STEPHEN FRY

Thank you Andrew.

I've already listened to it and found the following clues (SPOILERS):


- Trefusis was born in 1921 (three years after the end of WW1 in 1918).
- He was 17 when he went to see 'Film A', which means it was in 1938. I googled Julius, Lennard & Arthur which lead me to the Marx Brothers. 1938 + Marx Brothers says 'Room Service', but I wasn't too sure about that one being film A. So I googled 'Ice cream, codebook and Marx Brothers' which led to 'A Day at the Races'. This one however is from 1937 so either I'm confused or Stephen made a calculation mistake. Anyway. Film A is likely to be 'A Day at the Races'.

- Film B was made in the year Stephen was born, 1957. Nickname of the man in the movie was 'The Lone Eagle'. After a bit of searching, I found out that Film B must therefore be 'The Spirit of St. Louis', a biopic about Charles Lindbergh. Wiki showed me I was right i.e. the nicknames were the same. The Crime of the Century is when his son, Charles Jr. was kidnapped. Further down the Wiki page, it says something about the Lindy Hop. Lindbergh -> Lindy Hop. Get the reference?

- I then waited a bit and found out that 'the boy wonder' or 'the last tycoon' is Irving Thalberg. He was also the model for Monroe Stahr in The Love of the Last Tycoon.

- After checking IMDB page on A Day at the Races I stumbled upon Carole Landis. I think that's the uncredited dancer.

I am still working on the last vital clue...

americans may have a leg up



i say that with all modesty intended, i was completely lost halfway thru last one.

Yes, I don't want to spoil the fun, but it does say spoilers in the thread name and it would seem so unfair to the thread at least, if i didn't do it a just a bit,

spoilers follow.......................... if you do nobly choose to investigate yourself then merry wiki-ing, becuase lets face it, that's where you're heading.




I have the first first lady and her lindy hop dancing namesake. I don't think that it is Carole Landis Love_Kingdom, i haven't looked into who she is but the first first lady of the USA 'Martha Custis (nee) Dandridge' matches quite well with the first black lady to be nominated for an oscar, dorothy dandridge who is presumably the dancer of film A.
Haven't looked at all into slavery.
I know the city named for the roman statesman/farmer, Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus leads in the right direction. the deceased in Cincinnati in 1911 i dont know but it doesn't seem useful to anything, her name is probably martha though nice enough as names go, hope she died happy.

There are a couple of things twisting my nipples though;
1. seems like film A and film B are mixed up at 19:49 and 20:22 but i could easily be mistaken, more likely to be me than he based on, well, he.
2.little one here, when he's talking about larks he says it a few times, then says that he is one letter out with all dramatised internation so i assumed he was pointing out that it rhymed with Marx, but thats three letters out, any ideas...? (around 12:57.)
EDIT; just realised that he probably meant he was one letter out phonetically...LOL, eh, lol... thats a good one right, RIGHT!?

relating it to episode 2 i have only one link...
http://www.eiu.edu/~agora/0712/Boswell.htm
there's a fair amount about thalberg in there.

first and foremost: the Lizard People mention in the introduction was soooooo amusing! X-D

good catch in your #1 nipple-twister SchwibMun! I didn't notice, but you're right that the letters are switched around. I guess it's good that it's getting repetitive by then so accuracy isn't entirely critical.
the odd thing I noticed is how it's said the first first's family might have owned the woman in the 1950s. now I guess it means that'd be the case had slavery not been abolished, but it seems weird to talk about owning anyone who was living in the 1950s.
also, Trefusis says Prohibition was repealed in the US when he was about 10, and he actually must have been 11 or 12. I guess that's about 10. but if you asked a 12 year old kid he'd probably be insulted you considered about the same age as a puny 10 year old. X-D

Spoilers ahoy:

this episode, I have to say, was a bit more fun than the last. I got so side-tracked reading about different people. maybe I have a bias toward finding early Hollywood people interesting because I've been trained to appreciate those types of personalities.
I didn't feel as though everything fit together in the same a fancy and neat way as it did last time. I liked having so many clues though, so I felt that I had a lot of room for error-- any wrong pathes would be quickly revealed.

