October 3, 2013

"I like intelligent women. When you go out, it shouldn't be a staring contest."

Said Frank Sinatra. I found that quote because I was Googling to try to find out how intelligent Frank Sinatra was, a propos of yesterday's PR from the Farrow family that it's possible that Ronan Farrow came into existence because Mia Farrow continued — during her long relationship with Woody Allen — to have sex with the love of her life, her ex-husband, Frank Sinatra.

Ronan Farrow seems to be a young man of very high intelligence (since he started attending Yale Law School at age 15), so one naturally wonders about the relative intelligence of the 2 possible fathers.

What's Woody Allen's IQ? He once said "I've got a 150, 160 IQ," but that was as a character in a movie. "To Rome With Love." One might only guess that it's actually Woody Allen's IQ, but we know that he wrote the dialogue, and he was smart enough to write the dialogue, which had Judy Davis coming back with: "You're figuring it in Euros. In dollars, it's much less."

How intelligent is Mia Farrow? Presumably intelligent enough for Sinatra — the liker of intelligent women — to have married her. But what kind of judge of intelligence was Sinatra? His quote is pretty funny, maybe not Woody Allen funny, but funny in that it has a set up and punch line. "I like intelligent women" is the straight line. The joke — "When you go out, it shouldn't be a staring contest" — also works as Sinatra's definition of intelligent: able to keep up one end of a conversation. That might be kind of a low standard. He's saying he wants someone at his level and we're hard-pressed to infer what his level was. (ADDED: In a staring contest, no one is talking, so he may be saying he's pretty dumb and somebody needs to be able to say something.)

Sinatra was a genius at singing, but does musical intelligence express itself genetically in offspring who do things like go to Yale Law School at age 15? I doubt it! [ADDED: Ronan was accepted to YLS when he was 15, but deferred admission until he was 19. In the interval, he worked for UNICEF.)

But that gets us no closer to the answer to the question who is Ronan's father, since Woody Allen is also a genius of a particular sort — writing comedy — and that sort of genius also seems disconnected from the sort of mind that gets drawn into law school at 15.

By the way, I love the question whether high-level legal analysis is more like comic writing or more like the vocal interpretation of song lyrics.

Googling for answers to my idle questions, I ran across the 1992 Farrow PR that — like this new piece — appeared in Vanity Fair. It came up because it had "IQ":
Soon-Yi issued her own statement... “I’m not a retarded little underage flower who was raped, molested and spoiled by some evil stepfather—not by a long shot. I’m a psychology major at college who fell for a man who happens to be the ex-boyfriend of Mia.”...

Mia’s family were astounded by the statement. “Soon-Yi doesn’t know half those words, what they mean,” one close to them said.... When Soon-Yi was in the third grade, her I.Q. tested as slightly below average.... “She’s a very typical L.D. kid, very socially inappropriate, very, very naïve,” says [a woman who tutored Soon-Yi]. “She has trouble processing information, trouble understanding language on an inferential level. She’s very, very literal and flat in how she interprets what she sees and how she interprets things socially. She misinterprets situations."
One might infer that Woody Allen is most likely the father, since Woody, unlike Frank, seems to have gravitated to females who don't seem so intelligent to him. Since both men gravitated to Mia Farrow, that may mean that Woody was more intelligent than Frank, if she seemed relatively dumb to Woody and relatively smart to Frank.

70 comments:

buwaya said...

Best to look at the actual and potential grandparents too, not just Frank and Woody.

Balfegor said...

This is a little off-topic, but --

When Soon-Yi was in the third grade, her I.Q. tested as slightly below average....

As I understand it, third grade (age 8) is when she was adopted and moved from Korea to the US. I don't know what her circumstances in Korea were (I suspect she was not exactly from a privileged background, though) but it's unsurprising that she'd test low.

“She’s a very typical L.D. kid, very socially inappropriate, very, very naïve,” says [a woman who tutored Soon-Yi]. “She has trouble processing information, trouble understanding language on an inferential level. She’s very, very literal and flat in how she interprets what she sees and how she interprets things socially. She misinterprets situations."

