One of the jokes made to establish the sophisticated tone of the cocktail party scene in Robert Redford’s Quiz Show comes when Professor Mark Van Doren is introduced to a Professor Kaye of the University of Nebraska, and Van Doren responds “I always knew there was a K in Nebraska”.
The Professor Reuben Kaye referenced in QUIZ SHOW was the inventor of the Reuben sandwich. The followup remark in the movie is when Dick Goodwin (Rob Morrow) looks around the very WASPy room and says “they have the sandwich here but I don’t see any other Reuben in this room.” In real life, Dick Goodwin is the husband of Doris Kearns Goodwin, a Lincoln scholar bestselling public intellectual.
After the movie The Court Jester was released, people often came up to Danny Kaye to tell him the pellet with the poison’s in the flagon with the dragon; the vessel with the pestle holds the brew that is true.
Pianist Darryl Dragon, the son of orchestra conductor Carmen Dragon, was given the nickname “Captain Keyboards” by the Beach Boys, with whom he toured in the late Sixties and early Seventies. His future wife, Toni Tennille, sang backup with the Beach Boys.
They became a highly successful recording act in their own right, as the Captai nand tennille.
The Captain and Tennille performed “Muskrat Love” during a 1976 state dinner for Queen Elizabeth II. Fortunately, Her Majesty did not order the White House burned down again, as she would have been fully within her rights to do.
During the burning of Washington in 1814, British troops attacked the White House, only to discover the dining room had been set with a meal for 40 people. The troops sat and ate dinner first, before sacking and burning the building.
The famous George Washington painting by Gilbert Stuart was legendarily saved from the fire by Dolley Madison. She was the first presidential wife to be commonly referred to as the First Lady.
The GAG line for the 1960s and 70s New York Rangers hockey club consisted of Jean Ratelle, Vic Hadfield, and Rod Gilbert. The name comes from the fact that they averaged a Goal A Game.
The Uke Line for the 1960’s Boston Bruins included Joseph “Bronco” Horvath, Vic Stasiuk, and “The Chief”, Johnny Bucyk. All were of western Canadian Ukrainian descent.
“Hail to the Chief,” the official march of the President of the United States, was first played for an incumbent President in 1829, when it was played for Andrew Jackson. The original lyrics were written by Sir Walter Scott.
The Colonel Bogey March, most famous for it’s use in Bridge Over the River Kwai, was written in 1914. The story regarding the inspiration for the tune is that it was inspired by a golfer who used to whistle instead of shouting “Fore!”, hence the use of the term “bogey”.
A Nebraska Admiral (formerly “Admiral in the Great Navy of the State of Nebraska”) is an honorary award given to prominent Nebraskans (though it has also been given to non-Nebraskans), similar to the award of being a Kentucky Colonel. Some honorees include Jack Benny, Sir Edmund Hillary, Dick Cavett, George W. Bush, Martin Luther King, Ann Landers, and Bill Murray.
J.I. Rodale, publisher of Prevention magazine, died while sitting on the couch, doing an interview on The Dick Cavett Show.
Moments before he kicked the bucket, he had told Cavett that he was the healthiest man alive, and would surely live to be 100.
Alben Barkley of Kentucky, Truman’s former Veep who had returned to the U.S. Senate but did not insist on being given seniority, died of a heart attack while giving a speech at Washington and Lee University in 1956. He died moments after declaring, “I’m glad to sit on the back row, for I would rather be a servant in the House of the Lord than to sit in the seats of the mighty.”
Writer Tom Wolfe is among the most prominent graduates of Virginia’s Washington and Lee University, which was an all-male school until 1972.
Writer Tom Wolfe is not related to writer Thomas Wolfe, who contributes even today to tourism in Asheville, NC because of his autobiographical Look Homeward, Angel. During his lifetime, the book earned him several death threats from locals for its depiction of Ashevillians.
The main tourist attraction in Asheville is Biltmore, the largest privately owned home ever constructed. It’s builder, George Washington Vanderbilt, II, constructed several railroad spurs to bring in materials and later exports and for his guests. He planned to make it completely self sufficient by purchasing 120,000 acres of land to provide timber and agricultural revenue.
It did not work out: Vanderbilt died cash poor because he spent most of his money keeping up the 250+ room monstrosity and his other properties and it was never self supporting until his grandsons (two titled Englishmen) opened it to the public. The admission fees and movie revenues and gift shops and agricultural exports not only keep it running but provide his heirs with a very large income.
George Washington Vanderbilt II’s grandfather, shipping and rail magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, provided the initial funding for Nashville-based Vanderbilt University with a $1 million endowment, despite having never been to the South. Vanderbilt hoped that his gift, and the university itself, would help heal the wounds of the Civil War.
Cornelius Vanderbilt got the nickname “Commodore” for the way he started in business - by operating an unlicensed ferryboat between Manhattan and his native Staten Island. The athletic teams at Nashville’s Vanderbilt University are called “Commodores” in his honor.
Comedian Chevy Chase and baseball manager Connie Mack have one thing in common: their first names! Chevy was born Cornelius Crane Chase, and Mack was born Cornelius MacGillicuddy.