Actress Gates McFadden, who portrayed Dr. Beverly Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation, is also an accomplished dancer and choreographer. Prior to her work on Star Trek, McFadden worked with the Jim Henson Company, where she was director of choreography on the film Labyrinth. Her dance skills are displayed in the ST:TNG episode Data’s Day, in which Dr. Crusher teaches Data how to dance.
McFadden has typically used her middle name, Gates, for her acting credits, and her given name, Cheryl, for choreography credits.
Early in her career, Cheryl Ladd supplied the singing voice of Melody on the Hanna-Barbera animated series Josie and the Pussycats under the name “Cherie Moore.”
Ernie Ladd (1938-2007) was a pro football player who later also found success in professional wrestling. Ladd, who stood 6’9" and weighed 290 pounds, was a basketball player at Grambling State University when he was drafted in 1961 by the San Diego Chargers of the American Football League. He helped the Chargers win the AFL championship in 1963 and later played for the Kansas City Chiefs and the Houston Oilers. After a knee injury ended his football career, he took up professional wrestling in 1969 and became known as one of the top villains in the business. He would regularly taunt both opponents and crowds and had ongoing feuds with many of the big-name wrestlers before retiring in 1986. Ladd died of colon cancer at age 68.
Alan Ladd was an American actor from the 1940s and 1950s who frequently appeared with Veronica Lake in various noir-genre films such as The Blue Dahlia, The Glass Key, and This Gun for Hire, and also appeared in ten films with William Bendix. His best known role, however, was that of the eponymous gunman in Shane (1953).
The novel Shane (upon which the movie was based) was written by Jack Schaefer. He’s also the author of the classic Christmas short story “The Cowboy’s Christmas Eve”.
Schaefer is a brand of American beer, first introduced in New York City in 1842. Through the middle of the 20th century, Schaefer was one of the best-selling American beer brands, though it was primarily sold only in the northeastern U.S.
The Schaefer brand is currently owned by Pabst, which continues to produce it.
Genesee Beer is brewed in Rochester NY. Genesee Brewing is one of the largest and oldest continually operating breweries in the United States. They trace their roots to 1857 and Rau & Reisky Brewery. In 1878 through an acquisition they changed their name to The Genesee Brewery. The Genesee River flows through Rochester and empties into Lake Ontario. The brewery is named after this river.
Jack Lord, famous for his starring role on Hawaii Five-O, was earlier offered the role of Capt. James T. Kirk on Star Trek which eventually went to William Shatner.
Jack Lord went to NYU on a football scholarship. When he graduated he’d earned a BFA, Bachelor of Fine Arts. During his years at NYU he was the only football player to earn a BFA. On Hawaii Five-O, he was the only actor to appear in all 281 episodes.
Traci Lords (birth name Nora Kuzma) is an actress and singer. In the 1980s, Lords was one of the U.S.'s most popular adult film stars, until 1986, when it came to light that she had used falsified IDs to claim that she was an adult – all but one of her adult films and magazine shoots had been filmed before she turned 18, and were subsequently banned as child pornography.
Lords left the adult film industry at that point, and became a mainstream actor, as well as having a brief career as a singer.
She adopted her screen name in 1984, at age 16; she took the surname “Lords” in tribute to actor Jack Lord, as she was a fan of his TV series Hawaii Five-O.
Tracy Lord is the character played by Katharine Hepburn in the film The Philadelphia Story. Hepburn would receive accolades for her performance, including a nomination for Best Actress. The film was Hepburn’s first hit following several flops that caused her placement on a 1938 list of actors considered to be “box office poison” compiled by theater owner Harry Brandt.
Mae West enjoyed a robust social life in Hollywood. Among her boyfriends was boxing champion William Jones, nicknamed “Gorilla” Jones. When the management at her Ravenswood apartment building barred the African American boxer from entering the premises, West solved the problem by buying the building and lifting the ban.
“Mae West” was a widely-used nickname for an early inflatable life vest, particularly used by the U.S. and British military during World War II. The nickname was coined by servicemen, who noted that, when worn and inflated, the vest bore a resemblance to the curvaceous actress’s bosom.
Mae West also has a cocktail named for her. One version consists of vodka, amaretto, melon liqueur, and cranberry juice shaken with ice and served in a martini glass. The other, “Yellow Diamond Cocktail”, is brandy, egg yolk, powdered sugar, and cayenne pepper served over ice in a highball glass.
American actress Da’Vine Joy Randolph won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in The Holdovers last year. She played Mary Lamb, a prep school cafeteria manager and a mother mourning her son, a US Army casualty of the Vietnam War.
The Leftovers is an American TV series that tells of a “Sudden Departure” of 2% of the world’s population (approximately 140 million people) who vanish from the earth in a single day. The remaining survivors are left to deal with this event. Based on a book by Tom Perrogtta, it ran for three seasons on HBO.
Added comment: it would be interesting to find out what percentages of the world’s population those numbers represent. I don’t have the time to find that now; perhaps later.