0:00

Support for this American life comes from

0:02

one password. Tired of trying to remember

0:04

one hundred different passwords? Get one password,

0:07

One passwords. Industry leading security and

0:09

award winning design. Bring private, secure and

0:11

user friendly password management to every one

0:13

Any device. Any time securely switch

0:15

between I Phone, Android, Mac and Pc

0:18

with features like auto fill for quick

0:20

signings. Just remember one strong account

0:22

password to protect everything. Loggins credit cards

0:24

secure notes were the off his wife

0:27

I password. Right now listeners get

0:29

a free two. Week Trial

0:31

at One password.com/tl That's

0:33

two. Three weeks at

0:36

One password.com/tl. In

0:39

October, two thousand and three and I

0:41

was brought into the Psychiatric Emergency Room

0:43

at Bellevue Hospital in New York City.

0:46

That Joe Gold was the chief attending

0:48

psychiatrists at Day and Song. He felt

0:50

that his life was essentially reality. Show

0:53

her that he's been recorded for years,

0:55

that everyone in his life. Was

0:58

an actor reagan from a script

1:00

and ah, he came to New

1:02

York. Essentially the test this hypothesis.

1:04

He. That the maybe nine Eleven was faked just

1:07

to get a reaction out of him on

1:09

reality Tv. And. If he came to

1:11

New York and if the World Trade Centers

1:13

were still standing, he would know that was

1:15

in fact the case. If in fact they

1:17

had been destroyed, than he would admit that.

1:20

Perhaps who is delusional? The. Went to

1:22

got to New York instead of visiting the twin

1:24

towers. He walked into the United Nations and asked

1:26

for asylum. Asylum. From.

1:28

A Tv show, There. Was filming

1:30

him without his consent Twenty four hours a day,

1:32

which you know. Is. How we ended up in

1:34

Bellevue. That a goat didn't

1:37

think much of this. People shop at Bellevue with

1:39

lots of weirdos into all the time. And then

1:41

a few months later another guy walks in with

1:43

same idea that he was being filmed twenty four

1:45

seven and broadcast around the world. And

1:48

the second guy like the first one mentioned film.

1:50

The. Ninety Ninety Eight Movie The Truman

1:52

Show. Both of them name the Truman

1:55

Show you know by name they they

1:57

they said my life is like the

1:59

tree. Truman is played by Jim

2:01

Carrey. He's filmed all day, every day on

2:03

a program that has broadcast to billions of

2:05

people around the globe. His wife,

2:08

his best friend, everybody around him is an actor.

2:10

Everybody knows it's a TV show but him, until

2:13

one day he starts to see

2:15

clues that make him suspicious. And

2:18

just to be clear, you're not saying that the

2:20

Truman Show necessarily triggered this. Like people watch the

2:22

Truman Show and suddenly something in their brain snaps.

2:24

Yeah, exactly. On the contrary, I think it's

2:27

just when people are becoming

2:29

psychotic, perhaps if you've seen the movie

2:31

and that's kicking around your head, you might

2:33

say, yes, this is what's happening to me. If

2:36

your psychosis includes both paranoia and

2:38

a sense that you are very,

2:40

very important, what psychiatrists call grandiosity.

2:44

Thirty years ago, you might think that the CIA or

2:46

the KGB is watching you all the time. These

2:48

days you have another possible explanation, reality

2:51

TV. A few months

2:53

later, a third patient showed up with the same delusion

2:55

and a few months after that, a fourth. Dr.

2:58

Gold started calling it the Truman Show delusion. He's

3:00

just written a book about it with his brother Ian

3:02

called Suspicious Minds. In one case

3:05

in the book, a patient, super smart guy,

3:07

an academic, very altruistic, believed that

3:09

he was part of an elaborate game show

3:11

and the world was watching him and betting

3:13

on everything that he did. This

3:16

was a really fun thing that everyone would

3:18

be doing online and the

3:20

monies collected would go to

3:23

charities all over the world

3:25

and that every single human being on earth

3:27

would be given some amount of money and

3:30

the world would be bettered for it. One

3:33

of the things that he included in his delusion you write in

3:35

your book is that he has

3:37

the thought that he actually was the mastermind

3:39

who created this game show that he was

3:41

on and that he controlled it and he

3:44

knew the rules when he had originally created

3:46

the show. But somehow he

3:48

had forgotten that and all the

3:50

rules, which is so interesting because

3:52

of course it's true. He

3:54

did invent the game show and the

3:56

only fact that he's missing is that

3:58

it's not real. all on his own

4:00

head. That's an interesting way

4:02

of putting it. It is kind of

4:04

fantastical. And heartbreaking. It is. Like part

4:07

of him knows he made it up,

4:09

but he can't grasp the whole reality.

4:11

He does not remember. At one point

4:13

he suggests that he told his best

4:15

friends, this is what I'm going to

4:17

do. You're going to run the show,

4:19

but you will now hypnotize me and

4:21

I will forget what we're talking about now

4:24

so we can do this really good deed

4:27

for humanity. Some

4:32

of these patients respond to treatment,

4:35

some don't. Same as with other delusions and psychosis.

4:37

But Dr. Goht says that if they

4:39

do come back to reality, some

4:41

feel great relief if they've been persecuted.

4:45

It's quite embarrassing if you think about it every

4:47

moment of your life. I mean, when you're in

4:49

the shower, literally everything is filmed. So

4:53

they feel quite good about it. At

4:55

the same time, there's a certain sadness that

4:57

they're not particularly important. Do

5:00

they miss being the most famous person on the world?

5:04

No question there. Some who feel that that's

5:06

a huge loss. At

5:10

the same time, I think they return to

5:13

the notion that they're mentally ill, which

5:15

in and of itself is an unfortunate

5:17

and sad thing. Psychosis

5:20

aside, I think all this illustrates

5:23

so clearly, you know, there's a downside to it.

5:25

All this illustrates so clearly, you know, there's a

5:27

downside and an upside to being on stage for

5:30

the whole world to see a human spectacle

5:32

against your will. And

5:34

today on our program, we have people who became

5:36

just that. They have an experience,

5:39

you know, so few of us have that

5:41

we all get to see from afar. They

5:43

are on display for everybody and not because

5:45

they chose it. What that

5:47

feels like, the positive parts and the negative side

5:50

and the real life reality, the whole thing. From

5:52

WBE Chicago, it's a This American Life. I'm

5:55

Eric Glass. Stay with us. I

6:04

am the eggplant, cuckoo, kachoo. In

6:07

the TV genre that's devoted to

6:09

pure human spectacle, reality TV, you

6:11

know, people fight drunkenly in hot

6:14

tubs, they eat live spiders for

6:16

money, but none of that

6:18

can hold a candle to this show, a show

6:21

that aired in Japan all the way back in 1998. It

6:24

was called Susunu Denpa Shonen, and

6:26

one of its segments in particular got the

6:29

attention of one of our producers, Stephanie Fu. She

6:31

put this story together a few years back, today's show was

6:33

a rebrand. The segment

6:35

is called Sweepstakes. It

6:38

starts the way a lot of these shows do, with a

6:40

bunch of people at an audition. One

6:43

guy beats out everyone else. He's

6:45

22 years old, a comedian just starting

6:47

out in his career. His name

6:49

is Masubi. Masubi

6:52

means eggplant in Japanese, a nickname he got

6:54

because he is a long face. The

6:57

producers tell him they have a unique idea for a

6:59

show, something they've never tried

7:01

before. It may or may not

7:03

air, but if it does, he'll be the

7:05

star. He'll be famous. The

7:11

producers blindfold him, put him in a car, and

7:14

take him to a small apartment. Then

7:16

they tell him to take his clothes off. That

7:21

wipes the grin off his face. It

7:23

wasn't just my personal

7:25

sort of shame or issues about nudity per se. My

7:32

dad is a cop. When

7:35

I first announced that my

7:37

career choice was going to be comedy, he

7:39

was not thrilled. We had to go through

7:42

some things to get him around to the idea.