these paragraphs (the shrunken ones) are no longer valid after Trefusis has provided us further information. I'll leave them in the post, though, in case anyone else comes to the same conclusion. scroll down to other posts for the actual solution.
((the one place where my response this episode is still tenuous is the death in Cincinnati in 1911. here is my guess: Mt. Washington, a formerly "autonomous community" on the outskirts of Cincinnati which was annexed by the city in 1911. I think it works because Trefusis never says it's someone or some person who died, he says there was "a death" of "one" who died. in addition, he uses the present tense to describe how the name "lives" on in this dead one from almost 100 years ago. Mt. Washington is still a neighborhood, so the name is maintained.
is it to far from convention to suggest that a city died? obviously Treffy has some strange ideas about what constitutes death, what with his tweeting from beyond.

I'm not even sure why this would be important, but I couldn't leave it alone without finding some type of solution.))

regarding the rest of the puzzle:
I came up with Charles Lindbergh and Martha Washington without needing to Google.
(actually...the first thing I wrote was HINDENBURG BABY??? just like that and then about a half minute later I was like "omg self what an idiot, mix your Bergy tragedies" and it was kinda funny.)
I thought my quick Martha Washington was too simple, but it seems to have worked out. I thought she might have been the wrong first first at first because I noticed that the President's wife wasn't actually called that until later on, and the two women from Whitey's Lindy Hoppers whose last names were Washington were yielding nothing. that was probably my longest tangent, but the Lindy Hoppers kept me occupied. I love that dancing. it looks like a great workout.

I cannot find a single bit of connection between episode 2 and episode 3. the link you had SchwibMun certainly mentions Thalberg, but that Boswell isn't even remotely related to any of our Boswell friends from before. she seems to just be the professor who wrote the text.
so, in terms of linking the two episodes, I wouldn't be surprised if they're distance pieces on a puzzle, and the intermediate pieces haven't been given to us yet. on the other hand, I think it would be very fun if each episode were its own self-contained adventure! that way there would be no limitations to the different sorts of places we could explore with dear Treffy.

As asual I'm having a bit of difficulties researching for the names, but this dongle is so funny and charming I'm having a great time trying to do it =)

I've stumbled in interesting articles about The Crime of the Century (that is not the Battle of the Century - LoL - the pie fight I mean) but I guess this one: http://www.time.com/time/2007/crimes/
that suits the Lindbergh Hop of the Film A.
and I agree with the identity of Dorothy Dandridge as the uncredited singer & dancer. I'm now investigated Halle Berry that possibly has dedicated her Oscar to her and to the other black movie pioneers. she also starred in her biopic movie, so I'm quite sure about that. as sure as I can be, not much, but sure as I am, well... Mr Dalliard! I'm talking nonsense now!
still have to look into the slave stuff - but I'm optimistic now

oh good! @donaldtrefusis had corrected himself on Twitter-- he did mean for the date to be 1914! I'd copy and paste the tweet, but I haven't paid for 3.0 on my iPod yet, so if you'd like to verify for yourself just head over to his Twitter page thingy.

now I wonder how I managed to overlook that poor pigeon. I must have constantly included the year in my searches. hmm.

The first first lady to be called "first lady" was Dolley (Dorothy or Dorothea) Madison, not Washington. She was named after a relative called Dorothea Dandridge. Madison came from the Payne family, who owned slaves in North Carolina.

Edit - Ha! Seems that Trefusis is fallible - not only getting 1911 wrong, but also the first lady clue - Martha Washington was never known as First Lady...

the trouble with that solution to the first first is that the passenger pigeon, who with the amended date was obviously the Cincinnati death we were meant to find, was called Martha Washington. no part of Dolley Madison's name is the same as that bird's.

I guess I'm OK with Martha as the first first because we know that the first lady is the wife of the President, and she was the first person to be the wife of the President. it's not perfect, but it's completely wrong either.