Share true trivia you find interesting about famous people of your choosing

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
81

I love a scene in the movie COBB in which Al Stump finally insists that the obnoxious/ornery/halfway-to-barking-mad/halfway-past-barking-mad/racist/sexist/classist/bitter old Ty Cobb (Tommy Lee Jones) “say just one… ONE!.. thing complimentary about Babe Ruth!” (Until this point Cobb’s only badmouthed him and talked about how overrated he is.)

Cobb complies: “Well… for a fatass he didn’t run too bad.”

If you haven’t seen the movie COBB it’s well worth a look as a character study even if you’re not into baseball (I’m not at all). It’s based on the book that Al Stump wrote after writing Cobb’s official/authorized biography (over which Cobb, a near psychopath but a brilliant businessman, had managed to get complete editorial control). The official bio of course showed him as a great ballplayer and ladies man and philanthropist and business leader, while the unofficial but much more accurate showed him as a mean, violent, thoroughly selfish, evil old prick of whom even Stump, who was fully grown and nationally famous, was frequently physically afraid (due to Cobb’s ever present sidearms). Most surprising are the revelations that Cobb, who was not a harmless old curmudgeon, did have a soft side.

82

You think you’ve had a bad day? Then think about Teddy Roosevelt.

His first wife Alice, and his mother died a few hours apart, on the same day, Valentine’s Day, February 14, 1884. Mom died of typhoid, wife died due to complications following the birth of her daughter. Teddy, arriving home, was greeted by his brother “This house is cursed.”

83

Actually, Cobb’s official bio was not just a puff piece. Sure it stayed away from some subjects, but Cobb made it quite clear that, as a ballplayer, he wasn’t interested in being nice to the other guys. He also talked about how he could have done much better as a businessman, lamenting lost opportunities.

Also, many of his claims were backed up by independent evidence. It was somewhat sanitized, but Stump’s later biography didn’t really contradict anything important (though it did delve into Cobb’s psychology).

84

Not too long after his brother Elliot (Eleanor’s father) went insane, literally having to be taken away from his home in a straight jacket. Contemporary article.
Most biographers say the final blow for TR and the one that did him in was the death of his son Quentin in WW1 (possibly murdered after being shot down). TR’s health was already poor and most biographers believe that Quentin’s death was when he gave up the ghost. In any event he died six months later. me as teddy

85

Assorted stuff about Civil War figures:

Joe Wheeler was born in Augusta, Georgia. Both of his parents were New England Yankees (complete with Puritan pedigrees) who moved to Georgia a few years before his birth, and from the time he was 6 (when his mother died) he was raised in Connecticut, then Massachusetts, then moving to Brooklyn in his teens and remaing there until going to West Point. After West Point (where he graduated near the bottom of his class, in part because he flunked his cavalry courses) he taught at a school in Pennsylvania for a while, then was commissioned a lieutenant guarding freight shipments to and from Kansas/New Mexico. So… by 1861 he was 25 years old, had lived 19 years in the north and the west, had no southern ancestry, owned no slaves, and had only been to Georgia on occasional visits to his father, yet he resigned his commission and joined the Confederate infantry. Because he was a Westpointer (about which fellow WP man Jeff Davis was very snobbish) he was raised to major, then colonel, and then (in spite of failing cavalry tactics and being only a so-so rider) he was given command of a cavalry brigade, and eventually raised to head of all cavalry in the Army of Tennessee. (How good he was is a matter of some debate, but it’s safe to say he wasn’t the best cavalry general of the war but neither was he a gross incompetent- technically he wasn’t cavalry at all but dragoon as he preferred to fight dismounted, but Wheeler’s Cavalry Corps was how his unit was referred to always.)
Wheeler’s most famous feat during the war may be his escape from certain Union capture at the evacuation of Shelbyville, TN, when- during a terrible rainstorm- surrounded on three sides and with the Duck River behind- he charged his horse into the flooding River, jumping about 15 feet from the bank. By the time he got to the other side of the river, holding onto his horse’s tail and almost drowned (he was a tiny man- about 5’2 or 5’3 and under 100 lbs) the Union soldiers had stopped shooting at him and were shooting salutes into the air at what they considered one hell of an impressive feat. (Several members of his cavalry also jumped into the river that night- some were killed, some captured, some drowned, and a minority made it to the rebel side along with Wheeler.)
After the war Wheeler married an Alabama heiress/widow he met during the war (long story there), settled on her plantation, and entered politics. During the Spanish War Teddy Roosevelt, a lifelong admirer of Wheeler’s (he’d met him several times) convinced him to come to Cuba where Wheeler became the only Confederate general to be commissioned a general in the postwar U.S. armed forces (Brigadier General/U.S. Volunteer Cavalry). He suffered from disease in Cuba but, reverting to his wartime “do or die” training (when he saw battle for 40 days straight and none of it with a full stomach) he came off his sickbed to charge up San Juan Hill. Perhaps it was the fever or perhaps it was age or perhaps it was just force of habit, but firsthand accounts attest that when the Spanish were routed Wheeler yelled out to his men “C’mon boys! We got the damned Yankees on the run!”

