A-Tisket, A-Tasket, Where's Charlie Chaplin's Casket?
Starting with this column, I will never again prattle on about our summer vacation to Maine.
Aw, nooo, I just did. Well, luckily I've got a storyline that connects with it. AND with the weird headline too.
While we were in Maine with my wife's whole fam damily, we played several spirited games of "Scene It." Scene It is a movie trivia game that requires the following equipment: a game board, dice, question cards, chips and salsa, a DVD, a DVD player, and an ample supply of beer.
I learned several new things while playing Scene It. For one, my sister-in-law S--- Ooops, I almost used her name, which she does NOT want revealed, for fear she'll be shunned for associating with me. I'll cleverly disguise her identity by calling her my "Sue-ster-in-law."
Anyway, my Sue-ster-in-law has a knack for identifying celebrities from their high-school yearbook pictures, regardless of graininess, poor focus, or subsequent plastic surgery.
Whenever the Scene It DVD challenged us to "Identify this actor," Sue-ster-in-law called out the name before the rest of us could tell if the person pictured was male or female. She recognized the saucy sprite who became Shirley MacLaine, the brooding homunculus who became Sigourney Weaver, and even the larval pupae that became Jiminy Cricket.
But that wasn't the most amazing thing I learned from Scene It. The oddest oddity was this "True or False" question: "The remains of Charlie Chaplin were once stolen and held for ransom." I know you're way ahead of me here; of course the answer is "True."
Now, if you're like me, you are — with all due respect to the late Mr. Chaplin — just dying to learn more. Unfortunately, if you're like me, you're glumly aware that this might require some effort. But, if you're like me, you also remember that your No. 2 son (age 19) owes you $10, and that you could probably coerce him into working it off by researching this strange incident for you. So that's what you do. And coincidentally, that's what I did too.
Here are the facts, ma'am: Chaplin died on Christmas Day, 1977, in Switzerland, at the ripe old age of 88. He was buried in a village called Vevey, which is the sister city of the Ohio River town in southern Indiana called Vevay. Or it should be, anyway.
On March 2, 1978, the story turns weird. Chaplin's coffin was dug up and carted away. Pretty soon, Chaplin's widow, Oona, who lived in the Swiss city of Lausanne, began receiving phone calls demanding ransoms for the return of the casket. Presumably with Charlie still inside.
Unfortunately, the Lausanne authorities couldn't figure out which ransom demand was the real one — a variety of people claimed to have the coffin, resulting in a variety of ransom requests. Finally one of the callers proved he possessed the casket by furnishing a photo of it. The picture was grainy and out-of-focus, but my Sue-ster-in-law saw it once and immediately recognized it as Chaplin's coffin.
Serious negotiations began with this ransomer. The police listened in on several phone conversations with the grave robber. Exhaustive and painstaking analysis by the sensuously pouty CSI: Lausanne team determined beyond the shadow of a doubt that (a) the calls were made from a telephone, and (b) the caller had a heavy accent, either Eastern European or extreme Southern Indiana.
The Chaplin family dragged out the negotiations to enable police to eavesdrop on every phone call made on Lausanne's public phones by people with Hoosier or Slavic accents, and voila! — they captured a Polish auto mechanic, who quickly fingered his accomplice, a Bulgarian from down around Vevay.
They led authorities to Chaplin's casket, hidden in the cornfield where it had been photographed. There were several other celebrity coffins among the stalks, but Chaplin's was easily identified due to its tiny size. Hey, at 5'5" he wasn't called "The Little Tramp" for nothing.
Thus ends the very last column mentioning my Maine vacation. Oh, except for the fate of the grave-nappers: They were tried and found guilty of extortion and "disturbing the peace of the dead." The court found this crime particularly heinous, and leveled the maximum sentence — seven-and-a-half years of "very hard" level Sudoku puzzles.
Get with the Modern Times* and write me a Nice and Friendly* e-mail. TakefiveT5@yahoo.com.