7:46

He said, the one

7:48

thing that I must never do in public is strip.

7:50

Oh no. So there I was. And

7:53

then this guilt towards breaking the promise to my

7:55

father is as publicly as possible.

8:01

But he strips. He

8:03

grabs a pillow, holds it over his groin,

8:05

and looks around the room. There's

8:08

no chair in the room. No bed.

8:11

Just a coffee table. And

8:13

magazines. Tons of magazines.

8:17

The producers tell him that from now on,

8:19

if he wants food, quotes, he

8:21

will have to win them by entering

8:23

sweet steaks in those magazines. They

8:26

give him postcards to send in for prize drawings.

8:28

He'll be freed from the apartment after he

8:30

wins one million yen, or ten thousand

8:33

dollars worth of prizes. Until

8:35

then, he isn't allowed any outside contact with the

8:37

world. He can't call his family. He can't

8:40

talk to friends. And oh,

8:42

they tell him, don't forget to put tapes in

8:44

this little camera here every two hours and record

8:46

yourself. We'll come pick up the tapes once a

8:48

day. Then they say, alright,

8:50

later. Nastubi screams, are

8:53

you for real? Nastubi

9:00

says he'd signed no contract. But

9:03

he didn't have anything better to do, so

9:05

he sat down and wrote, and

9:08

soon was entering two to three hundred

9:10

contests a day. And while he

9:12

waited for prizes to arrive, he had

9:14

no food. Nastubi got frighteningly

9:17

thin very quickly. You

9:19

could see the sharp angles of his collarbones.

9:24

Well, starvation is a good word for it. The

9:27

staff got together and would give me basically

9:29

a very simple little

9:32

bread each day. So I

9:35

had bread and water essentially for the first two weeks. But

9:37

then as soon as the results started to

9:39

come in, then that stopped

9:41

and everything shifted over entirely to the

9:43

things that I could win through

9:46

sweet steaks. After two

9:48

weeks, he finally won some sugary drinks.

9:51

A few days after that, he won a bag of rice.

9:54

When the postman dropped it off, it was like

9:56

Christmas. Nastubi danced like a

9:58

madman. Were you trying

10:00

to be a good performer and be

10:03

funny when you were doing

10:05

that or was it just

10:13

really genuine joy? Well,

10:16

initially, of course, I was there as

10:18

a performer and I wanted to be

10:20

a comedian. But

10:23

somewhere in the middle, you

10:25

know, the whole business of staying

10:27

alive became my full-time occupation. So

10:30

I think what you saw, if you saw the

10:32

uni dancing, it was really

10:34

just a human being expressing great joy.

10:40

So he danced for this package of rice. But

10:43

then he stopped short. He realized he didn't

10:45

own a pot to cook the rice in. But

10:47

after a couple days of failed attempts, he

10:49

figured out that if he put some rice

10:51

in an empty drink container and

10:53

left it near his single gas burner, it eventually

10:56

turned into a kind of porridge. And

10:59

I could eat delicious rice every day. I

11:03

remember how good that felt. And

11:05

then there was this slow trepidation as it

11:07

started to vanish and then it ran out.

11:10

And the only food substitute that I

11:12

had been able to win in a

11:14

sweet steaks was dog food. You

11:17

know, after, let's say, six weeks of eating

11:19

dog food, when then I was

11:21

able to get more rice and it

11:24

arrived, I really felt a kind of

11:26

special kind of joy at being

11:29

able to sort of return to humanity in

11:31

a sense and taste delicious rice again. Back

11:38

then, there was a kind of sweepstakes mania

11:40

in Japan. The country was in the middle

11:42

of a terrible recession. And some

11:44

wondered whether one could subsist entirely on

11:47

their winnings. And so

11:49

when sweepstakes life debuted, almost

11:51

immediately after Nasubi was first shot in

11:53

the room, it was an instant

11:55

hit. Nasubi had no

11:57

idea. He didn't even know he was on TV.

12:01

He believed what the producers had told him, that

12:03

he'd record some video tapes and maybe someday it

12:05

would end up on the air. On

12:09

television, Nasubi's groin was hidden by

12:11

a purple cartoon eggplant that floated

12:13

around as he moved. Everything

12:16

he did was accentuated with ridiculous

12:18

boing-boing sound effects and puffy rainbow

12:20

letters floated above his head. But

12:25

these effects popped up just

12:28

as often when Nasubi was despondent. The

12:35

show took every chance to poke fun

12:37

at him, whether he was muttering to

12:39

himself, dancing around, or doing terrible headstands.

12:41

You know, the dumb stuff you do when you think no one's

12:43

watching. Except people war.

12:46

For context, in the US, Game

12:49

of Thrones usually has around 9 million viewers.

12:52

Nasubi had 16 million. In

12:55

a country less than half the size of ours, people

12:58

thought Nasubi was the funniest comedy act

13:00

they'd ever seen. And

13:02

I have to admit, as a viewer, once

13:04

in a while, when Nasubi got something really awesome in

13:06

the mail, I couldn't help it. I

13:09

laughed too. Even though I knew

13:11

how much he was suffering, I couldn't help it. His

13:14

unfiltered joy is contagious. Though

13:17

as a foreigner watching sweepstakes life, most of

13:20

the time when the studio audience cracked up,

13:22

I felt sick. I thought,

13:24

what could possibly be funny about this? I

13:29

mean, that was maybe a time when

13:32

Japan was going through some things and they needed

13:34

to sort of do that. Roughly

13:36

50 years of prosperity has finally come to

13:38

a close. And people are

13:40

really uncertain about their futures. I

13:42

think people just tended to watch the show and

13:45

say, you know, I got it bad,

13:47

but look at poor Nasubi. He's got it worse. Now

13:50

there's a lot more awareness of the weak

13:52

and of people who need

13:54

extra support. And I don't think

13:56

the average Japanese would think it

13:58

was funny. that there was

14:01

a guy, you know, naked in a

14:03

room somewhere. The new car. New

14:05

car. NUSB

14:10

won hundreds of prizes, but many of

14:12

them were useless to him. Space

14:15

girls tickets, for example, or

14:17

a TV with no cable, or a

14:19

bicycle. He sent away for clothes,

14:21

but never won anything he could wear. He

14:24

was naked the entire time he was in that

14:26

room, for the entire show. And

14:29

as the weeks went by, then months, Nusby

14:31

started to look less and less sane. He

14:35

grew a beard, his hair was wild, and

14:38

he started talking differently, slower.

14:45

He'd make really creepy faces into the

14:47

camera. At one point, he won

14:49

some toys and he started talking to them. He

14:52

took a stuffed seal for a walk around the apartment. The

14:55

action figure became his sensei, and he got

14:57

life-invited from it. And

15:06

if right now you are sitting there

15:08

thinking, how in God's good name is

15:10

this possible? Why was this allowed?

15:14

Imprisonment, solitary confinement, starvation.