How fluent was she at the time? A lot of this (especially "understanding language on an inferential level") just sounds like incomplete command of a second language. Back in the 70's and 80's did reading and learning disability specialists also have training in linguistics and second language acquisition? Maybe, although given that it continues to be an issue (e.g. with classification of ESL speakers as learning disabled), I suspect not. Most of the literature on the subject is filled with vacuous blather about "diversity" but it's a real issue.

Anyhow, none of this makes Allen any less creepy -- just stood out to me, since I occasionally worry about how I sound like a halfwit when speaking languages where I have limited competence.

Jay Vogt said...

Anybody whom had it said of him (with no apparent controversy), "it's Franks world, we just live in it" is without question one very smart cat.

Anonymous said...

"I like intelligent women. When you go out, it shouldn't be a staring contest."
Said Frank Sinatra.

---------------------------------

I'm sure Frank was attracted to Ava Gardner's brain.

bandmeeting said...

I think Ronan wants a record contract.

William said...

Your class prejudices are showing. Sinatra's smarts were mostly visible in a street smart way, but he read plenty of books. Being a smart ass does not preclude being smart. Sinatra was smart enough to amass several hundred million dollars and smart enough to keep his hands off underage children.

Ann Althouse said...

"I'm sure Frank was attracted to Ava Gardner's brain."

Frank was in a position to have women who were both beautiful and intelligent, and it happens that Ava Gardner was supposed to be quite smart. Check it out.

She said some things about Sinatra that come across as really witty.

Ann Althouse said...

“The size of Frank Sinatra's penis had been on my mind for weeks. I don't know why it was bothering me so much, but it was.”

That's not the one I was looking for, but I was afraid if I didn't copy it here it would be on my mind for weeks.

Ann Althouse said...

Here it is:

"only 110 pounds, but 10 pounds of it is cock."

Ann Althouse said...

At http://www.aceshowbiz.com/news/view/w0007936 it says:


Frank Sinatra attempted to cover up the fact he was well hung - because he thought the size of his manhood was one of many negatives about his body, according to the late star's new biographer James Kaplan. The journalist spent five years researching his acclaimed new tome, "Frank - The Voice", and reveals Sinatra wasn't like most men, who reveled in the fact he had a big penis.

Recalling a quote from Sinatra's lover Ava Gardner, in which she stated the singer was "only 110 pounds, but 10 pounds of it is c**k!", Kaplan insists Sinatra wasn't proud of his manhood. The writer tells WENN, "I think we can take it as fact that Frank Sinatra was very well-endowed."

"George Jacobs, Sinatra's valet in latter years wrote a wonderful book, called 'Mr. S', and he speaks in the book about the size of Sinatra's manhood and actually having special underwear made to kind of keep it all in. But oddly enough, it was one of the things Sinatra was self-conscious about."

"He was scarred at birth, he weighed 13 pounds at birth, he was ripped from his mother with forceps, which damaged his ear and the side of his face. A mastoid operation when he was a kid further damaged the ear; when he was an adolescent, cystic acne pitted his cheeks; he lost his hair in his early 30s, and his gluteus maximus was minimal - he had no ass at all. He sort of hated the way that he looked for a lot of his life... and I think that, while he often boasted almost about his manhood, it was one more thing that made him different."

But Kaplan's research didn't reveal how good a lover Sinatra was in the bedroom. He adds, "Ava Gardner famously reported to her ex-husband Artie Shaw, at a time when she was growing dissatisfied with Sinatra, that being in bed with him was like being in bed with a woman."

"That was reported by Artie Shaw, who was very competitive with Sinatra... but if indeed Ava ever said anything like that, I think she may have been reflecting more on Sinatra's sensitivity, his vulnerability. There were a lot of women, so he must have been doing something right... I think women were thrilled just to be with him and I think that goes a long way in the sexual experience."

Revenant said...

Mia Farrow was throwing around a lot of crazy nonsense at the time. "Soon-Yi is mentally disabled" wasn't as bad as "Woody Allen molests children", but it was still pretty bad.

Ann Althouse said...

It could be that at some point very large genitalia make the rest of you looks small. A man could be self-conscious about that.

Similarly, being quite large overall can make a man's genitals seem small.

This is why actors in porn films tend to be short (or so I've read).

Anonymous said...


Blogger Ann Althouse said...

"I'm sure Frank was attracted to Ava Gardner's brain."

