Speaker 1: Hello, Mobituaries listeners. As you know, this podcast is about
Speaker 1: my favorite dead people and things. But for this episode,
Speaker 1: we wanted to well liven things up, so we decided
Speaker 1: to tape in front of a live audience. What follows
Speaker 1: is a compilation of two appearances I made in Asbury Park,
Speaker 1: New Jersey and Fairfield, Connecticut. There was plenty of fun
Speaker 1: and games, plus I interviewed legendary New York Times obituary
Speaker 1: writer Margatite Fox. Just a few times, you're going to
Speaker 1: hear the audience reacting to images displayed on a screen,
Speaker 1: but I'm pretty sure you'll get the joke. So without
Speaker 1: further ado from CBS Sunday Morning and Simon and Schuster,
Speaker 1: I'm Morocca and this is Mobituaries. Ladies and gentlemen. Please
Speaker 1: welcome to the stage. Mo Rocca. Hello, good evening. Thank
Speaker 1: you very much. I am so happy to be here
Speaker 1: in Asbury Park for the first Obituaries live. I inherited
Speaker 1: my love of obituaries from my father. My father always
Speaker 1: said that the obits was his favorite section of the newspaper,
Speaker 1: and I think it's because my father had a real
Speaker 1: sense of the romance of life. And I'm not being cute.
Speaker 1: When I say that romance of life and obits, I
Speaker 1: think he appreciated the sort of the dramatic sweep of
Speaker 1: an obituary, seeing a person's life the highs and lows
Speaker 1: kind of reduced to a few inches of newsprint. It's
Speaker 1: sort of like a movie trailer for an Oscar winning biopic,
Speaker 1: right It's which is usually much better than the full movie,
Speaker 1: but kind of the the lows. It's so dramatic, and
Speaker 1: to read a good one, you're like you're really swept away.
Speaker 1: For instance, W J. Sidas not a famous person, but
Speaker 1: boy what a story. X Prodigy and obscure clerk the
Speaker 1: all important first line. William James Sidis, who was a
Speaker 1: child prodigy, completed seven years of public schooling in six
Speaker 1: months and astounded Harvard University professors with his original theories
Speaker 1: on the fourth dimension, died today a lonely obscure clerk,
Speaker 1: one of whose last jobs was operating an adding machine
Speaker 1: at fifteen dollars a week. I mean, you just know
Speaker 1: that the kid who plays young Sheldon is going to
Speaker 1: win an Oscar playing that role. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I kind of like to do is imagine certain
Speaker 1: people with very eventful lives. What the first line of
Speaker 1: their obituary will be. Um, someone likes say Bill Cosby,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying I like him. His life is eventful.
Speaker 1: So so this is the line I came up with
Speaker 1: what would be sort of a first line that could
Speaker 1: pack it all in Bill Cosby, the Philadelphia born legendary
Speaker 1: stand up comedian who broke barriers when he became the
Speaker 1: first black actor to star in an American television drama
Speaker 1: before going on to star in his own blockbuster Upon
Speaker 1: Him as Sitcom, but whose legacy was eclipsed by a
Speaker 1: torrent of accusations of drug facilitated sex crimes, and who
Speaker 1: was two thousand eighteen conviction of aggravated and decent assault
Speaker 1: sent him to prison, where he lived out his days
Speaker 1: in disgrace. Died today. Now, when I was in the
Speaker 1: third grade, I loved diagramming sentences. I don't know how
Speaker 1: the heck you could diagram that sentence. Actually I do.
Speaker 1: I want to roll to see it. This is where
Speaker 1: Twitter is so great. I went on Twitter and I said,
Speaker 1: I have a sentence diagramming emergency. Can someone helped me?
Speaker 1: And a guy named Matthew Brown helped me out so
Speaker 1: any good obituary writer, and we have a great one
Speaker 1: coming out later, will tell you that someone's obituary is
Speaker 1: not about their death, but really about their life, which
Speaker 1: is what I'm interested in. I've been a correspondent on
Speaker 1: CBS Sunday Morning for about thirteen years now, thinking much,
Speaker 1: thank you, and I've done probably over a hundred different profiles,
Speaker 1: and I love doing them of all different types of people.
