An American Original
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Support for Criminal comes from Squarespace. If you're a business owner, you know that it matters how you present your business online. Squarespace has the tools you need to customize your website and advertise all the kinds of services you provide. Plus, you can choose the colors and fonts you like. Go to squarespace.com slash criminal for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use the offer code criminal to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Hi, it's Phoebe. Today, an episode that we originally made for our other show, This Is Love. Sometimes a story will come along, and we're not sure whether to make it for Criminal or This Is Love, because it could kind of go both ways.
This is one of those stories. We hope you like it. In 1963, Newsday published an article about an organization that thought animals should be wearing clothes, The headline was, Decency Counts. The article included a sewing pattern, boxer shorts for dog and horse. The pattern could also be used for cats, the writer noted, but with some minor adjustments. Quote, just ruffle the bottom and use a fancy print material. The New York Times wrote about this campaign, too, after people showed up and picketed in front of the White House. They wanted the First Lady, Jackie Kennedy, to put clothes on her horses. Jean Abel was one of the picketers.
We called it CINA, the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals.
Jean says that during the protest, she held up a sign that said, please put pants on macaroni. That was Caroline Kennedy's pony. He'd been a gift from Lyndon B. Johnson. Jean's husband, Alan Abel, was at the protest too. Picketing in D.C. had been Jean and Alan's idea. Actually, the whole thing had been their idea. CINA, the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals, was a prank that they'd been running for years.
How did you and Alan meet? Well, I came to New York looking for an acting career. I had already done summer stock and studied speech and acting in college, and it was my time to try my luck.
Jean saw a call for actresses in a newspaper.
What prompted Jeanne and Alan Abel to picket in front of the White House?
She answered the ad and ended up meeting Alan.
He seemed very nice. At this point, I'd only spent maybe a month or so in New York. I'd met with various agents, and they all seemed rather abrupt. They didn't want to spend more than five minutes getting to know you. But he took like 40 minutes. And I'm trying to figure out why he was being so nice and kind to me.
Alan was spending so much time talking to her because he was stalling. There was a man in the hallway waiting to talk to him about a prop tree he'd used for an off-Broadway play and never returned.
So he was being sued for that, a couple hundred bucks. So I didn't learn about, of course, the process or for quite some time after. But meantime, we got, you know, very chummy. What can I say? Jean and Alan were married within the year.
I'm Phoebe Judge, and this is love.
I can't say, you know, I fell for him immediately, but he certainly grew on me, that's for sure. He just had this, I don't know, I think a lot of it emanated from his father, who had a small general store in Coshocton, Ohio. And Alan was that kind of guy. He would engage waiters and waitresses in conversation. He would step outside the norm to be kind and to be... to find other people interesting. And I kind of liked that. I thought that was very... that was unlike many of the fellows you would meet, you know.
When Gene met Alan, he already knew what he wanted to do with his life. He just didn't know how he was going to do it.
I think the thing that started it all for him... When he went to Ohio State, he was giving the new freshmen some sort of pep talk or something. In the process, he fell off the stage. And he got laughs. They thought he was being funny. He actually fell off the stage without intent. But every time he rubbed his elbow or some other, you know, scratched his head or whatever, he got a laugh. And he liked laughter. He liked, he thought, huh.
It was a few years after that when Alan came up with the idea that it would be funny to tell people to put clothes on animals.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–2:34
2
What prompted Jeanne and Alan Abel to picket in front of the White House?
2:34–7:51
3
What was the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals (CINA)?
7:51–11:29
4
How did Jean and Alan meet and start their journey together?
11:29–27:24
5
What inspired Alan Abel's idea to clothe animals?
27:24–33:41