Photograph of Johns Hopkins taken by Harvey Cushing circa 1900.

The text here is reproduced from The Life of a Man‘s preface (with minor edits).

This drawing is based on a photo of the real Milford train depot (date unknown).

Brinkley’s status as perpetual benefactor to his community is a big part of the image he cultivated, for obvious reasons. There are loads of period newspaper references to how much Brinkley “built up” Milford (“the Milford [Little League baseball] team wears uniforms furnished by Dr. Brinkley” said The Junction City Daily Union in 1922, and “[Brinkley] gave the town a $25,000 Methodist church in memory of his mother” claimd The San Bernardino County Sun in 1933) but they’re all pretty hard to substantiate. He certainly made many improvements to his own property, and spared no expense (“Brinkley built electrical, water and sewage systems for his hospital, and soon his power plant supplied Milford businesses, then the Methodist church, then residences. He expanded the water and sewer systems also, and sidewalks were built,” wrote Lee). And there’s little doubt that Milford benefitted from its new status as rejuvenation destination (“trains stop regularly at Milford and electric lights and asphalt streets have supplanted kerosene lamps and mud roads” said the Wilmington News-Journal in 1923, and “the town is planning a new hotel” said The San Bernardino County Sun in 1923).

But remember that he’s got a paid staff of PR people working for him to place stories just like these in newspapers!

In fact, he built the Methodist Church!

They loved him so much that in 1933, newspapers reported that a “majority of voters” in Milford unsuccessfully petitioned to have the town itself renamed “Brinkley.”

Pope Brock wrote a Brinkley biography called Charlatan, which is how we found out about Brinkley in the first place!

This is logical, we’ve read it in multiple sources, and we’re guessing we can believe the photo caption.

True, radio was really taking off in the early 1920s.

The story goes that he “realized what radio could do” when he visited California in 1922. “In February 1922 the doctor received a brusque invitation from Harry Chandler, owner of the Los Angeles Times, to come to the West Coast and put goat glands in one of his editors” (Brock, 56). “Chandler was in the midst of constructing Los Angeles’ first radio station, KHJ. Brinkley saw it and had a religious experience” (Brock, 60).

In September of 1922, Brinkley installed a state of the art radio receiving set in his own home, a big enough deal to make the papers.

The drawing of the station is based on a real photograph of KFKB. (See also: notes 8 and 23 on the origin of this image of Milford.)

“The Sunshine Station in the Heart of the Nation” was the real slogan of KFKB (which he would repurpose for his later Mexican radio station as “The Sunshine Station Between the Nations”). Sometimes Brinkley said KFKB stood for “Kansas First, Kansas Best” and other times “Kansas Folks Know Best.” (See also: note 185 on XERA slogan.)

The “potted palm” music is by the Victor Salon Orchestra, from a record called “Music to Relax By” (late 1920s or early 1930s).

Brinkley indeed had this “network of druggists”: the Brinkley Pharmaceutical Association, who stocked Brinkley medicines. People who listened to Medical Question Box would be told which medicine to take for what ailment, and they could visit any number of “official” Brinkley medicine purveyors to buy them.

Brinkley was specifically from Beta, North Carolina.

According to Brinkley himself (who else are you supposed to believe when it comes to the personal details of a life that can’t be otherwise verified?), he indeed grew up in these conditions.

John R. Brinkley was born a bastard. This image of a photo of his birth mother, Sarah Candace Burnett, who was impregnated by an unknown man outside of wedlock. The boy was named after and raised by his uncle John Brinkley, married to the aunt of his birth mother. (Did you follow that? No, we didn’t either, but this appears to be correct.)

This is a photo of young Brinkley included in The Life of a Man.

This is a photo of Brinkley’s father included in The Life of a Man.

We play up Brinkley’s verified love of flowers, especially roses, whenever we can because it makes him seem like a bit of a romantic.

Johnny Boy indeed had a tutor named Lowell Brown, a former grade school principal.

This line is borrowed from the last ever letter Brinkley wrote Minnie in 1942. (See also: note 306 for more on “the last love letter.”)

