Woody Allen , Academy Award-winning
writer/producer/director, flunked motion picture production at New
York University and the City College of New York and failed English
at N.Y.U. (The Best of Bits &
Piece s, p. 60)
Who flunked first and fourth grades yet went on to become an
astronaut ? Ed Gibson. (Glenn Van Ekeren,
The Speaker's Sourcebook , p.
355)
Auntie Mame by Patrick Dennis: Some 17 publishers
rejected this novel about a free-spirited older woman before Vanguard
accepted it. An immediate hit, the book was soon made into a popular
film starring Rosalind Russell. Ten years later a musical version of
the play, now called Mame , started a long Broadway run. The
film Mame was released in 1974. Total book sales have been
around 2 million copies. (Wallace/Wallechinsky,
The Book of Lists, #2 )
In the Irish uprising of 1848, the men were captured, tried and
convicted of treason against Her Majesty, Queen Victoria. All were
sentenced to death...
Passionate protest from all over the world persuaded the Queen to
commute the death sentences. The men were banished to
Australia --as remote and full of prisoners as Russian
Siberia. Years passed. In 1874 Queen Victoria learned that a Sir
Charles Duffy who had been elected Prime Minister of Australia was
the same Charles Duffy who had been banished 26 years earlier. She
asked what had become of the other eight convicts. She learned
that:
Patrick Donahue became a Brigadier General in the United States
Army.
Morris Lyene became Attorney General for Australia.
Michael Ireland succeeded Lyene as Attorney General.
Thomas McGee became Minister of.. Agriculture for Canada.
Terrence McManus became a Brigadier General in the United States
Army.
Thomas Meagher was elected Governor of Montana.
John Mitchell became a prominent New York politician and his son,
John Purroy Mitchell, a famous Mayor of New York City.
Richard O'Gorman became Governor of Newfoundland.
(Johnny Rocco, in Abundant
Living magazine)
It is said that there is not a moment of the day when reruns of the
madcap television series I Love Lucy are not playing
somewhere in the world. Lucille Ball 's career didn't start
off so well, however. She was once dismissed from drama school for
being too quiet and shy.
(Paul Stirling Hagerman, It's a Weird
World )
Big companies that went bankrupt :
1. Quaker Oats (3 times)
2. Pepsi-Cola (3 times)
3. Birds Eye Frozen Foods
4. Borden's
5. Aunt Jemima
6. Wrigley's (3 times)
(Press-Telegram newspaper, Long
Beach, CA)
In 1962 the Decca Recording Company turned down the opportunity to
work with the Beatles . Their rationale? "We don't like their
sound. Groups of guitars are on their way out." Of course, the
Beatles turned that imminent failure into prominent success.
(Glenn Van Ekeren, The Speaker's
Sourcebook )
Alexander Graham Bell , the inventor of the telephone, an
invention without which the business world of today could not even
begin to function, was hard pressed to find a major backer. In 1876,
the year he patented the telephone, Bell approached Western Union,
then the largest communications company in America, and offered it
exclusive rights to the invention for $100,000. William Orton,
Western Union's president, turned down the offer, posing one of the
most shortsighted questions in business history: "What use could this
company make of an electrical toy?"
(M. Hirsh Goldberg, The Blunder
Book , p. 151)
Lee Strasberg, head of the famed Actors Studio, once told Robert
Blake he could never learn to act. Blake went on to star in the
popular American TV show Baretta and was voted outstanding
actor in a dramatic series in 1975 by the U. S. Academy of TV Arts
and Sciences.
(Ripley's Believe It or Not!: Book of Chance)
Best-selling books rejected by six or more publishers: And
to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street , Theodor Geisel (Dr.
Seuss); MASH , Richard Hooker; Kon-Tiki , Thor
Heyerdahl; Jonathan Livingston Seagull , Richard Bach;
Auntie Mame , Patrick Dennis.
(Wallace/Wallechinsky,The Book of
Lists , #2)
Gregor Johann Mendel (1822-1884) the Austrian botanist who
discovered the basic laws of heredity, never was able to pass the
examination to become a full-fledged teacher of science.
(Ripley's Believe It or Not!: Weird Inventions and Discoveries,
p. 67)
Winston Churchill did not become prime minister of
England until he was 62, and then only after a lifetime of defeats
and setbacks. His greatest contributions came when he was a senior
citizen.