*Titles of Chaplin movies. . .ain't I just so clever?
Aw, nooo, I just did. Well, luckily I've got a storyline that connects with it. AND with the weird headline too.
While we were in Maine with my wife's whole fam damily, we played several spirited games of "Scene It." Scene It is a movie trivia game that requires the following equipment: a game board, dice, question cards, chips and salsa, a DVD, a DVD player, and an ample supply of beer.
I learned several new things while playing Scene It. For one, my sister-in-law S--- Ooops, I almost used her name, which she does NOT want revealed, for fear she'll be shunned for associating with me. I'll cleverly disguise her identity by calling her my "Sue-ster-in-law."
Anyway, my Sue-ster-in-law has a knack for identifying celebrities from their high-school yearbook pictures, regardless of graininess, poor focus, or subsequent plastic surgery.
Whenever the Scene It DVD challenged us to "Identify this actor," Sue-ster-in-law called out the name before the rest of us could tell if the person pictured was male or female. She recognized the saucy sprite who became Shirley MacLaine, the brooding homunculus who became Sigourney Weaver, and even the larval pupae that became Jiminy Cricket.
But that wasn't the most amazing thing I learned from Scene It. The oddest oddity was this "True or False" question: "The remains of Charlie Chaplin were once stolen and held for ransom." I know you're way ahead of me here; of course the answer is "True."
Now, if you're like me, you are — with all due respect to the late Mr. Chaplin — just dying to learn more. Unfortunately, if you're like me, you're glumly aware that this might require some effort. But, if you're like me, you also remember that your No. 2 son (age 19) owes you $10, and that you could probably coerce him into working it off by researching this strange incident for you. So that's what you do. And coincidentally, that's what I did too.
Here are the facts, ma'am: Chaplin died on Christmas Day, 1977, in Switzerland, at the ripe old age of 88. He was buried in a village called Vevey, which is the sister city of the Ohio River town in southern Indiana called Vevay. Or it should be, anyway.
On March 2, 1978, the story turns weird. Chaplin's coffin was dug up and carted away. Pretty soon, Chaplin's widow, Oona, who lived in the Swiss city of Lausanne, began receiving phone calls demanding ransoms for the return of the casket. Presumably with Charlie still inside.
Unfortunately, the Lausanne authorities couldn't figure out which ransom demand was the real one — a variety of people claimed to have the coffin, resulting in a variety of ransom requests. Finally one of the callers proved he possessed the casket by furnishing a photo of it. The picture was grainy and out-of-focus, but my Sue-ster-in-law saw it once and immediately recognized it as Chaplin's coffin.
Serious negotiations began with this ransomer. The police listened in on several phone conversations with the grave robber. Exhaustive and painstaking analysis by the sensuously pouty CSI: Lausanne team determined beyond the shadow of a doubt that (a) the calls were made from a telephone, and (b) the caller had a heavy accent, either Eastern European or extreme Southern Indiana.
The Chaplin family dragged out the negotiations to enable police to eavesdrop on every phone call made on Lausanne's public phones by people with Hoosier or Slavic accents, and voila! — they captured a Polish auto mechanic, who quickly fingered his accomplice, a Bulgarian from down around Vevay.
They led authorities to Chaplin's casket, hidden in the cornfield where it had been photographed. There were several other celebrity coffins among the stalks, but Chaplin's was easily identified due to its tiny size. Hey, at 5'5" he wasn't called "The Little Tramp" for nothing.
Thus ends the very last column mentioning my Maine vacation. Oh, except for the fate of the grave-nappers: They were tried and found guilty of extortion and "disturbing the peace of the dead." The court found this crime particularly heinous, and leveled the maximum sentence — seven-and-a-half years of "very hard" level Sudoku puzzles.
# # #
Get with the Modern Times* and write me a Nice and Friendly* e-mail. TakefiveT5@yahoo.com.
*Titles of Chaplin movies. . .ain't I just so clever?
posted by Don Stuart at 3:07 PM
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