Fishbein’s words throughout this section are paraphrased from his actual writing.

Here is the first time we bring the word “quack” into this film. It’s worth taking a second to define it. We like Stephen Barret’s definition of quackery as “anything involving overpromotion in the field of health. This definition would include questionable ideas as well as questionable products and services, regardless of the sincerity of their promoters. In line with this definition, the word ‘fraud’ would be reserved only for situations in which deliberate deception is involved. Unproven methods are not necessarily quackery. Those consistent with established scientific concepts may be considered experimental. Legitimate researchers and practitioners do not promote unproven procedures in the marketplace but engage in responsible, properly-designed studies. Methods not compatible with established scientific concepts should be classified as nonsensical or disproven rather than experimental. Methods that sound scientific but are nonsensical can also be classified as pseudoscientific. Folk medicine, even when known to be erroneous, is not generally considered quackery so long as it is not done for gain. Thus, self-treatment, family home treatment, neighborly medical advice, and the noncommercial activities of folk healers should not be labeled as quackery. However, folk medicine and quackery are closely connected because folk medicine often provides a basis for commercial exploitation. For example, herbs long gathered for personal use have been packaged and promoted by modern entrepreneurs, and practitioners who once served their neighbors voluntarily or for gratuities may market themselves outside their traditional communities. All things considered, I find it most useful to define quackery as the promotion of unsubstantiated methods that lack a scientifically plausible rationale. Promotion usually involves a profit motive. Unsubstantiated means either unproven or disproven. Implausible means that it either clashes with well-established facts or makes so little sense that it is not worth testing.”

We have already established Brinkley as the hero of this story and are trying to keep you identifying with him as such. So we’re doing a lot of manipulative things to make you think that he is not a quack, and to ensure that even if you already know that Brinkley is a quack, at this point you may think he is at least not a fraud (maybe he’s just a bit of a weirdo who believes this stuff works.) Later, we will make it as clear as possible that we think he is both a quack and a fraud.

Conversely, we are now introducing Morris Fishbein as Brinkley’s nemesis. So we’re doing what we can to make him as unappealing and unreasonable as possible. Later, we will make it clear that Fishbein was hardly perfect, but when it comes to Brinkley he was entirely correct.

Archival imagery taken from “Men Of Medicine” (American Medical Association, 1938). It’s from a slightly later time period than is being discussed here…

Professor Megan Seaholm is a senior lecturer in the Dept. of History at UT Austin. One of her research areas is the social construction of medical science and medical practice.

Archival imagery taken from “Men Of Medicine” (American Medical Association, 1938). It’s from a slightly later time period than is being discussed here…

Archival imagery taken from “Men Of Medicine” (American Medical Association, 1938). It’s from a slightly later time period than is being discussed here…

This is actually a photo of the Federal Radio Commission in 1929, so pretty close to the right time period. Also: omg, look at how big their ears are!!!

The FRC was created in 1926 to regulate radio use “as the public interest, convenience, or necessity” requires. The Radio Act of 1927 superseded the Radio Act of 1912, which had given regulatory powers over radio communication to the Secretary of Commerce and Labor.

True. The Federal Radio Commission became the Federal Communications Commission in 1934.

True: KFKB was voted the most popular radio station in America in a 1929 survey conducted by the Chicago-based magazine Radio Times.

But we’ve noticed that quacks are especially good at calling on their fans to vote in things like this. They can always marshal popularity when credibility is scarce.

This term “alternative practitioners” is not historically accurate, but it’s more legible to a contemporary audience than “irregular doctors.” (That’s what they called alternative practitioners back then!)

We borrowed the lines, “Of course gland transplantation is only in an experimental stage – for some people…” from The Life of A Man (254). The point is that this guy is right: gland transplantation was only in an experimental stage, and was soon abandoned as totally ineffective (see note 12 on omitted background on the era of experimental gland transplantation).

This is actually a photo of the Federal Radio Commission in 1929, so pretty close to the right time period. Also: omg, look at how big their ears are!!!

