What the Nose Knows: The Science of Scent in Everyday Life (32 page)

O. J. Simpson
“What’s Become of O.J.’s Ex-Gal Pal?”
New York Daily News
, January 23, 2002; “Miami Cops Say O.J.’s Ex-Girlfriend Isn’t Missing, Knows About Dead Cat,”
South Florida Sun-Sentinel,
January 23, 2003.

urban legend
Jan Harold Brunvand,
The Baby Train and Other Lusty Urban Legends
(New York: Norton, 1993); Barbara Mikkelson writing on
Snopes.com
.

hit man immortalized
Katherine Ramsland, “Richard Kuklinski: The Iceman,” chapter title “Going to Florida,”
Crimelibrary.com
.

Jerry Payne
Jessica Snyder Sachs,
Corpse: Nature, Forensics, and the Struggle to Pinpoint Time of Death
(Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books, 2001).

an ironic twist
“Woman, two men dead in Bronx apt. bloodbath,”
New York Daily News
, January 22, 2002.

found in bad breath
S. Goldberg, A. Kozlovsky, et al., “Cadaverine as a putative component of oral malodor,”
Journal of Dental Research
73(1994):1168–72.

“smelled like kim chee”
“Isle Mainland Traveler Shared Room with Corpse,”
Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
August 1, 1996.

lives at the scene of the crime
“He Slays Wife, Then Can’t Take Smell, Say Cops,”
New York Daily News,
December 11, 2003; “Mom, Stepdad Charged in Death of Disabled Man,”
Houston Chronicle,
April 11, 2002.

made of tougher stuff
“Body Undiscovered in Apartment for 2 Years?”
Tucson Citizen
, April 8, 2005; “Woman Drove for Days with Dead Mother,” Reuters/CNN, April 29, 2004.

young hiker
Aron Ralston,
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
(New York:

Atria Books, 2004).

Chapter 7. The Olfactory Imagination

“The rank effluvium”
Charles Darwin,
The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex
(London: John Murray, 1871), p. 279.

“with a confidence that always astonished”
Edouard Toulouse,
Enquête médico-psychologique sur les rapports de la supériorité intellectuale avec le névrophatie
(Paris Societé d’edition scientifiques, 1896);
Annales Médico-Psychologiques
, series 8, vol. 5 (1897):425–46.

consumer survey
Sarah Purcell, “Scents and Scentsibilities,”
Chemist & Druggist
, November 22, 2003, p. S32.

Cobain’s personal journals
Tim Appelo, “Kurt Cobain’s Last No. 1 Hit,”
Seattle Weekly
, December 25, 2002; Kurt Cobain,
Journals
(Riverhead Books, 2002).

His favorite book
Charles R. Cross,
Heavier than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain
(New York: Hyperion, 2001).

world’s first Aroma Jockey
E-mail correspondence with Eric Berghammer, aka Odo7, May–June 2005.

With my colleagues
A. N. Gilbert, M. Crouch, and S. E. Kemp, “Olfactory and visual mental imagery,”
Journal of Mental Imagery
22 (1998): 137–46.

Other researchers have used our test
M. Bensafi and C. Rouby, “Individual differences in odor imaging ability reflect differences in olfactory and emotional perception,”
Chemical Senses
32 (2007):237–44.

innovative American director
Lise-Lone Marker,
David Belasco: Naturalism in the American Theatre
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975),p. 61 ff.

pioneers of olfactory multimedia
Beatriz Colomina, “Enclosed by images: The Eameses’ multimedia architecture,
Grey Room
2, (Winter 2001), pp. 6–29 (esp. p. 13); Stanley Abercrombie,
George Nelson: The Design of Modern Design
(Boston: MIT Press, 1995), p 147; Colomina, 2001, p. 14, referencing Eames collaborator George Nelson’s quote in Abercrombie, 1995; Owen Gingerich, “A conversation with Charles Eames,”
The American Scholar
46, no. 3 (1977):326–37 (esp. p. 331); Abercrombie,
George Nelson,
p. 147.

written descriptions evoke
J. C. Baird and K. A. Harder, “The psychophysics of imagery,”
Perception & Psychophysics
62 (2000):113–26;J. Gonzalez, A. Barros-Loscertales, et al., “Reading cinnamon activates olfactory brain regions,”
Neuroimage
32 (2006):906–12.