Speaker 1: One sobering thing that I've learned from this whole experience
Speaker 1: is that basically everybody will be forgotten. You probably knew
Speaker 1: that already. My colleague gets CBS Sunday Morning and my
Speaker 1: friend Rita Braver was profiling Nora Fron, the writer, producer
Speaker 1: and the wit in two thousand two, Yeah, and um
Speaker 1: profiling her. She had, what's that, No Fron? Well, okay,
Speaker 1: but let me tell you something that I don't want
Speaker 1: to either. I mean, but and I'm not not going to.
Speaker 1: But Rita Braver was was profile telling her about a
Speaker 1: musical that she had written, called Imaginary Friends, about the
Speaker 1: vicious feud between the great writers and intellectuals Lillian Hellman
Speaker 1: and Mary McCarthy. And Rita at one point asked Nora Efron.
Speaker 1: She said, you know, how do you want to be remembered?
Speaker 1: And Nora Efron said, to her, remembered. Lilian Helman and
Speaker 1: Mary McCarthy were the biggest names in America at one point,
Speaker 1: and they've been dead for ten or twelve years now
Speaker 1: and no one knows their names. And I kind of thought, well, yeah, right, whatever.
Speaker 1: But when we were doing this podcast, I wanted in
Speaker 1: the Audrey Hepburn episode to put in a line from
Speaker 1: Nora Efron. She had talked to me about Audrey Hepburn
Speaker 1: at one point, and on our staff all the people
Speaker 1: under the age of thirty had no idea who Nora
Speaker 1: Efron was. I'm telling and these are really look, I
Speaker 1: don't know who Cardi b is, so I'm not judging,
Speaker 1: but like, like so it was so brain These are
Speaker 1: really whip smart with the kids because they're very young.
Speaker 1: But it tells you something. So this next segment kind
Speaker 1: of comes out of that. It's sort of a public service.
Speaker 1: People are dying all the time, which means that the
Speaker 1: list of dead people keeps growing, which means that it's
Speaker 1: harder and harder to keep track of people, and it's
Speaker 1: easier to just confuse different people from the past. So
Speaker 1: I called this segment disambiguation. You know, it's important to
Speaker 1: point out that Audrey Hepburn was not related in any
Speaker 1: way to Katherine Heppern, not related at all. I am
Speaker 1: forever confusing Tennessee frontiersman Davy Crockett with Kentucky pioneer Daniel Boone.
Speaker 1: Don't ask me the difference between the frontiersman and a pioneer.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I know they're different. The reason
Speaker 1: they're always confused is that Bess Parker played both of
Speaker 1: them and a coon skin cap, and only Dave Crockett
Speaker 1: wore a coon skin cap. And now I can't tell
Speaker 1: which one is which. Chef Paul Prudome is not all together. Now,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I just got a whole audience to say,
Speaker 1: Don Delouise and Judison they have nothing to do with
Speaker 1: each other. They went to the same hat shop. I
Speaker 1: guess Paul Berdome was a chef. Don Deloise was an
Speaker 1: actor who cooked. Gore Vittall was a stylist of prose
Speaker 1: beat also Soon was a stylist of hair. Neither had
Speaker 1: anything to do with us on jeans. This is Joan
Speaker 1: of Arc the Sainted French heroine of the Hundred Years War.
Speaker 1: This is Joan van Arc, who started on Not So
Speaker 1: Landing for fourteen years. Unless I get sued, I want
Speaker 1: to be really clear. Joan van Arc is alive. At
Speaker 1: least she was right before the show started. Anyways, I
Speaker 1: want to be really clear. Okay. Oh, Molly Pitcher is
Speaker 1: one of the twelve service areas on the New Jersey Turnpike.