Brinkley faced three charges: KFKB had deviated from its assigned wave length; he was broadcasting obscene and indecent things; and his answers to listeners to his Medical Question Box were “inimical to the public interest.” We are reenacting this hearing as if the FRC were just snobs who didn’t like country music or hated the First Amendment. While these issues were certainly at play, it was most of all the advisability and safety of Medical Question Box (which we’re leaving out completely) that was at issue at the hearing. Prescribing medicines for people over the air was seen as a pretty bad thing to do.

According to Brock, about thirty Brinkley supporters took the stand, but mostly they talked about was how much they loved Medical Question Box.

It’s more accurate to say that the FRC declined to renew his radio license. The FRC decision was made on Friday the 13th(!) of June 1930. The vote was 3-2. Also, Brinkley appealed both of these decisions and the appeals process went on for a few more months, but we’re leaving all that our for brevity since his appeals failed anyway.

“The Will of the People” is Clement Wood’s title for Chapter XIII in his book, dealing with the same period. The title refers to Brinkley’s preferred version of the story of the gubernatorial race: “Thousands of Kansans have written urging me to run for governor,” he said. “Judging from my mail the people of Kansas seem to believe that I have been persecuted, not prosecuted, and as long as I have a leg to stand on I will fight'” (quoted in Brock, 155).

A real paperweight, yes.

Weird but true, this business with the lakes! It had to do with increasing rainfall. “Brinkley also proposed building a recreational lake in every county in the state” (Lee, 122).

Weird but true, this business with the lakes! It had to do with increasing rainfall. “Brinkley also proposed building a recreational lake in every county in the state” (Lee, 122).

We feel that we didn’t make up the actual line “When God made Kansas, He blessed her with everything but lakes” (it sure sounds like Brinkley!), but we can’t track down the reference now, so maybe we did make it up?

True! “He favored free textbooks, free medical services for the poor, and health clubs for children in every county” (Lee, 122).

True.

Also there is an omission here: although the FRC had revoked KFKB’s broadcasting license, Brinkley appealed to the U.S. Appeals Court and was given a temporary stay. He used KFKB to great advantage during this campaign.

It really did appear to many that he was going to win! Some sources say that his campaign brought out the most voters in Kansas history.

Smith really did issue this ruling about the spelling issue on November 1 (three days before the election).

We never looked this up ourselves, but we trust that Reardon did. He researched this episode extensively.

True. Brinkley really did lead crowds in spelling out his name correctly. He even handed out pencils imprinted with the correct spelling.

True: the polls closed November 4, and the election was decided November 16.

The Kansas City Times reported that he received votes for both Senate seats, Supreme Court justice, for Congress, and for other county positions, and that Brinkley got more than 20,000 votes in Oklahoma.

Woodring received 217,171 votes, to Haucke’s 216,920, and Brinkley’s 183,278.

This bizarre 1934 film is a professionally filmed record of a three-month journey aboard the Brinkleys’ yacht (named the “Doctor Brinkley,” of course). It is seventy-five minuts long and culminates with Dr. Brinkley’s 788-pound tuna catch, which broke the Western Hemisphere record held by Zane Grey.

The film also includes a visit to Brinkley’s birthplace in Beta, NC. We loved this film so very much, in part because it contains a reference to the idea of the “fish story,” or “big fish story” – a colloquial term for an outlandish and far-fetched story full of lies… or a story that’s just too good to be true.

“The Sunshine Station Between The Nations” was a reworking of his earlier KFKB slogan, “The Sunshine Station in the Heart of the Nation” (see note 67).

True (also see note 65 for details on KFKB power).

The Carter Family were in fact one of the “in house bands” at XERA from 1937 to 1939. “Their three year stint on XERA would turn the Carter Family from regional stars into national icons, ‘the inventors of commercial country music,’ ‘the big bang of country music,’ the first act elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame.”

This ad is for a line of products by a charlatan named Rose Dawn who looked a lot like Mae West.

