Product Description

In this humorous collection of celebrity wit, acclaimed broadcaster and humorist Charles Osgood offers witticisms penned by luminaries ranging from Abraham Lincoln to Andy Rooney.

Known for his clever commentary and witty radio-show rhymes, Charles Osgood here selects and introduces a collection of hilarious correspondence from some of our best-loved politicians, authors, and stars of the stage and screen. Funny Letters from Famous People delivers rib-tickling communications from the likes of Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, Flannery O’Connor, S. J. Perelman, Groucho Marx, Bob Hope, John Cheever and dozens more.
Providing an entertaining look at celebrated lives, Osgood lets us glimpse Mark Twain squabbling with the gas company, Dwight D. Eisenhower kvetching to Mamie about Patton, and radio personality Fred Allen desperately seeking logic from his insurance carrier in one of comedy’s most amusing epistles.
Sprinkled throughout with Osgood’s own humorous quips, Funny Letters from Famous People is a delightful compendium of clever letter writing at its side-splitting best.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #36905 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-08
• Released on: 2003-04-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

From Publishers Weekly
This lightweight yet un-fluffy collection of humorous letters is divided into sections from politicians, writers and show business figures, organized chronologically. Highlights include Fred Allen's 1932 "encounter" with a barrel of bricks, the bon mots of Robert Benchley about water in the streets of Venice and Dorothy Parker's telegram about a friend's long-awaited baby: "Good work Mary. We all knew you had it in you." Groucho Marx's wit is sublime and sometimes bawdy, but who would have expected double entendres in the correspondence of George Washington? Also from the 18th century is Joseph Addison's humorous love letter retelling his various incarnations, while the 19th's Charles Lamb notes the perils of being carried home drunk from an epic party. Drinking figures less humorously in letters from Hemingway and Faulkner. Some of the letters, indeed, such as those from an aging and convicted Oscar Wilde and an ailing but resilient Frederic Chopin are by men trying to laugh in order to avoid weeping, while Andy Rooney's signature curmudgeonliness plays poorly in print. In the end, this male-heavy book reveals less humor and more pain than the letter writers intended, which may be something of which old school CBS anchor Osgood is aware.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
A laugh-out-loud collection from CBS Sunday Morning anchor Osgood.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin or Groucho Marx, this book will make you laugh out loud.”
—News & Record (Greensboro, NC)
 
“[A] charming little book . . . witty, engaged, and educated.”
—The Salt Lake Tribune

Customer Reviews

The lost art of letter writing
When I picked up this book, I thought the letters in it would be more ha-ha funny, or maybe unintentionally funny. Instead, I was treated to finely-constructed correspondences from politicians, authors, and entertainers. Some of my favorites: everything from Abraham Lincoln, Churchill's treatise on the unintended consequences of praying for rain, Bush The Elder's letter to the chairman of the Roach Bowl in Hawaii, Lewis Carroll's over-the-top apology for missing an appointment, everything by Mark Twain, groaners by Dorothy Parker and Carl Sandburg, and the exchange between Eddie Cantor and Florenz Ziegfeld.

Some letters are laugh-out-loud funny, but many are more subtle, understated, and dry. All display the wit and expressiveness of their authors. While I don't want to give up telephone and e-mail, I can see how these technologies have made the thoughtfully composed letter an endangered species.

So read this book and then get out some stationery and write a real letter!

A Gold Mine Of Humorous Letters

There is always something audacious about reading other people's letters. You have the feeling that you are secretly looking into the soul and mind of the letter writer without his or her knowledge.
Unfortunately, in today's age of emails, television, and every other modern day distraction, we have little time or the patience for the letter writing that was quite prevalent years ago.
Luckily for us, many letters written by famous people have been saved, providing a virtual gold mine of information pertaining to these individuals. Gleaning through these letters, you will also discover a great deal of humor as evidenced in Charles Osgood's collection Funny Letters From Famous People.