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Wheeler’s commanding general during the Civil War, Braxton Bragg- Commanding Officer of the Army of the Tennessee, makes all Top 10 lists of “worst generals of the Civil War” and sometakes takes the Number 1 spot. Like Wheeler he graduated West Point, unlike Wheeler he graduated near the top of his class, and he wrote textbooks on tactics and requisitioning and various forms of military management, plus he served with distinction and bravery and honor in the Mexican War. Unfortunately he was absolutely insane.
How crazy was he? Well, more than a decade before the civil war he commanded a fort in Nebraska, where his quartermaster pretty much said “discharge me, court martial me, throw me in the brig, I don’t care, I cannot work for you” (possibly the first but far far far from the last person to say this of Bragg), at which time Bragg took over the quartermaster duties as well as command of the fort. As quartermaster he wrote requisition orders to the fort commander, which as fort commander he rejected. As quartermaster he wrote nasty letters explaining the urgency of the need to the commander, which as commander he replied to just as bluntly- in writing- and rejected again. As quartermaster, fed up with himself as commander, he wrote a letter to his (as commander’s) superior officer appealing the denial of supplies, to which his superior, aware of Bragg’s reputation, wrote back "“My God, Mr. Bragg, you have quarreled with every officer in the army, and now you are quarreling with yourself!”
Nevertheless he was given command of the most important fighting force south of General Lee. Total disaster. He was absolutely incapable of making a decision, being at all decisive, or getting along with anybody. (Nathan Forrest literally, in front of witnesses, told him that if he ever interfered with his cavalry again he was going to kill him- not surprisingly Bragg did nothing about the insubordination or threat, and surprisingly Forrest was basically cut loose by Davis and given a pretty much independent command.)
He was so hated that almost every member of his general staff- Wheeler the exception- signed a petition to Richmond saying ‘GET RID OF THIS MAN AT ONCE!’ Bragg himself agreed and offered his resignation! Davis refused to accept it, even after an inspection tour of Confederate HQ near Chattanooga showed that the disaster was verified. (Among other things the rebels should easily have been able to crush the besieged Union troops in Chatanooga, just as they could after the battle of Chickamauga (a Confederate victory but only because the Union general committed one of the war’s greatest blunders, and one that Bragg completely failed to follow up on in spite of urging from ALL of his general staff), but Bragg refused to act, then sent away his entire cavalry on a suicidal mission when he needed them most.
Bragg’s refusal to act led to the Union lasting long enough for U.S. Grant to relieve Rosecrans and change the course of the war. Had he been replaced by somebody competent or even by Johnston and held Chattanooga (which he really should never have had to retreat to and then evacuate to begin with) the war would have gone much differently. (Not saying the south would have won, but they’d have been a whole lot better off come 1864.)
After the war Bragg was walking down a street talking to himself when he fell dead of a heart attack. He was not particularly mourned by his former generals.