“Border performers were rated by how much mail they could ‘pull.’ Rose Dawn, Brinkley’s personal astrologer, became ‘one of the most successful mail pullers in border radio history.’ Rose would read listeners’ horoscopes, pray for a radio fan, or give lovelorn advice for $1 per service – with no discounted rates for a combination thereof. Rose also offered a book that would make a personality ‘blossom like a flower’ or vials of perfume that would affect one’s own and other people’s behavior in an extraordinary manner, for $1 each. Some wags began referring to [Del Rio] as Dollar Rio. Rose was married to Koran, a missionary for an occult society called the Mayan Order, and the couple was ‘an ethereal sight on the streets of Del Rio as the glided past gawking onlookers in their pink Chrysler trimmed in green with orchid wheels” (Lee, 161).

The Kolor-Bak radio ad is from a real XERA broadcast, c. 1937-9; the voice is one of the members of the Pickard Family. The image is also from a real Kolor-Bak ad we found online.

In 1922, the American Medical Association analyzed KolorBak and found it to be made primarily of lead (with some sulphur, salt and alcohol), warning that the product could cause lead poisoning.

The Kolor-Bak radio ad is from a real XERA broadcast, c. 1937-9; the voice is one of the members of the Pickard Family. The image is also from a real Kolor-Bak ad we found online.

This image is from a film made in 1934 about Brinkley’s fishing exploits titled “Making A World’s Record.” So, actually it’s just about chronologically correct in this usage!

This is indeed the text of a Congressional bill.

True: Section 325(b) of the Communications Act of 1934 was written into law in an attempt to halt live broadcasting via telephone lines from radio studios in the United States linked to “border blaster” transmitters on the Mexican side of the border. This amendment is colloquially referred to as the “Brinkley Act.”

Brinkley probably didn’t himself “invent” this method of recording on transcription discs, but he was an early adopter of the technology and was the first to use it to circumvent the new law. So many transcription discs were produced and discarded by XERA that locals supposedly used them as roofing shingles.

Yup.

True.

We don’t know if it was “every Sunday evening,” but Brinkley in fact owned a giant fountain with interactive colored lights he controlled from a panel inside his house. We have seen the panel, which is still in the Brinkley Mansion, or it was as of 2009 when we visited. He also had a (rare and expensive) player organ inside his house and installed giant speakers so he could play the music outside. Eventually the Brinkleys installed a parking lot across the street from their house for all the cars bringing the onlookers.

This statue is a replica of the iconic “Capitoline Wolf,” depicting future founders of Rome Romulus and Remus suckling at a wolf’s teat. The image was a favorite of Mussolini’s, who liked to cast himself as the founder of “New Rome.” He gave replicas of the Capitoline Wolf to many U.S. cities called “Rome” as a gesture of goodwill c. 1929-1931. We don’t know where Brinkley got his copy from, but Brinkley visited Italy in 1925 (where he received a medical degree from the University of Pavia, later rescinded). He was quite enamoured of Italian culture and especially Mussolini himself.

Incidentally, the Capitoline Wolf was traditionally thought to be an Etruscan work from the 5th century B.C., with the twins added in the 15th century A.D., but recent scholarship and carbon dating have established pretty certainly that the sculpture is from between the 11th and 12th centuries A.D.

The gist of this filmed lecture (from which of course we’ve only used a tiny excerpt) was to tell patients that they can’t bring their whole families with them when they visit the Brinkley Hospital. He goes on to explain this at great length. It’s very weird.

Real circulars from Brinkley’s many ventures. We have not, until now, given you a real sense of just how much junk mail this man produced! Watch the letterheads and slogans change; he changes the name of his hospital, operation, etc. even more often than he changes their locations.

Brinkley called this one “The World’s Most Beautiful Hospital” or the “Country Club Hospital.”

This one was in downtown Little Rock.

Yes, this is an actual thing Brinkley said.

Real circulars from Brinkley’s many ventures. We have not, until now, given you a real sense of just how much junk mail this man produced!

An advertisement from one of his Doctor Books.