(Joe Griffith, Speaker's Library of
Business , p. 250)
Discussing her early career as a would-be stage actress at England's
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, "Dynasty" star Joan Collins
reveals that her first report card there contained a rather ironic
assessment of her talents. It read: "Joan has a good personality and
lots of stage presence. But she must try to improve her voice
projection or she will wind up in films and TV, and that would be a
pity." (People Weekly)
Turn On , a television series hosted by Tim Conway ,
proved to be a turn off. It premiered on February 5, 1969, and was
cancelled the same day.
(Jack Kreismer, The Bathroom Trivia
Book , p. 88)
Gary Cooper wore his best suit to a tryout for a
western movie, but suspicious producers thought the big actor was a
dude and made him prove he could ride--and fall off--a horse. He went
on to a career that culminated in the classic High Noon ,
but before he made it big, Coop was fired and rehired by the movie
bosses seven times.
(Ripley's Believe It or Not!: Book of
Chance , p. 8)
Twenty dollars a week was all the salary Joan Crawford drew in
her first job on the stage. She was a dancer in a road show which
closed two weeks after it opened.
(Sunshine magazine)
Edison knew 1800 ways not to build a light bulb. One of Madame
Curie's failures was radium. Columbus thought he had discovered the
East Indies. Freud had several big failures before he devised
psychoanalysis. Rodgers and Hammerstein's first collaboration bombed
so badly that they didn't get together again for years. The whole
history of thought is filled with people who arrived at the "wrong"
destinations . (Bits & Pieces)
Neil Diamond was on his way to becoming the first
member of his family to graduate from college when he dropped out in
his senior year to take a songwriting job with a music-publishing
company. "It was a chance to step into my career," he explains. The
job lasted only four months. Eventually, he was fired by five other
music publishers. "I loved writing music and lyrics," he says, "and I
thought, 'There's got to be a place for me somewhere.'" After eight
years of knocking around and bringing songs to publishers and still
being basically nowhere, I met two very successful producers and
writers, Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, who liked the way I sang.
They took me from being a guy with a guitar to a guy who could make
real records," he adds. (Claire Carter, in
Parade magazine)
Dune by Frank Herbert: Herbert's massive science-fiction tale
was rejected by 13 publishers with comments like "too slow,"
"confusing and irritating," "too long," and "issues too clear-cut and
old fashioned." But the persistence of Herbert and his agent, Lurton
Blassingame, finally paid off. Dune won the two
highest awards in the science-fiction writing and has sold over 10
million copies. (Wallace/Wallechinsky, The
Book of Lists, #2 )
Clint Eastwood was once told by a Universal Pictures
executive that his future wasn't very promising. The man said, "You
have a chip on your tooth, your Adam's apple sticks out too far, and
you talk too slow." (Ed Lucaire, Celebrity
Setbacks )
Thomas A. Edison (1847-1931) America's most prolific inventor,
was granted 1,093 patents by the U.S. Patent office, more than anyone
else--yet they included such duds as a perpetual cigar, furniture
made of cement and a way of using goldenrod for rubber.
(Ripley's Believe It or Not!: Weird Inventions
and Discoveries , p. 36)
Paul Ehrlich , the German bacteriologist, always
performed badly at school, and he particularly loathed examinations.
He had a flair for microscopic staining work, however, and this
carried him through his education despite his ineptness at
composition and oral presentations. He eventually used his talent
with the microscope to develop the field of chemotherapy, and he was
awarded a Nobel Prize in medicine in 1908.
(Wallace/Wallechinsky, The Book of Lists,
#2 )
Albert Einstein did poorly in elementary school, and he failed
his first college entrance exam at Zurich Polytechnic. But he became
one of the greatest scientists in the history of the world.
(Charles Reichblum, Knowledge in a
Nutshell , p. 137)
If starting your own business is what you'd like to do, please note
that studies at Tulane University suggest the average
entrepreneur fails 3.8 times before making it work. (L.
M. Boyd)
Hope, can be increased and fears decreased when you keep in
mind that failure, like success, is never fatal . God always
has new experiences and surprises in store for us. Often what appears
to be the end is, in the hands of God, a new beginning. (Victor
M. Parachin, in Unity
magazine)
William Faulkner failed to graduate from high school
because he didn't have enough credits.