15:17

Watching, I thought, this isn't a

15:19

reality TV show. It's a psychological

15:21

experiment made public. Plus,

15:23

bang bangs, of course. Was

15:28

there anything preventing you from backing out at that

15:30

point? Like, was the door locked? No,

15:33

there was no lock on the door. And

15:37

producers later asked me, so why

15:39

didn't you escape? I

15:42

was naked, so I would have

15:44

had to go outside naked and seek

15:46

help. But

15:48

I don't think that's what kept me in there.

15:53

The only thing I really have to say is that

15:55

I said I'd do it, and I

15:58

do what I say. That was

16:00

it the only reason I cast

16:03

asking him but wait really why? Phrase

16:09

Yamato Damacy the the Japanese spirit which is

16:12

just that you sort of stick through you

16:14

endure things You know when you're given something

16:16

whether it's easy or whether it's hard you

16:18

just really do you know You're

16:20

obliged to forward through Without that

16:23

you know what? Nausubi

16:29

did finally win $10,000

16:33

worth of prizes it took him

16:35

almost an entire year, but at last

16:37

he'd completed the change When

16:40

he reached his goal producers didn't tell him

16:42

anything about it Instead he snuck

16:45

into his apartment in the middle of the night put

16:47

a blindfold on him took him out to a

16:49

car Give him clothes Nausubi

16:51

seemed to think this was a good thing. He

16:54

was laughing giggling But

17:00

when he took the blindfold off he

17:02

found out he'd been taken to Korea

17:05

There's a tomorrow to honey when I got off

17:08

on the other side in Korea I

17:10

took off the mask and they said congratulations You've

17:13

achieved your $10,000. This is your reward You

17:17

get to have a trip in Korea So I

17:19

got to do a little sightseeing that day and

17:22

I thought wow, you know, that was a

17:24

long thing boy What what I've been through?

17:28

But then when they at the end of the day, they took

17:30

me back to my room and there was

17:32

the exact same room set up in the exact same

17:34

way They'd recreated his

17:36

little apartment complete with the magazines

17:39

the stuff seal the postcards exactly

17:41

how he'd left it Except

17:44

in Korea and they told him

17:46

great now all you have to

17:48

do is start over and win your airfare back

17:50

home within you matter This

17:54

was just like somebody just had

17:56

pulled the floor out from under me and

17:58

I just Fell. I

18:01

yeah. My

18:03

I didn't know that humans could be that

18:05

cruel. Did you feel like you

18:07

are going insane? Are there are

18:09

those muffins in Nevada? Mccanns with

18:11

material, if anything, the opposite of

18:14

of insane that I have them.

18:16

So it's it's I lost all

18:18

energy. It's like somebody who just

18:20

like sucked the life out of

18:22

me. I didn't want to talk,

18:24

I didn't want a breather, didn't

18:27

wanna move a muscle. I.

18:29

Was day he had reached the

18:31

end. It was just that was

18:33

sentenced. Enough to know a

18:35

towards the producer that it I wouldn't

18:38

do it. I refused and the we

18:40

went back and forth for quite a

18:42

while. Actually I'm but a in the

18:45

end kudos to his skill as a

18:47

negotiator. I did give in and do

18:49

the last The last section of it.

18:52

Why did you do it went to But did he say

18:54

that actually convince. You. To do it produces on

18:56

a cleaner. Well he was do is

18:59

that they got exhausted. If anything I

19:01

mean he wasn't leaving. I couldn't to

19:03

sort of get up and storm out.

19:06

I hadn't made no preparations for beating

19:08

him Korea and it just so it

19:10

the end. I just said yeah, whatever.

19:12

And so I continued. As.

19:15

Rob she was naked with no money

19:17

in another country. If. You

19:19

watch the clip. The producers just tell

19:21

him he's tapped some looking shocked and

19:23

cut away. The studio

19:26

audience laughs. Nervously

19:32

continued his writing your team for four

19:34

more months. And then the

19:37

final episode aired. Picture It!

19:39

The. Producer: sneak into Niceties room and

19:41

blindfold him again. Dress. Hence

19:43

drive him to another location, they

19:45

release him and yet another bear

19:48

him and he sighs and instinctively

19:50

to south all his clothes. Son.

19:53

Suddenly all four of the was

19:55

around him fall down. That's

20:03

him screaming. Turns

20:05

out he is on stage in a

20:07

huge studio in Japan in front of

20:10

an enormous audience. Nastybe,

20:13

congratulations on

20:16

your goal. Nastybe, look horrible. Two

20:25

television hosts cautiously approach him and talk to

20:27

him like a baby, telling

20:30

him, congratulations. Nastybe

20:34

says, frightened, my house fell

20:37

down and there's all these people here. It

20:45

finally over presses the host. You're

20:48

finished. Nastybe should be happy

20:50

that he looks thoroughly weirded out.

20:53

Remember, Nastybe didn't even know he was

20:56

being broadcast. The producers told

20:58

him that it was an experiment, that they didn't know

21:00

if he'd ever make it on air. So

21:02

he's blown away when they tell him about the

21:04

TV show, that a secret camera

21:07

in his apartment once even broadcast a

21:09

24-hour livestream of his actions. They

21:11

tell him his diaries were published and are best

21:13

sellers. Clips from him enjoying

21:16

a specific brand of ramen turned into

21:18

commercials and endorsement deals. He

21:20

was on the cover of magazines. Then

21:23

they play a bunch of clips from the show. Nastybe

21:26

blinks. He says, did I

21:29

do that? That was me?

21:33

And so I sat there realizing

21:35

that this new sort of life was,

21:37

you know, I was no longer just

21:40

a nobody. I was the entire

21:42

nation had been watching me for 15 months. And, you

21:44

know, to be honest, I thought, you know, what the

21:46

hell? What is my country

21:48

coming to? I mean, I was, you know,

21:51

very happy that, you know, my journey

21:53

was not for nothing. But

21:55

it's still weird. Unsurprisingly,

22:06

Menzibi left the show with some

22:09

scars. He had a lot

22:11

of trouble holding the conversation for six months, and

22:13

felt sweaty and uncomfortable in clothes for a

22:16

year. And his role didn't

22:18

help his comedy career like he'd hoped. He

22:20

was mostly offered roles that required him to be

22:23

goofy and naked. He's

22:25

a D-list celebrity now, and has the

22:27

dwindling bank account to match. In

22:30

talking to him, it felt like he's

22:32

really worked hard to turn that traumatic

22:34

experience into a positive story he tells

22:37

himself. He even says he's

22:39

thankful for the experience. It

22:42

was kind of meditative in a way. I

22:48

had a lot of time to think about my life,

22:51

and a lot of time to think about a

22:53

lot of stuff. That certainly

22:55

is a very Zen way to look at it. Well,

22:59

I mean, it's ten-some

23:01

years since I finished, since I did that

23:03

project. And after that, everything

23:05

has been much easier and much better. I'm

23:09

able to deal with things. I see things happening,

23:11

or I see situations around

23:13

myself, and I think that's

23:15

nothing that I went through in that room. And

23:19

people still remember him. That's more

23:21

than one could say for most of the other

23:23

Denposhonen characters. None of them lasted

23:26

as long as Nasubi, or it became as

23:28

famous. The show

23:30

ended in 2002, after its

23:32

ratings began to drop. I

23:35

came out of the whole thing, you know, in

23:37

a sense with the very best of possible results.