One of the difficulties of publishing this kind of a book is to decipher hundreds of letters before deciding which ones to include in a book that has as its principal objective humor.
Osgood, who is the anchorperson of CBS News Sunday Morning, succeeds admirably in his presentation of letters written by politicians, authors, artists and show business personalities.
We can't help but have a good chuckle reading the letters of Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Groucho Marx, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Eugene O'Neill, Charles Dickens, and many more.
As an example, an extract taken from one of Chopin's letters to his friend Julien Fontana pertaining to Chopin's health describes how awful he feels after contacting a cold and goes onto to say that three doctors examined him. The first doctor said he was going to die, the second indicated that he was actually dying and the third told him he was dead already.
In another letter, American short story writer and novelist John Cheever and his wife Mary were asked by their friend Josephine Herbst to take care of her cat Delmore. After several years, Cheevers writes to his friend to recount his experiences with the cat. He tells of how the cat used the Kleenex box as a place to "dump a load," and unfortunately for Cheevers, who had a cold at the time, used one of the tissues to wipe his nose. Cheevers goes on to recount that he took Delmore to the kitchen door and dropkicked him into the clothes yard. I hope animal rights activists will not come knocking on Cheevers' door!

This is a wonderful collection of humorous letters to meander through, as it adheres to the often -quoted adage "laughter is the best medicine."

Norm Goldman Editor of Bookpleasures.com

Humorous collection that was also touching
FUNNY LETTERS FROM FAMOUS PEOPLE by Charles Osgood,
the acclaimed broadcaster and humorist, is a humorous collection
of correspondence from politicians, writers and show business
figures--organized chronologically . . . there are contributions
from those you might expect, such as Groucho Marx and Bob
Hope, as well a surprising entry from George Washington . . . I
also got a kick from reading Dwight D. Eisenhower kvetch
to Mamie about Patton.

Some of the letters are actually quite touching; e.g., one
from an aging and convicted Oscar Wilde, as well as another from an
ailing but resilient Frederic Chopin . . . they appear to be written by
men trying to laugh in order to avoid crying.

Osgood's commentary also added to my enjoyment.

My only criticism: There are very few women represented in this
male-heavy collection.

Among the many passages that caught my attention were the
following:

* Truman was, of course, famous for his "plain speaking." He did not
suffer fools lightly, and he found a good deal of his job as president
to be a tremendous waste of time. In a letter to his sister in 1947,
Truman wrote: "All the President is, is a glorified public relations man
who spends his time flattering, kissing, and kicking people to get
them to do what they are supposed to do anyway."

* As Elizabeth Dole's fame and power grew over the years, even to
the point of being-with her husband-a front-runner for George
Bush's choice of a vice president, Bob Dole was utterly undisturbed.
When she was appointed Secretary of Transportation, Dole
remembered, "There were a lot of stories and a lot of pictures taken.
I was always in the picture, but I was never identified. They said,
'The man on the left is the husband.' PEOPLE magazine took an
interest in Elizabeth, so a photographer followed us around and took
about three hundred pictures. They wound up using three, and one
showed us making the bed.

"Some guy out in California whose wife had read the story wrote
that he was now helping make the bed. He said, "Senator, I don't
mind your wife getting the job. She's well qualified. She's doing
good work. But you've got to stop doing the work around the house.
You're causing problems for men all across the country."

Dole wrote back:
"Buster, you don't know the half of it. The only reason she was
helping was because they were taking the pictures."

* From time to time throughout her illustrious career, Julia Child was
attacked by people she began to refer to as "food police"--those who
thought her recipes and culinary edicts were too high-fat and unhealthy.
One such attacker wrote asking why Child couldn't advocate healthy
foods in her books and television programs-after all, she'd been
seen in public eating a salad.

Julia sent her the following recipe for a healthy life:

Small helpings,
no seconds,
eat a little bit of everything,
no snacking,
have a good time,
and pick your grandparents!