Talk:Wilson Mizner

Date of Birth
The 1893 date given originally could not possibly be correct: he would have been 16 when his first broadway play was produced, and 12 when first married to 80 year old Ms. Yerkes (the article claimed he was 29 at the time of his marriage, which is consistent with the corrected date). ubiquity 03:48, 18 June 2006 (UTC)ubiquity
 * Yes, it's right now. (1893 was the year of his father's death). =- Nunh-huh 08:19, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

It's an old canard that Mary Yerkes was in her seventies or eighties when she wed Mizner. Actually she was around 47. She had married Yerkes in 1881. She was born around 1858.
 * Indeed. I've added a cautionary note so it doesn't get changed back. - Nunh-huh 04:00, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Quotations
If you change the text of one of the quotations, please provide a definitive citation. Mizner's quotations are popular, and not usually based on a work of literature, so it's easy for them to get corrupted. Also, it would be nice if the quotations we have here match the text of the ones in Wikiquote, even when unsourced. --ubiquity 22:44, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

He and his brother had the same name?
Wilson ("Bill") Mizner was born in Benicia, California, one of eight children including brothers William, Edgar, Murray, Wilson, Addison, Henry, and Lansing —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Special:Contributions/ (talk)

I fixed it. Eight is correct. There was also a sister. GroveGuy (talk) 06:59, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Category fraudster
I removed the category American Fraudsters. Being a fraud involves work. Wilson was proud of his ability to avoid work. He was never convicted of any crime. GroveGuy (talk) 04:52, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Was he really that bad?
I just finished reading 'The Many Mizners' by his brother Addison Mizner. Now, I realize the brother might not be so trustworthy, trying to rehabilitate their names, but some other sources also paint Addison Mizner in a better light. (I'm generally more familiar with Addison than Wilson.) Some of the sources cited for the Wilson article have egregious mistakes. For example the "School For Scoundrels" source says he married "the 80-year old Mrs Yerkes". She died in her 50s and was only 19 years older than Mizner. According to "The Many Mizners", when Wilson married her, there were a lot of people out for her money, and they libeled Wilson Mizner as part of their schemes. One person approached Addison saying he was friend trying to help. Addison told the guy the only thing Wilson had ever done was kill a woman in Hawaii. Within hours, an acquaintance was calling him telling him about how Wilson had killed a woman in Hawaii. Addison assured her Wilson had never even been to Hawaii, so much for the 'friend'. Anyway, I suspect a lot of these sources were just picking up legends about Wilson, and Wilson himself may have encouraged some of them. Even Addison admits he wasn't above conning people, even if just for fun. Kashikom (talk) 04:25, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

Inconsistent quotation
• In ‘Life’: “If you copy from one author, it's plagiarism. If you copy from two, it's research.” • In ‘Famous quotes’: “Stealing from one is plagiarism, stealing from many is research”.

Which, if either, is correct? JDAWiseman (talk) 12:07, 9 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Many of Mizner's most famous quotations did not come from his writings, but from conversations with other people. I imagine that he probably said the same thing in different ways at different times, which (along with imperfect memories on the part of his listeners) could account for different versions of the same quotation. That said:
 * This page alleges, with a citation, that the correct quotation is “When you take stuff from one writer it’s plagiarism, but when you take from many writers it’s called research.” I don't think Mizner would have used the word "stuff" in this context, so I tend to doubt this.
 * This page has "When you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research." They cite Bartlett's, 1992, p. 631, which I verified, but Bartlett's itself doesn't give a source. However, the quote also appears in Alva Johnston's The Legendary Mizners (1953, Farrar Straus and Young, New York, chapter 4, p 66). I think this is one correct version of the quotation. It is similar to the one in Famous Quotes, though not identical.
 * Mizner's Wikiquote page has "If you copy from one author, it's plagiarism. If you copy from two, it's research," with a different citation (Stuart B. McIver, Dreamers, Schemers and Scalawags, Pineapple Press, Sarasota, Florida, 1994. ISBN 1-56164-034-4). I am pretty sure I had this book out of the library when I originally recorded the quote in Wikiquote (15 September 2006‎). I think this is another correct version of the quotation.
 * I think we should leave the quote alone in "Life" (since it matches the WQ version, and at least one reliable source) and remove the version in the famous quotes section. I will do this immediately.
 * I also think we should remove the Famous Quotes section entirely, since there's already a link to Wikiquote, which contains all these quotes and more. Any consensus? ubiquity (talk) 13:54, 9 June 2016 (UTC)


 * An answer both knowledgeable and swift: very good. And I have no objections to your proposals. JDAWiseman (talk) 14:04, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Wilson Mizner
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Wilson Mizner's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "Vickers": From Addison Mizner:  From Lansing B. Mizner:  

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 15:20, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

External links modified (January 2018)
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