
Speaker 1: one knows what you look like yet or who you are.
Speaker 1: Will you pose as G. Clifford Prute, the president of Sina?
Speaker 1: And this was right up Buck Henry's alley. He said,
Speaker 1: oh yeah. And they kept this up for four to
Speaker 1: six years, Chuck, not secretly, not quietly, as loudly and
Speaker 1: nationally as they possibly could. They kept this hoax going. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I get the feeling this was had more legs than
Speaker 1: he ever dreamed it would. Yes, and just decided, as
Speaker 1: any great um sort of Andy Kaufman like comedian like,
Speaker 1: to keep rolling with it once once it's going, if
Speaker 1: everyone is fooled. And even after it was exposed in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four by Time magazine, UM, people like Walter
Speaker 1: Cronkite was still really mad. He felt he had been
Speaker 1: made a full of obviously Uh, it's important to point
Speaker 1: out that he did not take any of this money.
Speaker 1: He wasn't drifting people, So that forty grand that check
Speaker 1: was never cashed or anything. Yeah, that's yeah, Like people
Speaker 1: would be angry. There's listeners right now, they're like, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, this guy stole all this money, right, and
Speaker 1: he was a comedian, right, So that never happened, thankfully,
Speaker 1: no hum. But the thing that was most astounding was
Speaker 1: that they accidentally inadvertently created a moral movement to clothe animals.
Speaker 1: Those fifty thousand people that joined SINA were earnest, like,
Speaker 1: they were passionately supportive of clothing animals because it was
Speaker 1: indecent to have naked animals running around. A joke became reality,
Speaker 1: and that is about the best you could possibly hope
Speaker 1: for from a hoax. That's a cultural criticism. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: not a big fan of clothing on animals at all.
Speaker 1: I'm not either lead the animals alone everybody, Like if
Speaker 1: if your dog needs a sweater in the winter or something,
Speaker 1: that's okay to me. But like these people that dress
Speaker 1: up their animals and take pictures of I don't know,
Speaker 1: I feel it's not very respectful. Oh I see what
Speaker 1: you mean. Yeah, we dressed moment, but it's just for warmth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: then that's different if, like I said, if your dog
Speaker 1: needs a sweater or a thunderbuddy, which is what we
Speaker 1: called the thundercoats the vests. What about ThunderCats, I don't
Speaker 1: know anything about ThunderCats. You don't know the ThunderCats that
Speaker 1: cartoon from the eighties. I've heard of it, but it
Speaker 1: was a little after my time. Oh I could see that,
Speaker 1: but it was directly in my wheelhouse. And that is
Speaker 1: one of the all time greats. All right. Uh So, obviously,
Speaker 1: since we started talking about ThunderCats, that signals that this
Speaker 1: episode of short Stuff is over right, that's right. Before
Speaker 1: we go, Chuck, I want to say thank you very
Speaker 1: much as Zachary Crockett and Priceonomics, the Museum of Hoaxes
Speaker 1: and Ripley's believe it or not, believe it or not
Speaker 1: for being sources about this. So keep an ear out
Speaker 1: for alan Able short Stuffs in the future, because he's
Speaker 1: got plenty more coming. In the meantime, everybody, short Stuff
Speaker 1: is out. Stuff you should Know is a production of
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