23:40

A lot of people, you know, were not so fortunate. They

23:45

were terrible things that happened

23:47

related to the show. Another

24:00

man was forced to go into a gay

24:02

club in Australia and offer condoms to men

24:04

until he was assaulted. The

24:06

video cuts out, but you can hear him

24:08

scream. And the

24:10

mastermind behind all this? The producer of

24:12

the show, the guy who convinced Nasubi to

24:15

keep going in Korea? His

24:17

name was Toshio Tsuchiya. Back

24:20

in the 90s, he was considered the

24:22

king of Japanese reality TV. Last

24:25

year, 14 years after Sweepstakes Life

24:28

ended, Tsuchiya called Nasubi, who

24:30

wasn't thrilled to hear from him at first. I

24:35

had some, you know, let's say

24:37

mixed feelings about him, a little

24:39

resentment maybe. Yeah, I

24:42

kept my distance for a very

24:44

long time. And then, actually, just

24:47

last year, he got in

24:49

touch with me. And apparently, it sort of came

24:51

to his attention that maybe

24:53

he had, you know, put

24:55

people through maybe more

24:57

than they deserved. And so,

25:00

he invited me to dinner, and he spent

25:02

the evening sort of explaining

25:04

why he did what he did, and

25:07

apologizing. I think we,

25:09

yeah, I think we pretty much came to terms,

25:12

and I welcomed the opportunity

25:14

to work with him again, certainly, you know. Wow,

25:17

he would work with him again. It's really shocking.

25:23

And what was his reason for putting you through what he did? He

25:26

wanted something that would move people, and

25:29

you don't get that out of just

25:31

sort of somebody, you

25:33

know, playing around. He wanted to see something real.

25:36

He wanted to see, he wanted to pull

25:38

miracles out of people, and he wanted to,

25:42

it was done for the

25:44

purpose of getting a

25:46

miracle on film. And

25:49

that seemed to me like, well, I'll

25:52

be honest, it sounds like something an evil puppet master

25:54

would say. So, I

25:56

had to. I talked to Toshio Tsuchiya

25:59

on the phone. He's a

26:01

round middle-aged guy bleached platinum

26:03

blonde hair. He confirmed

26:05

that he reached out to Nasubi and that when

26:07

they met, Nasubi told him very

26:09

honestly how painful his experience on the show

26:12

was. So Chia says

26:14

he listened and was moved. But

26:16

he says he wasn't sorry. About

26:19

Nasubi, about any of the segments he

26:21

produced for Denposhonan, about any of the

26:23

contestants, not on the slightest. I

26:26

use the same interpreter for our interview that I

26:28

use for Nasubi's. Here's

26:30

Chia. I

26:34

was enthralled by their struggle. I

26:36

was thrilled by their personal struggles.

26:39

So I was watching them succeed. I

26:43

have no regrets about anything I do with that show. Nasubi

26:46

said that you apologized to him

26:48

when you guys talked. Is that

26:50

correct or no? Well,

26:54

I put him through a lot. I'm not… If

26:57

you say that you have a sports team and you

27:00

have a coach who runs

27:02

his players through very difficult

27:04

maneuvers, at the end of the

27:06

day he may pat him on the back and say,

27:08

you know, sorry for putting you through such a rough

27:10

struggle. It wasn't me

27:12

expressing that I shouldn't have done the

27:14

project. So

27:18

Chia has a lot of lofty ideas of what

27:20

the show is trying to accomplish. And

27:22

when he talks about them, you do get

27:24

the sense that it was in fact intended

27:26

to be a sort of psychological experiment. The

27:31

whole project was trying to

27:34

reach at some very elemental,

27:37

simple humanity. You

27:39

see, Nasubi had been sort of brought to

27:41

a state where he was at such

27:44

an elemental part of sort of his

27:46

existence that he danced

27:48

without realizing he had ever danced.

27:51

He danced on a regular basis. The

27:54

modern individual is sort of shackled

27:56

by convention and expectation and all

27:58

these other things that we… wear from

28:00

day to day and I wanted

28:02

to see them drop some of that to see

28:04

this simple humanity and then to see actual

28:07

gratefulness. It's

28:12

weird to think about, but the fact of

28:15

the matter is what Suchiya is saying

28:17

is true. Danpashonen did really

28:20

capture humanity in a rare way.

28:23

Hungry, starving, alone, unaware that he

28:25

was being watched, Nasebi

28:27

was totally innocent and totally animal.

28:31

Of course, it's cruel to bring a human being to that

28:33

point and it takes a special

28:35

kind of cruelty to take someone at their most

28:37

vulnerable and add wacky sound effects

28:39

to their suffering. A

28:42

couple weeks into Nasebi's challenge, before he won

28:44

any solid food, when he was

28:46

hungriest, a delivery man

28:49

came to the door bearing ramen

28:51

and stir-fried vegetables. It's

28:53

1700 yen altogether, the man said.

28:57

I don't have any money, Nasebi replied. Sorry,

29:00

my mistake, the delivery man

29:02

said, and left. Nasebi

29:05

sat there, his head hung, a contestant

29:07

in a real-life hunger game,

29:10

the smell of ramen lingering in

29:12

the air. Stephanie

29:19

Fu is one of the producers on our show

29:21

when we first broadcast this story years ago. We're

29:24

running the story today because Nasebi's story

29:26

has been turned into a full-length documentary

29:28

called The Contestant and

29:31

seeing him do all this naked

29:34

is even more intense than hearing

29:36

about it. You can find the

29:38

film next week on Hulu or

29:41

search hulu.com/The Contestant.

29:48

Coming up, we go to a land where

29:50

highway clover leaves their sunken, a vast meadow

29:52

where one man tries to document how things

29:54

really are. That's in

29:57

a minute from Chicago Public Radio, when

29:59

our program continues. news. This

30:30

year, a very important public figure turns 80. He sent us his wish

30:32

for his birthday. My

30:43

wish is for everyone to practice

30:45

wildfire safety, because only you can

30:47

prevent wildfires. That sounds easy enough,

30:49

but you don't know who it

30:51

is. Nah, of course you do,

30:53

it's Smokey Bear. Let's all make

30:55

sure Smokey's wish comes true by

30:57

learning his wildfire prevention tips at

30:59

smokeybear.com. Because Smokey Bear lives within

31:01

us all. Brought to you by

31:03

the USDA Forest Service, your state

31:05

forester and the Ad Council. Hi,

31:08

I'm Tracy Mumford. I'm an audio producer at

31:10

The New York Times. We're always looking for

31:12

new ways to bring you our reporting. That's

31:14

where our show, The Headlines, comes in.

