Every so often, I come upon a factoid that makes me say, ‘Wow.’ The latest concerns child actor Donald Haynes. We’re watching Skippy (1931) and I mentioned to my wife that he was in The Little Rascals. I looked up up to make sure I was correct. (I was, only Our Gang.) I found out he was killed in action in North Africa in 1943 as a 2LT in the 93rd Fighter Squadron. He was 23 years old.
What interesting or ‘wow’ things have you come across?
I think Hedy Lamarr’s contribution to secure wireless communications is pretty well known:
Hedy Lamarr: Golden Age Film Star—and Important Inventor | Smithsonian Institution.
As I recall, it was originally intended to guide torpedoes to their targets. At the time, they were notoriously unreliable and sometimes doubled back on the vessels that launched them.
Today I was reading about Native Canadian actor Evan Adams who has combined a career acting in film and TV with a career as a medical officer in the British Columbia public health service.
Several years ago I learned that Bobby Driscoll, the child actor who appeared in Disney’s Song of the South and provided the voice of Peter Pan in the eponymous animated movie, died in an abandoned tenement in NYC in 1968. Since he had no identification with him at the time he was discovered he was buried in a potter’s field on Hart Island, where he remains to this day.
I remember reading about that a few years ago.
Robert Downy Jr. is a Multi-Millionaire instead of being a Prison Number for his numerous crimes.
Makes me say ‘Wow, Wish I could get way with that shit’.
I recently watched Lawrence of Arabia and wondered what had happened to the teen actor Michel Ray who played Farraj. He had, a few years prior, appeared in The Tin Star with Henry Fonda and Anthony Perkins. After spending 18 months making the movie he decided to quit acting and commit himself to his studies. He earned an MBA from Harvard and became a merchant banker with, among others NM Rothschild and Credit Suisse First Boston. He became the first non-Japanese member of the board of Nikko Securities. Between 1968 and 1976 he represented Britain in 3 Winter Olympics in skiing and luge. He married a childhood friend, Charlene. When her father died in 2002 he left them the controlling interest in his business - the Heineken brewing empire.
Didn’t RDJ actually spend time in prison? What’s he gotten away with?
Planning 9/11
I’ve known this for quite some time, but I only learned a few months ago that she played the first depiction of a female orgasm in movie history in the German movie “Ekstase” (“Ecstasy”) from 1933.
Remember Boss Hogg from the Dukes of Hazard? He was the round man always wearing white, telling his deputy, Rosco P. Coltrane to “get them Duke boys”.
Well, he was actually Sorrell Booke, a learned man who had a masters degree from Yale and spoke a dozen languages. Wow!
Susan Oliver was a prolific actress in the 1960s, mostly in TV and character roles in movies. “Star Trek” fans will remember her from the pilot episode, “The Cage,” which was later reworked into a two-parter titled “The Menagerie” for the series. She was a beautiful and talented actress, and later became a director.
I’d seen her “Star Trek” episode many times, and several years ago looked her up on-line, wondering whatever became of her. Was I surprised!
Her dozens of acting credits aside, the most interesting thing about her was that she also became a respected and honored aviator, qualified to pilot jet aircraft. She was the fourth woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, piloting her own personal plane. And this was only three years after her “Star Trek” acting job. If you remember her as only an actress, you should look up her accomplishments as an aviator, which are too numerous to list here.
Unfortunately, she died at a relatively young ago, 58, of colorectal cancer.
And the first with green skin!
.
Huh??
While not best known as an actress, Dolly Parton is even less renowned for her contributions to COVID vaccine research:
“In April 2020, Dolly Parton announced that she was donating $1 million to Vanderbilt University efforts to find a vaccine for COVID-19. On November 16, 2020, the pharmaceutical company Moderna announced that the vaccine they were testing was 95% effective; the first stages of research for this vaccine were funded by Ms. Parton’s donation. Parton had been encouraged to donate to COVID research generally and Vanderbilt specifically because of her somewhat unlikely friendship with Dr. Naji Abumrad, a professor and doctor who she first met when he treated her at Vanderbilt University Medical Center after a minor car accident (2013).” - Dolly Parton - Trivia - IMDb
Christopher Lee definitely killed Nazis, but it was long rumored he quietly revealed to people that he was personally involved in the killing of Reinhard Heydrich, one the principal architects of the Holocaust.
He never confirmed this specific detail in interviews, but I’ve always heard he confirmed it in private.
Here is Dolly, cute as a button, receiving the vaccine from Dr. Abumrad Dolly Parton sings and gets COVID vaccine shot - YouTube
One friend of mine is the world’s greatest expert on the life and times of Eliza Poe, Edgar Allan Poe’s mother. Another did every standard play by Shakespeare, and one more directed them all.
Forceps used during Frank Sinatra’s birth caused permanent damage to his left earlobe, I never really noticed it till I read that. His 2 ears are quite different when you look for it.
Donnie Dunagan, who played the voice of young Bambi in Bambi, stopped voice acting at age 8. Without his work to support them, his family fell into abject poverty, and by age 13 he was living alone in a boardinghouse and working as a lathe operator. He was drafted into teh Marines in 1952 at age 18, and went on to serve as a career NCO. He was the Corps’ youngest-ever drill instructor, served three tours in Vietnam, winning a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts, and retired as a major in 1977.
He kept his past as Bambi secret, for obvious reasons, although some of his fellow Marines found out. After one of his battlefield injuries, when he was very close to death, his commanding officer started whispering lines from the movie into his ears to keep him hanging on to life. Apparently, it worked.
Sylvester Stallone was also permanently disfigured at birth by forceps-induced nerve damage, which left him with paralysis in his lips, chin, and half his tongue.