Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson
Speaker 1: and I'm Holly Frye. We talked about Dorothy Arsner this week.
Speaker 1: We sure did back you. You researched and wrote the
Speaker 1: Billy Burke episode where we had previously mentioned Dorothy Arsner.
Speaker 1: And when I looked back at that, I was trying
Speaker 1: to remember, like what specifically we had said, and you
Speaker 1: had a little note in there that said, maybe a
Speaker 1: future episode. Finally its own episode written by the opposite
Speaker 1: person from the person who wrote the Billy Burke episode. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: Sometimes I don't get to him. And you had asked me,
Speaker 1: are you doing this one? And I was like no, now,
Speaker 1: so hooray for Tracy. I also will say maybe a
Speaker 1: future episode and then forget that I ever said that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: rediscover a person five years later and say oh yeah,
Speaker 1: oh so number one. Boy? Did I love reading everything
Speaker 1: about Dorothy Arsner. I love all the pictures of Dorothy Arsner.
Speaker 1: I find her personal style to be great. I love
Speaker 1: the pictures. I love the pictures of her, like on
Speaker 1: a film set in a cowboy suit. Well, I was
Speaker 1: very into that. You know, I love a little themed dressing.
Speaker 1: I think it's super fun. Yeah, I love that she
Speaker 1: was able to carve out a career for herself in
Speaker 1: Hollywood at a time when because of her gender and
Speaker 1: her sexual orientation like that would have been really hard
Speaker 1: for her. And it is kind of speculative, but I
Speaker 1: do think that's one of the reasons that she just
Speaker 1: didn't want to talk about herself, and she didn't even
Speaker 1: want to talk about her work. And this included like
Speaker 1: doing publicity for a film, not wanting to discuss the
Speaker 1: immediate previous film, or even doing publicity for a film
Speaker 1: that just came out and not even really wanting to
Speaker 1: talk about that film anymore. So there was one interview
Speaker 1: that she gave in nineteen thirty six and they were
Speaker 1: asking about it her work, and here's what she said. Quote,
Speaker 1: as far as I'm concerned, they are ancient history. The
Speaker 1: latest picture of mine Craig's Wife happens to be a hit,
Speaker 1: But why should I talk about it and think about it? Now?
Speaker 1: It's finished, I'm through with it. There's nothing more I
Speaker 1: can do about it, So why should I dwell on it?
Speaker 1: You know, I understand this completely. I understand this in
Speaker 1: terms of the way our podcast work, but you tell
Speaker 1: me your understanding of it. Yeah, same thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like it's one of those things where I feel like,
Speaker 1: once you've put a thing out into the world, unless
Speaker 1: you're gonna go back and edit it, which some creators do,
Speaker 1: talking about it a whole bunch just gets you hung
Speaker 1: up in it. Sure, and you know, potentially like, what
Speaker 1: are you going to answer some one who is like,
Speaker 1: but why didn't you blah blah blah, I just didn't write. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna change. And then also, you know, she
Speaker 1: seems like somebody that was so I'm trying to think
Speaker 1: of exactly the right word. She's very driven and focused
Speaker 1: in her work, which I think probably meant like I'm
Speaker 1: busy thinking about the next thing. I don't really have
Speaker 1: time to retread. Yeah that makes sense too. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I similarly will like if I make an actual error
Speaker 1: and someone alerts me to that error in something that
Speaker 1: I have done, yeah, I will correct that error. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But sometimes it's like this should have been phrased in
Speaker 1: a very subtly different way and it's not anything meaningful,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, if I continue to think about that
Speaker 1: for the next ten years, all of my life will
Speaker 1: be regrets. Yeah, I mean it will. It will block
Speaker 1: you from getting other good work done because your brain
Speaker 1: is occupied with an unshiftable gear, I mean, ruminations on
Speaker 1: things that have already happened. I wonder too if she
Speaker 1: also just like was uncomfortable with accolades. Oh possibly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, because even when people are saying nice things
Speaker 1: about my work, I don't want to talk about it.
