Funny Letters from Famous People
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- £2.99
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- £2.99
Publisher 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.
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. (On sale Apr. 8)
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