I was looking at this a while back and I think I now have fully decoded what I was trying to express here, in connection with my wife. I do not recall ever seeing this movie, but if I have this all figured out correctly, then it is quite clever, if I do say so myself.
From 7/16/1963 to 9/16/1994 is: 11385 days
From 3/3/1959 to 7/21/1969 is: 3793 days
3793 / 11385 = 0.333
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Caraboo_%28film%29
Release date(s) September 16, 1994 (USA)
Princess Caraboo is a 1994 film, directed by Michael Austin, based on the real-life 19th-century character Princess Caraboo, who passed herself off in British society as an exotic princess who spoke a strange foreign language. She is played in the film by Phoebe Cates. The film was written by Michael Austin and John Wells The original music score was composed by Richard Hartley.
Tagline: She was everything they dreamed of... and nothing they expected.
The two appearances listed for Phoebe Cates on The Late Show with David Letterman were around the time her movie “Princess Caraboo” was in theatres. Her first appearance was just before the movie released and then her second appearance would have been my 36th birthday.
Show #0232
Episode Number: 232
Season Num: 2
First Aired: Wednesday September 14, 1994
Show #0338
Episode Number: 338
Season Num: 2
First Aired: Friday March 3, 1995
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Caraboo
Princess Caraboo (1791 - January 4, 1865), a noted impostor, pretended to be from a faraway island and fooled a British town for some time.
On April 3, 1817, a cobbler in Almondsbury in Gloucestershire, England, met an apparently disoriented young woman with exotic clothes who was speaking a language no one could understand. The cobbler's wife took her to the Overseer of the Poor who left her in the hands of the local county magistrate, Samuel Worrall, who lived in Knole Park. When he and his wife could not understand her either, they sent her to the local inn, where she insisted on eating a pineapple and sleeping on the floor. Later, Mrs. Worrall let her stay at her family's mansion.
All they could immediately find out was that she called herself Caraboo and that she was interested in Chinese imagery. They sent her to the mayor of Bristol who ended up sending her to St. Peter's Hospital. There she declined all meat. A week later, Mrs. Worrall brought her to her husband's offices in Bristol.
Locals brought many foreigners who tried to find out what strange language the lady was talking, but apparently in vain. Then came a Portuguese sailor named Manuel Eynesso (or Enes) who said he knew the language and translated her story.
According to Eynesso, she was Princess Caraboo from the island of Javasu in the Indian Ocean. She had been captured by pirates and after a long voyage she had jumped overboard in the Bristol Channel and swum ashore.
The Worralls brought Caraboo back to their home. For the next ten weeks, this representative of exotic royalty was a favourite of the local dignitaries. She used a bow and arrow, fenced, swam naked and prayed to God, whom she termed Allah Tallah. She acquired exotic clothing and a portrait made of her was reproduced in local newspapers. A certain Mrs. Neale recognised her from the picture in the Bristol Journal and informed her hosts.
Eventually the truth came out. The would-be princess was actually a cobbler's daughter, Mary Baker (née Wilcocks) from Witheridge, Devon. She had been a servant girl in various places all over England but had not found a place to stay. She had invented a fictitious language out of imaginary and gypsy words and created an exotic character. The British press had a field day at the expense of the duped rustic middle-class.
Her hosts arranged for her to leave for Philadelphia and she departed June 28, 1817. In the USA, she briefly continued her role, but lost contact with the Worralls after a couple of months.
There was a contemporary legend that she had visited Napoleon in the island of Saint Helena, but that is probably untrue.
In 1821, she had returned to Britain but her act was no longer very successful. She briefly traveled to France and Spain in her guise but soon returned to England and re-married. In September 1828, she was living in Bedminster with the name Mary Burgess and gave birth to a daughter the next year. In 1839, she was selling leeches to the Bristol Infirmary Hospital. She died on January 4, 1865 and was buried in an unmarked grave in the Hebron Road cemetery in Bristol.
The hoax was the basis of the 1994 movie Princess Caraboo, written by John Wells, which added some fictional incidents to the true story.
