How to Win Six Million Dollars

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Summon six millionaires and invite them to stake their fortunes on a single hand of poker. They will eagerly agree. Open a new deck of cards, discard the jokers, and ask the millionaires to cut (but not shuffle!) the deck as many times as they like. Then deal seven hands, ostentatiously dealing your own second and fourth cards from the bottom of the deck.

The millionaires may be reluctant to object to this, as all six of them will be holding full houses. (This works — try it.) But “See here,” they will finally say. “What was that business with the bottom-dealing? You’re up to something. We insist that you discard that hand.” Look hurt, then deal yourself a new hand.

You’ll likely be holding a straight flush.

| Entertainment · Science & Math

Too Much Talent

John Cazale is not a household name, but he should be. When the actor died at age 42, he’d made only five films, but every one of them was nominated for best picture:

  • The Godfather
  • The Conversation
  • The Godfather Part II
  • Dog Day Afternoon
  • The Deer Hunter

That alone would have made him unique in Hollywood history, but he added a hat trick. In 1990, 12 years after his death, Francis Ford Coppola used archive footage to include Cazale in The Godfather Part III (as Fredo Corleone).

That too was nominated for best picture.

| Entertainment · Trivia

Boomerang

In seeking a costume for the character Professor Marvel in the The Wizard of Oz, the MGM wardrobe department found a tattered Prince Albert coat in a secondhand store in Los Angeles.

One afternoon actor Frank Morgan turned out the coat’s pocket and discovered the name “L. Frank Baum.” By a bizarre coincidence, they had chosen a coat once owned by the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

This sounds dubious, I know, but cinematographer Hal Rosson, his niece Helene Bowman, and unit publicist Mary Mayer have all vouched for the story.

“We wired the tailor in Chicago and sent pictures,” Mayer told Aljean Harmetz for the book The Making of The Wizard of Oz. “And the tailor sent back a notarized letter saying that the coat had been made for Frank Baum. Baum’s widow identified the coat, too, and after the picture was finished we presented it to her. But I could never get anyone to believe the story.”

| Entertainment · Oddities