 |
The Wrecking Crew is a recurring group of fictional characters from the golf stories of British comic writer P. G. Wodehouse, being a foursome of golfers infamous for their grotesque golfing techniques and tedious pace of play.
| |
The Wrecking Crew is a recurring group of fictional characters from the golf stories of British comic writer P. G. Wodehouse, being a foursome of golfers infamous for their grotesque golfing techniques and tedious pace of play.
They featured prominently in the short story "Chester Forgets Himself" (1923), and act as a catalyst whereby the protagonist finds himself uttering a string of profanity in front of a lady whom he very much wants to impress.
The foursome consist of "The First Grave Digger", "The Man with the Hoe", "Old Father Time", and "Consul, the Almost Human".
"The Wrecking Crew consisted of four retired business men who had taken up the noble game late in life because their doctors had ordered them air and exercise."
The First Grave Digger is the nickname of Joseph Poskitt, who appears and is co-protagonist of the Oldest Member short story "The Letter of the Law". In this tale he is described as being "[…]somewhat short-sighted and completely muscle-bound[…]as an undergraduate, he had made a name as a hammer thrower." He plays the Final of his club's President's Cup against the scheming retired solicitor, Wadsworth Hemmingway. He was "the star performer of the Wrecking Crew […] He differed from his colleagues […] in that, while they were content to peck cautiously at the ball, he never spared himself in his efforts to do it a violent injury."
Every golfer has been trapped behind this immortal foursome. Their collective name expresses their painfully awkward, brutally slow, meandering and extraordinarily destructive progress over the course—their endless practice-swings, infinite brooding over putts, labored swings, foozled shots and onward crawl, leaving a devastated landscape littered with massive, irreplaceable divots in their wake—but the individual names are allusive as well. The nickname "The First Grave Digger" is a reference to a character in Shakespeare's 'Hamlet', wherein (Act V, Scene 1) he sings the following callous ditty as he digs the grave of the fair Ophelia:
A pick-axe and a spade, a spade,
For an a shrouding sheet;
Oh, a pit of clay for to be made
For such a guest is meet.
"The Man with the Hoe" ("L'Homme à la Houe"), painted in 1861, is a famous painting by Jean-François Millet. Given the proclivities of the Wrecking Crew, Wodehouse may also have had in mind a poem inspired by Millet's work — Edwin Markham's "The Man with the Hoe," which begins
Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back, the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?
Gaunt, white-bearded, and funereal, "Old Father Time" is at once the most familiar and the most ominous member of the Wrecking Crew quartet. With his hour-glass he measures out the precious hours allotted us on earth; with the stroke of his scythe he mows us down when our hour has come. He is always before us on the fairway of life.
"Consul, the Almost Human" would have been familiar to many of Wodehouse's original readers as the chimpanzee famous for a vaudeville act in which he wore human clothing, dined at the table, smoked cigars, rode a bicycle, used a typewriter, roller-skated, and so on. During the last decade of the nineteenth and the first of the twentieth century, Consul appeared so often in Europe and the United States that it seems likely that there was more than one "Consul," and/or that several chimpanzees in succession were pressed into the role. The final Consul died of pleurisy while on tour in Berlin, after which his stuffed body was placed on display at the American Museum of Natural History. At the peak of his fame, according to his obituary in the New York Times (April 12, 1907), this Consul earned $1,500 per week, and had his life insured for $124,000. That he may not always have appreciated his existence as a gawked-at curiosity is suggested by the fact that on one occasion at least he took full advantage of an opportunity to fire a revolver at his trainer, only to discover that the weapon had, alas, been loaded with blank cartridges (Popular Mechanics Magazine, 1919, 593).
Members of The Wrecking Crew are featured in:
Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge is a fictional character in comedic stories by author P. G. Wodehouse. Ukridge appears in one novel and nineteen short stories. Ukridge is a charismatic opportunist who will do anything to increase his capital—except, of course, work. The stories in which he appears generally involve his get-rich-quick schemes. Though Ukridge never achieved the popularity of the same author's Bertie Wooster and Jeeves, Wodehouse retained a certain fondness for him, his last appearance in a Wodehouse story being as late as 1966. With completed new stories appearing over a span of 60 years, he is the longest-running of Wodehouse's characters, topping Jeeves and Wooster and the denizens of Blandings Castle.
Lord Emsworth and Others is a collection of nine short stories by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom on 19 March 1937 by Herbert Jenkins, London; it was not published in the United States. The Crime Wave at Blandings, which was published on 25 June 1937 by Doubleday, Doran, New York, is a very different collection, sharing only three of its seven titles with the UK book. Penguin Books published a UK edition of The Crime Wave at Blandings in 1966. The stories in both books had all previously appeared in both British and American magazines.
