Sublime

In Britain, TV producer Jack Good decked him out in black leather like an extra from Marlon Brando’s The Wild One and created the basis for a cult legend; but the reality was more mundane – the usual tale of too much drink and lost money.

His father, John Jenney, was a horn salesman who, according to family legend, was the basis for Harold Hill in The Music Man, the Broadway musical written by fellow Mason City native and family friend Meredith Willson. That’s why, in later years, Kay often referred to Jack as “the son of the Music Man.”

John Macdonald (1741–96), a Scottish Highlander, was a famous footman who wrote memoirs of his experiences in service. An orphan who had been sacked from a previous job rocking a baby’s cradle, Macdonald found work in a gentleman’s house turning the spit. He was aged just five.

He must have gone straight from the warmth of the womb to the awful chill of the jar,