We are now sharing lots of images that we haven’t shared before because we’ve been downplaying the true extent of both his wealth and his narcissism.

“If only they had the wisdom to cooperate with the inspired healer from Milford . . . but the doctors had no more sense than the geese of Rome who could only call out ‘Quack! ‘Quack!,'” is taken directly from The Life of a Man (219).

This is the SS Normandie, considered by some to the greatest ocean liners of all time. The Brinkleys traveled aboard the Normandie in 1937 on their way home to a “grand tour” of Europe.

This rant/lecture by Fishbein is composed almost entirely of things he really wrote, primarily in the February 1938 Hygeia article “Modern Medical Charlatans.”

We created this headline in Photoshop. None of the real ones were this clear. But Brinkley indeed sued Fishbein for libel, asserting that he was owed $250,000 in damages.

By the way, by 1939 Brinkley had already sued Fishbein, the Kansas City Star, the AMA and many others quite a number of times, which we’ve left out of the film.

True. We are pleased to report that some things in this story are actually easy to verify!

“Judge R. J. McMillan’s oblong little court room in the federal building is filled an hour before each day’s trial begins, but that doesn’t mean there is much of a crowd on hand. Its seating capacity is less than 100, and some twenty-five or thirty form a waiting line outside” (Millard Cope, San Angelo Standard-Times coverage of the trial, quoted in “The Case of Brinkley v. Fishbein”, Journal of the American Medical Association, May 13, 1939, Volume 112, No. 19, p. 1952).

True, Robert J. McMillan was the judge.

It is true that the judge decided in this case that patients would not be allowed to testify, though not quite as immediately as we’ve portrayed it:

“Judge McMillan took a long night to think it over. Next morning he announced his decision. ‘Gentlemen, I am of the opinion that the specific instances of malpractice couldn’t be shown, nor could specific instances of good result obtained by [Brinkley] be shown… [If the attempt were made], it would open up an unlimited field of evidence in which, maybe, seventy five or a hundred patients might appear and, for some reason or other, claim they had been benefited, and seventy five or a hundred might appear on the other side and claim they had been mistrated or hadn’t been benefited, and the first thing you know the drial would deteriorate from a trial of issues before the court and jury to one of prejudice and passion and feeling… I don’t think that kind of evidence is admissable'” (Brock, 239-240).

Clinton Brown was in fact the name of Fishbein’s lawyer. Brown, a former mayor of San Antonio, was considered one of the most capable lawyers in Texas.

We made up the name “Richard Ross” and we can’t remember why; the name of the urologist who gave this testimony at the trial was Dr. A. I. Folsom. Other than his name, this exchange is very close to that found directly in the transcript.

True. Brinkley’s lawyers unsuccessfully argued that the goat gland surgeries were not relevant to this case, wanting (for obvious reasons) to limit testimony to Brinkley’s activities after 1933, when he stopped performing the goat gland surgeries. Judge McMillan ruled that the jury should consider the entirety of Brinkley’s career, including the goat gland surgeries, when deciding whether or not Fishbein libelled him by calling him a quack.

See note 12 on how many other people – real scientists and quacks alike – had attempted “xenotransplantation of this sort.”

These claims were all actually made by Brinkley.

True, a chemist testified about his analysis of Formula 1020 at the trial.

At the trial, chemist Dr. Eugene W. Schoeffel testified that Formula 1020 was in fact just colored water.

This insane back and forth about whether he is “absolutely certain” or “relatively certain” is taken (almost) verbatim from the transcript. Can’t make this stuff up.

Again, we kept this pretty close to the transcript:

Q– Now, what was your gross income for the year 1937?

A– If I remember correctly, the gross income for 1937 was pretty close to eleven hundred thousand.

Q– Doctor, wouldn’t most people refer to that number, that eleven hundred thousand, as one million, one hundred thousand dollars?

A– I couldn’t say what most people would say. I would say I made about eleven hundred thousand in 1937.

Brinkley indeed said, “I don’t remember,” when asked about the LLD degree.

