Template:Did you know nominations/LeRoy Prinz

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by — Maile (talk) 01:04, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

LeRoy Prinz

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... ~~that LeRoy Prinz, who choreographed dozens of Hollywood films from 1929 to 1958, was a pilot with air ace Eddie Rickenbacker during World War I?~~

Created by Coretheapple (talk). Self nominated at 04:26, 13 February 2014 (UTC).

Please note that a PD image was obtained after I nominated this.[1] I wasn't sure how to add this to the nomination. Coretheapple (talk) 14:24, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Article size okay and article creation date okay; policy considerations look okay in general. Hook length is okay and hook interest is nominally okay. As for the image, it doesn't show Prinz well enough be suitable for DYK purposes anyway. But, my reservation about the hook is this: Prinz is already established as telling tall tales about himself, and the one thing that people tend to fabricate more than anything is their war record. Given the amount of attention the air war of WWI has received and in particular Rickenbacker's unit, there should be some independent evidence in military histories that Prinz really was a pilot and really flew with Rickenbacker, and those should be the sources the article is using to support this statement going up on the main page. Currently this is just sourced to profiles of Prinz by entertainment writers, and I don't think that's good enough in this case. Wasted Time R (talk) 13:09, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

I agree with you 100%. I actually only used this because it was mentioned by reliable sources in his obituaries. However, I agree that a higher standard of sourcing than newspaper obits should be used, and amazing as it may seem he actually is mentioned in authoritative sources! I'll dig them up and get back to you shortly. Coretheapple (talk) 17:48, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

A Google Books search[2] of "leroy prinz" and "rickenbacker" yielded the following: Navy Air Pilot and Military Aeronautic Review, Volume 4, dated 1918, with "Leroy J. Prinz" included on a list of army officers transferred to the air service [3]; Cecil B. DeMille's memoirs have him, Rickenbacker and Carl Spaatz sponsoring him for membership in the Wings Club, composed of aviation pioneers[4]; "Leroy Prinz of the 27th" is mentioned in passing in American Aviation Historical Society Journal[5]; and in "Wings of honor, American airmen in World War I" he is part of a long list as being a member of the "27th P.S.," along with what appears to be his date of service.[6]. Now, the 27th P.S. reference would seem to contradict his saying he was with The 94th (Rickenbacker). However, this blog post in an aviation message board says he transferred from the 27th to the 94th and gives more details as well as a source, " Harold Hartney's book, UP AND AT 'EM." The book is not online anywhere. So, taken all together with the various obits and articles during his lifetime, and also considering that Rickenbacker lived till 1973 and never contradicted Prinz's claim, I think the claim holds water. Coretheapple (talk) 19:40, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Hmm. I'm not trying to be difficult, but I'm not a big fan of drawing conclusions from Google Books snippets. It's too easy to imagine context that turns out to be something else when you actually read the real book – I've made this mistake myself in the past. No academic setting would ever accept use of snippets; they would say, find the book in a library and read it. To your particular findings: The Navy Air Pilot and Military Aeronautic Review snippet shows he was transferred from the army to the air service, but the issue is dated November 1918 so the timeframe is unclear. The DeMille memoirs have little value here – we already know how Prinz represented himself in Hollywood. The American Aviation Historical Society Journal bit was written in 1972 and is quoting Prinz on his own experiences, so also little value. The Wings of Honor, American Airmen in World War I entry is the kind of thing I'm looking for, but it places him only in the 27th and says he was part of "Orly test", which from looking around was an Aircraft Acceptance Park for final staging and checkout of delivered aircraft before going to the front. What exactly those dates mean is unclear from the snippet. The blog post might be from someone who knows what they are talking about or it might not. The Hartney book is a memoir by a WWI pilot, and thus potentially a good source if it really gives more facts on Prinz. You can buy it used online for less than $10 or there's a decent chance you can get it from your local library via inter-library loan. But from what you have right now, all I'm prepared to believe is that Prinz was in France, in the 27th, and stationed at that Orly facility for at least some of the time. I'm not prepared to believe anything about Rickenbacker yet. What you say about Prinz's claims not being contradicted doesn't hold much sway for me; since Prinz was known as a fabulist, the people around him might have long since given up correcting his tales. Wasted Time R (talk) 12:27, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, I see your point on all this. Maybe we should just go with an alternate hook? Coretheapple (talk) 16:03, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

How about this:

ALT1 ... that LeRoy Prinz, who choreographed dozens of Hollywood films from 1929 to 1958, cultivated a swashbuckling off-screen image that one journalist likened to Errol Flynn?