A fairly well known piece of trivia but I’ll mention it anyway: The war did NOT end when Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse (which is the name of a town, not a building) but 17 days later when Joe Johnston surrendered to William Sherman at Bennett’s farmhouse outside Durham. The two men had a great respect for each other, so much so that when Sherman died in 1891 Johnston, then 84 years of age, honored Sherman’s request to serve as a pallbearer. It was a cold snowy February day and Johnston, in spite of requests even by Sherman’s family to cover his bald head due to the weather, refused to, saying it would be disrespectful and Sherman would have done the same for him. Johnston died a month later from pneumonia he caught on that day. (Not sure what having his head exposed had to do with it, but it’s usually told as if there’s a connection.)

86

One more ARMY OF TENNESSEE trivia:

After the war Nathan B. Forrest declined lucrative offers to command cavalry from the Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, Napoleon III of France, and the Ottoman Emperor in Turkey. He instead sought to rebuild his fortune in the ruined economy. (Before the war he was one of the richest men in the south with assets of well over $1 million- many many millions in today’s money- and every penny of it self made; his initial fortune was in slave trading.)

He never remade his money. He failed in one business after another, and by the 1870s he decided to take up one of the offers. Unfortunately for him by that time Maximilian I had been deposed/executed, Napoleon III had died, the Turks were in a period of major reorganization and no longer interested. Not even the U.S. government was interested in spite of heavy recommendations from Sherman.

It’s well known Forrest was the first president of (though not the founder of) the KKK. It’s less well known that he famously resigned from and denounced it as well. Before the war he’d been a slave trader and while the events at Fort Pillow have been hotly debated (if he didn’t order the murder of black troops he certainly didn’t investigate it or punish those who did), Forrest actually seems to have sincerely worked for the cause of preparing blacks for freedom and for the institution of better race relations in the South.
He died from diabetes. His estate was insolvent at the time of his death and he was back to living in a log cabin (albeit a big one) from the mansion he had once owned. His widow received a good amount of money in donations, not all of it from southerners, that allowed her a comfortable golden years.
Forrest’s son, grandson, and great-grandsons all became highly decorated officers in the U.S. Army.

When Jefferson Davis was imprisoned at Fortress Monroe, several prominent northerners were incensed at his treatment and his imprisonment without trial. They included Union generals and politicians. Cornelius Vanderbilt (transitioning at the time from shipping tycoon to railroad tycoon) offered to post any bond it would take to free Davis up to $100,000, interest free, an odd offer considering that
1- Vanderbilt was a notoriously stingy man
2- Vanderbilt was largely apolotical
3- Vanderbilt’s only child that he gave a damn (though he had 13 others) was his son George Washington Vanderbilt, had just died in the Civil War (of disease while serving in the Union Army). If anybody reads this and wants an interesting story about spiritualists and sex and financial impropriety, ask about the legal battles over Vanderbilt’s estate.
Pope Pius IX hand-wove (himself, personally) a crown of thorns for Davis, an odd gesture that’s never been fully explained considering that Davis wasn’t imprisoned for a religious offense and wasn’t even Catholic.
He was finally released in 1867, and the bond returned when the prosecution dropped the case in 1869. He never regained his citizenship.

Robert E. Lee also never regained his citizenship. The reason: his application was believed to be a joke and was put aside. It was lost and not found until many years after Lee’s death.

Lee’s last words by some accounts were “Strike the tent.”

87

Todd Helton, first baseman for the Colorado Rockies, was the backup quarterback to Peyton Manning at the University of Tennessee. Helton’s Rockies teammate, outfielder Seth Smith, played quarterback behind Peyton Manning’s brother, Eli, at the University of Mississippi.

88

Sampiro, I always enjoy it when you share the trivia you’ve learned about these figures. Thanks.

89

Tim Matheson, forever to be remembered as Otter in “Animal House”, did the voice for the original Jonny Quest in 1964.

90

Nice!

91

I don’t think this is accurate.
I remember reading a biography by either Scotty or Bones that talked about this, and said that the original idea had been a Germanic engineer (based on the stereotype of Germans as good engineers & strict disciplinarians). It was only changed to a Scottish character rather late in the process. (I don’t remember what reason was given for the change.)

92

In her hit song Lovin’ You, Minnie Ripperton can be heard singing the name Maya- a reference to her daughter, actress Maya Rudolph.