31:16

It covers three top stories each

31:18

weekday morning, all in under 10 minutes. You

31:21

can find The Headlines in The

31:24

New York Times audio app, along

31:26

with other exclusive shows, narrated articles

31:28

and more. And New York Times

31:30

news subscribers can download this app

31:32

right now and listen to The

31:35

Headlines at nytimes.com/audio app. This

31:39

is American Life, I'm Eric Glass. Each week in a

31:41

program, of course, which is a theme, bringing different kinds

31:43

of stories on that theme. Today's show, Human Spectacle. We

31:46

have stories of people who go on display in front

31:49

of others, lots and lots of others,

31:51

even though they are not so crazy about

31:53

doing that. We've arrived at Act 2

31:55

of our program, Act 2. I always

31:57

feel like somebody's watching me. We've

32:00

talked a lot in today's program so far about reality

32:03

TV, and of course, what makes reality TV entertaining is

32:05

very, very simple, and that

32:07

is editing. Editing. If

32:09

they just set up cameras and showed you

32:11

all 24 hours in anybody's day, how interesting

32:13

could that possibly be? Well, here

32:16

is a story of somebody trying just that, a

32:18

story of everyday people being treated

32:20

as human spectacle and being treated that way

32:22

precisely because of their everydayness. Ariel

32:25

Sabar explains. Here's

32:27

how it worked. On a Tuesday morning

32:29

in the spring of 1949, a seven-year-old boy named Raymond

32:31

Birch was

32:33

fast asleep in his bed. His

32:36

mother walked into his bedroom and said, Raymond,

32:38

time to get up for school. When

32:41

the boy opened his eyes, he saw a scientist

32:43

with a clipboard and timer standing in the corner

32:45

of his room. The

32:47

scientist, a stranger to the boy,

32:49

just stared, didn't say a word.

32:53

The boy squirmed out of bed and reached for his clothes.

32:56

The scientist wrote, 7.01 a.m. Raymond

32:59

picked up a sock. In

33:05

the late 1940s and early 50s,

33:07

scientists followed kids in houses, schoolyards,

33:09

and streets across the town of

33:11

Oskaloosa, Kansas, taking pages of notes

33:13

on the littlest things they did

33:15

or said. 6.33 p.m. Bradley

33:20

walked deliberately to where his sister sat playing with

33:22

the puppy and hit her on the head twice,

33:24

just as hard as he could hit. His

33:26

sister looked very surprised and annoyed. 11.06

33:29

a.m. Fred skidded

33:31

on the floor so that he fell with his body

33:33

partially under the swing. He yelled, whoops,

33:36

and then lay still since he saw the swing coming back

33:38

over him. 11.37 a.m. Margaret's

33:42

mother asked, Why can't you play with your dolls

33:45

and let that go? Margaret

33:47

kept on painting the pillars before, neither looking

33:49

at her mother nor answering her.

33:53

All of this was happening under the watch

33:55

of a University of Kansas psychologist named Roger

33:57

Barker, who was bent on taking his feet.

34:00

in a radically new direction. Because

34:03

psychology was still struggling in those days to

34:05

be taken seriously as a science, most

34:07

of Barker's colleagues imitated other kinds of

34:10

scientists doing lots of experiments in labs.

34:13

But none of this made sense to Barker. Humans

34:16

didn't live in laboratories. They lived in the real

34:18

world, and that's where Barker wanted to study them.

34:21

In the wild, the way a botanist looked at

34:23

flowers in the field, or a

34:25

primatologist tracked apes through a forest. So

34:28

when the University of Kansas called in 1947 and asked Barker if

34:32

he wanted to chair its psychology department, Barker

34:35

said, I'll take the job, but

34:37

on one condition. You find

34:39

me a small town. A

34:41

dean at the school said he knew just the place. Oskaloosa,

34:45

population 725. When

34:53

Roger Barker first drove up into the hills

34:55

of northeastern Kansas to see Oskaloosa, he must

34:57

have been beside himself. A

35:00

place was a Norman Rockwell painting. Not

35:02

too rich, not too poor, sturdy

35:04

families in modest houses. It

35:07

was the picture of middle America. Barker

35:10

wanted to study what he called

35:12

the naturally occurring behavior of free-ranging

35:15

persons. And to do that, he

35:17

told his field workers to become part of the scenery,

35:19

visible and friendly, but not obtrusive.

35:23

The last thing we want to do, he said,

35:25

is give people the guinea pig feeling. Barker

35:28

took his own advice and moved his entire

35:30

family to Oskaloosa. They settled in

35:32

a beat-up house near the town square, joined

35:35

the Presbyterian Church, and became active in

35:37

the town's social and civic organizations. And

35:40

that left Barker just as exposed as the

35:42

Oskaloosans he planned to put under his microscope.

35:45

You'll be watching us, a local mother told the

35:47

researchers one day, but don't forget, we'll

35:50

be watching you. One

35:53

of the first things Barker wanted to do in

35:55

Oskaloosa was to document a day in the life

35:57

of an ordinary boy. Barker

36:00

didn't have a hypothesis about the boy

36:02

or about seven-year-olds. He wasn't

36:04

testing for anything in particular. He

36:07

wanted only to show the world that following a kid

36:09

for a day could produce a ton of interesting data.

36:12

Scientists could later break down that data in

36:14

an infinite number of ways, depending on their

36:16

interests and the goals of their research. Which

36:19

was how little Raymond Birch woke up that morning

36:21

to find a scientist standing over him. On

36:24

that Tuesday, April 26, 1949,

36:27

eight researchers, taking turns like runners in

36:29

a relay race, followed Raymond

36:32

for 13 hours straight. The

36:34

book that came out of it, One Boy's Day, was 435

36:37

pages long. It

36:40

had an entry for nearly every minute of Raymond's

36:42

day. The researchers tried

36:44

to record not just Raymond's words and

36:46

movements, but also his perceptions,

36:48

motives, and feelings. They

36:51

noted that Raymond mumbled with a mouthful of toast

36:53

at breakfast. They followed him as

36:55

he walked with his mom to her job at the

36:57

county clerk's office and looked on as he drew a

36:59

picture of a cowboy with a long beard. They

37:02

watched Raymond find a baseball bat in the grass and pick

37:04

it up. Oh boy, he said, according

37:06

to their notes. He tossed a

37:08

stone in the air and swung, but accidentally clipped

37:11

a flagpole. 8.24 AM. This

37:14

made a wonderful, hollow, ringing noise, so he

37:16

proceeded to hit the flagpole again. 8.25

37:19

AM. He went

37:21

around and around and around the pole, hitting it

37:23

with a bat as he did so, until he

37:25

became so dizzy that he fell down, bat and

37:28

all. Even

37:33

before the book about Raymond's day was published,

37:35

Barker felt it was destined for greatness. It

37:38

would find its way onto campuses as

37:40

a staple of psychology courses, he thought,

37:42

and into the hands of artists, novelists,

37:44

and laymen interested in the cultural scene.

37:47

We believe it will become a sort of classic and be

37:49

in demand for a long time, he wrote in a

37:51

January 1951 letter. But

37:54

one boy's day never took off, and

37:57

by April 1959, Barker, Crest Falls. asked

38:01

Harper and Rowe to ship him the 70 remainders

38:03

languishing in his warehouse. Part

38:06

of the trouble was simply the book's premise. In

38:09

its defiant first sentence, Barker calls

38:11

the book a scientific document. But

38:14

other scientists had a hard time seeing that. The

38:16

book was just a tick-tock chronology of

38:19

Raymond's day. There wasn't any theory or

38:21

analysis. And this annoyed many

38:23

of the reviewers in serious academic journals. One

38:26

reviewer wrote, the reader is struck by the

38:28

fact that he is encountering only raw data.

38:31

How can one evaluate such materials without

38:33

a theoretical framework? In

38:36

other words, what does it mean? Barker

38:43

lived in Oskaloosa the rest of his life, but

38:46

he abandoned his day in the life studies after

38:48

just a few years. There

38:50

were more revealing and less labor-intensive ways

38:52

he discovered to study human beings in

38:54

their natural habitats. Today,

38:57

field studies of naturally occurring behavior are

38:59

no more common in psychology than they

39:02

were in Barker's time. The

39:04

costs and logistics are just too staggering.