Speaker 1: That feels weird and yeah, self indulgent and gross. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Occasionally I will be somewhere being introduced to someone and
Speaker 1: someone will like make a big deal about the podcast,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, I want to leave now. Like I
Speaker 1: usually say something very potty mouthed and self deprecating at
Speaker 1: that point. Yeah. One of the books that I read
Speaker 1: for this did have that partial autobiography in it as
Speaker 1: one of the sort of appendices. And we don't know
Speaker 1: for sure that she stopped writing because she got about
Speaker 1: to the point where she was going to meet Marian
Speaker 1: And how how do you have an autobiography where you're
Speaker 1: not talking about that when that's a big part of
Speaker 1: your life. Again, speculative, but totally makes sense. She worked
Speaker 1: on that. I think it about nineteen fifty five, so
Speaker 1: after her film career was done, but you know, she
Speaker 1: still had some decades of her life left after that.
Speaker 1: Apparently she was in a restaurant in nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: which was, you know, much closer to the end of
Speaker 1: her life, and the server asked her when she was
Speaker 1: going to write her autobiography and she said never. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I loved that. Anyway, this is one of the
Speaker 1: most fun to me episodes that I have worked on
Speaker 1: in a little bit. Yeah, she's delightful. I liked her
Speaker 1: a lot. We've not talked about her for very long,
Speaker 1: but I don't feel like I have a whole lot
Speaker 1: more to say. Some of some of them are lost,
Speaker 1: as we said, some of her movies you are able
Speaker 1: to find through streaming services and things like that. Some
Speaker 1: of them are old enough to be in the public domain,
Speaker 1: some not. I did watch some of the bullfighting footage
Speaker 1: that she entered cut together. I kind of thought about
Speaker 1: what if I had like a Dorothy Arsner film weekend
Speaker 1: and watched a bunch of drothy Arsner movies. I did
Speaker 1: not wind up doing that, but I may still at
Speaker 1: some point check out various movies that I've seen, not
Speaker 1: seen all of beyond the clips that I saw for
Speaker 1: the purposes of research here Strawberry Domestications. We did. Some
Speaker 1: aspects of this reminded me a little bit of when
Speaker 1: we did that episode on Nick's versus Headden and the
Speaker 1: decision of whether tomatoes were fruit or a vegetable. Some
Speaker 1: similar stuff in there about which things are fruits and Yeah,
Speaker 1: though to the best of my knowledge, there's never been
Speaker 1: a big, yucky legal battle over this one. I don't think, zoo.
Speaker 1: There are One thing that I wanted to mention is
Speaker 1: that it fell to you to read a section of
Speaker 1: the outline that featured the title of a book called
Speaker 1: The Great herbal And It's spelled in very old timey
Speaker 1: spellings when things were not standardized E T E and
Speaker 1: then herbil is E R B A L L. I
Speaker 1: think I don't have a handy in front of me.
