Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, A production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio, Hello and Happy Friday. Am Polly
Speaker 1: Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. We talked about oh
Speaker 1: copy this week we did Gosh, They're pretty, Yeah they are.
Speaker 1: This one was good and I was glad it had
Speaker 1: the sort of happy ending of of discussing how captive
Speaker 1: populations can be a way to sustain conservation efforts. UM.
Speaker 1: I know there are people that have very mixed feelings
Speaker 1: about zoos and aquariums that animals should not be held
Speaker 1: in captivity. I mean, I feel like for a lot
Speaker 1: of them, this is a nice offshoot. Whether it started
Speaker 1: out in the right um headspace or not that we
Speaker 1: started collecting animals, this is a way that many of
Speaker 1: those facilities have become really vital to making sure we
Speaker 1: continue to have those animal for theoretically the rest of time.
Speaker 1: UM So, I just know that's something that's always on
Speaker 1: my mind. I um, you know, have volunteered with various
Speaker 1: such facilities, and I know I always get a little
Speaker 1: bit heartsick when I hear people talking about how the
Speaker 1: people that work there don't care about animals and don't
Speaker 1: they're just in it for money, And I'm like, I
Speaker 1: don't know any biologists that has worked in one of
Speaker 1: those facilities that is rich, and they certainly will sometimes
Speaker 1: give up their personal lives almost entirely to make sure
Speaker 1: the animals are cared for. So, um, you know I
Speaker 1: have I have definitely seen staff. I definitely knew one
Speaker 1: that spent Christmas Day, despite having children at the facility,
Speaker 1: ran home to do gift time and then came right
Speaker 1: back to make sure that an animal that was having
Speaker 1: some some health needs was being taken care of around
Speaker 1: the clock. So like, just just know there are a
Speaker 1: lot of dedicated people in those facilities that kind of
Speaker 1: are should not be lumped in as like part of
Speaker 1: a capitalist driven problem. Um. Anyway, that's my little mini
Speaker 1: soapbox boy. I didn't put a lot of it in here,
Speaker 1: but it sure is frustrating to read accounts by white
Speaker 1: people traveling through Africa thinking they understand what they're talking about,
Speaker 1: saying sort of weird things about the indigenous people's there.
Speaker 1: Johnston's brother was with him at one point and wrote
Speaker 1: this account about how when they went to get the
Speaker 1: men who had been kidnapped from them booty tribe, that
Speaker 1: one of the men had died already, and according to
Speaker 1: this person, Johnston had negotiated with the ma booty people
Speaker 1: that they were supposed to bring home to let him
Speaker 1: have the skeletons stripped by ants so he could ship
Speaker 1: it back to Europe. And I'm like, are you real
Speaker 1: confident about this, dude? But you can't go back in
Speaker 1: time and say that to them as they're writing it.
Speaker 1: But that was my like, I'm not confident that's really
Speaker 1: what happened here. Um. Yeah, that's a whole weird a
Speaker 1: whole weird thing. Um. There was one person in the
Speaker 1: midst of all of this that was very interesting to me.
Speaker 1: He was a Catholic missionary that was in Africa named
Speaker 1: Brother Joseph Huts about I'm guessing on that pronunciation, and
Speaker 1: he for some reason had the touch with O copy,
Speaker 1: like he could manage and raise captive O copy and
Speaker 1: keep them very healthy, and various people, including the Belgian government,
Speaker 1: asked him if he would be the official guy to
Speaker 1: do that, and he was like, I'm here because I'm
Speaker 1: a missionary that no, I'm not going to do that
Speaker 1: for you. Yeah, And they were like, Okay, we'll find
Speaker 1: somebody else and I was like, yeah, but he was
Speaker 1: the only one who knew how to take care of them.
