Mike Karakas made it into hockey’s Hall of Fame for a couple of reasons: in part by earning the Calder Memorial Trophy in his own right, and in part by being part of a team that won the Calder Cup.
I mention this to note that the Hall of Fame of course also honors the guy both of those awards are named for: Frank Calder, the first president of the NHL.
Cyberpunk author Bruce Sterling — the “Mirrorshades” guy — won the Hugo Award, and then won another Hugo Award, and otherwise got his name out there until TIME hailed him as “one of America’s best-known science-fiction writers and perhaps the sharpest observer of our media-choked culture working today in any genre.”
Competing for the United States in ‘36, hurdler Forrest Towns broke the world record in the course of winning Olympic gold in Berlin. (It wasn’t the only time he broke the world record, but it was surely the most memorable.)
Carol Lawrence earned herself a Tony nomination for originating the role of Maria in WEST SIDE STORY, and then did plenty of staying-in-the-public-eye stuff: a whole lot of singing on THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW, and doing a KISS ME KATE production alongside husband Robert Goulet, and the whole celebrity-circuit thing with MATCH GAME and HOLLYWOOD SQUARES and WHAT’S MY LINE and so on: be it Dean Martin’s show, or Joey Bishop’s, or Bob Hope’s, or Johnny Carson’s, or whatever.
Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, is my point.
A number of Avril Lavigne’s albums have gone multiplatinum, sure as she’s of course put out a double-digit number of Top 40 hits — including Girlfriend, which of course hit #1. (And her next album is on its way; she was just debuting a song from it on an episode of Jimmy Kimmel’s show, hit it out of the park.)
Wilfried Dietrich repeatedly topped out at silver in Greco-Roman but won gold in Freestyle, which makes it pretty easy to see why he holds the all-time record for Olympic medals as a wrestler. (Also easy to see: this clip, which is probably the closest thing to a pro wrestling finish at the Olympics that I can recall.)
A whole lot of stuff has gotten named after explorer Jacques Cartier.
Emmanuel Lubezki recently earned the cinematography Oscar, for The Revenant. And the year before that, Lubezki likewise earned the Oscar for Birdman. And the year before that, Lubezki likewise earned the Oscar for Gravity.
Oh, he’d gotten plenty of Oscar nominations before that: lush outdoorsy stuff for Terrence Malick, and dark gothic stuff for Tim Burton, and so on, when he wasn’t busy doing comedies like The Birdcage or Burn After Reading. But three straight cinematography wins? Nobody else has ever managed that.
Super Bowl MVP, and Pro Football Hall of Famer, Richard Dent
Hence the city of Lomonosov, and the lunar crater Lomonosov, and so on from the Lomonosov State University of Moscow to the Lomonosov Gold Medal…
Celebrated and prolific architect Christopher Wren: face on the currency, sure; but: “Reader, if you seek his monument – look around you.”
Bethel Leslie’s name-on-the-movie-poster acting is probably overshadowed by her Emmy-nominated acting on TV and her Tony-nominated acting on Broadway.
Fred Dean set the sacks-in-a-single-game record during an NFL career that earned him a number of Super Bowl rings and a spot in the Hall of Fame.
Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway, doesn’t count.
Didja know, though, that the Segway’s patent renderings got drawn by his father, award-winning comic-book artist (Tales from the Crypt, MAD Magazine, Creepshow, Brenda Starr, Vault of Horror, Blue Beetle, and so on) Jack Kamen?
The philosopher Donald Davidson won the Jean Nicod Prize, but rather than dwell on Donald Davidson let me go on a bit about Jean Nicod: “In his best known work, he showed that the classical propositional calculus could be derived from one axiom and one rule, both expressed using the Sheffer stroke. He also proposed the Nicod’s axiom and developed Nicod’s criterion.”
Christopher Rich did leading-man work as Prince Charming and Archie Andrews, but it’s maybe the six seasons he spent as Reba McEntire’s no-good ex on Reba — or his stint as Miller Redfield, on Murphy Brown; or his recurring role as simple country lawyer (or IS he?) Melvin Palmer, on Boston Legal — that’s more memorable.
Tom McCarthy may have only gotten an Oscar nomination for directing SPOTLIGHT; but he won an Oscar for writing it, sure as it won the Oscar for Best Picture. And he’s been busy since then, with that CHRISTOPHER ROBIN movie earlier this year and that NUTCRACKER movie later this year (and, next year, he’s apparently got Russell Crowe playing Roger Ailes in THE LOUDEST VOICE IN THE ROOM).
Harvey Lembeck’s kid, Michael Lembeck, was Kaptain Kool on television before he was top billed on the big screen in GORP — and got second-billed to Margaret Colin in the short-lived FOLEY SQUARE, but had a good long run on ONE DAY AT A TIME as the male flight attendant who winds up marrying Julie — and otherwise bounced around from job to job to job to job to another until he picked up an Emmy.
And he was Peter Falk’s son in THE IN-LAWS, so I can’t say a word against him.
Frederick Copleston famously debated the existence of God with Bertrand Russell for the BBC, and then turned around and debated logical positivism with AJ Ayer the next year; and, after completing his eleven-volume HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, was made a Commander of the British Empire.