Speaker 1: Molly Hatchett is not. John Paul Jones is the father
Speaker 1: of the American Navy. John Paul Jones was the basis
Speaker 1: for led Zeppelin. John Paul Jones is a contestant on
Speaker 1: The Bachelorette. They're all named John Paul Jones. And finally,
Speaker 1: this is so important because people are constantly getting confused.
Speaker 1: The Norman Conquest was in ten sixty six when England
Speaker 1: fell to the Norman's, which should not be confused with
Speaker 1: Norman Bell Love Mr Roper Stanley. Okay, and now I
Speaker 1: am pleased to introduce this evening's special guests. I have
Speaker 1: a special guest for the first Mobituaries Live. Margalite Fox
Speaker 1: has written over four hundred obituaries for The New York Times.
Speaker 1: Margalite is also the author of three books. Her new
Speaker 1: newest release, Excuse Me, should win an Award for Best Title.
Speaker 1: It's called Conan Doyle for the Defense, the true story
Speaker 1: of a sensational British murder, a quest for justice and
Speaker 1: the world's most famous detective writer, Ladies and Gentlemen, margin
Speaker 1: Elite Fox. So, Margarlie, I said that you're retired from
Speaker 1: the New York Times, But in a sense you you'll
Speaker 1: never be retired, because your byline is going to appear
Speaker 1: for a good long while. Because when I retired, very
Speaker 1: very early, I should point out in June I left
Speaker 1: behind in the can I left behind while a case
Speaker 1: of Scotch under my desk. But we're not going to
Speaker 1: talk about that, which I gave to my colleagues because
Speaker 1: they'll need it more than I. But I left behind
Speaker 1: probably between seventy and eighty advents O bits, O bits
Speaker 1: that are written for the undead when they run. Is
Speaker 1: in the lap of the gods. But they I've been
Speaker 1: averaging maybe one by line a month, and so it
Speaker 1: may well be the case, because of course I could
Speaker 1: get hit by a bus tomorrow, that my byelines will
Speaker 1: outlive me. Now, are you allowed to tell us who
Speaker 1: any of the advanced obits are before they've been released. No,
Speaker 1: and then I really would have to kill you all,
Speaker 1: and you all seem like lovely people, so I think
Speaker 1: I won't do that. And is it true that the
Speaker 1: first oh bit you wrote was an advanced O bit?
Speaker 1: The very first advance O bit I wrote was in
Speaker 1: for a very major American scholar and thinker. I can't
Speaker 1: tell you more than that, and blessed him. Not only
Speaker 1: is he still alive, but he's still fiendishly productive. So
Speaker 1: every time he came I had to go into the
Speaker 1: computer and update is obit? Oh? Is it? Is it?
Speaker 1: David McCullough, Mo, did you hear what I just said? So?
Speaker 1: I know that it used to be that the obituary
Speaker 1: section was where you were put out to pasture, but
Speaker 1: that was long ago. Right to tell me about how
Speaker 1: you even got to be an obituary writer? Well, the
Speaker 1: child has not been born, And if anyone has such
Speaker 1: a child, please raise your hands and stand up and
Speaker 1: test of I, because I want to hear it. But
Speaker 1: I'm firmly convinced the child has not been born. Who
Speaker 1: comes home from primary school clutching a theme that says
Speaker 1: when I grow up. I want to be an obituary writer.
Speaker 1: That's never going to happen, and so journalists, including me,
Speaker 1: stumble into it quite by accident. And as most said,
Speaker 1: until maybe twenty years ago, the open department on any
Speaker 1: American newspaper was Siberia. It was where they put you
Speaker 1: if they didn't like you but didn't quite have enough
Speaker 1: dirt on you to fire you out right. And it
Speaker 1: was where they put you as the last stop before
Speaker 1: you needed to know that yourself. But why, I mean,
Speaker 1: it seems so satisfying, and I think I've heard you
Speaker 1: say that it's the most purely kind of narrative writing.
