Eric Fleming was the star of TV’s Rawhide for seven seasons before being replaced by his younger costar, Clint Eastwood. No reason for his departure was given at the start of the show’s eighth and final season.
Marty McFly uses the alias “Clint Eastwood” when he goes back to the Old West in Back to the Future III.
A top Romney campaign staffer ran to the bathroom to throw up when Clint Eastwood’s primetime semi-comedic improvisation with a chair at the 2012 Republican National Convention ran very long and was an obvious flop.
The electric chair at Sing Sing prison (now the Ossining Correctional Facility) is nicknamed “Old Sparky.”
In the television sitcom MASH, “Sparky” was the nickname of a radio telephone operator with the U.S. Army in Korea, with whom Radar (and, in later seasons, Klinger) often spoke when looking for information and favors.
Sparky was typically not ever shown, or even heard, and was only identified by Radar’s or Klinger’s side of the telephone conversation. However, in the character’s very first appearance – the Season 1 episode “Tuttle,” Sparky is briefly shown, and his rank and surname are given: Sergeant Pryor.
Asteroid 22369 Klinger named after Max Klinger. No, not the one from MAS*H but rather a German artist.
Jamie Farr, who played Max Klinger, got his start in acting by being cast on The Red Skelton Show in 1955. Farr played the character of Snorkel, whose large nose gave him an inhumanly strong sense of smell.
Originally Gary Larson titled his iconic comic strip “Nature’s Way” but after being picked up by the San Francisco Chronicle the name was changed to “The Far Side.”
In the past few decades, the spiked tail of stegosaurian dinosaurs has become informally known by scientists and researcher as the “thagomizer,” in homage to a particular The Far Side cartoon by Gary Larson, drawn in 1982, which depicts a caveman lecturer describing the tail, and how it is named for “the late Thag Simmons.”
Ted Simmons played for 21 seasons in the major leagues, primarily as a catcher. Most of his career was spent with the St. Louis Cardinals, and he also played for the Brewers and Braves. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2020, more than 30 years after his retirement following the 1988 season. Simmons is one of 20 catchers in the HOF; the latest catcher to be inducted was Joe Maurer, who joined the Hall in 2024.
Gary Carter was the catcher for the Montreal Expos from 1974 to 1984. He was the first Expo inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame.
The Gaelic Athletic Association has a special hurling competition in 1984 called the Centenary Cup to celebrate its 100th anniversary. Cork ultimately won the Cup.
The first use in space of NASA’s Manned Maneuvering Unit, or personal orbital rocket backpack, was in February 1984. An astronaut played by George Clooney used a similar device in the movie Gravity.
In the 2014 Golden Globes ceremony George Clooney was identified by host Tina Fey for his appearance in Gravity, which she described as “a story in which George would rather float away in space and die rather then spend another minute with a woman his own age.”
George Clooney’s first wife, American actress Talia Balsam, was 2 years older than him. His second wife, British international human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin Clooney, is 17 years younger than him.
Actor Martin Balsam was a prolific actor on stage, film, and television. He was a member of the Actors’ Studio, and won a Tony Award (for You Know I Can’t Hear You When the Water’s Running in 1968) and an Academy Award (for A Thousand Clowns in 1965).
Balsam was married to actress Joyce Van Patten from 1959 to 1962, with whom he had a daughter, Talia Balsam.
Martin Balsam was the first person cast to provide the voice of the malfunctioning, murderous supercomputer HAL 9000 in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 sf epic, 2001: A Space Odyssey. The role eventually went to Canadian stage actor Douglas Rain. For more: I met Keir Dullea tonight!
Rain was in the original repertory cast for the Stratford Fedtival and performed in 33 seasons. He died at age 90 in 2018.
Ringo Starr considers his drumming on Rain to be his best work.
In 1978, Ringo Starr starred in a made-for-TV comedy movie, Ringo, which was loosely based on Mark Twain’s novel The Prince and the Pauper.
In the film, Starr played a fictionalized version of his rock-star self, as well as his downtrodden lookalike, Ognir Rrats (“Ringo Starr” spelled backwards). The film also starred Carrie Fisher, Art Carney, John Ritter, Vincent Price, Angie Dickinson, Mike Douglas, and Ringo’s former bandmate in the Beatles, George Harrison.