Speaker 1: And the whole time I was doing research, every time
Speaker 1: I came across it, I called it the Great hair
Speaker 1: Ball and make myself giggle. It's not that funny, but
Speaker 1: you know, we find our joy where we can. I
Speaker 1: also one of the other things that made me think
Speaker 1: about this, I follow a lot of gardeners on huh
Speaker 1: social media, one of whom is this amazing English gardener
Speaker 1: named Simon Ackroyd, and he was pointing out it's in
Speaker 1: he has a new book out that's about like how
Speaker 1: you can cultivate your own plants from things that you
Speaker 1: would buy for your grocery supply, like okay, strawberries, and
Speaker 1: one is you know, like slicing off some of the
Speaker 1: exterior skin of a strawberry, letting it dry on a
Speaker 1: paper towel, and then when it's dry, you can scrape
Speaker 1: the seeds off and plant those, which I am in
Speaker 1: the middle of propagating, which is very exciting, but it
Speaker 1: really is easier to do it just from Yeah, but
Speaker 1: you don't have the whole plant if you're buying a
Speaker 1: strawberry at the grocery store. I also had a moment
Speaker 1: where those statistics we were reading at the end about
Speaker 1: each person eating an estimated four zero point eighty five
Speaker 1: pounds of strawberries annually. I don't know if I believe
Speaker 1: that in which direction both okay and I think it's
Speaker 1: because like they're there are years of my life where
Speaker 1: I'll be like, yeah, strawberries, and I eat a ton
Speaker 1: of them, and then I could go two years without
Speaker 1: eating a strawberry. Yeah. So I just don't know how
Speaker 1: common they are in other people's diets. I love strawberries,
Speaker 1: and I love berries in general, and having gotten in
Speaker 1: the habit of trying to shop more locally when we
Speaker 1: are able, that means a lot of my berry consumption
Speaker 1: is now happening when the berries are in season in Massachusetts, right,
Speaker 1: And the strawberry season in Massachusetts, you know, unless you're
Speaker 1: somewhere where there's a big greenhouse set up and all
Speaker 1: of that, Like, it's not a long season no for
Speaker 1: strawberries and Massachusetts. But I do love them. I like them.
Speaker 1: I'm you know, once again, we're back to the hydroponic garden. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I can have this is part of it. I
Speaker 1: want things year round. Yeah, And I don't I don't
Speaker 1: love the idea of all of the the travel that
Speaker 1: fruits and vegetables have to go through and how long
Speaker 1: they are sitting in survival climate as they try to
Speaker 1: make their way in all of the the you know,
Speaker 1: the waste that comes from those shipments. So if I
Speaker 1: could just grow them here at the house, yeah, in
Speaker 1: my house, So I can mash them into cocktails. Marvelous.
Speaker 1: When I was living in the Atlanta area the first year,
Speaker 1: I was going to have a nice little container garden
Speaker 1: out on the back patio, and I had gotten all
Speaker 1: these little plants, and it included a number of strawberry plants.
Speaker 1: I was so excited. And then I broke my leg
Speaker 1: and refused anyone, refused to ask anyone for help with anything,
Speaker 1: and so all of my plants died. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: have never since then made the same level of attempt
Speaker 1: at like growing food plants at home. I've govern other
Speaker 1: plants at various times, but not so much with the
Speaker 1: food plants. Did have a good herb garden, yeah, on
Speaker 1: the back deck here for a couple of years. You
Speaker 1: have a good climate for lettuce. Do have a good
Speaker 1: climate for lettuce? You could be growing lettuce all the time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I have put off any of my ongoing questions of
Speaker 1: growing things indoors because we are trying to track down
Speaker 1: a potential allergy situation with one of the cats, just
Speaker 1: like trying not to introduce more things into the household
Speaker 1: for a little bit. Yeah, yeah, uh yeah. We mostly
Speaker 1: keep the cats out of the rooms where the plants are,
Speaker 1: oh sure. However, one of our newer cats, it's her
Speaker 1: habit in the mornings to walk all the plants with
Speaker 1: me check them. I love that. It's pretty cute. Really.
Speaker 1: She just wants to hang out in our bar all
Speaker 1: the time. Yeah. I don't know how I got a
Speaker 1: barfly cat, but I did, and that's fine with me.
Speaker 1: And that's where like our our hydroponics are because I
Speaker 1: use them for garnish. Yeah, and she just wants to
Speaker 1: run in there. She'll sit there and cry at the
Speaker 1: door because she wants to drink. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't know what she thinks is going to happen. But
Speaker 1: it's pretty cute. But she has to be watched like
Speaker 1: a hawk because without any pre sniff or investigation, she
Speaker 1: will run up to any plant and bite it. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we have to be careful and not Yeah. I
Speaker 1: don't have anything right now that would be dangerous to cats. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I don't want to risk it either. To return
Speaker 1: to when I was living in Atlanta, one time I
Speaker 1: got a little container garden of succulents. Would that me
Speaker 1: or you? And I came into the house with the succulents,
Speaker 1: and I returned to the car to get the second
Speaker 1: load of thing to bring in, and in the time
Speaker 1: that I was gone, Cestina just bit the end right
Speaker 1: off one of the succulent plants and it was I
Speaker 1: made sure it was not a plant that was gonna
Speaker 1: hurt her, but it was. It's probably very bitter because
Speaker 1: then she foamed at the mouth and I was like,
Speaker 1: maybe you took me one minute I was not in
Speaker 1: the house to go take a bite out of this plant.