I agree that it's probably best to change the hook at this point. But regardless of that, the article still has to be modified to put him in the 27th and mention his Orly duty, using Wings of Honor, American Airmen in World War I as a new source. Those can be stated as facts, while you can move the Rickenbacker mention into the "Prinz told journalists ..." sentence, where things are stated as claims. As for the ALT1 hook, I don't think that's exactly the meaning of the quote. (Despite my being a NYT subscriber and having full digital access, I can't find this 1945 story in their online archives ... where did you manage to get it from?) The quote is saying that Prinz's purported back history read like a plot in an Errol Flynn movie, not that Prinz the choreographer tried to emulate Flynn's style. I would suggest coming up with a hook that is about Prinz's choreography or choreographic style, which after all is the central subject of the article. Wasted Time R (talk) 12:27, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

OK, I'll make those modifications to the article. How about this for a hook? It's directly cited in the article, and also is consistent with what others (such as Cole) said about him. Coretheapple (talk) 14:30, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Did another search on the book Wings of Honor[7] and found that it actually does put him in the 94th too. See p. 134. That seems to substantiate his claim about flying with Rickenbacker. So what do you think? I wonder if maybe we can go with the original hook after all, though I think Alt2 might work too. The book has him in the 94th from late November 1917 to early June 1918, if I am reading the snippet correctly. Coretheapple (talk) 15:25, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

ALT2 ... that LeRoy Prinz, who staged dances in dozens of Hollywood movies in the 1930s and 1940s, was more an "idea man" than a choreographer, using simple steps and dance routines?

Have I mentioned that I really don't like snippets? :-) These can't exactly be dates of service, since they seem to go no further than the armistice, when obviously pilots would have still been in their units for some time after that (the article on the 27th says most of them were demobilized in March 1919). And why does Prinz's end on November 7, four days short of the armistice? Is that when he got wounded like he says? Except that if you do a search for "Wounded", you find many entries show that, but Prinz's doesn't. But anyway, you are right that this does demonstrate he was in the 94th, and you can add this as sourced to the article.

As for which hook to use, I leave that up to you. Or sometimes the DYK promoter decides.

There are also some MOS issues I've spotted. These are not required to be fixed for DYK, but since you have the article up for GAN, you might as well do it now anyway:

* You should paraphrase or rework the lead quote to get the Errol Flynn link out of it (see MOS:QUOTE#Linking).

* There should not be spaces before footnotes (4 and 10 have this right now).

* The link to Hermes Pan needs to be disambiguated.

* The image captions in the article body should end with a period, since they are full sentences (see WP:CAPTION#Formatting and punctuation).

* The references can be put in two columns ({{reflist|2}} is the simplest way).

* You have cases like "pp. E23" which should be "p. E23" since it's a single page (use page= instead of pages= in the cite template).

* You have months abbreviated in cites, such as "Sept. 20, 1983"; they should all be spelled out.

* You use both mdy and dmy order in dates; one should be used consistently, mdy in this case because it's an American subject.

* You should create a redirect of "Leroy Prinz" to this article, since some sources capitalize it that way.

But I should say that all in all, it's a good article and interesting article, these points I've raised notwithstanding. Wasted Time R (talk) 12:03, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Well thanks, and I'll definitely put in those fixes and additional WWI reference. I'm already going through GA on another article (which this one sprang from actually). Grueling! But a very good experience, quite a challenge, and I'm enjoying it. As for the hook on this, all three are OK with me, but I think I'll stick with the first one now, since we've put in so much work on it and there's no real doubt as to its truth. But either of the other two are OK too. Coretheapple (talk) 15:08, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Oh by the way, in your fixes, re "pp": I have to have to watch out for that. It's a Provelt bug. Coretheapple (talk) 15:33, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

I did a couple of fixups myself, and you still have to make the date order consistent, but we are good to go for DYK. I struck out ALT1 because I don't think that's quite accurate, but either of the other two hooks is okay with me. Wasted Time R (talk) 13:41, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Great. Thanks for your help. I'll fix the date order. Been a bit sidelined lately. Coretheapple (talk) 15:51, 1 March 2014 (UTC)