By Tony Deyal
I was born on August 10, 1945. Before me, and long before I was born, on the first day of that month, August 1, 1819, was Herman Melville who told the story of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship Pequod, for vengeance against Moby Dick, the giant white sperm whale.
In between the rest of the month were other greats including James Baldwin (1924), P.D. James (1920),, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792), Barack Obama (1961), Guy de Maupassant (1850), Lord Alfred Tennyson (1806), Steve Martin (1945), Edna Ferber (1885), Ogden Nash (1902), Dorothy Parker (1893), Mary Wollstonecraft (1797) and, at August 31, William Saroyan (1908) with the choice of this article, either “The Human Comedy” or “The Time of Your Life.” Take your pick and I will start the short series from now until my 80th birthday.
Because my articles are a mix of hard-core journalism and interrelated humour, my choice for the first article is Alfred Hitchcock who was the most innovative filmmaker of all time, laying the groundwork for slasher horror and a dark sense of comedy. As he explained: “For me, suspense doesn’t have any value if it’s not balanced by humour.” He added, “My goal is to amuse the public and not to depress them…People flock to the pictures for relaxation and pleasure. They don’t want to emerge all bowed down with sadness.” Later he explained, “The more happy-go-luck the setting, the greater hick you get from the sudden introduction of drama.”
In other words, he made it clear: “I like to exploit the fine line between comedy and tragedy.” In terms of his jokes, there are two that give us a strong idea of his “dark sense”. When Robert Donat and Maeline Carroll were part of a scene, he handcuffed them and pretended he had lost the key for an entire day. In fact, even as he was on his last, he joked about his own death. In 1979, when I was 34 years old and a great supporter of Alfred Hitchcock, he won the greatest of all, the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award. He joked with friends that it meant he didn’t have long to live. He died a year later.
The link between Hitchcock and I may have started in 1945 when my mother had her only child, me, and we both were “Spellbound” and then “Duel in the Sun” (1946) and “Rope” in 1948. She had problems with me and had to make sure I did not run away. However, in 1951, when I was six, I was on “Strangers on a Train” on a trip to my grandfather. When I was nine, I saw the “colour” films and never stopped following Hitchcock’s work. Imagine the three-some ‘Dial M for Murder’ – ‘Rear Window’ (1954), and ‘To Catch a Thief’ (1955). I followed the movies in the Cinema and home TV until, almost in tears, I found out that he had died.
However, the one thing I found about Hitchcock was his sense of how he saw his work. Among his comments were, “The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.” – “Puns are the highest form of literature.” Seeing a murder on television can help work off one’s antagonism. And if you haven’t any antagonism, the commercials will give you some.” – “I never said all actors are cattle; what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.” – “Television has brought back murder into the home where it belongs.”; and, “There is nothing so good as a burial at sea. It is simple, tidy and not incriminating.”
I’m not sure how, at that time, I became a fan of D. Edward de Bono’s “Lateral Thinking”. He was not an “August” born, but he helped to make me who I am. I think it started when I read my first question after Hitchcock. “A man stands on one side of a river, his dog on the other.
The man calls his dog, who immediately crosses the river without getting wet and without using a bridge or a boat. How did the dog do it?” I tried and failed. Then I went for the answer. It was, “The river was frozen.” That was my start and even now I still try hard to work out the answers.
For example: “Arnold Schwarzenegger has a new one. Michael J. Fox has a short one. Madonna does not use hers. Bill Clinton always uses his. The pope never uses his. What is it?” The answer was, “their surname.” Then there are two that I found easily. The first was, “I am the beginning of sorrow and the end of sickness. You cannot express happiness without me, yet I am amid crosses. I am always at risk yet never in danger. You may find me in the sun, but I am never out of darkness.” I got it because my family gave me the name “Shunun” (and I have no idea what it means). However, it gave me the answer though- “The Letter S.” Then the other Tony for you, “Just like me, a man was walking in the rain. He was in the middle of nowhere. He had nothing and nowhere to hide. He came home all wet, but not a single hair on his head was wet. Why is that?” The man, like Tony, was bald.
One of my books, which was in a box that was out of sight for several years but never out of mind, finally arrived at home and eventually opened. As the “Ingenious Lateral Thinking Puzzles” it had more questions than I have answers. Maybe some of you might help. The first question for me was “Where in the World” it asked; “In what place would you find Julius Caesar, the biblical Rachel, King David, Pallas Athena (the Goddess of War).
King Charlemagne, Alexander the Great, Queen Elizabeth 1 of England, and Sir Lancelot all together?” The first thing you get are clues that are more like screws because they make it even harder to work out the answer. They “help” you with, “their images are found together in one common place.” – “They are found one something which is in common use and has been for many years.” – “They are used in a form of game.” Eventually, if you give up, the answer is: “The original designs for the Kings, Queens and Jacks are on a pack of playing cards.” Just to give you a second chance of the lateral, here’s “Creepy Crawly.”
“On a trip deep in the Amazon jungle, the explorer Alan Quartermaine woke one morning. He could feel something inside his sleeping bag. It had a head and a tail, and it moved when he moved. However, he was calm and unafraid,” Why? The clues? “It was not dangerous; it was not alive and had never been.” It was a coin.
*Tony Deyal was last seen saying if you like it send him a coin or, better yet, some good jokes for his birthday.
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