We have finally come full circle: the way that The Life of a Man functioned at this trial was a major source of inspiration for the entire structure of this film. We’ve represented the way the book worked in the trial pretty accurately in this scene, with Brown reading the more absurd portions out loud and forcing Brinkley to respond to them, Brinkley trying to say he doesn’t even know what’s in it, and eventually admitting he paid for it and published it himself as a sort of promotional item.

Brown actually said, “Interesting reading… if you’ve got a strong stomach.”

Sally came up at the trial, but only in a minor way in trying to get Brinkley’s early life story straight. It’s not true that Sally doesn’t appear in The Life of a Man; it is true that she doesn’t appear in this film. We’ve withheld information about her both because it didn’t seem too relevant and because keeping it from you until this point only adds to the sense that Brinkley’s life story – and thus, this film – has been pretty untrustworthy.

We’re condensing a lot into this section, but it is true that Brinkley’s early life selling snake oil both with and without his first wife Sally was an important part of the evidence presented in this trial.

“On May 7, 1915, the Eclectic Medical University of Kansas City presented him with a certificate signed by its president, Dr. Date R. Alexander. To become an alumnus of E.M.U. (later described in court proceedings as ‘vague, obliging and long defunct’) cost Brinkley one hundred dollars and got him licensed in eight states” (Brock, 25).

True: Brinkley had been arrested for the colored water scam in Greenville, SC.
Not true: it was on the very same day he claimed to be graduating.
So: a chronological distortion for effect.

We learned about the “German Electric Medicine” thing from Pope Brock (although we made up  the bit about Robert Bunsen). So, Verified, and also Invention. Maybe this should have been two different notes. But, really, at this point, does anyone think these footnotes are complete?????

Brinkley’s actual line was, “I declare, I don’t know what is in that biography!”

We invented the $5,000 figure, but Brinkley did acknowledge having paid Wood to write this book in the trial.

Here is an excerpt from the trial transcript inspiring this part of this scene; we’ve condensed and clarified it greatly but the spirit is the same:

Q– Now tell us, please, does a little goat gland have little nerves there, when you take a testicle out of a young goat?

A– Naturally, any living organism in an animal body has nerves and blood vessels.

Q– Now explain to us, please, how you could make that little testicle of a 3-week old goat live and grow after you implanted it into a human testicle?

A– Some of them seemed to grow and enlarge, and others, the majority of them, went through a process of absorption.

Q– Absorption?

A– Yes, sir, they were gradually absorbed. Some of them were gone in 3 or 6 months.

Q– You mean to say that this little thing lived still inside there?

A– No sir, that is not how I conceive it.

Q– You don’t claim that you connected up the nerves or the blood vessels?

A– Oh Lord, no!

Q– You would examine the testicle before you transplanted a goat gland, would you?

A– You seem to be of the opinion that all of my gland operations were in the testicle but that’s not the case; I transplanted them in many different places. The majority were in the cremaster or in the fasciae of the scrotum.

Q– Well can you tell us about the testicle version?

A– Certain ones I took and cut a hole out of the man’s testicle and took a chunk out and filled it with the goat gland.

Q– Would you put just a little piece of the goat gland?

A– No, I would transplant the entire gland from a 3 week old goat.

Q– You would put a goat gland into one testicle and another in the other testicle?

A– Yes, and sometimes put them in the abdominal muscles. There were different places for them.

Q– Then, your goat glands had something to do with hormone production, is that it?

A– My idea of whatever good they did was that when you put them in a man, it caused him to urinate, and so forth, and he was getting that sex hormone to balance his own to the level with the female sex hormone, and that was there the good came from.

Clement Wood was a well-known hack said to “churn out manuscripts nearly on demand” and to write “at the pace of 80,000 words in 30 days” (not the best pace for careful research and fact-checking).

