"Five Minutes of Fire": Princess Grace, Peyton Place, Trouble in the Suez

<v Speaker 1>Hey, this is Van Allen Plexico of the White Rocket
<v Speaker 1>Entertainment Network and you're listening to the Surely You Can't
<v Speaker 1>Be Serious Podcast.
<v Speaker 2>Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Surely you Can't
<v Speaker 2>Be Serious Podcast Special Edition five Minutes of Fire. We
<v Speaker 2>are here talking about the lyrics of We Didn't Start
<v Speaker 2>the Fire by Billy Joel. We're covering only five minutes
<v Speaker 2>at a time, which is about to link for the song,
<v Speaker 2>so it works out kind of nicely. So please join
<v Speaker 2>us as we dive into some new lyrics today.
<v Speaker 1>All right, guys, so here are the topics that we're
<v Speaker 1>going to be covering today.
<v Speaker 2>Princess Grace Peyton Place, Trouble in the Suess.
<v Speaker 1>Okaye, tell me about Princess Grace.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, Princess Grace is Grace Kelly. She was an actress.
<v Speaker 2>She had been in multiple movies and then she teamed
<v Speaker 2>up with Alfred Hitchcock and was in dial m for
<v Speaker 2>Murder in nineteen fifty four, Rear Window in nineteen fifty
<v Speaker 2>four as well, and To Catch a Thief in nineteen
<v Speaker 2>fifty five. Then, on a kind of detour from going
<v Speaker 2>to the cann Film Festival, she was supposed to go
<v Speaker 2>do a modeling gig with the Prince of Monaco named
<v Speaker 2>Prince Rainier, and short time later they were getting engaged.
<v Speaker 2>Interesting at twenty six years of age, she retired from acting,
<v Speaker 2>unbeknownst to herself because she thought she was going to
<v Speaker 2>keep going, and married Prince Rainier in one of the
<v Speaker 2>biggest ceremonies in the history of royal weddings. Now, the
<v Speaker 2>side story on this is Monaco was in this agreement
<v Speaker 2>with France that it would remain independent so long as
<v Speaker 2>there was a monarchy in place, which meant Prince Rainier
<v Speaker 2>had to have heirs. Grace Kelly actually went through a
<v Speaker 2>physical exam to make sure that she could have kids
<v Speaker 2>before they actually got married, and then once they got married,
<v Speaker 2>she did. We had Princess Caroline, Prince Albert, and Princess Stephanie,
<v Speaker 2>and ultimately, in nineteen eighty two, she was driving in
<v Speaker 2>a car with Princess Stephanie, she suffered a mild cerebral
<v Speaker 2>hemorrhage which caused her to lose control of the car,
<v Speaker 2>which resulted in more injuries to her, which ultimately led
<v Speaker 2>to her death in nineteen eighty two. All right, tell
<v Speaker 2>me about Peyton Place. Okay.
<v Speaker 1>Peyton Place is a novel written in nineteen fifty six
<v Speaker 1>by Grace Talias hoping I'm saying that right. It's set
<v Speaker 1>in a fictional New England town called Peyton Place. It
<v Speaker 1>is a notoriously lascivious book containing themes of incest, sex, lust, murder,
<v Speaker 1>abortion and adultery, all set in this small conservative town.
<v Speaker 1>It sold sixty thousand copies in the first ten days
<v Speaker 1>and was a New York Times bestseller for fifty nine weeks.
<v Speaker 1>It's been adapted into movies, TV shows, and soap operas.
<v Speaker 1>The author Grace Mettelius. She died from cirrhosis of the
<v Speaker 1>liver at age thirty nine. Sandra Bullock was actually slated
<v Speaker 1>to portray her in a biopic, but unfortunately it was
<v Speaker 1>never made. Very impactful book for the nineteen sixties. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>do tell me about trouble in the Suez.
<v Speaker 2>All right? So this refers to the Suez Canal crisis.
<v Speaker 2>Now I mentioned Naser, second president of Egypt, in one
<v Speaker 2>of our prior episodes. This is when the match HiT's
<v Speaker 2>the gasoline, if you will. So the Suez Canal was
<v Speaker 2>owned by a company called the Suez Canal Company, which
<v Speaker 2>that company was mostly owned by the UK and France.
<v Speaker 2>During the Cold War, Naser would not pledge allegiance to
<v Speaker 2>either the US or the Soviet Union, which really made
<v Speaker 2>the US mad. And so they said, you know what,
<v Speaker 2>we're not going to give you the money that we
<v Speaker 2>promised to give you since you won't align with anybody.
<v Speaker 2>In the UK said, yeah, we're not going to give
<v Speaker 2>you any money either, and so NASA was like, okay, well,
<v Speaker 2>then we're going to nationalize the Suez Canal, which means
<v Speaker 2>the egypt government is going to take over control of it.
<v Speaker 2>So UK and France are now like, ah, what what No,
<v Speaker 2>and they're freaking out. And so the UK, France and
<v Speaker 2>Israel all team up. They huddle up. They're like, okay,
<v Speaker 2>here's what's going to happen. Israel. You go invade Egypt
<v Speaker 2>and take over the Suez Canal and then we'll come
<v Speaker 2>in as peacemakers and we'll say, okay, well we're going
<v Speaker 2>to stay here and make sure that the Suez Canal
<v Speaker 2>isn't causing any trouble anymore. So Israel's like, okay, that's fine,
<v Speaker 2>I mean, really what we're more interested in the Straits
<v Speaker 2>of Tehran because Egypt's been blocking them from eight years,
<v Speaker 2>but now that they've nationalized the Suez Canal, we've got
<v Speaker 2>nowhere to go, so yes, we will invade. So on
<v Speaker 2>October twenty ninth, nineteen fifty six, Israel attacks and they
<v Speaker 2>are storming the place. I mean, they're taking out everybody.
<v Speaker 2>And then their very next day, the UK and France
<v Speaker 2>they issue this statement that they're like, hey, you naughty,
<v Speaker 2>naughty boys, Israel and Egypt. You've been very bad and
<v Speaker 2>we're gonna have to come in and take over and
<v Speaker 2>make sure things go okay. And then they get a
<v Speaker 2>phone call from Israel and they're like, we're still forty
<v Speaker 2>miles away from the Suez Canal. And at that point,
<v Speaker 2>the whole world realizes that the UK and France were
<v Speaker 2>in on this invasion of Egypt, and the world is pissed,
<v Speaker 2>including the US, who's like, nobody thought to pick up
<v Speaker 2>the phone and let us know what's going on here,
<v Speaker 2>and so Dwight Eisenhower says to the UK, you know what,
<v Speaker 2>I think We're going to sell all of our sterling bonds,
<v Speaker 2>which is going to tank You're British pound. How about
<v Speaker 2>we do that? And they're like Okay, wait, wait, wait, sorry,
<v Speaker 2>and France kind of followed suit, but Israel, who looked
<v Speaker 2>like a complete badass, said nope, we're sticking around because
<v Speaker 2>they still have both of these trade routes blocked and
<v Speaker 2>we came in and won, so we're going to stay
<v Speaker 2>here until something gets figured out. So they stayed there
<v Speaker 2>for four months. Finally an agreement was reached and the
<v Speaker 2>straits of Tehran were opened up for them after an
<v Speaker 2>eight year blockade. But this signified the end of the
<v Speaker 2>UK as a world power because established that if they
<v Speaker 2>want to do something, they better talk to us first. Okay, guys,
<v Speaker 2>that does it for today's episode. Join us next time
<v Speaker 2>for five minutes of fire. Grace Kelly, it's Gary Cooper.