Songwriter Al Sherman, writer of such hits as You’ve Got To Be A Football Hero and Livin’ In The Sunlight, Lovin’ In The Moonlight (the Tiny Tim recording of which was given new life by SpongeBob Squarepants nearly a decade ago), is the father of songwriters Richard and Robert Sherman, the Academy Award-winning composers who wrote countless hit songs for Disney, including Chim Chim Cheree, It’s A Small World, and many, many more.

Actor Sean Flynn, who appears on the Nickelodeon series Zoey 101, is the grandson of the legendary Errol Flynn. (His father, also named Sean, was a Vietnam War photographer who went missing in Cambodia.)

Puppeteer Steve Whitmire, who has performed Kermit the Frog since 1990, was born on September 24- the same birthday as the original Kermit, the immortal Jim Henson.

Before he became a TV weatherman, Willard Scott performed Bozo the Clown on a Washington, D.C. station and later became the first Ronald McDonald.

Stephen Colbert is a Catholic Sunday school teacher.

Walt Disney was the original voice of Mickey Mouse.

Jack Mercer regularly performed the voice of Popeye the Sailor from 1935 until his death in 1984, setting a Guinness record for longest period of time voicing a single cartoon character. Originally a storyboard artist at the Fleischer studio (where the first Popeye cartoons were made), Mercer often mimicked the voice of Popeye’s original performer and ended up replacing him after he became too hard to work with. Mercer also wrote a number of the cartoons.

93

William Shatner starred in Incubus, the second full length film to be filmed in Esperanto. (According to imdb there are 16 others.) The film was believed lost due to a fire, but copies were found and a DVD is now available. Very short clip.

Leonard Nimoy created the Vulcan salute from half of an orthodox Jewish blessing ritual performed with both hands that he was forbidden to look at (but snuck a peak at) in his childhood. From this site:

Hal Holbrook has performed in public as Mark Twain for well over 50 years. (His first appearance was between '52 and '56 depending on how you count “appeared in public” [i.e. if acting class counts then '52 and if in a theater with a paying audience, then '56].) What’s impressive about this is that Samuel Clemens only performed in public as Mark Twain for 42 years, more than a decade less than Holbrook.
Holbrook’s research on Twain included long discussions of Twain’s voice, accent, mannerisms, and bearings with Twain’s former secretaries and friends and, eventually, a couple of meetings with Twain’s daughter.

Rare movie of Twain at his home [Stormfield]

For those who think Twain only wrote folksy humor and Americana story stories, he wrote in an incredibly wide style and his manuscripts, published and un, included some of the darkest and most innovative fiction in American literature. This Surprise but Huge Netflix hit video is from an 80s Claymation movie and is based on Twain’s Mysterious Stranger and its various postings have cumulatively received millions of hits and generated a lot more discussion about Twain’s “other works”.

94

Speaking of Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner (grwwwwlllll) - When Frank married Mia Farrow (who had the very, very short haircut in fashion at the time of the marriage), Ava reportedly said, “I always knew Frank would end up in bed with a little boy.”

95

And his pronunciation is appalling. He didn’t actually learn the language, just enough of the pronunciation to fake it (badly). But then again they weren’t really setting out to make a film in Esperanto, they were setting out to make a film in a weird language that most of the viewers wouldn’t know. (Ironically the only people who have ever heard of the film nowadays are Esperantists.)

96

I gained a hell of a lot of respect for Bacall after reading her autobiographies.

97

And yet they named Fort Bragg after him. That makes me smile.

98

To be fair, there are times that a junior person in the military may have to make recommendations, out of their duty, that the duties of the superior officer may require those same recommendations be denied. I know I’ve had to present logged recommendations to the EOOW while I was in the Navy, and then tell him to go ahead and deny the recommendation because the ship’s operating condition made it impossible for him to comply. Had Bragg not gotten personal in the notes, I doubt that anyone would have found them remarkable.

99

As is indicated by this speech. Also, note the final paragraph of the article.

100

No less than three married couples appeared on Desigining Women:

Delta Burke and Gerald McRaney met on the set.
Hal Holbrook and Dixie Carter have been married for awhile, I believe.
Jean Smart is married to Richard Gilliland, who played Mary Jo’s boyfriend for awhile.