Friday, October 18, 2013

Better Late Than Never

Happy Birthday P. G. Wodehouse, born October 15, 1881, one of our favorite people.  Mac has read all of the Jeeves and Wooster stories many times, the Blandings stories more than once, the Mulliner books frequently and his Golf Omnibus repeatedly.  I like his golf stories best.
We own all the Jeeves and Wooster DVDs, the Wodehouse Theatre DVDs and just recently viewed the new series Blandings, it's not up to the standards of the others, but still quite fun.
Jeeves, as portrayed by Stephan Fry,  is of course our favorite character.  We once saw a horrible American film (Thank You Jeeves) from  1936 starring Arthur Treacher as Jeeves and David Niven as Bertie and it incredibly bad.

I understand that there is a new play on in London (Perfect Nonsense) starring Stephen Mangan and Matthew MscFadyen---Rowan of Circle of the Year says she has tickets for it, envy, envy envy.
Perfect Nonsense

Wodehouse fashioned Jeeves after his own butler Eugene Robinson, but named him after a cricket player named Percy Jeeves who played for the Warwickshire County Cricket Club.  Unfortunately the real Jeeves died in the first World War.
Percy Jeeves
Our fictional Jeeves first saw the light of day in 1915 in the story Extricating Young Gussie.
With the permission of the Wodehouse estate, author Sebastion Faulks has written an "homage" to Jeeves and Bertie entitled Jeeves and the Wedding Bells, I'm considering it as a Christmas present for Mac.

1 comment:

  1. I confess I'm a bit doubtful about the theatre production - Stephen Fry is so much the perfect Jeeves that I can't quite imagine anyone else playing that part! Will let you know what it's like:)

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