{"id":531,"date":"2013-01-27T21:28:02","date_gmt":"2013-01-28T02:28:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tikatusmuse.wordpress.com\/?p=531"},"modified":"2013-09-02T22:34:32","modified_gmt":"2013-09-03T02:34:32","slug":"more-scintillating-dinner-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tikatu.com\/musemoves\/2013\/01\/27\/more-scintillating-dinner-conversation\/","title":{"rendered":"More scintillating dinner conversation!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part of last night\u2019s conversation was in response to Boy #2\u2019s suggestion that we watch The Scarlet Pimpernel<\/em> (Anthony Andrews, Jane Seymour, and Ian McKellan, 1982). We finally bought a DVD version of this because our taped-from-my-parents\u2019-TV VHS copy died. Hubby led off the discussion on \u201cfictional gentlemen adventurers with secret identities\u201d, with an eye to finding out if there was one older than Sir Percy Blakeney. I mean, the Baroness D\u2019Orczy wrote The Scarlet Pimpernel back in 1903. There had to be somebody!<\/p>\n

Well, we really couldn\u2019t think of one! Zorro, whose pedigree is similar, wasn\u2019t created until 1919 in \u201cThe Curse of Capistrano\u201d. The Shadow, another \u201cwealthy man about town\u201d was 1930. Wikipedia suggests Sherlock Holmes to have or be a secret identity, but he was more a master of disguise \u2013 then again, so is Sir Percy! But, as Hubby put it, \u201che\u2019s not going around under an assumed name in a more or less constant fashion\u201d.<\/p>\n

Tonight I brought up two old Disney favorites that I thought might be relevant. One was the Swamp Fox, who is a historical figure anyway and not at all fictional. The \u201cold swamp fox\u201d was a sobriquet the British gave him. <\/p>\n

The other was the Scarecrow, or the Reverend Doctor Christopher Syn, who was a smuggler and pirate with a \u201csecret identity\u201d of a country vicar. Hubby brought out the fact that the man was not<\/em> a hero, and a quick look at Wikipedia showed that his first appearance was 1915. Hubby mentioned a character in an operetta, that of an archeologist who had a secret identity of a freedom-fighter in Northern Africa. The operetta was The Desert Song<\/em>, and was written in 1926. It was inspired both by tales of Lawrence of Arabia and a 1925 uprising in Morocco. The archeologist\u2019s name was Pierre Birabeau and his heroic alter ego was The Red Shadow. (It had a really cool song: The Riffs<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

So, as far as I can tell, ol\u2019 Percy is an original! Do any of my readers or friends have any candidates? (And don\u2019t you just love our table talk?)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part of last night\u2019s conversation was in response to Boy #2\u2019s suggestion that we watch The Scarlet Pimpernel (Anthony Andrews, Jane Seymour, and Ian McKellan, 1982). We finally bought a DVD version of this because our taped-from-my-parents\u2019-TV VHS copy died. Hubby led off the discussion on \u201cfictional gentlemen adventurers with secret identities\u201d, with an eye to finding out if there was one older than Sir Percy Blakeney. I mean, the Baroness D\u2019Orczy wrote The Scarlet Pimpernel back in 1903. There…<\/p>\n

Read More Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,14,18,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fun-stuff","category-hubby","category-music","category-son-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8AOo6-8z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tikatu.com\/musemoves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tikatu.com\/musemoves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tikatu.com\/musemoves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tikatu.com\/musemoves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tikatu.com\/musemoves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tikatu.com\/musemoves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tikatu.com\/musemoves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tikatu.com\/musemoves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tikatu.com\/musemoves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}