Speaker 1: Why are you also horrible? Um? Yeah, I thought he
Speaker 1: should get a shout out for going no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I don't want to be part of this machine. Uh
Speaker 1: that's interesting. Yeah, that whole found a new species thing
Speaker 1: that always comes up. I'm like, no he did not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know that's probably picking nts. Well, it makes me crazy.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of um, you know when we talked
Speaker 1: about the platypus. Uh, and when when we were talking
Speaker 1: about the platypus and how it was this argument among
Speaker 1: mostly European naturalists to decide how to categorize an animal that,
Speaker 1: like the indigenous people, already new lots about, not necessarily
Speaker 1: the exact kind of things that the naturalists are trying
Speaker 1: to figure out, and not so much like organization into
Speaker 1: this Western developed taxonomy European taxonomy, but like there were
Speaker 1: some parallels there in terms of multiple different aspects of it.
Speaker 1: I mean, right, it's all coded and framed in this
Speaker 1: weird conceit of like we know better than anyone else,
Speaker 1: which is just so problematic and it comes up on
Speaker 1: the show all the time. But I'm always just like, dudes, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm laughing in frustration because it is hard to read
Speaker 1: that stuff and think about how just foolishly conceded so
Speaker 1: many explorers have been. While at the same time, I
Speaker 1: will confess that I like seeing an O copy from
Speaker 1: time to time, so I understand the draw. Oh, I
Speaker 1: did want to mention um there was a particularly interesting
Speaker 1: he's of footage that was shown during that John Lucas
Speaker 1: lecture we mentioned during the show where he was talking
Speaker 1: about how hard it is for people to see a copy,
Speaker 1: and he was like, just look at this, and it's
Speaker 1: literally like fifteen or twenty second piece of footage from
Speaker 1: like a what appears to be a set up camera
Speaker 1: in the forest that's not manned, and you see the
Speaker 1: animal like right up by the camera, and then it
Speaker 1: turns and it walks ten feet away and you can't
Speaker 1: see it. Wow, because you know it's it's rump is
Speaker 1: striped in such a way that once it gets behind
Speaker 1: like a stick of foliage, like it just blends right
Speaker 1: in and you can't It's really hard to visualize. Um.
Speaker 1: If you're I mean, you can see it. You can
Speaker 1: be like, oh, I see there's where the head went
Speaker 1: there's because you watched it go, But you wouldn't ever
Speaker 1: pick it out from the forest naturally if you were
Speaker 1: just walking along, even if you were looking for it,
Speaker 1: because it's so the stripes are so effective at camouflaging
Speaker 1: it um and it is such a quiet, little shy
Speaker 1: thing that it's not little. It's a large animal in
Speaker 1: my heart, in my heart, it's littl it's little. Uh.
Speaker 1: But they're they are so extraordinarily beautiful, So I'm glad
Speaker 1: that they're huge conservation movements around them. You and I
Speaker 1: also discussed before we started recording how much like political
Speaker 1: upheaval there is in that area anyway. And it's one
Speaker 1: of those things that I I feel for conservationists and
Speaker 1: the people there that just want to like protect animals
Speaker 1: and keep these preserves, you know, healthy and and protected,
Speaker 1: and like how hard it must be when you are
Speaker 1: living in a world that doesn't prioritize that at all
Speaker 1: and has its own conflicts that are huge and terrifying
Speaker 1: going on around you. So that's just my hats off
Speaker 1: to those people, because that happens in a lot of
Speaker 1: places around the world, where are people just trying to
Speaker 1: preserve the natural species that are being encroached upon by civilization,
Speaker 1: that are being you know, endangered through people poaching, like
Speaker 1: actively trying to cause problems, but also just people who
Speaker 1: are in expanding populations that are trying to find their
Speaker 1: own way to live and survive. And it's it's a
Speaker 1: hard balance. I know I couldn't do that job. I
Speaker 1: think I would be depressed all the time. Just reading
Speaker 1: about it is sad making, so so thank you to
Speaker 1: everyone does um. Yeah, if you can check out check
Speaker 1: out some cool videos of a copy vanishing into the forest.
Speaker 1: It's quite striking and moving. Um is a good reminder
Speaker 1: that as as busy as our world is, they're still
Speaker 1: very shy, beautiful animals just trying to have their vegetarian diet.