Frank was in a position to have women who were both beautiful and intelligent, and it happens that Ava Gardner was supposed to be quite smart. Check it out.


"only 110 pounds, but 10 pounds of it is cock."

“Deep down, I'm pretty superficial.” Ava Gardner


Quite the intellectual.



Rosalyn C. said...

I read a comment by WA once concerning his wife, Soon-Yi, picking up his dry cleaning as if that's what wives are for. I also read about him having nude pictures of her which is what caused the cataclysm with Mia. I also read that Soon-Yi and Allen adopted two children. All that leads me to believe that Sinatra probably was the father of Ronan. Also, Sinatra not only was extraordinarily creative and talented musically, he also was capable of memorizing hundreds, possibly thousands of lyrics, had tremendous social skills, was politically active, and he was also a dedicated and prolific painter. And to top that off he was a train enthusiast.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Since both men gravitated to Mia Farrow, that may mean that Woody was more intelligent than Frank, if she seemed relatively dumb to Woody and relatively smart to Frank.

"Spinning yarns that were so lyrical"

lgv said...

How do you factor in her children with Previn? Both appeared to quite intelligent. While one could assign that to Previn's DNA, it could just as well be from Mia's stock.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

I take it a simple DNA test would ruin the hunt for red October that went on to the spirit in the sky.

Anonymous said...

I dont want to sound didactic or facetious in any manner but comparing pictures of Ronan and Sinatra with the heads tilted the same direction really doesn't prove anything.

In reality Ronan looks like Mia Farrow more than Sinantra. And dont forget that Woody and Ronan both have red hair.

Helenhightops said...

I am thinking somewhere I have seen that two people of similar high intelligence are likely to have a child whose intelligence regresses towards the mean, whereas if there is a wider disparity in IQ, the likelihood increases of having a child whose IQ leaps well above the bounds of the more gifted parent.

Hagar said...

Off topic (if the topic is Sinatra's "manhood")

What is a "L.D. kid"?

Any way you slice it, the kid was Allen's wife's - and thus his as well - adopted daughter.

Have you all forgotten Sinatra also was an Oscar winning actor?

I did not think much of Sinatra either, until later when I saw a clip of Johnny Carson doing a Sinatra impression, and Johnny could not stand still as long as Sinatra held the notes.
That made me think back, and though I still did not, and do not, care for his "ratpack" activities, I had to admit, love him or hate him, Frank Sinatra was a "somebody."

Ann Althouse said...

"Quite the intellectual."

I said she was smart. I didn't say she was an intellectual!

In the end, is it smarter to be an intellectual or to be able to come up with witty remarks like the one you quoted.

You think people who go to grad school and study for PhDs are more intelligent than people who figure out how to be Ava Gardner?

There are different kinds of intelligence, and figuring out what you like and how to get it are more important than slogging your way up the chain in some prestigious career.

By the way, does Ronan Farrow really figure out what to do with his life at such an early age? How smart is it to go to Yale Law School when you are 15? What's the reason? Why determine your path in life so early?

Ann Althouse said...

"Your class prejudices are showing. Sinatra's smarts were mostly visible in a street smart way, but he read plenty of books. Being a smart ass does not preclude being smart. Sinatra was smart enough to amass several hundred million dollars and smart enough to keep his hands off underage children."

Your prejudice towards me is what's showing. What is the basis for your assertion about me? You should read the post and my comments here again.

Ann Althouse said...

Woody Allen, it should be noted, has never taken his dispute with Mia Farrow to the press. He has not combatted her side of the story. He hasn't even used his fictional storytelling to get digs in. And remember how he promoted her in those pre-breakup movies, especially "Alice," which was a paean to her.

He could have written a memoir or blabbed to any number of important media outlets. He hasn't done that. He's allowed her and many other to take shots at him for 2 decades.

That says something about his character. A bit of a mystery what it says... but something.

Ann Althouse said...

Frank's last wife was Barbara Sinatra, who had been married to one of my favorite Marx Brothers, Zeppo. In her book "Lady Blue Eyes: My Life with Frank," there's this:

"Frank sometimes commissioned paintings of others he cared for and gifted them to the subjects afterward, although he did keep a few for himself. Not long after we were married, I decided to do something about a painting of Mia Farrow that hung in the master bedroom. Digging through my old photographs, I came across a large black and white poster of Zeppo, had it framed, and placed it prominently on my nightstand. “What the hell’s that?” Frank asked when he saw it. “Oh,” I replied innocently, “I thought this was a nostalgia room.” Frank said nothing, but Mia’s portrait vanished the following day. And so, of course, did Zeppo’s."

That made me laugh. There's also, earlier in the book, this:

"Having broken up with the dancer Juliet Prowse, he married the twenty-one-year-old actress Mia Farrow, announcing, “Let’s say I’ve got a good five years left—why not enjoy them?” He divorced her almost as quickly. I read a rather sad quote from him after that in Life magazine that said, “If I did marry [again] it would have to be somebody out of show business, or someone who will get out of the business … All I ask is that my wife looks after me and I will see that she’s looked after.” There was such poignancy to that, I thought. Frank was still looking for love."

ef200@verizon.net said...

Back in the '50s, Confidential magazine ran a cover story titled "Why Sinatra is King of the Boudoir." It gave as the reason the fact that in between bouts of sex, Sinatra would rush out to the kitchen and eat a bowl of Wheaties. Seriously.

ef200@verizon.net said...

Back in the '50s, Confidential magazine ran a cover story titled "Why Sinatra is King of the Boudoir." The reason: On any given night, after each sex session he rushed out to the kitchen and ate a bowl of Wheaties. Seriously.

Carol said...

I remember when Mia Farrow cut all her hair off - for Frank.

It was really shocking, because long hair was like, everything back then.

dustbunny said...

Two pretty great Ava Gardner quotes: when Sinatra married Mia, Ava said " Ha!! I always knew he'd end up in bed with a boy". And "when I lose my temper you can"t find it anywhere!"

Anonymous said...

Its pretty bizarre how controlling Mia is if you read the Vanity Fair interview. Its almost like "1984" when some guys job is to go back and revise history to make it fit the current narrative.

She has the daughter so intimidated that as a college senior she is scared to open an envelop from her father. Dylan's name is changed. Ronan was 'Satchel' so that was erased. One of the kids says that Soon-Yi doesnt exist. The oldest son is going through all of the family pictures photoshopping Woody out of them.

Now she is pretending Woody isnt the father? He is getting the full Trotsky treatment.

As Mia's character says in Broadway Danny Rose- "I'm moody. You knew I was moody when you met me."

CarolMR said...

FWIW, Nancy Sinatra, Jr., once said that her father didn't like young women (Mia being the exception) because he thought they were boring. I can believe that Frank and Mia remained close even after their divorce. She told Barbara Walters that Frank was her "first." Others have said that Frank always had a soft spot for Mia, even after their divorce.

William said...

I don't maintain that I've transcended all of my class prejudices. I do maintain that class prejudices are difficult to eradicate or even identify.. Sinatra was a far greater singer than Allen is as a director or screenwriter. I don't know how to measure intelligence or even if it's possible to measure intelligence, but it's more than possible that Sinatra was brighter than Allen and more than possible that people of a certain background would consider Allen's verbal gifts more indicative of intelligence than Sinatra's ability to carry a tune. Perhaps, but Sinatra seems to have negotiated a far better passage--for himself at least--through life than Allen and that's the best, final way to measure IQ.

Heartless Aztec said...

Not only was Ava smart, witty and a bombshell but she did it all with a sultry Southern accent. Frank knew what he was about.

Ann Althouse said...

"She told Barbara Walters that Frank was her "first.""

Insight into the tragedy of Mia: her first was the one with the gigantic penis.

Freeman Hunt said...

"By the way, does Ronan Farrow really figure out what to do with his life at such an early age? How smart is it to go to Yale Law School when you are 15? What's the reason? Why determine your path in life so early?"

I was coming back to this thread to bring this up, but there it is. Not specifically to Ronan Farrow, what should the families of precocious young geniuses do? I know one such, and people regularly say things like, "I guess he'll begin college when he's ten," or similar things. I always say, "Why? What's the rush?" Going to college at a young age is very prestigious when you are a young age, but your age is not a young one forever. Eventually you're just another person who went to college. So why rush it? If you've already mastered all of the pre-college material, what a gift! You have years and years to delve into whatever you want, to follow any bit of curiosity. You can always go to college later and collect credits for all the things you learned.

Institutions try to sell this idea that the young person's path lies entirely along what these institutions have carved out. "First A. Complete A, then B. Complete B, then C." Don't be in thrall to institutions!

But I digress.

Badger Pundit said...

What, intelligent women don't engage in staring contests? A couple of hours before reading your post, I happened to read a passage in Patricia Bosworth's 2001 biography of Marlon Brando describing his first meeting with Maria Schneider, his co-star in "Last Tango in Paris." Brando very much liked staring contests (p. 196):

"The first day she was introduced to Brando . . . he sat with her in a cafe and, hoping to unsettle her, had a staring contest. 'Is it difficult for you to look someone in the eye for a long time?' he demanded.

'Sometimes,' she told him, staring back at him unwaveringly. He was so impressed he sent her flowers that evening . . . ."

FWIW, Sinatra hated Brando, in part because he lost out to Brando for the lead role in "On the Waterfront," and in part because Brando had the temerity to micromanage Sinatra's singing technique in "Guys and Dolls" (p. 121).

SomeoneHasToSayIt said...

Balfegor said...

This is a little off-topic, but --

When Soon-Yi was in the third grade, her I.Q. tested as slightly below average....

As I understand it, third grade (age 8) is when she was adopted and moved from Korea to the US. I don't know what her circumstances in Korea were (I suspect she was not exactly from a privileged background, though) but it's unsurprising that she'd test low.


You're kidding, right? Korea has one of the highest average IQs in the world.

Did you do ANY research before writing your comment?

SomeoneHasToSayIt said...

William said...

Perhaps, but Sinatra seems to have negotiated a far better passage--for himself at least--through life than Allen and that's the best, final way to measure IQ.


Ah, no. No it's not. Not at all, actually. But, you did form a grammatically correct sentence at least.

Lydia said...

Wikipedia says Ronan Farrow was accepted at Yale Law School when he was 15, but didn't actually start there until he was 19.

Maybe because he had some medical problems? He says in this interview video that he spent a large part of his younger years in and out of a wheelchair, something apparently wrong with the bones in his legs.

I wonder if having a disability played into his pursuit of intellectual interests at such a young age.

Cedarford said...

Generally, I see Mia Farrow as on a non-stop hateful vendetta. And for his flaws, Woody Allen taking the higher road. As if Mia Farrow is a negligable creature not worth responding to.

Which of course makes her madder and more psycho than she already is.

Her "Valentines Day" card to him, a broken heart postcard she filled with broken off knife blades, scissors parts, needles - and all smeared with blood - was a true psycho classic.

Revenant said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Balfegor said...

Re: Someonehastosayit:

You're kidding, right? Korea has one of the highest average IQs in the world.

Yes . . . a fact of which I am well aware, since I am, in fact, half-Korean, and we keep track of things like that. 우리 대한민국 만세! and all that. Our glorious Fatherland (along with several other East Asian populations) is also somewhat unusual in that Korean IQs tested high even in the 60's and 70's, despite widespread poverty and malnutrition.

All of that is irrelevant to the point I was making, though. People typically don't test properly until they've fully acclimated to the new culture/language, though. If you tried to administer an IQ test to me in Turkish, for example, I'm pretty sure I would score extremely low. Or even German, which I have some limited knowledge of.

tpceltus said...

I thought one of the children worked(works) for US Treasury. I always thought it was Rowan, esp. w/the Yale degree.

Ann Althouse said...

" I happened to read a passage in Patricia Bosworth's 2001 biography of Marlon Brando describing his first meeting with Maria Schneider, his co-star in "Last Tango in Paris." Brando very much liked staring contests (p. 196):"

I think Brando's tested IQ was 91.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

It could be that at some point very large genitalia make the rest of you looks small. A man could be self-conscious about that.
Similarly, being quite large overall can make a man's genitals seem small.
This is why actors in porn films tend to be short (or so I've read).


Other things can affect the perception of size. That hideous thing that women do to their bodies actually began among male porn stars, as it made them look bigger.
Of course most women are too clueless to realize that a shaved snapper is not a thing of beauty.

Peter

Freeman Hunt said...

"Wikipedia says Ronan Farrow was accepted at Yale Law School when he was 15, but didn't actually start there until he was 19."

A smart thing to have done in any case.

Anonymous said...

Blogger Badger Pundit said...

What, intelligent women don't engage in staring contests? A couple of hours before reading your post, I happened to read a passage in Patricia Bosworth's 2001 biography of Marlon Brando describing his first meeting with Maria Schneider, his co-star in "Last Tango in Paris." Brando very much liked staring contests (p. 196):

"The first day she was introduced to Brando . . . he sat with her in a cafe and, hoping to unsettle her, had a staring contest. 'Is it difficult for you to look someone in the eye for a long time?' he demanded.

'Sometimes,' she told him, staring back at him unwaveringly. He was so impressed he sent her flowers that evening . . . ."
--------------------------------

He should have sent her a tub of butter. If she already read the script of 'Last Tango' that would have made her blink.

Meade said...

He has his father's eyes.

William said...

Mia Farrow had four biological and nine adopted children. With the exception of Soon Yi, they all side with her. That's taken by some here as evidence of her manipulation and control freak behavior. Give me a break. I'm sure these kids have their share of tics and hang ups, but they've never been in trouble with law or involved in any scandal of their own making. I think it's fair to say that Mia has some parenting skills.......Woody Allen gives an example of how to behave with grace and class after getting caught fooling around with your girlfriend's daughter. Can you set the bar any lower than that?

Lydia said...

He has his father's eyes.

Or Grandpa's.

Joseph Blieu said...

The real tell is the shape of the swirls in the ear, the kid is really Frank's. The nose with the tiny ala (sides) also is the same. Several studies show that intelligence of male children is very dependent on the mother and maternal grandmother due to the fact that men get a single Y chrom from Mom. Girls get one each from Mom and Dad, so girls can get some split of Dad's intelligence.

Christy said...

Know what they call an Italian with an IQ of 160?


Jewish.


Ducking for cover now.

Joseph Blieu said...

The real tell is the shape of the swirls in the ear, the kid is really Frank's. The nose with the tiny ala (sides) also is the same. Several studies show that intelligence of male children is very dependent on the mother and maternal grandmother due to the fact that men get a single Y chrom from Mom. Girls get one each from Mom and Dad, so girls can get some split of Dad's intelligence.

William said...

Further thoughts on Mia and Frank and Ava and Woody. It's interesting to note that Mia made her bones with the two best known child molesters of the 20th century--Roman Polanski and Woody Allen. Sadly she was not around for Charley Chaplin.....Ava married Mickey Rooney then Frank Sinatra. Maybe she felt more comfortable with short men. Ditto with Mia. Maybe she was attracted to scrawny men. She had polio as a child and could bond with human frailty. Whatever Frank's positives as a lover she was only with him for a year. She lasted with Allen for twelve years......After a night with Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe reportedly said "he's ok, but he's no DiMaggio." DiMaggio was as famous for his equipment as for his skills in their use. Marilyn only lasted a year with Joe. Her marriage with Arthur Miller lasted far longer. Women are apparently far more impressed with a large vocabulary than a big penis but are ashamed to admit it. As well they should be. That's really bizarre.

ricpic said...

My guess is that Mia Farrow, once upon a time in the spotlight, is, in her old age present, suffering from attention deficit. Sad that she can't come to terms with that deficit and retain her dignity. But some can't.

ricpic said...

Know what they call an Italian with an IQ of 160?

Jewish.


I don't know about Italian Italians but having grown up in an Italian American neighborhood I can say with complete confidence that most very bright IA's downplay the brightness. It's a cultural thing.

Joseph Blieu said...

Enrico Fermi was not Jewish, and Italian, however his wife was. Galileo also. Italy only acts unintelligent.

Joseph Blieu said...

Enrico Fermi was not Jewish, and Italian, however his wife was. Galileo also. Italy only acts unintelligent.

Revenant said...

It's interesting to note that Mia made her bones with the two best known child molesters of the 20th century--Roman Polanski and Woody Allen.

Under the little-known rule that sex with a 19-year-old makes you a child molester? :)

Molly said...

I've read a theory that intelligence is in the x chromosome, so girls get some contribution from both mom and dad, but boys get it only from mom. By this theory, Frank's (or Woody's] intelligence is irrelevant in explaining why Ronan is so smart; we should be re-evaluating what we think of Mia's intelligence.

