Nothing Like A Good Story

    When one of Winston Churchill’s many secretaries went into the hospital to have her appendix out, he said….

Oh, sorry to hear that. Can she still type? 

    Cary Grant refused the role of Henry Higgins in the 1963 film  My Fair Lady, telling Jack Warner not only would he not be in it, he wouldn’t go and see it unless Rex Harrison originating the role on stage, was cast, and he was, winning the 1964 Oscar for Best Actor. 

    Speaking of Cary Grant, whenever someone said, I so want to be just like you, he said, so would I, claiming to be nothing like his on screen persona.

During a dinner honoring former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley, he had asked the waiter distributing butter if he could have an extra pat on his butter plate.

The waiter said, “Sorry, everyone only gets one.”

Bradley, a bit surprised said, “Don’t you know who I am?” And the fellow replied, “Don’t you know who I am?”

(I love this)

“Who are you?”

“I’m the one in charge of butter.” 

    I’ll end with a story I find most poignant.

    If anyone told me John F. Kennedy Jr. would die before his beloved cousin, Anthony Radziwell suffering from terminal testicular cancer, it would have seemed impossible.

    On the night of July 16, 1999, Anthony and his wife, Carole, were waiting for John and his wife, Carolyn, at Red Gate Farm, John’s mother’s former home he moved into after she died. Everyone agreed, the climes in Martha’s Vineyard would be a nicer spot for the two couples to spend some last days together, knowing Anthony hadn’t much time left.

John had already been writing his eulogy later found in his desk drawer at his loft on North Moore Street.

    They were as close as brothers, a year apart, always showing up for the other, but John, alas, never showed up that night.

Anthony was the one who had to call John’s sister, Caroline, to break the news.

    At the ceremony aboard a Navy destroyer when the ashes of John, Carolyn and her sister, Lauren, were scattered at sea, you could see Anthony on deck bundled in a wheelchair.

Prince Anthony Stanislaw Albert Radziwell died two weeks later at the age of 40 (1959-1999).

Anthony, his whole life, ignoring the Title inherited from his father, didn’t stop John from ending the eulogy he would never get to give with (from Hamlet)…

goodnight sweet prince, and flights of angels sing you to your rest.   

Need a hankie?

SB