THE CHINA MAIL,
XEBRUARY 22, 1937.
Fame is fickle,
and even a
vegetable has to find new angles to remain a celebrity
Chronicle Of A Discovery
MAJORITY of the morning from critics of higher education in laid the data on what this investi-
papers of August 25th, 1940 America for being tied carried front page accounts of Pro- academic tradition. fessor Herman Ganzmüller's re- The Parsley Movement was now markable discovery about parsley.
Hollywood, of course, was not to down by gation disclosed. Suffice it to say be caught, napping. It announced that people at the time were about immediate production plans for evenly divided as to the justice of three love stories, four gangster the decision arrived at by the in- films, and four musicals all having a parsley background. One of the lat- After twelve years of patient under way, Herman Blatz, who al vestigating committee. read all
Concurrent with this investiga- er, Pass the Parsley, was positive- research,
stated,
the Metropolitan they
the ways
brief counter-parsley ly the most sensational musical ever Professor was. finally able papers for timely topics, pecked his tion ran a to announce to the world right forefinger untiringly at grime movement sponsored by a large staged. The high spot was a scene September chain of newspapers which claimed where two hundred chorus girls in that in parsley he had discovered covered keys, and, on another valuable-nay, indispensable 2nd, succeeded in getting his latest that the parsley craze was an en- green foliage (representing parsley, entitled: tering wedge for Communism. It of course), sprouted out of a huge -vitamin, Vitamin L, necessary for song published. It was
Bunch of is not clear just how this idea got garden, did a tap dance, and then several important body functions, You're My Great Big
up by draping themselves and a preventative against various Parsley. In two weeks it had gross started, but apparently it had some wound serious human ailments. Ganz- ed more than any of his former hits connection with a statement Gan- over a gigantic papier mache sir- muller, brought up in the best tradi- in the corresponding time, includ- zmuller made some twenty years loin steak. The steak alone is said. tions of scientific research, was not ing: All I Want Is Love, Ethio- before in which he remarked, or is to have cost $15,000. given to extravagant statements, pian Serenade, and the smash hit said to have remarked, that some and he admitted frankly that this of 1938, Old Man Depression's Dy- people are a lot better off than they vitamin was also present in other commonly consumed forms of vegetation. However, he pointed out, none of them even approximat- ed parsley in this respect.
It was the Professor's belief (ar-
By Parke Cummings
It was some six weeks after Ganz- muller's initial announcement, that the blow fell. Doctor Charles Fayo- din, member of the World Interna- tional Association of Scientists, an- nounced that this body had care- fully investigated the effects of parsley on the human system, and However, when an- that, far from being (save in rare rived at only after the most care- ing. Radio loudspeakers, of course, deserve to be.
coast, and other string of papers accused the cases) biologically beneficial, it was ful checks and rechecks) that peo- blared it from coast to who made it an habitual practice to for many weeks it was the number Professor of Fascist leanings, there- capable of being definitely injurious rival antiparsley even fatal if taken in too large eat parsley at least once a day one selection on all the hit-of-the- by creating a
Vitamin "could, on the average, expect to live week programme. He threatened to movement, the two campaigns soon quantities. Overdoses of longer, have better eyesight and sue the writer of a subsequent song, neutralised each other, the net re L given to rats had been in every digestion, and, to quote the initial A Bunch Of Parsley And You, sult was a substantial increase in case lethal, and moreover, a newly sales discovered vitamin, N, was of far report directly, “enjoy increased but everybody knew that it was parsley (and newspaper)
Besides, throughout the country.
more importance in human · diet. and more satisfactory reproductive simply a formal gesture. faculties."
Well-to-do people in New York Green beans contained this to a Professor Ganmuller the later song was a flop, as were also held that parsley-eaters could three or four other parsley ditties were totally indifferent to these larger extent than any other known expect to be less susceptible to come which got on the market too late. charges anyhow because they were vegetable.
too busy trying to secure, by hook mon colds, jaundice, tuberculosis,
Three days later the Editor of and possibly although complete By the middle of September, of or crook, seats to the new revue: data on this point wasn't as yet course, parsley sales were booming Parsley Trimmings of 1940 which Your and My Magazine returned a and such was the demand for this had taken the frivolous element in short story about parsley to one of commodity that governments anti- Gotham by storm. The more seri- his most frequent and dependable The contributors, Lester, Price. With This announcement, fortunate cipated no immediate need for pass- ous-minded were attending enough to break in an interlude be- ing any edicts about parsley limita- Greens, a genre play about South- the rejected manuscript he enclos- They say ed a brief note. It read: "Good tween wars, received instant and tion. Everything in that respect ern parsley farmers.
Sorry wide publicity. Several leading was going very nicely, the price of some of the language in that play stuff, but subject out-dated:
What else have you got?” wita made quips about it in their parsley continually increasing, and was just awful columns and over the radio, and the people complaining bitterly against It almost topical cartoonists also saw to it the exorbitant cost
available cancer.
that parsley got the breaks it so sounded like the good old days of richly deserved. The Professor Prosperity. On the 18th of Sep- himself explained his theory (not tember the public was thrilled to too technicallyy before newsreel read of a daring broad daylight cameras in a rich Teutonic accent, hold-up of a parsley truck in which and a good many newspapers saw the driver and two guards were death. The fit to comment on the discovery, machine gunned to
over $8,000 editorially most of them in a seri- bandits escaped with ous vein. The tabloids, regrettably, worth of parsley, and the incident -newspapers to demand tended to lay undue stress on the prompted reproductive faculty angle which police shake-ups-a lead Gauzmuller to emphasize that ent regulations.
•
he considered this among the less
important virtues of the plant. This hol This move on Ganzmuller's part, publicity
more string
of course, served to consolidate himi ment at all-to-the sale of Frederick with the more reputable element in Starrow's new novel, Parsley and the country without in any way critics were soon halling it as one weakening his popularity with tab of those rare books that would live loid readers who, in fact, were for all time. It was, said the blurb: unaware of it because their papers on its jacket, a poignant story of saw no need of mentioning it.
the struggle of a poor city tenement family to obtain its share of pars- headley Starrow became a national receiving several large and attended several literary
by his publishers dur ing which he always sat next to
rofessor Garamuller.
His pub- shers were powerless to pictures of the two men
om getting into the new
phenomenal sales
The Professor wade lines on the six days after his figure, initial announcement, when Harris prize University, a new, heavily, endow dinn ́ed and exceedingly earnest institu-
tion which laid great stress having no football team nor eram inations, awarded him its Prize for the year's most discovery in bio-chemistry.
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