Speaker 1: You're reading someone's life from wound to tomb. Absolutely, and
Speaker 1: the dirty little secret is it's the best beat in
Speaker 1: American journalism. I want to ask about the paid oh bit.
Speaker 1: We'll be paying attention to the paid o bits, yes
Speaker 1: and no. But the first thing, and now I'm gonna
Speaker 1: to invoke a pop culture reference. I feel like Bert
Speaker 1: Lancaster talking to um Tony Curtis and sweet smell of
Speaker 1: success come here. I want to chestise you. First thing
Speaker 1: you must learn is not to call them moments. I'm
Speaker 1: so sorry you did a very bad thing. Um. They
Speaker 1: are paid death notices, so they are completely un journalistic
Speaker 1: in that if you read them, basically everyone who died
Speaker 1: was a saint. He died doing what he loved, and
Speaker 1: he died surrounded by his adoring family. Could I so,
Speaker 1: could I have a paid a bit excuse me, a
Speaker 1: paid death notice for myself that says that I was
Speaker 1: the president of Gambia. I suspect that would be fact checked.
Speaker 1: The capital is Banjo, by the way. But seriously, the
Speaker 1: paid notices are invaluable to reporters, and we scan that page.
Speaker 1: I have to do it with a magnifying glass now,
Speaker 1: but we scan it like a forty nin prospector panning
Speaker 1: for gold because sometimes, surprisingly often actually families don't quite
Speaker 1: know what they have tell us about alan Abel. Alan
Speaker 1: Abel gave my colleagues and me many a sleepless night.
Speaker 1: Alan Abel, who died last year at the age of
Speaker 1: ninety four, was a professional hoaxer. And he's he started
Speaker 1: early enough that one could at least make a kind
Speaker 1: of scanty living at it. Well, woe betide the New
Speaker 1: York Times in we ran his obituary, and he knew
Speaker 1: exactly the kind of fact checking that The Times would
Speaker 1: be doing, and he anticipated their every move. He had
Speaker 1: a woman weeping playing the part of the grieving widow
Speaker 1: because we're applied to call the family, so she answered
Speaker 1: the phone. He created a fake funeral parlor with its
Speaker 1: own business directory information listing, and had a fake under
Speaker 1: tech taker who answered the phone when the reporter called
Speaker 1: to do that bit of fact checking. He was a
Speaker 1: step ahead of us every inch of the way. And
Speaker 1: so the day after we ran his news over in nineteen,
Speaker 1: we had to run a retraction of that open amazing.
Speaker 1: Now he lived, as you know, America's self appointed court jester.
Speaker 1: He lived into his nineties, and so this was one
Speaker 1: of the people on my dance card about whom I
Speaker 1: needed to do and advance over. You can imagine how
Speaker 1: nervous that made me feel. And I wrote it. I
Speaker 1: did every possible bit of checking that I could at
Speaker 1: the time, and then, because I didn't want to deal
Speaker 1: with it when he actually did die, I retired. But
Speaker 1: he happened to die maybe it's six months after I retired.
Speaker 1: But had I still been on staff then and had
Speaker 1: it fallen to me too, as we say, put a
Speaker 1: top on the story, get the where and the when,
Speaker 1: and the all important confirmation that Mr Smith is really dead.
Speaker 1: I had this fantasy that when the Undertaker's back was turned,
Speaker 1: I would take out a hat, pim lean over the coffin,
Speaker 1: and we have to decide who is playing you in
Speaker 1: the movie, because this has to be a movie. I'm
Speaker 1: more concerned with the placement of obits. Margaretie knows that
Speaker 1: I still have not gotten over the fact that Richard
Speaker 1: Rogers was above the fold on the front page of
Speaker 1: the New York Times, but Oscar Hammerstein was below the fold.
Speaker 1: And this is the long history of the New York Times.
