Lenny Bruce, was a stand-up comedian, social critic, and satirist. In 1952 he played at Peter Cook’s “The Establishment” club in London, and in April the next year he was barred from entering England by the Home Office as an “undesirable alien”, due to the perceived lewdness of his material.
John F. Kennedy’s Secret Service codename in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963 was “Lancer.” His wife Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy’s was “Lace.”
Phoebe Cates starred in the popular 1984 TV miniseries, Lace. One of her lines in the film, “Which one of you bitches is my mother?”, was named the greatest line in television history by TV Guide in 1993.
In 1989, Kevin Kline, then about 42 years old, married Phoebe Cates who was then about 26 years old.
Lucky dog!
Kevin Kline has played presidents and their doubles twice to date: he played Dave and President Bill Mitchell in the movie Dave in 1993, and Artemus Gordon and President Ulysses S. Grant in the ***Wild Wild West *** in 1999.
When Seth McFarlane hosted the Oscars for the year 2012, in which Daniel Day-Lewis won Best Actor for Lincoln, he introduced the award by discussing other actors who played President Lincoln in earlier films, summarizing by noting “But I still think the only actor to really get inside Lincoln’s head was John Wilkes Booth”. Following hisses from the crowd, he responded “A century and a half and it’s still too soon?”
in 1989, Daniel Day-Lewis appeared in the title role in Hamlet at the National Theatre, London, but collapsed during the scene where the ghost of Hamlet’s father appears before him. He began sobbing uncontrollably and refused to go back on stage; he was replaced by Jeremy Northam who finished the performance perfectly and received a standing ovation. Ian Charleson then formally replaced Day-Lewis for the rest of the run, except that Charleson’s illness (he died of AIDS the next year) forced Northam to stand in again many times.
Although the incident was officially attributed to exhaustion, Day-Lewis later claimed to have seen the ghost of his own father, Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom Cecil Day-Lewis.
Jeremy Northam has played an Austenian hero (Emma), an advisor to King Henry VIII (The Tudors) and Prime Minister Anthony Eden (The Crown), among other notable roles.
The prophet Jeremiah authored several Old Testament books: the Book of Jeremiah, the two Books of Kings and the Book of Lamentations, with the assistance and under the editorship of Baruch ben Neriah, his scribe and disciple.
Greater detail is known about Jeremiah’s life than for that of any other prophet. However, no biography of him can be written, as there are few facts available. Jeremiah’s ministry was active from the thirteenth year of Josiah, king of Judah (626 BC), until after the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of Solomon’s Temple in 587 BC.
The Book of Jeremiah is also known as the Epistle of Jeremy.
Jacob’s Ladder, the colloquial name for a connection between the earth and heaven that the biblical Patriarch Jacob dreams about during his flight from his brother Esau, not only inspired Led Zeppelin’s Staircase to Heaven, but is referenced to in Bob Dylan’s Forever Young: May you build a ladder to the stars and climb on every rung, and may you stay forever young.
Jacob’s Ladder was also a 1990 psychological horror movie starring Tim Robbins, about a Vietnam veteran wrestling with dark visions of his past and present.
Tim Robbins starred as Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption, one of the best movies made from a Stephen King work. The movie was considered a box office bomb, but found a new, profitable life on cable and DVD.
The Highwaymen were a 1960s “collegiate folk” group. They originated at Wesleyan University and had a Billboard #1 hit in 1961 with “Michael”, a version of the African-American work song “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore”, and another Top 20 hit in 1962 with “Cotton Fields”. “Michael” sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold record. Band member Gil Robbins is the father of actor Tim Robbins.
Tim Robbins’s small-screen debut, two years before he appeared in his first movie, was a three-episode run as a bad guy on St. Elsewhere in 1982.
Baskin-Robbins is the world’s largest chain of ice cream specialty shop restaurants. Based in Canton, Massachusetts, it was founded in 1945 by Burt Baskin and Irv Robbins in Glendale, California. Originally conceived with the notion of 31 flavors, they have developed over one thousand flavors since 1945.
The Shawshank Redemption is not the only notable prison-themed film with a Tim Robbins connection. In 1995, Dead Man Walking appeared, directed, produced and with screenplay by Robbins; he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Director.
The film was a family affair for Robbins. In addition to his longtime companion Susan Sarandon starring, his father Gil Robbins played Bishop Norwich, mother Mary Robbins played an aide to the governor, his sister Adele Robbins played a nurse, and sons Jack and Miles had small roles. His brother, David Robbins, composed the score.
Scooping at a Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop in San Francisco is the first post-prison employment of Paul Rudd’s lead character in the superhero movie Ant-Man. Baskin-Robbins’s corporate savvy is a running gag in the movie.
Punk rocker Stuart Goddard came to fame under the stage name Adam Ant, and was best known for 1982’s “Goody Two Shoes”.
Rocketry pioneer Robert Goddard was shown briefly in archival footage in the opening credits of the sf TV show Star Trek: Enterprise, briefly depicting advances in human spaceflight.