Eric Cartwright (Hoss’s real name)
Eleanor Rigby
Making headlines today (and more tomorrow) is Gavin Newsom, who does the usual ‘celebrity’ stuff — a guest on Jimmy Kimmel’s show, and on Stephen Colbert’s; and on Last Call With Carson Daly, when he isn’t a Real Time With Bill Maher panelist; and he does Good Morning America, and Meet The Press, and so on — but, of course, all of that is because he used to be the Mayor of San Francisco, and then he became the Lieutenant Governor of California; and he’s now the front-runner in the race for the Governor’s Mansion, and speculation abounds as to what comes next.
Enos Slaughter scored the winning run in the 1946 World Series; and if you ask why the ten-time All-Star hadn’t managed to do the same a year earlier, it’s because, hey, WWII; and the year before that, same story; and the year before that, too; but back before that, he was already an All-Star who’d already picked up a World Series ring. And he later earned a third and fourth World Series ring, which helps explain why the guy who repeatedly led the league in triples is in the Hall of Fame.
First Ladies of the US edition:
Louisa Adams
Margaret Taylor
Eleanor Roosevelt
Head of State of France: Philippe Pétain, who before WWII was a war hero and after WWII got convicted of treason and sentenced to death.
The Ultimate Stuntman: A Tribute To Dar Robinson touted the guy who was listed as highest paid stuntman for a single stunt to date in the 1988 Guinness Book of Records and broke 19 world records and set 21 “world’s firsts.” Go look at a Steve McQueen movie, a Clint Eastwood movie, a Burt Reynolds movie, a Sylvester Stallone movie, and there he is; Richard Donner’s dedication in the closing credits of Lethal Weapon reads, “This picture is dedicated to the memory of Dar Robinson / one of the motion picture industry’s greatest stuntmen”.
(By the by, one of his The Tonight Show appearances with Johnny Carson sparked a lawsuit of the Don’t-Try-This-At-Home variety; you can read about it here.)
After his Emmy nomination for I Know My First Name Is Steven, Corin Nemec spent three years in prime time as the star of Parker Lewis Can’t Lose.
Buster Keaton was Steamboat Bill, Jr — but Ernest Torrence was, y’know, his dad, Steamboat Bill. That was kind of his thing, see: Torrence would play Moriarty in a Sherlock Holmes movie, and Captain Hook in a Peter Pan movie, and so on.
And a lot of times he got billed third, after the leading man and the leading lady: that was the case in Across To Singapore, with Ramon Novarro and Joan Crawford; same idea with how I Cover The Waterfront featured Claudette Colbert, and with how Fighting Caravans featured Gary Cooper. But for all that he got top billing in a number of flicks, and earned his star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.
Lynn Nottage was the first (and remains the only) woman to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice; the first in 2009 for Ruined, and the second in 2017 for Sweat. And those both came after the award-winning Intimate Apparel.
Malcolm McLaren presumably deserves mention.
Michael Learned (female actor)
Putting it like that, Evalyn Knapp was so iconic a female actor as to be top-billed in The Perils Of Pauline, where kidnappers and shark-infested waters and various other cliffhangers await the intrepid daughter of a professor who’d researched the ancient Egyptian discovery that’s of great interest to a villainous Asian warlord!
(That was before Knapp got top billing over Chick Chandler in Three Of A Kind, but after she got top billing over John Wayne in His Private Secretary. Granted, she did plenty of pictures where she got billed second to the male lead — Confidential and The Night Mayor and In Old Santa Fe — but she got top billing in lots of other stuff, from Air Hostess to Bachelor Mother to Corruption.)
(And, yes, Knapp was only third-billed in Smart Money; but on the one hand, that was Jimmy Cagney and Edward G. Robinson, and that’s pretty great; and on the other, she could then turn around and get top billing in Slightly Married.)
Andrew Wodehouse (Rosemary’s Baby)
Also in that one: Phil Leeds, king of the “Hey It’s That Guy” guys. Did tons of stuff in the movies and on television, with plenty of recurring roles for the latter.
Award-winning casting director Juliet Taylor has done her thing in 15 films that were up for Best Picture: she did it with The Exorcist, and Taxi Driver, and Network; and then came the year when Annie Hall was up against Julia and The Turning Point and she’d done all three of those; and then, after Terms of Endearment and The Mission and The Killing Fields and Hannah and Her Sisters, came the year when Working Girl was up against Dangerous Liaisons and Mississippi Burning and she’d done all three of those; and she then did everything from Schindler’s List to Midnight in Paris.
(And the stuff she’s done that wasn’t up for Best Picture? The Stepford Wives! Big! Arthur! Close Encounters Of The Third Kind! Sleepless In Seattle! The Birdcage!)
Esther Ralston was a silent-movie star who got top billing in a number of films in the ’20s, with Figures Don’t Lie and The American Venus and Sawdust Paradise and even Half A Bride, where second billing went to young Gary Cooper.
And she kept at it with talkies in the ’30s: if it’s a comedy where Basil Rathbone is either trying to seduce an diplomat’s wife or accidentally making a play for the maid, you can bet that he only gets second billing while she’s on top; and if it’s a western with Randolph Scott — well, granted, that’s his wheelhouse and she’ll only manage to get second billing as the leading lady; but, still, that was between her top-billed roles in Rome Express and Shadows of the Orient, y’know?
3-time Olympic champ, and 4-time Wimbledon champ, Reginald Doherty.
Daryle Lamonica - AFL and NFL quarterback known as “The Mad Bomber”
Luke Kuechly may not have a cool nickname, but he leads the NFL in tackles (based on press box stats) since 2012 with 818 and leads linebackers with 15 interceptions and 22 total takeaways. (And as that link adds, he’s just now been named “No. 12 overall on the NFL Network’s presentation of ‘The Top 100 Players of 2018.’ Kuechly is expected to be the top linebacker on the list (the top 10 overall will be revealed next Tuesday) and is in the top 20 overall for the fifth consecutive season. He’s been on the list every year he’s been eligible since being selected in the first round of the 2012 NFL Draft, standing as the lone linebacker on all of those six countdowns.”)