The Oldest Member is a fictional character from the short stories and novels of P. G. Wodehouse. He narrates the majority of Wodehouse's golf stories from the terrace of a golf club whose location is unclear. The location and name of the club change between the stories, and between the US and UK versions of some of the stories.
"A Report to an Academy" is a short story by Franz Kafka, written and published in 1917. In the story, an ape named Red Peter, who has learned to behave like a human, presents to an academy the story of how he effected his transformation. The story was first published by Martin Buber in the German monthly Der Jude, along with another of Kafka's stories, "Jackals and Arabs". The story appeared again in a 1919 collection titled Ein Landarzt.
Plum Pie is a collection of nine short stories by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom on 22 September 1966 by Barrie & Jenkins, and in the United States on 1 December 1967 by Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York. The collection's title is derived from P. G. Wodehouse's nickname, Plum.
Nothing Serious is a collection of ten short stories by P. G. Wodehouse. It was first published in the United Kingdom on 21 July 1950 by Herbert Jenkins, London, and in the United States on 24 May 1951 by Doubleday & Co., New York. It was published again in 2008 by The Overlook Press.
A Few Quick Ones is a collection of ten short stories by P. G. Wodehouse. It was first published in the United States on 13 April 1959 by Simon & Schuster, New York, and in the United Kingdom on 26 June 1959 by Herbert Jenkins, London. The first US edition dust jacket was designed by Paul Bacon. The book's title comes from the informal phrase "a quick one", which is British slang for an alcoholic drink consumed quickly.
Donnell Clyde "Spade" Cooley was an American Western swing musician, big band leader, actor, television personality and convicted murderer. In 1961 he was tried and convicted for the murder of his second wife, Ella Mae Evans.
The Clicking of Cuthbert is a collection of ten short stories by P. G. Wodehouse, all with a golfing theme. It was first published in the United Kingdom on 3 February 1922 by Herbert Jenkins Ltd of London. It was later published in the United States by George H. Doran of New York on 28 May 1924 under the title Golf Without Tears. The short stories were originally published in magazines between 1919 and 1922.
A gravedigger is a cemetery worker who is responsible for digging a grave prior to a funeral service. Gravediggers have historically often been members of the church, though in modern secular cemeteries, they may be temporary or full-time staff. In many cultures, gravediggers are stigmatized for their association with the dead, which many religions consider unclean. Gravediggers have often been depicted in media, particularly in gothic and crime novels.
Wodehouse Playhouse is a British television comedy series based on the short stories of P. G. Wodehouse. From 1974 to 1978, a pilot and three series were made, with 21 half-hour episodes altogether in the entire series. The series has been released on home video.
The Heart of a Goof is a collection of nine short stories by English comic writer P. G. Wodehouse. It was first published in the United Kingdom on April 15, 1926, by Herbert Jenkins, and in the United States on March 4, 1927, by George H. Doran, New York, under the title Divots. The stories were originally published in magazines between 1921 and 1926.
William Everhart was an entrepreneur and wealthy businessman from Pennsylvania. He was responsible for developing much of West Chester and stimulating its economic growth. He was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1853 to 1855.
Divot Diggers is a 1936 Our Gang short comedy film directed by Robert F. McGowan; It was the 142nd Our Gang short to be released.
Jiggs was a male chimpanzee and animal actor who originated the character of Cheeta in the 1930s Hollywood Tarzan movies. He was owned and trained by Tony and Jacqueline Gentry.
The Kasekela chimpanzee community is a habituated community of wild eastern chimpanzees that lives in Gombe National Park near Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania. The community was the subject of Jane Goodall's pioneering study that began in 1960, and studies have continued ever since, becoming the longest continuous study of any animals in their natural habitat. As a result, the community has been instrumental in the study of chimpanzees and has been popularized in several books and documentaries. The community's popularity was enhanced by Goodall's practice of giving names to the chimpanzees she was observing, in contrast to the typical scientific practice of identifying the subjects by number. Goodall generally used a naming convention in which infants were given names starting with the same letter as their mother, allowing the recognition of matrilineal lines.
"Jeeves and the Yule-tide Spirit" is a short story by P. G. Wodehouse, and features the young gentleman Bertie Wooster and his valet Jeeves. The story was published in The Strand Magazine in the United Kingdom in December 1927, and in Liberty in the United States that same month. The story was also included as the third story in the 1930 collection Very Good, Jeeves.
The Clicking of Cuthbert is a 1924 British silent comedy series of six 30-minute short films, all involving golf. The series, directed by Andrew P. Wilson and starring Harry Beasley, was based on short stories by P. G. Wodehouse. These stories were originally published in various magazines; some of the stories had been featured in the collection The Clicking of Cuthbert (1922), while others were later included in the collection The Heart of a Goof (1926).