In the early days of the film industry, it was hard to find a good scream. Before the invention of sound bites, directors who needed a blood-curdling shriek from actors often got rather paltry sounding yelps. That is, until Private Wilhelm entered the scene. In the 1951 war classic Distant Drums, a soldier is dragged under water by an alligator as he wades through a treacherous Florida swamp. After the filming was completed, sound engineers recorded a series of screams that were added during post-production. Two years later, in The Charge at Feather River, a soldier named Private Wilhelm (played by Ralph Brooke) takes an arrow in the leg. Similar…
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Tooth Fairies Aren’t Easy How BMWs and laptops have replaced leaving a quarter under your pillow
When my dentist gave me the bad news, I was naturally distraught over the possibility of losing half of my teeth. Even after years of religiously brushing, flossing and wrestling with my Waterpik, the entire lower left-hand quadrant as well as a few other strategically located molars had succumbed to periodontal disease, so eating anything denser than applesauce started to become a challenge. The one redeeming factor was that I’d be partially reimbursed by the Tooth Fairy. I was introduced to the practice of exchanging my lost baby teeth for money when I was 5 years old. My mother told me if I put a tooth under my pillow, the…