We can’t verify that Brinkley’s daddy was a doctor, but he always said he was. Brinkley cited his father’s profession as inspiration for his own. If he was a doctor at all, Brinkey’s daddy would have almost certainly been the sort of poor “country doctor” common in the 1800s.  At that time, being a doctor wasn’t the distinguished profession it later became (largely due to the efforts of the American Medical Association).  On the other hand, sometimes Brinkley claimed his daddy had a medical degree from Davidson College in Charlotte.  As Lee wrote, “(t)his is highly unlikely, however, as attending college in the antebellum South was expensive and confined largely to the plantation and urban aristocracy who could afford it, not poor mountain folk.”

All true (they married August 23, 1913), but actually this was his second marriage. His first marriage was to Sally Wike on January 27, 1907. According to Wood, Brinkley met Sally Wike at the funeral for his Aunt Sally. Since Aunt Sally died on December 25, 1906, that would make their courtship pretty brief: about one month. Again according to Wood, this marriage produced three daughters and ended when Sally left him.

Incidentally, Minnie and John also married after an exceptionally brief courtship (four days).

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.

In other happy news, the Brinkleys were pulling in over $1 million a year during this period (1928-1930). We’re not mentioning this because we don’t want you thinking about how much money he’s making right now. We want you thinking about his accomplishments and success, yes; but not exactly in financial terms.

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.

Mr. Thurston the flower seller is invented.

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.”)

This archival imagery is not of the Brinkleys in Milford; it is from a film made in 1934 about Brinkley’s fishing exploits titled “Making A World’s Record.”

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.

This audio is from a record album Brinkley recorded for his son in Chicago in 1933; it’s not from his last broadcast at KFKB, which is strongly implied in this sequence.

The “Last Words” inscription on this record doesn’t make any literal sense; we imagined it in order to better invoke the seriousness of this blow to Brinkley’s life work, and to reinscribe the theme of Brinkley wanting his son to hear it after he is dead.

Note the life-size portrait of Brinkley in naval uniform. For some reason he was named an Admiral in the “Kansas Navy,” and on his yacht he often wore a uniform befitting that honor. The cap and the sleeves of the jacket bear the Kansas State seal!

Look closely and you’ll see that Minnie’s eyes have been scribbled out in blue pen. Weird. We looked into the book Brinkley is reading; it’s Behind the Ballots, a 1938 memoir written by James Farley, an influential New Deal politician. I’m not sure why he’s posing with it, as Brinkley was vehemently opposed to almost everything the New Deal stood for. He liked to pay lip service to the idea of government helping the poor, at least when he was running for governor during the Depression. But Brinkley’s real beliefs, stated over and over, were of the “men need to pull themselves up” variety.

However, Farley was born very poor around the same time as Brinkley, and by the 1930s he had risen to earn the title of “political kingmaker”; perhaps Brinkley simply appreciated the enormous power Farley had gained. Anyway, none of this is important.

An advertisement from one of his Doctor Books.

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.

This letter is actually a compilation of three different (real) letters Brinkley wrote to his wife around the same time. We cut them up and stitched them back together in Photoshop before printing it out for use in this scene.

This is the only filmed interview that we know of. Also note that the interviewer is James Reardon, one of our expert interviews; the interview was given in March of 1976. “Johnny Boy” (aka John Brinkley III) committed suicide about six months later.

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.

We have no reason to believe that John Brinkley Jr. had this record playing at this time.

“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.