In a letter
Helen McAfee, “The Sense of Smell,”
The Nation
, January 15, 1914, pp. 57–58.

“This all started”
Anne Tyler,
Ladder of Years
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995).

“You get down on your knees”
Jay McInerney,
Bright Lights, Big City
(New York: Vintage, 1984).

smell in cocaine abusers
A. S. Gordon, D. T. Moran, et al., “The effect of chronic cocaine abuse on human olfaction,”
Archives of Otolaryngology—Head & Neck Surgery
116 (1990):1415–18.

“The chimney of the new house” Nathaniel Hawthorne: Collected Novels
(New York: Library of America edition, 1983), p. 360.

the best smell-based story in American letters Nathaniel Hawthorne: Tales and Sketches
(New York: Library of America, 1982).

lived her entire life
Judith Farr,
The Gardens of Emily Dickinson
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).

“cultivation of emotional intensity”
Agnieszka Salska, “Dickinson’s letters: From correspondence to poetry,” in
The Emily Dickinson Handbook
, edited by G. Grabher, R. Hagenbüchle, and C. Miller (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998).

Paglia challenged this admiring consensus
Camille Paglia,
Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).

In her poems
Poems quoted here can be found as numbered in
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
, edited by T. H. Johnson (Boston: Little, Brown, 1960): drinker #1628, Inebriate #214, quaffing #230, kill your balm #238, when it dies #333, little odor #785, oils are wrung #675.

“fetishistic fascination”
Marc A. Weiner, “Wagner’s Nose and the Ideology of Perception.”
Monatshefte
81 (1989):62–78.

“The night is cool”
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch,
Venus in Furs
(1870; translation by Fernanda Savage, 1921).

American novelist Willa Cather
Marilee Lindemann,
Willa Cather: Queering America
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1999); Willa Cather,
O Pioneers!
(Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913).

“maybe smell is one of my”
Frederick L. Gwynn and Joseph L. Blotner,
Faulkner in the University
(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1959), p. 253.

it doesn’t add up
Joseph Blotner,
Faulkner: A Biography
(New York: Random House, 1974).

“the most radical innovator”
J. M. Coetzee, “The Making of William Faulkner,”
The New York Review of Books,
April 7, 2005, p. 20.

“the inherent tragedy of southern history”
Lorie W. Fulton, “William Faulkner’s Wistaria: The Tragic Scent of the South”
Southern Studies
11(2004):1–9.

symbol of courage and violence
William Faulkner,
The Unvanquished
(New York: Random House, 1938). True verbena should not be confused with lemon verbena (
Lippia citriodor
), which has a distinct lemony scent that Faulkner would have been hard pressed to ignore.

code of honor
R. W. Witt, “On Faulkner and Verbena,”
Southern Literary Journal
27 (1994):73–84.

extended use of smell
William Faulkner,
The Sound and the Fury
(New York: J. Cape and H. Smith, 1929).

review was merciless
Richard Dyer, “‘Blind Trust’: Hold Your Nose,”
Boston Globe,
June 7, 1993.

Chapter 8. Hollywood Psychophysics

“audiences worldwide paid me”
Interview with John Waters, April 12, 2006.

History has not been kind
Frank W. Hoffmann and William G. Bailey,
Arts & Entertainment Fads
(Harrington Park Press, 1990); Martin J. Smith and Patrick J. Kiger,
Oops: 20 Life Lessons from the Fiascoes That Shaped America
(New York: HarperCollins, 2006); “Cinematic Stinkers,”
The Times Educational Supplement,
May 26, 2006; “The 100 Worst Ideas of the Century,”
Time,
June 14, 1999; Harry and Michael Medved,
The Golden Turkey Awards: Nominees and Winners, the Worst Achievements in Hollywood History
(New York: Putnam, 1980).

first attempt to odorize movies
Terry Ramsaye,
A Million and One Nights: A History of the Motion Picture
(London: Frank Cass & Co., 1926),p. 175.

“tried the rose bit”
“Kill That Butt, the Smellie Is Starting,”
Film Daily
, September 10, 1958.

no Rose Bowl game
See
www.TournamentofRoses.com
for the relevant history.

imitated by others
Letter to the Editor by Albert E. Fowler,
Variety,
January 13, 1960 (for
Lilac Time
);
Photoplay Magazine
, September 1929, p. 98 (for
Hollywood Review of 1920
).