Speaker 1: We talked about Theda Bara this week. She's very fun
Speaker 1: because there's not a lot of tragedy going on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's absolutely cockamami things that happened in relation to the
Speaker 1: studio and now they presented her, but she is a
Speaker 1: very fun one. Yeah. She has a lot of things
Speaker 1: in her life, more her career than her life that
Speaker 1: are just sort of evidence of how early in the
Speaker 1: film industry, various standards were set, like the idea that
Speaker 1: that thirty is old. Well that was for this just
Speaker 1: acting in general, like if you wanted to be any
Speaker 1: kind of like in the public eye performer. Yeah, thirty
Speaker 1: was hagged out man, that was it. Uh Yeah. There's
Speaker 1: also that whole thing about how she was too curvy
Speaker 1: to be considered like the cute ideal. And if you
Speaker 1: watch a fool there was she looks very long and
Speaker 1: lean to me. So the fact that that came up
Speaker 1: in several uh sources about her, about how curvaceous she was,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, mon dieu unattainable body standards. Yeah,
Speaker 1: already they're already in place. Um. There were some fun
Speaker 1: things about her life that didn't make it into the episode.
Speaker 1: One is that that first play that she was in,
Speaker 1: The Devil. This is for my old school film and
Speaker 1: TV buffs. She was, um, you know, a small part.
Speaker 1: But one of the leads in that play was Mary
Speaker 1: and Lorne. I don't know if that name rings a
Speaker 1: bell for you. Tracy does not, And I don't know
Speaker 1: if you grew up watching Bewitched like I did. Rabidly
Speaker 1: she played Aunt Clara, so she Mary and Lauren was
Speaker 1: touches touches basse with Theda Bara Um. I also wanted
Speaker 1: to mention this interesting note that we mentioned it that
Speaker 1: that she is very pantomime. Earlier on in the filming
Speaker 1: of of a Fool there was which was, you know,
Speaker 1: her first time on film really other than that one
Speaker 1: very small bit part and one biography I read mentioned
Speaker 1: that she's very stiff in her early shots but loosens
Speaker 1: up as the film goes on. And I, having seen
Speaker 1: it before I read this, I thought that was purposeful
Speaker 1: as a character development choice because it kind of works right,
Speaker 1: and she starts out it's like the presentation of someone
Speaker 1: called a vampire would of course be very like theatrical
Speaker 1: and kind of oddly formal, and then loosen up as
Speaker 1: you see her wild party lifestyle. But um, that one
Speaker 1: was very funny to me. It's like I thought, I
Speaker 1: thought that was on purpose because she was struggling, not
Speaker 1: because she was learning how to make it do. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's an interesting audio clip I heard of her later
Speaker 1: in life talking about like how hard it was for
Speaker 1: silent film actors to like try to find that line
Speaker 1: of like conveying all of the emotions you would normally
Speaker 1: have in um dialogue without being like a crazy marionette
Speaker 1: about it, um, And I think to most of us
Speaker 1: they do look often like crazy marionettes. But well, and
Speaker 1: especially having done work on stage first, where you were
Speaker 1: speaking lines, to go from that into silent film, I
Speaker 1: think would be really hard. Silent film, no rehearsal, there's
Speaker 1: just like a director yelling at you what to do. Um,
Speaker 1: that would be There's a reason she str she felt
Speaker 1: very overwhelmed initially, but of course she became very good
Speaker 1: at it, did a lot of movies and made a
Speaker 1: lot of money. I wanted to also talk about how
Speaker 1: uh she negotiated her contract from one hundred dollars a
Speaker 1: week to one fifty as a complete unknown, and how
Speaker 1: that worked, because there is a reason for that. There's
Speaker 1: a logic behind it. It wasn't just that she was
Speaker 1: so brazen and skilled at negotiating, although it does sound
Speaker 1: like she's a pretty good negotiator. There was a clause
Speaker 1: in her contract, which was very common. This was not
Speaker 1: just for her, but for a lot of actresses at
Speaker 1: the time. One of the things studios would do was
Speaker 1: that basically, and I don't know that the men had
Speaker 1: the same clause, but women definitely had that they would
Speaker 1: provide their own costumes for any any scenario that was
Speaker 1: not a period piece. So if it wasn't a historical costume,
Speaker 1: you just had to show up to set in your
Speaker 1: clothes and they better look great. And she was like, um, high,
Speaker 1: I'm poor. I've been struggling to get a career going
Speaker 1: in stage for ten years and have gotten nowhere. So
Speaker 1: I'm not sure where you think clothes are going to
Speaker 1: come from. And she was like, I will do it,
Speaker 1: but you gotta at my rate a lot. And that's
Speaker 1: how she landed there because they knew this was going
Speaker 1: to make her famous. Like they it was in their
Speaker 1: best interest to be like, great, will acquiesce and and
Speaker 1: give you this money and that way you can do it,
Speaker 1: and it paid off. She often was. There were often
Speaker 1: comments in reviews about how amazing her clothes were, so
Speaker 1: she clearly had great taste and she was good at
Speaker 1: picking things out. Um, but yes, I find that so funny.
