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| This week, Greg looks at the great prognosticator, Criswell. |
Criswell. I need merely to mention his name and it will certainly conjure him in your mind, with his spit-curled hair, tux, and over-the-top theatricality. Although best remembered today for introducing Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), he was a household name for a quarter of a century, with a nationally syndicated column of predictions and frequent appearances on TV talk shows with the likes of Jack Paar and Johnny Carson. He even had his own show based upon his column, on KTLA's channel 13 in Los Angeles. Maila Nurmi occupied the dressing room next to him during the run of her stint as horror host Vampira.
Join me as we spend a little time marveling at the strange and wonderful predictions of The Amazing Criswell, including his thoughts on sex, politics, education, medicine, and the end of the world. And remember, depending on where you hear it, he was somewhere between 87% and 90% correct in his predictions.
Here's that Mae West song about Criswell that I mentioned during the podcast.
And here's a latter-day example of Criswell's syndicated column, this one taken from the March 12, 1980 edition of Cicero Life from Cicero, IL. He died in 1982.
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| Criswell was still predicting in 1980. |
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Further Criswell content: