[5] The story behind the break-up is more like an American soap opera than history. The more sordid--and unsubstantiated--details were shared by Blanche Lapin in her book Les Deux Jakes (Boragora: Singe D'Or 1992), who relied on interviews with extended family regarding letters from Daisy Cutter to her family. The whole story is best told by the report provided in 1901 to Jacob's father by the private detectives he hired to find Jacob. Unfortunately, my copy of the original report (along with other documents studied in preparing this article) has been temporarily misplaced in my recent, unanticipated move from the Seiber Islands to the Marivellas.
[6] Potter nee Lizardo was "asked" to leave the Marivellas when he included in his performance the act "The Diasappearing Aviatrix".
[7] Blanche Lapin
in her book Les Deux Jakes (Boragora: Singe D'Or 1992)
claims that shortly before Jake's birth she wrote her twin
sister
a bitter letter which stated something to the effect that she
had been taken advantage of by "two Jakes". Lapin claims
that this phrase inspired the title of her book. (She probably
also claims that she is not a Jack Nicholson fan.) Her claimed
source for this information was a telephonic interview with her
twin sister's granddaughter-in-law Lucy Lizardo in 1992.
I personally visited Luciella Lizardo at her home in Grover's
Mill,
New Jersey last year. Among the many questions I asked during
our lengthy conversation was if she had, in fact, told this to
Lapin. Mrs Lizardo--who recently retired as Chief Etymologist
with a (there) local teaching hospital--answered that what she
had actually said to Lapin was that the letter stated something
to the effect that "she had been taken advantage of by two
jerks." In response to my question as to whether the word
"jerks" was, in fact, in the letter, she replied that
she did not think so and confirmed this rather quickly on the
Internet, which
indicated
that the term "jerk" probably originated in
the 1930's. [Dead Link, see WAYBACK
MACHINE] Informed that Lapin had quoted her
as saying "two
Jakes" and not "two jerks", Mrs Lizardo was quick
to add that the connection with Lapin was not of a high quality.
Since Lapin's native language is French, not English, it is easy
to conclude that she misunderstood what Mrs Lizardo said.
Unfortunately,
my copy of my notes of the interview (along with other documents
studied in preparing this article) has been temporarily
misplaced
in my recent, unanticipated move from the Seiber Islands to the
Marivellas.
[8] In any event, I personally suspect that Winston Wolf arranged to have the document altered to eliminate any unnecesary information which could lead back to his client's son.
[9] Dr Husila Specht, Curator of the Cutter Air Museum, has assured me that a full accounting of the contents of this trunk will be made public in the near future.