Art, Literature and Entertainment

Harpo Marx was mute

Adolph Arthur Marx, known as Harpo Marx, was perfectly able to speak. He was also a talented and self-taught harpist, which is how he got his nickname.

In November 2000, Radio Two's The Birth of Screen Comedy featured Harpo's son Bill Marx explaining why his father suddenly stopped speaking on stage. It came about as a result of a bad review, which said that 'his pantomime was wonderful, but when he opened his mouth to speak he ruined the image'. According to Bill Marx: 'Dad took it to heart and he just stopped talking.'

You can hear Harpo Marx explaining how he fell off a stool while playing the harp in a brothel at the following website: www.marx-brothers.org/living/harposp.htm

Toulouse-Lautrec was a dwarf

The French artist Toulouse-Lautrec may have been born with a congenital disorder, but it wasn't achondroplasia (dwarfism) as is commonly believed. Arnold Matthias, author of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, has discovered that it was much more likely to have been 'a hereditary bone disease (pyknodysostosis)'.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica reveals that at the age of thirteen, Toulouse-Lautrec broke his left thighbone, and just over a year later he fractured his right thighbone in a second mishap. The resulting damage caused to his bones left his legs atrophied and made it very difficult for him to walk. According to the findings of geneticist Philip R. Reilly, in his book Abraham Lincoln's DNA and Other Adventures in Genetics, as an adult Toulouse-Lautrec 'stood just shy of 4 feet 11 inches tall'.

A further misconception surrounding the artist concerns the name 'Toulouse'. Often regarded as his first name, Toulouse actually formed part of his surname. The Encyclopaedia Britannica cites his full name as 'Henri-Marie-Raymonde de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa'.

Errol Flynn was Irish or English or American

Dashing Hollywood actor Errol Flynn earned acclaim as a great swashbuckler in films such as The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and The Sea Hawk (1940). Biographer Jeffrey Meyers reveals in his 2002 book Inherited Risk that in an effort to perpetuate Flynn's romantic screen image, Hollywood publicity departments portrayed Flynn as a 'mad Irishman', an 'elegant Englishman' and a 'bold American'.

However, Meyers reliably informs us that Flynn was the son of Australian scientist, Professor Theodore Leslie Thomson Flynn, and he was born 'on the cold, strange island of Tasmania' in 1909. Therefore Flynn was neither Irish, English nor American, but Australian by birth.

Humpt