Speaker 1: Anti lyrics bias is just unacceptable. It's we've got to
Speaker 1: put a stop to it. But as you well know,
Speaker 1: these judgments are never absolute. They were only relatives. So
Speaker 1: of course it depended on who and what else was
Speaker 1: on page one on those respective days. Okay, um, Judy
Speaker 1: Garland was below the fold. That really bothered me. Don't
Speaker 1: look at me, moo, it's not on me. When Judy
Speaker 1: Carlin died, I was seven years old. Okay, well, all right,
Speaker 1: Dear Abbey and her sister Anne Landers were both below
Speaker 1: the fold. Do you think they did that intentionally so
Speaker 1: that they would you know his sibling rivalry. They wanted
Speaker 1: to make sure they were treated the same. No, they
Speaker 1: did it to hurt me because they were both mined.
Speaker 1: They were okay, No, dear Abby and Anne Landers, as
Speaker 1: you all know that two dueling advice columnists were identical twins,
Speaker 1: and they had great love for each other, but also
Speaker 1: tremendous rivalry as can happen. So born obviously on the
Speaker 1: same day, married on the same day in a double ceremony.
Speaker 1: They had a double wedding. Yes, I loved weddings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember when remember does anybody remember? It was really
Speaker 1: bad the Brady girls get married. They had like a
Speaker 1: special and I always thought they should like continue with it,
Speaker 1: and when they got to the end of their lives
Speaker 1: they could have the Brady Girls get buried. It has
Speaker 1: real possibilities, but they're the natural constituency audience will probably
Speaker 1: be themselves buried by then, so who's going to watch it? Right?
Speaker 1: A good point I need to work on. The marketing
Speaker 1: of this should go back to and and Abbey. Yes,
Speaker 1: Um and Landers died first, and in fact that was
Speaker 1: my first page one. So my husband got the paper
Speaker 1: and said, you know, you're on page one. I said,
Speaker 1: what the hell are you talking about? And indeed that
Speaker 1: was uh and Landers and then dear Abbey died quite
Speaker 1: a number of years later, fairly recently. But that must
Speaker 1: have been a thrill your first page one. It's a
Speaker 1: big deal. It was a lot of fun, high studio
Speaker 1: mo butting in here for a second. Turns out that
Speaker 1: mark Elite's favorite oh bits weren't the ones she wrote
Speaker 1: for the movers and shakers, but for who she calls histories,
Speaker 1: backstage players, the unsung heroes and heroines who changed our
Speaker 1: world in large, small, and almost always delightful ways. To
Speaker 1: honor them, we played a little game with Margarlite that
Speaker 1: involved my producer, Harry would dressing up as the Grim
Speaker 1: Reaper and bringing props on stage two. Well, you'll figure
Speaker 1: it out. Consider this as this is your life and
Speaker 1: oh Bitt's Margalite Fox, you're scaring me, Harry, who is
Speaker 1: the subject of Margalite's first oh bit flashback? Indeed, it
Speaker 1: is stovetop stuffing. It is Ruth scenes right, that is
Speaker 1: Ruth SAMs. And why ordinarily would be we be interested
Speaker 1: in doing the news oh bit, Thank you death? Why
Speaker 1: would the New York Times be interested in doing the
Speaker 1: news oh bit of a relatively unknown home economist from
Speaker 1: Indiana who worked in quite an anonymity for General Foods
Speaker 1: for thirty years. Indeed, Ruth Seems invented a product whose
Speaker 1: patents had the thrilling name of dehydrated bread product or
Speaker 1: something like that, stovetop stuffing, and bless her heart, she
Speaker 1: died in November, so we were able to run the
Speaker 1: story Wednesday of Thanksgiving week. Perfect timing. And as you
Speaker 1: wrote in that two thousand five oh bit, today, Craft Foods,
Speaker 1: which now owns the brand, sells about sixty million boxes
Speaker 1: of it at Thanksgiving. And I had to tell you,
Speaker 1: I am a fan. I love I'm stand. That's what
Speaker 1: they used to say in the ad right soap top.
