Really? Why?
Because nobody would know that today. We’ve been dumbed down.
I thought the Maxwell went to a wartime scrap drive.
You don’t think there are things we would know today that nobody would have known in 1950? Or conversely, things that people in 1890 would have known that people in 1950 would have not? I grew up in a time when we spent weeks in elementary school learning how to do multiplication of Roman numerals. Believe me, I don’t think that students who didn’t learn that have been dumbed down. In fact, all who went through that had to have been made measurably stupider by the experience.
You can’t expect everyone to know everything, and the identity of some woman whose primary claim to fame was that she was married to Napoleon I for less than a decade is a good fact not to have to carry around in your head.
I got the joke because by coincidence I was watching a collection of Jack Benny shows, and one had him and Bob Hope doing a sketch where they were big game hunters, and they came in carrying a tiger.
Jack: Say Clyde- There’s one thing I don’t understand.
Bob: What’s that?
Jack: Well, we’re in Africa.
Bob: Yeah…
Jack: Well there are no tigers in Africa?
Bob: Are you sure?
Jack: Yeah!
(Bob swings the tiger around to reveal leopard spots on the other side)
Jack: He must have gone to a veterinarian in Denmark!
Bob: I wondered why he had his hand on his hip when I shot him…
Hell, even Louis Farrakhan was hip to it. Surely we’re smarter than he is.
from 37 Jack Buys the Maxwell
from 40 Jack Tries to Trade in the Maxwell
from 42 Jack Gives the Maxwell for Scrap
from 49 Jack Decides to Trade in the Maxwell
from 50 The Maxwell Is Stolen
from 55 Renting the Maxwell to a Movie Studio
The Maxwell was given to a scrap drive- and the writers missed it and brought it back later hoping nobody would notice. Which was easier to do back then, with no reruns to speak of.
Or people didn’t obsess about continuity for comedy shows. One of those.
Given the state of the Maxwell, one can assume that Jack got it back when it was rejected for whatever use it was sold for and just appeared on his front lawn in the middle of the night.
Oh, I don’t really think so. Knowing about Josephine doesn’t necessarily indicate any great depth of historical knowledge. People knew about her then (as I’m pretty sure they do now) largely from references in popular culture – like the Jack Benny show, for instance.
Everyone knew who Josephine was, inasmuch as they knew she was the wife of Napoleon. Napoleon being that short French emperor with the bicorn hat who stuck one hand into his waistcoat and said “Not tonight, Josephine”, and then got defeated at Waterloo.
It’s the equivalent of everyone knowing who William Wallace was, since Braveheart came out.
That’s what happened when the Maxwell was stolen- while Jack and Rochester were at the police station reporting it stolen, they got a call that the thieves had brought it back and left it at Jack’s house!