39:07

One rare but recent Barker-like effort was

39:09

conducted by UCLA's Center on the Everyday

39:11

Life of Families. Researchers

39:13

there embedded in the homes of 32

39:16

middle-class families in Los Angeles for a

39:18

week and videotaped nearly every

39:20

waking minute. But the

39:22

ratio of cost and effort to interesting

39:24

results remains as lopsided today as it

39:26

was in Barker's time. The

39:28

New York Times reported that, quote, after

39:31

more than $9 million in untold thousands

39:33

of hours of video watching, the

39:35

researchers found that, well, life in

39:37

these trenches is exactly what it looks like. A

39:40

fire shower of stress, multitasking,

39:42

and mutual nitpicking. One

39:46

guy in particular who's not a big fan of these studies,

39:48

Raymond Birch, the boy. I

39:51

tracked him down a few years ago. His real

39:53

name is Gary Morgan, and he's now a retired

39:55

utility worker in his early 70s, living

39:58

in Pennsylvania. Roger Berry. Parker

40:00

autographed Gary's copy of One Boy's

40:02

Day and personally inscribed it, calling

40:04

Gary its quote, real author. But

40:07

Gary is yet to get past his first pages. I

40:11

have to say, why is this interesting? He told

40:13

me. There's nothing happening in this book as

40:15

far as I can tell. What

40:18

is it going to tell them that I was

40:20

standing there chewing on my fingernails? Ariel

40:32

Sabar is the author of several books,

40:34

including The Outsider, the biography of Roger

40:36

Parker. You can find his work at

40:39

arielle sabar dot com. That's

40:50

three, the big break. So

40:53

in this story, a comedy act takes to the

40:55

stage for the biggest show of their lives, and

40:57

it is a spectacle, though not the

40:59

one they had in mind. David Siegel

41:01

tells the story. Mitzi McCall

41:03

and Charlie Brill were a sketch comedy act back in

41:05

the early 1960s, playing small

41:08

clubs around the country, mostly in Los

41:10

Angeles, where they lived. They were

41:12

married, they still are actually, and they were

41:14

struggling. Then one day they

41:16

got a phone call that changed their lives. We

41:19

were sitting at home and I didn't

41:21

know what we were doing. Starving. Starving.

41:23

Oh no, we weren't starving. Yes, I was

41:25

starving. I was hungry that day. Oh, was

41:27

that it? Yeah. And the phone rang and

41:29

it was our manager, Mason Newfield, and he

41:32

said, guess what? What?

41:34

I got you on the Ed Sullivan show

41:36

and we let out a scream because that

41:38

was the show. The ultimate. Bigger.

41:41

If you got a shot on Ed Sullivan, you had a shot at stardom. We

41:44

were just so thrilled and immediately we started to

41:46

work on the piece of material that we selected

41:49

for the Ed Sullivan show. And

41:51

we rehearsed and rehearsed and we fine-tuned it.

41:54

We ran down to the horn in Santa

41:56

Monica. We broke it in. It got a

41:58

lovely, lovely reaction. We had,

42:00

we told everybody, in fact, I think

42:02

I skyrode it, uh, uh, over Hollywood.

42:04

We're on the Ed Sullivan show, yee-hoo!

42:07

Yeah. And we were on our way. Whoo! This

42:11

wasn't just a shot of greatness. This

42:18

was a chance to meet a few of their idols who'd be

42:20

on the show that night, too. People

42:22

like Tessie O'Shea, Georgia Brown, who are

42:24

both big musical theatre stars. And

42:26

then we got to Charlie Mitzi, the biggest deal of all, was

42:29

a guy they'd already met. We

42:31

were just, we were in awe of Frank Gorshin, a

42:34

great, great, great impressionist and the

42:36

riddler on Batman. We

42:38

had probably done maybe something with Frank Gorshin.

42:40

I think it was something for Frank Gorshin.

42:42

I just shined his shoes and I was

42:45

so in awe. So

42:47

we get to New York and we, we,

42:50

we go to rehearsal by taxi

42:53

and, and there's thousands of people

42:55

in the streets clamoring and, and

42:57

the streets are cordoned off. And

42:59

there, there, yeah. Cordoned.

43:02

Cordoned. And I looked at Mitzi and I said, my

43:04

God, all this for Frank Gorshin. They

43:07

were given the worst dressing room in the building,

43:09

on the top floor, a space they shared

43:11

with a soda machine. But they didn't care.

43:14

They were both 26 years old and they were about

43:16

to go national. But first, it

43:19

was time for a dress rehearsal. Here's the,

43:21

here's the deal. We didn't know

43:24

that the dress rehearsal was

43:26

something that was looked at very carefully.

43:28

By all the executives. Exactly. And they

43:30

have an audience. We, we didn't know.

43:33

We were like coming down in our

43:35

bathrobes with hair curlers. And

43:37

we go through our act. And when

43:39

we get to a punch line, instead of doing

43:41

the punch line, we go blah, blah, blah. Because

43:43

we don't want to reveal the punch line. We

43:45

want the band to laugh and, and we don't

43:47

want, you know, it was a secret, our punch

43:49

line. Yeah. And

43:52

here we are. And Mitzi, by the way,

43:54

blah, blah, blah. So then we slept upstairs

43:56

to our dressing room and we get, and

43:58

we hear in the loudspeaker. McCall and

44:00

Brill, Mr. Sullivan's office, please. McCall

44:02

and Brill. So we

44:05

go down and we go into Mr.

44:07

Sullivan's office and there he was. Oh

44:09

my God. He was

44:11

sitting in the chair getting made up and

44:13

I looked at the man who could make

44:15

our entire careers. So

44:18

he said, what you did

44:20

in dress rehearsal, first of all,

44:22

I don't get the blah, blah, blah. I'm

44:25

not getting that. And we said, no,

44:27

Mr. Sullivan, those are our punch lines

44:29

and we want them to be fresh.

44:31

And he said, oh, well, I wish you would let us

44:33

in on them for the dress rehearsal. And

44:36

he said, and the piece of material you're

44:38

doing is too sophisticated

44:40

for this audience. And I went,

44:42

what? Because I had seen the Sullivan

44:44

show all my life. And he said, well, there's going to

44:46

be mostly 14, 15, 16 year old girls in the audience

44:51

tonight and kids. And

44:53

it never occurred to me to say, why? What is it?

44:56

What are we doing? Like a circus show? And he

44:58

said, so show me your entire

45:00

act. And because we

45:02

were so new and eager to please,

45:04

we stood there in the office and

45:06

showed Mr. Sullivan our entire nightclub act,

45:08

anything we had ever worked on. Which

45:10

was like 25, 30 minutes of sketches.

45:16

Blah, blah, blah. Yeah, sketches. And

45:18

he said, okay, here's the

45:21

deal. We're going to put that first girl

45:23

that comes in. In the first sketch. Mm-hmm.

45:26

We'll put her in the second sketch. But then you do

45:28

the other girl that you did in the third sketch. And

45:30

then that's what you end with. And that's what you end

45:32

with. Now we went, oh,

45:34

okay. They went back

45:36

upstairs in something close to a panic. Basically,

45:39

they had just been told to write a new act

45:41

right then and there. Instead of the

45:44

routine, they've been fine tuning for weeks. They

45:46

might have freaked out, but they didn't have time. The

45:49

curtain was going up in an hour. We

45:51

were in a daze. We didn't really know what he

45:53

said. Should we put the first...