Speaker 1: I'm staying. Would she have gotten in oh bit had
Speaker 1: she died in July? Absolutely, But we were so giddy
Speaker 1: with the excitement. There are only two times I've run
Speaker 1: around the news room in high excitement, shrieking to anyone
Speaker 1: I knew about the subject of the next day's o bit,
Speaker 1: and this Ruth Seems was one of them. Harry, who
Speaker 1: is the subject of Margalite's next oh bit flashback, It's
Speaker 1: Don Featherstone Adventure of the Pink Flamingo. Thanks, Harry. As
Speaker 1: most said, I've done well over bits, and this is
Speaker 1: one of the ones that made me the most deliriously
Speaker 1: have be And this is what I mean by the
Speaker 1: unsung backstage players. We all know about pink plastic lawn
Speaker 1: flamingos and every bit. All right, let's be honest here.
Speaker 1: It doesn't leave this room. What happens in Anthebury Park
Speaker 1: stays in Athebury Park. Hands up. If your family had
Speaker 1: one on their lawn, I wish we had. Yeah we didn't,
Speaker 1: but my parents were Communists, they had red flamingos. But
Speaker 1: so it was a phenomenon that literally defined the landscape
Speaker 1: of mid century America. And it comes from somewhere. It
Speaker 1: came from one guy with the perfect name of Don Featherstone,
Speaker 1: who was a sculptor for a plastics company in Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: and in nineteen fifty seven he decided, let's make this fun,
Speaker 1: pink summary product. It was put on the market the
Speaker 1: next year and took off like a pink flamingo. Harry,
Speaker 1: bring out the next subject of Margalite's oh Bit flashback.
Speaker 1: That's right, you're applauding. Andre Cassan, the inventor of the
Speaker 1: etch a sketch. Thank you, Harry. I can't believe I
Speaker 1: just tickled the grim Reekbert. That was really fun. It
Speaker 1: may buy me an extra few years, or it may
Speaker 1: have the reverse effect. That just sketch was invented by
Speaker 1: a French engineer named Andre Casson. Again invented totally by accident.
Speaker 1: He was working in a factory that made something else.
Speaker 1: There were metal filings in the air. They note. He
Speaker 1: noticed the metal filings stuck to a plastic decale for
Speaker 1: a light switch cover he was installing. And if you
Speaker 1: moved your finger or a pencil point on the underside,
Speaker 1: you got a pattern in those metal filings and that
Speaker 1: was all it took. You had a great line. And
Speaker 1: this just you right, so beautifully. First marketed in nineteen sixty,
Speaker 1: the toy, with its rectangular gray screen, red frame and
Speaker 1: two white knobs, quickly became one of the brightest stars
Speaker 1: in the constellation of mid century childhood amusements that included
Speaker 1: Lincoln Logs and the Slinky. And it just takes you back.
Speaker 1: It places it so beautiful, like really beautifully written. Um well, Margolie,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. I'm gonna ask you if you'll
Speaker 1: stay for one more. We ended the show by taking
Speaker 1: questions from the audience. Um, first of all, this was fascinating,
Speaker 1: Thank you both. So I was certainly aware of the
Speaker 1: fact that, oh, bits for famous people are written in advance.
Speaker 1: But is there some sort of pattern that gets followed? Um,
Speaker 1: you mentioned her earlier Cardi b gets famous. Do they
Speaker 1: at the New York Times then decide we need to
Speaker 1: have something on file about her? Or do you wait
Speaker 1: until someone is of a certain age. Well, the rather
Speaker 1: dark joke and open departments across america's that if you're
Speaker 1: a rocker, you're going to be dead at seven from
Speaker 1: an odor a plane crash. Sadly, but since our departments
Speaker 1: are small, newsroom budgets are shrinking by the minute, we
Speaker 1: have the resources only to do People who am an
Speaker 1: actuary would also be looking at so it's seriously, we
Speaker 1: there's no hard and fast rule. If we hear someone
Speaker 1: as ill, then of course we will drop everything and
Speaker 1: start in advance. But under normal circumstances, people have long
Speaker 1: lives now, so we wouldn't look at anyone much under
Speaker 1: eight unless they were excellent things going on. Um, well,
Speaker 1: I'm curiously whether you'd want to write your own or
Speaker 1: are you there's somebody that you chose to have right,
Speaker 1: like a doctor, cheating family member? How the hell old
Speaker 1: do you think I am? I guess I would think
Speaker 1: that would be something, you know. I'm like maybe others
Speaker 1: that you would you know, you would think about whead.