Clement Wood wrote some other biographies-for-hire. Wood’s list of published works is astonishingly diverse and poor in quality. One of his books, Flesh And Other Stories, published in 1929, was the subject of an important obscenity trial. Wood was a one-time lawyer turned teacher turned Greenwich Village hipster who supposedly hosted orgies as a means of satisfying the sexual needs of his beautiful wife Gloria Goddard; he himself was said to be impotent. He is a fascinating person that we did a lot of unnecessary research on, and his Wikipedia page deserves much more attention.

The jury returned in less than 4 hours, according to The Journal of the American Medical Association.

Brinkley declared bankruptcy on February 1, 1941, claiming over a million dollars in debt.

Brinkley had a heart attack on July 24, 1941. A blood clot formed in his leg and he had to have it amputated on August 29, 1941.

Brinkley died on May 26, 1942 (just over three years from the conclusion of the libel case). There are many letters attesting to Brinkley’s desperation and despair during the last few years of his life; i.e.,

“On January 10, 1942, the doctor wrote one of his attorneys, Wallace Davis of San Antonio, begging for help: ‘I am in bankruptcy and everything I own has been sold . . . I have been in bed since August 23rd. My weight fell from 175 to 130. The amputated bone is diseased and the leg has never healed properly. I am in constant pain… Until we were indicted we could borrow money, but since the indictment even our personal friends will not take a chance . . . In days gone by I paid you every cent you charged me. One time I had to borrow money to pay you, but you were paid. I am flat on my back and helpless and I am asking for a little mercy…'” (quoted in Brock, 271-272).

True, although the $550,000 figure is not consistent across sources; Lee, for example, puts it at $115,000. We used the highest number we found.

True. “The most crushing blow of all fell on September 22, 1941, when a grand jury in Little Rock indicted John, Minnie, and six of their former employees . . . on fifteen counts of using the mail to defraud” (Lee, 224).

True; according to the Associated Press, Mexican officials claimed that the station was broadcasting Nazi propaganda. Minnie Brinkley denied the Nazi affiliation. Historians have pointed out that whether or not the Nazi claim was true, the United States and Canada finally agreed to share use of the airwaves with Mexico – if the border radio stations were shut down. So there were other incentives for this action regardless of the Nazi connection.

True.  See previous note.

True.

It was reported in the New York Press that an old man at Brinkley’s funeral said, “I knew he was bilking me… but I liked him anyway.” We made this anonymous old man into Stittsworth, because: storytelling, closure, full circle, etc.

True.

True. There is much more we could say about this; the history of border radio is long and rich. We recommend the book Border Radio as an entertaining primer on the subject.

True, but our text is off by one year: the town was flooded in 1962.

All true. The issue of Minnie’s belief is obviously not something we can verify by talking to her ourselves, but several sources indicate her continued claim that her the goat gland cure was “ahead of its time” for decades after her husband’s death.

“Daunted by repeated failures, Johnny turned to alcohol . . .” (Lee, 235).

“. . . finally overwhelmed, took his own life. On October 23, 1976, police found the body of John R. Brinkley III in his home. A 9mm German Luger was in his left hand. A bullet had pierced the left side of his head and exited behind his right ear” (Lee, 235).

But! Remember Brinkley had daughters, too, with his first wife. We’ve let this scene play out as if it’s the end of the family line, because it’s poetic and tragic. But that’s not really true.

We’ve based this closing credits scene on a real party at the Brinkley Mansion in April of 1937. It sounds like the best party of all time!

“[W]hile a stunt pilot did barrel rolls in the opalescent evening sky, fourteen hundred guests milled about the Brinkley estate under a wide web of glowing paper lanterns. Floodlights buried in the bushes produced an effect of ‘intense moonlight, almost as bright as day, such as seen in Japan in the cherry blossom time.’ High-school girls dressed as geishas hoisted seventy pounds of canapes. From a twinkling bandstand a San Antonio hotel orchestra dealt out dance music and the blues. It was the biggest party the doctor ever threw, the biggest south Texas could recall. After short speeches and a big feed, the night was crowned by an apocalyptic fireworks display: dogs, cats, ducks, soldiers on horseback appeared in the heavens etched in flame, each greeted with gasps and applause (Brock, 211).