45:55

What did he say? We take the first girl and

45:57

put it in the third... And

46:00

then there was a knock on the door. It was always

46:02

open, but there was a knock. And

46:04

there's this guy standing

46:06

there with funny

46:09

hair and granny glasses.

46:12

And he said, give us a cool glove. Give us

46:14

a cool glove. And I looked at

46:16

Mitzi and I said, this guy wants a glove

46:18

or something. I'm not sure what he wants. And

46:20

he started to laugh and he said, no, give

46:22

us a cool glove. And he pointed to the

46:24

machine. The coke machine and I said, oh yeah,

46:26

well come in. It's all yours. And he said,

46:29

can you give me a dime, $0.10? And

46:32

I said, oh, I've got to buy you the coke as

46:34

well. OK. And what do

46:36

you think? We're made out of money, kid? Yeah. The

46:39

worst part was that this guy seemed to want to just hang

46:41

out. So he held himself to a seat

46:44

on the sofa. While he's talking

46:46

to us, he takes out

46:48

of his pocket a napkin and a pen and he's drawing

46:50

me. He's looking at me and he's

46:52

drawing me. That's nice. And

46:54

he did some pictures of me and Mitzi

46:57

on napkins. All we

46:59

thought about was, I wish this kid would

47:01

go so we could work on our own. We

47:05

haven't put the first character in the third sketch

47:07

and the second in the, and he left. And

47:09

we looked at each other and said, OK, now, what

47:13

are we doing? All right, McCall and

47:15

Brill, McCall and Brill on stage for

47:17

the show. Good

47:19

evening, ladies and gentlemen. Tonight, live from New

47:21

York. The show is about to begin. All

47:24

the performers gathered in the wings, waiting for

47:26

their time. Finally, Ed Sullivan

47:28

came out and announced the first act.

47:31

Ladies and gentlemen, the Beatles!

47:33

What? We

47:36

were on the Ed Sullivan show with

47:38

the Beatles. Close

47:40

the eyes. And now, we're

47:42

in the middle of the night. We

47:47

didn't realize how much crowds were for

47:49

us because we

47:51

didn't really know who the Beatles were. Actually,

47:54

our manager, when he called us, he said,

47:56

you're gonna be on the Ed Sullivan show.

47:58

And he said, and guess what? You're

48:00

gonna be with the Beatles, as

48:02

we said. Who? I'll

48:05

please it that I'm to the... ...the

48:08

best time of the day. The

48:11

guy with the pen, the one who drew the pictures,

48:13

that of course was John Lennon. And

48:16

this was February 9, 1964,

48:19

the first time a U.S. audience had laid eyes

48:21

on the Beatles. Years later,

48:23

Lennon said he thought the kids that

48:25

night had lost their minds. Charlie,

48:28

watching from 20 feet away, thought so

48:30

too. Honest to God, my hand

48:33

to God, I'd tell you, we couldn't

48:35

hear them. The screams, all

48:38

through what they did, were so loud, I never

48:41

got a chance to hear what they sound like. Who's

48:44

singing? This was something

48:46

different. Yeah, I mean, I heard

48:48

about Sinatra at the Paramount, you

48:50

know, people were screaming. But this,

48:52

I never heard or saw such

48:54

bedlam in my life. Now, when

48:56

they're finished, the screams keep going

48:58

on. It

49:12

must have dawned on you, at

49:15

that moment or was it before,

49:17

that this was a cultural phenomenon

49:20

just off the charts? I really

49:22

need to be rigorously honest right

49:24

now. No, it didn't. No. Well,

49:27

think about it. Think it over. All right,

49:29

I'll think it over. No. Okay. It

49:32

never occurred. No. We were too nervous of what

49:34

we were going to do. Please. I mean, I

49:36

knew they were a hit. But you know what?

49:38

We hadn't gone on yet. I wanted to know

49:41

that we were going to be fabulous. Our careers

49:43

were at stake here. 73

49:46

million Americans watched the Ed Sullivan show that

49:48

night, about 40% of the entire country. Ordinarily,

49:52

when that many people come together, it's

49:54

for the last episode of the long-running

49:56

TV series, or for playoff games, teams

49:59

they already know. Not for

50:01

show that turns the stage over to an act

50:03

that nobody's heard of. Arguably,

50:05

Mitzi and Charlie have the single

50:07

greatest break in the history of

50:09

show business. People

50:14

forget this was an hour-long program, with the Beatles

50:16

playing a few songs at the beginning and then

50:19

a few songs toward the end. In

50:21

between, there were six different acts,

50:23

from vaudeville, from Broadway, from the

50:25

circus, from everything rock was

50:27

about to bulldoze aside. She

50:30

was basically the future, sharing a bill with the doomed.

50:33

Which is why, after the Beatles finished singing

50:35

She Loves You, the next thing on the

50:37

Ed Sullivan show that night was a guy

50:40

in a tuck doing a card

50:42

trick. There's

50:45

an acrobatic novelty act. There's

50:56

Tessie O'Shea, a very large woman in

50:58

a sequined gown, playing a banjo, doing

51:00

her signature tune, Two Ton

51:03

Tessie in Tennessee. Tink

51:15

Ocean comes on with ten minutes

51:17

of impersonations, Dee Merton, Burt Lancaster,

51:19

Anthony Quinn. The far-fetched conceit

51:22

of his act doesn't seem quite so far-fetched

51:24

forty years later. While it's election year,

51:26

once again a lot of the Hollywood stars will

51:28

be out campaigning for the candidates of both parties.

51:31

Well, a funny thing occurred to me, what if

51:33

these stars should suddenly decide to run for these

51:35

offices themselves? They'd have

51:37

no trouble getting votes because of their popularity, and just

51:40

a short time, the

51:42

stars will be running the country. He

51:45

imagines a meeting of the US Senate,

51:47

where character actor Roderick Crawford is Vice

51:49

President, and people like Marlon Brando are

51:51

Senators. Tonight we're going to discuss whether

51:53

or not this and what he changed his major two-party system in a

51:55

different way. If he was done with his major entry, I opposed no.

51:57

Write the laws, guys. Ten-four! Mission

52:01

chairman. The year

52:04

after year after year, there have been

52:06

just two major parties. One

52:08

is Frank Sinatra House and the other one is Dean Martin's.

52:13

Just two years after this, Lava Reagan was

52:15

elected governor of California. This

52:25

is the Artful Dodger from the musical

52:27

Oliver, played here by an 18-year-old Davy

52:29

Jones. When he heard the screams

52:31

that evening, he thought, and this is a quote, I'd

52:33

like a little bit of this action. Two

52:36

years later, he was cast as a

52:38

member of the Monkees, the made-for-TV knockoff

52:40

of The Beatles. Mitzi

52:47

and Charlie were slated for what was probably the

52:49

worst slot on the show. They

52:51

were the last act before The Beatles returned for

52:53

the final songs. We were in

52:56

a daze, but we heard him introduce

52:58

us. We walked out. Now the screams

53:01

came on because they wanted The Beatles.

53:03

That's when I said, I thought I

53:05

heard, get them off. Yes. Did

53:08

you hear that? I think I

53:10

said it. Oh. Now

53:13

we take you to Hollywood at a very

53:15

tense moment in the career of a young

53:18

aspiring actress, the office of McCall

53:21

and Brill. Miss

53:28

Tidy, would you come into my office right away, please? Yes,

53:31

sir. Me, me, me, me. Everything nice

53:33

to me. That's me. Hello, sir.