He bummed around the United States and Canada, enlisting in the Royal
Canadian Air Force, trying to get into a university and later working
as a postmaster until he was fired for reading on the job.
He then tried writing and had five books finished by 1930 but failed
to earn enough money to support a family. But he kept going and
became popular in the mid 1930's. He eventually received the Nobel
Prize for Literature in 1949. (Ripley's Believe It or Not!:
Book of Chance, p. 37)
Malcolm Forbes , the late editor-in-chief of
Forbes magazine, one of the largest business publications in
the world, did not make the staff of The
Princetonian , the school newspaper at Princeton
University.
(The Best of Bits &
Piece s, p. 60)
Henry Ford failed and went broke five times before he
finally succeeded.
(Joe Griffith, Speaker's Library of
Business , p. 250)
Henry Ford forgot to put reverse gear in the first car he
manufactured. Then in 1957, he bragged about the car of the decade.
It was the Edsel, renowned for doors that wouldn't close, a hood that
wouldn't open, paint that peeled, a horn that stuck, and a reputation
that made it impossible to resell. However, Ford's future track
record contains more glowing productions. (Glenn Van Ekeren,
The Speaker's Sourcebook , p.
150)
Who was dismissed from the psychiatric society in Vienna, Austria,
only to become a world respected, prominent psychiatrist? Victor
Frankl .
(Glenn Van Ekeren, The Speaker's
Sourcebook , p. 355)
Past performance is usually a pretty good indication of a man's
future potential--but not always.
In 1860 a thirty-eight-year-old man was working as a handyman for his
father, a leather merchant. He kept books, drove wagons, and handled
hides for about $66 a month.
Prior to this menial job the man had failed as a soldier, a farmer,
and a real estate agent. Most of the people who knew him had written
him off as a failure.
Eight years later he was President of the United States. The man was
Ulysses S. Grant . (Bits & Pieces)
In World War II, the army classified thirty-three-year-old Joe
Rosenthal as 4-F because he had one-twentieth normal vision, but he
followed the fighting anyway as a war photographer. When the U. S.
invaded the island of Iwo Jima under heavy Japanese fire,
Rosenthal was there wearing his thick glasses and carrying two spare
pairs.
At the top of Mount Suribachi he caught the greatest picture of the
war--five marines and a navy corpsman raising the Stars and Stripes.
Rosenthal became an immediate celebrity and his picture won the
Pulitzer Prize. The flag-raising appeared on a three-cent stamp and
broke all records for first-day-issue sales. On November 19, 1954, a
seventy-five-feet-high sculpture of the raising was dedicated at
Arlington National Cemetery.
(John & Claire Whitcomb, Oh Say Can You
See , p. 101)
Eighteen publishers turned down Richard Bach's 10,000-word story
about a "soaring" seagull, Jonathan Livingston Seagull ,
before Macmillan finally published it in 1970. By 1975, it had sold
more than 7 million copies in the United States alone. (Joe
Griffith, Speaker's Library of
Business , p. 250)
One November night, Michael Jordan and I found ourselves
alone, and he told me about being cut as a sophomore from his
high-school basketball team in Wilmington, N.C. "The day the cut list
was going up, a friend--Leroy Smith--and I went to the gym to look
together," Jordan recalled. "If your name was on the list, you made
the team. Leroy's name was there, and mine wasn't. I went through the
day numb. After school, I hurried home, closed the door to my room
and cried so hard. It was all I wanted--to play on that team."
(Bob Greene, in Reader's
Digest )
Who flunked the first grade and went on to become attorney general?
Robert F. Kennedy . (Glenn Van Ekeren,
The Speaker's Sourcebook )
When he was 22, he failed in business. When he was 23, he ran for the
legislature and lost. When he was 24, he failed in business again.
The following year he was elected to the legislature. When he was 26,
his sweetheart died. At the age of 27, he had a nervous breakdown.
When he was 29, he was defeated for the post of Speaker of the House
in the State Legislature. When he was 31, he was defeated as Elector.
When he was 34, he ran for Congress and lost. At the age of 37, he
ran for Congress and finally won. Two years later, he ran again and
lost his seat in Congress. At the age of 46, he ran for the U.S.