Speaker 1: If that were to happen today on a film set,
Speaker 1: people would lose their minds. I'm sorry, what did you
Speaker 1: bring to wear for this shot? Your excuse like it
Speaker 1: would never went and when at work, um, I really
Speaker 1: really wish we had a cut of Cleopatra just for
Speaker 1: the costumes. Yeah, there's I mean there's stills from it. Um,
Speaker 1: there are stills from a ton of her stuff available,
Speaker 1: like a lot of publicity stuff. And going through it
Speaker 1: to pick to pick a picture to put on her
Speaker 1: social media, I was like, I really, I would rather
Speaker 1: have an image that is evocative of her career and
Speaker 1: not one where she's definitely a white person playing someone
Speaker 1: of another race. Yeah. And fortunately there's a ton of
Speaker 1: stuff from a fool there was where she's playing a
Speaker 1: you know, random person. But yeah, there's a ton of it.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say something that may make you think I
Speaker 1: am completely off my rocker? Are you ready sure? I
Speaker 1: don't know if this happened. Every time I look at
Speaker 1: pictures of her at our just shots of her like
Speaker 1: with her hair down, not in a big costume or anything,
Speaker 1: but sort of like probably the equivalent of her head shots.
Speaker 1: She's long hair, just kind of a rounded face. She
Speaker 1: has very um, you know, almost rubic features. I get
Speaker 1: heavy Stevie Nicks vibes there. As I was looking at pictures,
Speaker 1: there was one where her hair was down, and I
Speaker 1: feel like she also had a cape, and I was like,
Speaker 1: Stevie Nicks, I'm glad this is not just me in
Speaker 1: the best way. I mean in in the most loving
Speaker 1: and girl your fabulous kind of way. But I had
Speaker 1: not really put that together until I don't know, recent years.
Speaker 1: I remember looking at a picture of her and going
Speaker 1: her face structure and the big eyes and especially with
Speaker 1: all of the islands and the like Stevie Nicks and
Speaker 1: I love it. Um, she's like, you know, one of
Speaker 1: the proto goth girls, even though in her regular life
Speaker 1: she was kind of not that pri and very modern. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which I think really helped her after she retired as well,
Speaker 1: because she had that image on screen when she just
Speaker 1: went out as herself, Like there are accounts of people
Speaker 1: not recognizing her in public and then someone being like, hey,
Speaker 1: that was seta Bara and I'm going, oh, that was
Speaker 1: like a nice lady in a suit. Um. So it's
Speaker 1: I think she kind of got an unexpected benefit from
Speaker 1: that whole setup, which is that she could she could
Speaker 1: be anonymous on occasions when she wished to. Yeah, she's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Yeah. I do find it very funny how
Speaker 1: scant her costumes became, considering how chagrined she was to
Speaker 1: wear bathings. You didn't. Yeah, I mean, I'm curious. Do
Speaker 1: we know? Do we know how she felt about that?