“The scent organ was playing”
Aldous Huxley,
Brave New World
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Company, 1932).

“By midmorning”
Bill Buford,
Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-quoting Butcher in Tuscany
(New York: Knopf, 2006).

“The blowers which wafted these odors”
Arthur Mayer,
Merely Colossal
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953), pp. 187, 189–90.

system described by John H. Leavell
John H. Leavell, “Method of and apparatus for presenting theatrical impressions,” U.S. Patent 1,749,187, March 4, 1930. To synchronize the smell with the movie, Leavell used a spring-loaded lever arm to detect notches cut into the edge of the motion picture film; a notch moved the lever arm and triggered the compressed air. As in Mayer’s cartoon, a projectionist stood by to open valves to the appropriate odor tanks. Driven by compressed air, the scent emerged into the theater from mushroom-shaped vents beneath the seats—a standard ventilation method at the time.

Walt Disney got excited
John Canemaker, “The
Fantasia
That Never Was,”
Print
42 (1988):76–87, 139–40.

“was on the verge”
“The Smellies,”
Time
, April 18, 1949, p. 30.

“A young man meets”
Felix Aeppli,
Der Schweizer Film 1929–1964: Die Schweiz als Ritual
, vol. 2, (Zürich: Limmat Verlag, 1981) p. 333 [my translation].

garnering a mention
B. R. Crisler, “Week of Minor Wonders,”
New York Times
, February 25, 1940.

On the evening of
“Today’s Program at the Fair,”
New York Times
, October 19, 1940.

“At the conclusion”
Hervé Dumont,
Geschichte des Schweizer Films: Spielfilme 1896–1965
(Lausanne: Schweizer Film Archiv, 1987), pp. 157–58 [my translation]. Dumont lists the first showing of
My Dream
as October 10, 1940, but also says it ran from June to July 1940. It is unclear from this whether the bust took place after the first performance or at the end of the first run.

to promote his inventions
“Smellovision” item in “Sidelines” column,
Los Angeles Times
, February 3, 1946; “The Smellies,”
Time,
April 18, 1949,p. 30. On February 23, 1941, the
New York Times
in its “Reported from the Field of Science” column credits Laube and Barth for inventing the “smellies.” Soon after, a Swiss film encyclopedia credits them with inventing “Duftfilm” Charles Reinert,
Kleines Filmlexikon: Kunst, Technik, Geschichte, Biographie, Schrifttum
(Einsiedeln-Zürich: Benziger & Co., 1946), p. 85.

risk-taker and a feisty competitor
Michael Todd Jr. and Susan McCarthy Todd,
A valuable property: The life story of Michael Todd
(New York: Arbor House, 1983).

bring aroma to movies and television
A Swiss newspaper reported on Laube’s press demo of a video and smell system in a New York hotel room: “Fernriechen auf dem Weg,”
Die Tat
, February 1, 1956.

To secure international rights
Laube applied for a European patent in June, 1955; it was issued on January 21, 1959: Hans Laube and Bert Samuel Good, “Motion pictures and the like with synchronized odor emission,” European patent GB807615. Laube filed the second U.S. application in June of 1956.

Motion Picture Daily
hinted
“ScentoVision to Be Installed in Theatre in 9 Months, Ruskin Says,”
Motion Picture Daily
, September 14, 1956.

mentioned in the
New York Times “Odors Added to Films and Video, Even Those of Oranges or Ham,”
New York Times
, November 23, 1957.

project called
Scent of Danger “Brand-new ‘Scent’ on the Todd Roster,”
New York Times
, September 28, 1958.

Glenda Jensen, then a secretary
Glenda Jensen, “Working for the Michael Todd Corporation and a Little Bit of Cinemiracle Too,”
The 70mm Newsletter
, March 15, 2005; interview with Glenda Jensen, April 18, 2006.

Elizabeth Taylor was cast
Hedda Hopper column,
Los Angeles Times
, November 8, 1958.

a public-relations executive
“Kill That Butt, the Smellie Is Starting,”
Film Daily
, September 10, 1958.

revealed the cast
“‘Does It Not Betray Itself by Its Smell?’”
Film Daily
, April 14, 1959.

movie’s ad slogan
“Movies…Talkies…and Now—Smellies!”
Los Angeles Times
, April 26, 1959.