Speaker 1: And I'm sorry this happened to you, but this is
Speaker 1: a consequence. Yeah. Cats will always pick out one moment
Speaker 1: that you're not looking, yep, and be like, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna raise some hell today. Here we go. I
Speaker 1: love them me too. Our newer babies are sort of
Speaker 1: hell racers. I will tell an unrelated to history story
Speaker 1: about them. We have talked anything on the show before
Speaker 1: about the Murphy door that we have that goes to
Speaker 1: my husband's office. Ahh. He had wanted one for a
Speaker 1: long time and I bought him one for his birthday
Speaker 1: some years back. And so you know, when we first
Speaker 1: installed it, it was tricky to get the balance right
Speaker 1: so it could smoothly open and close. It's quite heavy,
Speaker 1: and yet the new cats can easily open it, which
Speaker 1: his office is not really organized in a way that's
Speaker 1: super safe for cats to run around in and also
Speaker 1: create just havoc. And so as a temporary fix, he
Speaker 1: put several heavy boxes in front of it, like when
Speaker 1: we're not here, intending it for to be when we're
Speaker 1: not here, but no, sooner had he put them up,
Speaker 1: and they're substantially heavy items. But one of the new ladies,
Speaker 1: who is a big, beautiful woman, she's a big cat,
Speaker 1: trotted down there hip checked the boxes out of the
Speaker 1: way and just walked right into his office like it
Speaker 1: was a minor annoyance. So we are still having to
Speaker 1: figure out how we work around that. They're diabolical, the
Speaker 1: new ladies. We love them, but they are a whole
Speaker 1: new level of tricky than we have dealt with since
Speaker 1: the years when mister Burns was a youth. They're like
Speaker 1: that level of tricky. I sure like plant history though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just love it. Yeah, I love it, and I
Speaker 1: like that there's a spy involved. Yeah. When you told
Speaker 1: me you were working on an episode on strawberries, I
Speaker 1: was like, what is there to say historically about strawberries?
Speaker 1: And it was a delightful story. So spy missions, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're very interesting and they've I mean, the one thing
Speaker 1: that's interesting is that that mission has been written about
Speaker 1: quite a lot throughout history, Yeah, which is nice. I
Speaker 1: always wonder when that happens, because you know, other than
Speaker 1: Fresier's original book, which isn't like hey, I was a spy,
Speaker 1: it's more like, hey, I was I was exploring these areas.
Speaker 1: I always wonder how much of it is colored by
Speaker 1: like the early writeups of it. Yeah, have been reiterated
Speaker 1: throughout time, but there's no good way to go back
Speaker 1: and comparatively fact check that to reality. Right, But it's
Speaker 1: pretty pretty widely accepted that he is the only one
Speaker 1: who brought those five plants back. So thanks Harad, and
Speaker 1: do shame because we love strawberry I love them a lot.
Speaker 1: If this is your weekend coming up, I hope you
Speaker 1: eat something delicious, whether that's a strawberry or anything else.
Speaker 1: If you don't have time off, I still hope you
Speaker 1: eat something delicious that delights your palette and your soul hopefully,
Speaker 1: and then maybe you share a meal with somebody, because look,
Speaker 1: in hard times, that's what's getting me through is meeting
Speaker 1: friends for dinner, or having people over for drinks, or
Speaker 1: whatever we gotta do to keep the faith. We will
Speaker 1: be right back here tomorrow in a classic episode, and
Speaker 1: then on Monday we will have something brand new. Stuff
Speaker 1: you missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
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