Kenneth Tynan

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Orson Welles in a 1967 Playboy Interview, conducted by Kenneth Tynan, recalled working as a fortuneteller (or so he claimed):

Playboy: Another prevalent rumor is that you have the power of clairvoyance. Is that true?

Welles: Well, if it exists, I sure as hell have it; if it doesn’t exist, I have the thing that’s mistaken for it. I’ve told people their futures in a terrifying way sometimes–and please understand that I hate fortunetelling. It’s meddlesome, dangerous and a mockery of free will–the most important doctrine man has invented. But I was a fortuneteller once in Kansas City, when I was playing a week’s stand there in the theater. As a part-time magician, I’d met a lot of semi-magician racketeers and learned the tricks of the professional seers. I took an apartment in a cheap district and put up a sign–$2 READINGS–and every day I went there, put on a turban and told fortunes. At first I used what are called ‘cold readings’; that’s a technical term for things you say to people that are bound to impress them and put them off their guard so that they start telling you things about themselves. A typical cold reading is to say that you have a scar on your knee. Everybody has a scar on their knee, because everybody fell down as a child. Another one is to say that a big change took place in your attitude toward life between the ages of 12 and 14. But in the last two or three days, I stopped doing the tricks and just talked. A woman came in wearing a bright dress. As soon as she sat down, I said, ‘You’ve just lost your husband’; and she burst into tears. I believe that I saw and deduced things that my conscious mind did not record. But consciously, I just said the first thing that came into my head, and it was true. So I was well on the way to contracting the fortune-teller’s occupational disease, which is to start believing in yourself; to become what they call a ‘shut-eye.’ And that’s dangerous.”

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The Beatles in 1964, three years before they became shopkeepers.

The Beatles and Steve Jobs famously feuded over the Apple name, and the Fab Four even had an Apple store–the Apple Boutique–while Jobs was still in grade school. British Pathé was on hand for the groovy opening on Baker Street in London. George and John dropped by to mug for cameras and greet shoppers, who were adorned in everything from furs to monocles. Psychedelic fashions and inflatable furniture were for sale, and writer Kenneth Tynan was among the notables to show up. Watch it here.

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