Senate and lost. The following year he ran for Vice President and
lost that, too. He ran for the Senate again, and again lost. Finally,
at the age of 51, he was elected President of the United States. Who
was this perpetual "loser"? Abraham Lincoln .
(Paul Stirling Hagerman, It's a Weird
World , p. 74)
It's an historical fact that Carl Linder , the 1919
winner of the Boston Marathon, was rejected for military service
because of flat feet.
(L. M. Boyd)
When Mickey Mantle graduated from Commerce
High (Oklahoma) in 1949 he was not voted "Most Athletic." That's
right, the man who possessed the greatest combination of power from
both sides of the plate (he hit the longest home run in major league
history, 565 feet in 1953) and speed (some experts suggested he could
have won a track medal in the Olympics) lost out in the voting to his
best friend, Bill Mosley.
(Jim Kreuz, in Baseball
Digest )
Richard Hooker worked for seven years on his humorous war novel,
M*A*S*H , only to have it rejected by 21 publishers before
Morrow decided to publish it. It became a runaway best-seller,
spawning a blockbusting movie and a highly successful television
series.
(Joe Griffith, Speaker's Library of
Business , p. 250)
Napoleon finished near the bottom of his class
at military school, yet became one of the leading military men of all
time.
(Charles Reichblum, Knowledge in a
Nutshell , p. 138)
Lord Laurence Olivier is acknowledged by many critics as the
greatest actor of the 20th century. However, his debut as an actor
was less than auspicious. His first professional role was that of a
policeman in a play called The Ghost Train . At his first
entrance--the very first time he had ever set foot on the
professional stage--he tripped over the door sill and fell headfirst
into the floodlights. (Paul Stirling Hagerman,
It"s a Weird World )
Charles Schulz, the cartoonist who draws " Peanuts ", was told
by his high school's yearbook staff that his cartoons were not
acceptable for the annual. But Charles Schulz knew that he was of
importance to God. He kept on drawing and eventually became known
internationally for his considerable talent. (Charles E.
Ferrell, in The Clergy Journal
)
Devotees of Elvis Presley will tell you their hero tried to
join his high school glee club but was turned down. (L. M.
Boyd)
As playwright Gore Vidal tells it, when his play The Best
Man was being cast back in 1959, Ronald Reagan was
proposed for the lead role of the distinguished front-running
Presidential candidate. He was rejected. It was decided that he
lacked the "Presidential look." (Fifty Plus)
Daniel Dafoe took Robinson Crusoe to 20 publishers before he
finally got it printed. It has been a best-seller for over 250 years
and has been translated into 10 languages. (Ripley's Believe It
or Not!: Book of Chance)
The poet Carl Sandburg flunked out of West Point,
according to the record, because of deficiencies in English.
(L. M. Boyd)
One of America's most beloved writers was rejected 20 times by
the magazine that eventually bought most of his work. James
Thurber started writing sketches for the New Yorker in 1926, but
they kept turning him down before finally accepting a short piece on
a man caught in a revolving door. Thurber never looked back. He
published more than 20 books of collected prose and delightful
pictures he drew himself.
(Ripley's Believe It or Not!: Book of Chance)
Liv Ullman , two-time Academy Award nominee for Best
Actress, failed an audition for the state theater school in Norway.
The judges told her she had no talent. (The Best of
Bits & Piece s, p. 60)
The United States greatest naval victory--Midway--occurred
only six months after its greatest naval defeat--Pearl Harbor.
(L. M. Boyd)
At that time we had the pleasure of visiting with Mary Oliff
Ward, whose husband, William Arthur Ward , is one of America's
most quoted writers of inspirational maxims...Mary told how Bill kept
a rolling pin around which he wrapped all rejection slips received.
When one of his students complained about rejected work, yet one more
time, Bill would unwind the rolling pin to reveal yards of rejection
slips!
(Dr. Delia Sellers, in Abundant
Living )
George Washington lived in the day of the Duke of
Wellington and Napoleon, both of whom far outshone him as military
geniuses. He made some rather tragic blunders on the battlefield but
somehow managed to bring our troops through that long and painful war
to victory.
(Dr. D. James Kennedy)