Speaker 1: If that was something like was just her progressing comfort level,
Speaker 1: or if it was more like pressure from the studio. Um.
Speaker 1: It seems like as things were going on, she got
Speaker 1: more comfortable with the idea, and I think she had
Speaker 1: a little streak of defiance in her so as more
Speaker 1: people complained, she was like, great, I'm wearing nothing but
Speaker 1: pasty's in this next movie. Like she was like, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna fine. I don't even know that she was conscious
Speaker 1: of it, but some of the ways that this gets
Speaker 1: written up about her, you know, the fact that she
Speaker 1: would respond to a fan letter criticizing her and being like, oh, honey,
Speaker 1: if I were that person, I would you would not
Speaker 1: be seeing me on a screen. Yeah, I'd be just
Speaker 1: living my casual life. I think I think probably that
Speaker 1: was a driver. That's pure speculation on my part, but
Speaker 1: that letter reminded me of various things that have happened
Speaker 1: in more recent years, where like people have become outraged
Speaker 1: at a voice act there for playing a toxic character
Speaker 1: in a video game, and the actor being like, this
Speaker 1: is literally my job to play characters. If I turned
Speaker 1: down the roles of the villain, I wouldn't really have
Speaker 1: a career and you wouldn't have video games that have
Speaker 1: villains in them, right. I Mean, on the one hand, too,
Speaker 1: it was a little refreshing to me that to see that,
Speaker 1: like even in nineteen fifteen, people could not grasp the
Speaker 1: nuances mean reality and fiction, and admittedly, like her presentation
Speaker 1: as this fictional character probably did not help that. But
Speaker 1: also like, just because you see it on a screen
Speaker 1: does not mean that that is a real thing. It
Speaker 1: is a it is a play that is on screen. Right. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, we we fight that today. We see it
Speaker 1: all the time, so at least we know it has
Speaker 1: a long and storied history. Here's the thing. Did you
Speaker 1: see a picture while you were looking from Cleopatra where
Speaker 1: she is in a spectacular peacock gown. I don't think
Speaker 1: I saw the peacock gown. Holy, but Jolie, I really
Speaker 1: really want to like find more pictures of that if
Speaker 1: I can. And I that's the one thing that like
Speaker 1: I would yearn to see of that movie because it's
Speaker 1: like just this amazing giant train that's made of feathers
Speaker 1: and it's super beautiful, and she's something. I also think
Speaker 1: it's interesting that she was not um necessarily like growing up.
Speaker 1: She was never considered especially like pretty or attractive, and
Speaker 1: she became like the biggest sex symbol for several years,
Speaker 1: and that to me just was kind of a funny.
Speaker 1: One of those those things we see it all the
Speaker 1: time today as well, where actors will be like, um no,
Speaker 1: I've always been a dork. I don't know what this
Speaker 1: attention is about. Um So it's again has been going
Speaker 1: on since the beginning of film. But Theta Bara. I
Speaker 1: hope one day we find some secret cut of something
Speaker 1: else that she was in, because she's quite so much
Speaker 1: early film is lost on it sucks. She didn't seem
Speaker 1: to care when everything got destroyed in the fire. She's like,
Speaker 1: all right, um, I'm kind of moved on anyway, So
Speaker 1: not a lot of sense of her place in history.
Speaker 1: I think at that. Yeah, I'm gonna go watch movies now, Okay.
Speaker 1: We hope you have a delightful weekend and that you
Speaker 1: get to watch movies or do whatever it is that
Speaker 1: brings you joy. If you don't have time off and
Speaker 1: you have to get a lot of stuff done. I
Speaker 1: hope that all of those tasks are easiest pie and
Speaker 1: they get done with very little effort. That would be
Speaker 1: my dream. And that everybody treats you nicely and that
Speaker 1: you do the same in return. We will be right
Speaker 1: back here tomorrow with a classic, and then see you
Speaker 1: again on Monday with brand new stuff. Stuff you missed
Speaker 1: in History Class is a production of I heart Radio.
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