53:35

Miss Tidy, I am having a terrible

53:37

time trying to find a young actress

53:40

to star in my next motion picture. Yes, sir.

53:42

Now are the young ladies outside ready to be interviewed?

53:44

Yes, sir. They're neatly waiting outside, sir. I'll send them in. Just

53:47

one at a time, Miss Tidy. The premise here

53:49

is that Charlie is a director casting a movie,

53:52

and Mitzi is his secretary, and then a bunch

53:54

of different women auditioning for the role. She

53:57

plays an aspiring starlet. Hi, sir. You

54:00

might not remember me, but I was Miss Tom Springs

54:02

back in 1956. The

54:05

stage mom. Sir, if you're not interested in her, maybe

54:07

you could be interested in me. Well, I really... You

54:09

know, I have a little talent this time. I have a little talent this

54:11

time. I have a little talent this time. I have a little talent this

54:13

time. And a method actor. Then

54:16

and only then can the true justification

54:18

of the motivation of our inside urgency

54:20

henceforth find the infinotisimal need of our

54:23

outward action. Dig. Did

54:26

you notice the dead silence after she says

54:28

dig? In a room that only

54:30

30 minutes earlier had been filled with a noise that

54:33

scared the cops. That's

54:35

a lot of silence. So you

54:37

were up there for what? How long do you think? Two minutes

54:39

or something like that? It was two years. Two years.

54:42

We were there for two years. We started at 24.

54:47

We didn't know what we were doing. We didn't know

54:49

if we finished the act or didn't finish the

54:51

act, but the band leader had

54:53

the punchline and he

54:56

played tada. And now you want

54:58

to see a couple of

55:00

Jews standing there so nervous looking

55:02

to see if they had called

55:05

us over because that's what makes

55:07

you. Did he call us over? No. Yeah,

55:10

but I think I saw it. No. No.

55:13

We were looking at each other saying did he motion to

55:15

us? It wasn't an emotion. No. No. It

55:18

wasn't. Get off. No.

55:22

No. We knew. We

55:24

were in the toilet. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

55:27

But see, they didn't have this expression then, but we

55:29

faked. It was in fact

55:31

the worst three minutes of their lives. They

55:34

bombed so bad that when they came off stage, people

55:36

wouldn't look at them. Mitzi's

55:38

mom dodged their call. The

55:40

biggest terror was that we didn't want to go

55:42

home. We just didn't want to

55:44

go home. We did not

55:47

want to go back to Los Angeles. That

55:49

night, we felt so bad and

55:51

Frank Gorshin was nice enough to

55:53

take us to Downey's. Sardis. Sardis.

55:56

And we had a drink and he said, don't worry. This is

55:58

not the end of your life. lives and we said, oh

56:01

my God. It was such

56:03

a fiasco that in 40 years, neither of them

56:05

have actually seen their performance until

56:07

now. Watching a tape of it,

56:09

the first thing Charlie noticed was that they actually did

56:11

get a couple laughs. It made me quite ill. Miss

56:14

Tidy, send in the next young lady, please. Are we getting lit?

56:17

It's like they're on the next young lady's

56:19

mother. My little girl was waiting outside. You

56:21

know, she used to be one of the Beatles. Oh, what

56:23

happened? Somebody stepped on her. That

56:27

was funny. You ad-libbed that. You

56:30

know something there? We were a hit. No, you

56:32

know what comes through. We were a hit. Look at us,

56:34

cute. You know what? There's

56:36

something wrong with you. It was

56:38

just egg. The problem, they

56:40

both say, is that they had to rearrange

56:42

their act for 14-year-olds in a hurry the

56:44

day of the broadcast. They're still

56:47

convinced that if they'd been invited on the show

56:49

any other night, things would have been different.

56:52

As it happened, they retreated back home,

56:54

where their agent didn't call for six

56:56

long months. From then on,

56:58

they'd winch every time they heard the Beatles. Imagine

57:01

that. They had the rest of the

57:03

60s ahead of them. They

57:06

were in for a lot of winchings. But

57:23

Mitzie and Charlie regrouped and recovered, and

57:26

they had long and fine careers. Through

57:29

the 60s and 70s, they played nightclubs in

57:31

Vegas, and they were on television a lot.

57:33

Goofy stuff, like the Gong Show. But

57:36

great programs, too, like the Tonight Show, which they

57:38

were on four times. Mitzie

57:40

later wrote for sitcoms, like Alf. Charlie

57:43

eventually landed a leading role on a detective

57:45

show called Silk Stockings, which ran on the

57:47

USA network for nine years. They

57:49

have a daughter, whom they adore. No

57:51

knock on Alf, but it gradually dawned on Mitzie

57:54

and Charlie that on February 9, 1964, they were

57:56

part of something

57:58

seismic. We were in the midst

58:01

of greatness. We

58:03

didn't know it. People would come up

58:05

to us and say, wasn't it you

58:07

that was on The Beatles show? And

58:09

we said yes, yes, waiting for them

58:11

to say, boy did you suck. And

58:14

they went, oh my God, you're famous.

58:17

Mitzi and Charlie are retired now. Meanwhile,

58:20

the Beatles have split up. Hell, wings

58:22

have split up. But four

58:24

decades after they flamed out in front of

58:26

nearly half the country, Mitzi and

58:29

Charlie are still together, still

58:31

standing, and still refining the

58:33

act. I said to Mitzi,

58:35

I said to Mitzi, let's go to Florida. Did

58:40

you call me Dixie? I think I met

58:42

him. Who's Dixie? No, nobody. No, I mean, you're...

58:44

What, do you have a girlfriend? No, there's no difference. All

58:47

right, never mind. Who's us? Okay, Pussy, forget the Dixie.

58:49

What I'm like, yawning in this reality is... Anyway, I'm not

58:51

sure if it's me or you. I'm sorry. I'm

58:53

sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm

58:56

sorry. My name is Zeego. He's

59:02

a reporter for the New York Times. We first

59:04

ran this story back in 2005. Since

59:07

then, Charlie and Mitzi are still going

59:10

strong. This year, they're celebrating their 65th

59:12

wedding anniversary. All

59:14

I gotta do is enjoy

59:16

the spectacle. Make sure

59:19

that it's all forgivable. Van

1:00:00

Der Torn and Sarah Bromer. Our

1:00:02

website, where you can listen to over 800 episodes of

1:00:05

our show for absolutely free,

1:00:07

thisamericanlife.org. This American Life

1:00:10

is delivered to public radio stations by

1:00:12

PRX, the public radio exchange. As

1:00:14

always, we're a program's co-founder, Mr. Tony Malatia. You

1:00:17

know, at the beginning of this program, when we started This

1:00:19

American Life together, even then,

1:00:21

he already wanted to disavow any

1:00:24

responsibility for what happens here each

1:00:26

week. He told me back then, this

1:00:28

is what I'm going to do, you're going to

1:00:30

run the show, but you will now

1:00:32

hypnotize me, and I will forget. I'm

1:00:35

out of glass. Back next week, more

1:00:37

stories of this American life. Enjoy

1:00:39

this. Enjoy

1:00:47

this. Enjoy

1:00:56

this. Enjoy

1:00:58

this. Capella

1:01:05

University is rethinking higher education.

1:01:08

With their game-changing FlexPath format, you can earn

1:01:10

your degree on your schedule, so you

1:01:12

can fit education seamlessly into your life.

1:01:15

Imagine your future differently at capella.edu.