Speaker 1: I think at this moment, I'm more likely to commit
Speaker 1: homicide than this will push the podcast back to number one,
Speaker 1: because we wanted it to be true crime, and that's
Speaker 1: where it's all that. I would love if you wrote
Speaker 1: my O bed, I already have the headline selected. It's
Speaker 1: just gonna say, no, Mo, that is so good. I
Speaker 1: will oblige you right now. Thank you to Margalite Fox
Speaker 1: so much. Oh no, oh, I write I forgot, I forgot,
Speaker 1: not that this is the reason I'm here. But there's
Speaker 1: also a mobituaries book, everything from the death of dragons
Speaker 1: to the death of different diagnoses. People used to believe
Speaker 1: the dragons were real until and some guy came along
Speaker 1: and said, no, they're made up, and then everyone went,
Speaker 1: holy crap, we thought dragons were real. Sorry. That should
Speaker 1: have issued a spoiler alert for Game of Thrones fans
Speaker 1: on that one, so don't don't let your Game of
Speaker 1: Thrones fans read that chapter. I hope that you will
Speaker 1: get the book or read someone else's copy, and most
Speaker 1: of all, enjoy it and continue listening to the podcast.
Speaker 1: And thank you all for being part of this first
Speaker 1: Mobituaries Live. Next time on Mobituaries. Anna May Wong Hollywood's
Speaker 1: first Chinese American superstar. She was a true pioneer in
Speaker 1: that she couldn't look to anyone and say I want
Speaker 1: to be like this person. She really had to u
Speaker 1: forge her own path. I certainly hope you enjoyed this Mobituary. May.
Speaker 1: I ask you to please rate and review our podcast.
Speaker 1: You can also follow Mobituaries on Facebook and Instagram, and
Speaker 1: you can follow me on Twitter at Morocca. You can
Speaker 1: subscribe to Mobituaries wherever you get your podcasts. This episode
Speaker 1: of Mobituaries was produced by Megan Marcus, Harry Wood, Christopher Kentner,
Speaker 1: and me Morocca. He was edited by Harry Wood and
Speaker 1: engineered by Dan de Zula. Indispensable support from Christina Tompkins,
Speaker 1: Genius Doneski, Richard Rohr, Don Epstein, and everyone at CBS
Speaker 1: News Radio. Special thanks to Jim Norton at the Asbury
Speaker 1: Park House of Independence and Robert Martineau at the Fairfield
Speaker 1: Theater Company for their hospitality and technical support. Our theme
Speaker 1: music is written by Daniel Hart and as always, undying
Speaker 1: thanks to Rand Morrison and John Carp without whom Mobituaries
Speaker 1: couldn't live. Hi, It's mo. If you're enjoying Mobituaries the podcast,
Speaker 1: may I invite you to check out Mobituaries the book.
Speaker 1: It's chock full of stories not in the podcast. Celebrities
Speaker 1: who put their butts on the line, sports teams that
Speaker 1: threw in the towel for good, forgotten fashions, defunct diagnoses,
Speaker 1: presidential candidacies that cratered whole countries that went to put
Speaker 1: and dragons, Yes, dragons, you see. People used to believe
Speaker 1: the dragons will real until just get the book. You
Speaker 1: can order Mobituaries the Book from any online bookseller, or
Speaker 1: stop by your local bookstore and look for me when
Speaker 1: I come to your city. Tour information and lots more
Speaker 1: at mobituaries dot com