Molly said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lost My Cookies said...

I think most accomplished musicians have pretty high IQ's. Both of those guys are pretty accomplished musicians. I'm not super sure that IQ equals smarts, but if it does and you want some high IQ kids, have sex with any of my wife's friends. It seems that, despite all outward appearance, each of them has given birth to at least one SUPERGENIUS.

On the other hand, I recently became reacquainted with a childhood friend who was supposedly learning disabled to the point of near retardation. Short bus and all, and not dyslexic. Outside of school, you'd never know any of this. I saw him again for the first time in twenty years and found that he became a chef and now owns three restaurants and partners in two others.

I still eat paste.

Badger Pundit said...

Responding to my 3:22 p.m. observation that Marlo Brando enjoyed staring contests with intelligent women (unlike Sinatra, who hated him), Ann notes:

"I think Brando's tested IQ was 91."

Not that he's my hero or anything, but that data point doesn't seem to mean much. According to a Yahoo biographical sketch, the IQ test was administered at Shattuck Military Academy:
http://voices.yahoo.com/marlon-brando-godfather-american-actors-621438.html

There, as Patricia Bosworth's biography of Brando notes (pp. 9-11), Brando flunked his courses but excelled at thrilling his classmates, and dismaying administrators, with inventive pranks -- eventually he went too far and was expelled.

All one can say for sure is that Brando didn't take school very seriously. His native intelligence may have been very high -- indeed, his dad was an honor student at Shattuck. There are indications Brando may have been dyslexic, which could explain much. The Yahoo sketch states that Richard Burton "wrote in his diaries that Brando was, in fact, very highly intelligent, but tried to mask it."

Given that Brando was a genius actor, how could one concluded based on his behavior that he was of low intelligence?

For example, Brando was notorious for his supposed "inability to memorize" dialogue, and for ad libbing many scenes, but his "Last Tango in Paris" director concluded that "Marlon's forgetfulness was deliberate. He uses the sense of danger that comes from forgetting dialogue as a means of heightening his dramatic powers." (P. 189)

Harsh Pencil said...

Gomez: He has my father's eyes.
Morticia: Gomez, take those out of his mouth.

Anonymous said...

So don't we just need to measure Ronan's c**k?

Poppop said...

Farrow, n. a litter of pigs

look it up

catondan said...

Not sure intelligence is a trait which can be identified and passed on generation to generation. At best, our genetic makeup includes the grandparents and others as well . Even something like hair color does not pass on 100% from parent to child.
Additionally, an IQ test requires about 2-3 hours of one-to-one testing/scoring with a trained and licensed examiner, not a score on a group test. I suspect that the time and expense associated with the process would exclude most of us from ever having had one.
When I was growing up, people used to say things like this son is smarter than the other son or so-and-so female is brighter than her spouse. Probably based on nothing or on a school administered screening by the counselor.
Intelligence is really complicated, as witnessed by some here who think memorizing lyrics or directing movies or painting or making jokes are examples of it.

CarolMR said...

Marilyn Monroe may have been married less than a year to DiMaggio but, like Mia and Frank, they never really ended their relationship. And Marilyn and DiMaggio resumed their relationship openly after her divorce from Miller. Biographies of Monroe say that she and DiMaggio were together mainly for the sex because they had little else in common.

Carl said...

I think this is probably a futile quest, because you are failing to take into account base rates.

In this case, for example, it is probably more likely that an IQ 145 child has parents of relatively ordinary IQ 115 (from whom he deviates by two standard deviations) than that he has parents of IQ 145 (from whom he deviates not at all). That's because the lower probability of a greater deviation from the parents is probably swamped by the much higher probability of the lower IQ parents in the first place.

If this were not true, intelligence would not generally revert to the mean, and it does. Who was Einstein's father? Nobody in particular. Who is Einstein's grandson? Also nobody in particular. (He's an anesthesiologist in an LA cosmetic surgery joint.)

jonypolo said...

"You're figuring it in Euros. In dollars, it's much less."

Actually that is backwards. For example a 150 IQ in Euros is around 180 in dollars given typical exchange rates for the past twelve years.