John Philip Sousa wrote a poem titled “The Feast of the Monkeys.”
When the movie PT-109 came out in the early Sixties, starring Cliff Robertson as Lt. JG John F. Kennedy, an Alabama theater (perhaps apocryphally) advertised the movie on its marquee, “SEE HOW THE JAPS ALMOST GOT JFK.”
The open rotating turrets on PT-109 were designed by the firm that later produced the Tucker automobile.
F Troop star Forrest Tucker was the protagonist of the B-horror movie The Crawling Eye
Nathan Bedford Forrest, Confederate cavalry commander, is often considered to be one of the founders of the Ku Klux Klan. While the Klan did use his name, it’s unclear as to whether he agreed to it, and if it did agree, whether he knew about their racist overtones (he may have thought it was just generally opposing carpetbaggers).
In any case, he did speak to the Independent Order of Pole Bearers – and precursor to the NAACP – in favor of Black civil rights. He also kissed a black woman on the cheek after the speech, something unheard of in Tennessee at the time.
A statue of Nathan Hale, the Revolutionary War spy, stands at Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Va., along with Hale’s famous last words, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”
Alan Hale Jr, “The Skipper”, was the son of, and a dead ringer for, (guess who?) Alan Hale Sr., best known for his roles as “Little John” in three Robin Hood movies, the title roles being played by Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Errol Flynn, and John Derek.
Bo Derek and Dudley Moore starred in the movie 10, which briefly popularized both cornrows for white women, and Ravel’s Bolero as good music to have sex to.
Dudley Moore and his comedic partner Peter Cook starred in the 1967 movie Bedazzled, in which a short order cook (Moore) sells his soul to the devil (Cook) in exchange for the chance to woo the girl of his dreams. The movie was remade in 2000, with Brendan Fraser in Moore’s role, and Elizabeth Hurley as the devil.
[del]Bo Derek’s long time live in love interest is John Corbett, the actor best known for playing the disk jockey Chris on Northern Exposure, the non-Greek groom in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and one of Carrie’s love interests in Sex and the City.[/del]
Elizabeth Hurley had a nasty paternity dispute with her ex lover Steve Bing, a billionaire realtor who denied he was the father of Hurley’s child and stated the true father was actor Matthew Perry who, ironically, played Chandler Bing on the show FRIENDS. DNA proved Bing was the father and he took full responsibility, but in a very strange reverse-child-support case Hurley attempted to prevent him from paying child support stating that she could provide for the child just fine and did not want him involved in raising the kid. They have since evidently come to some more amiable agreement.
Bing is the name of a search engine developed by Microsoft to compete with Google and others. Microsoft claims Bing offers more-relevant, higher-quality results and helps users find what they’re searching more quickly.
Detroit Mayor Dave Bing was formerly a great player for the Detroit Pistons NBA team. In 1996, he was voted one of the NBA’s top 50 players of all time. He later founded Bing Steel, a local supplier to the auto industry, before entering a public service career.
In his celebrated book Lincoln, historian David Herbert Donald tells the story of President Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of State William Seward attending a fancy diplomatic function, after which Lincoln turned to Seward and without further ado said, “Well, I have decided who to appoint as postmaster in Detroit.”
In the early days of the NBL, a precursor to the NBA, several teams were sponsored and named after auto parts manufacturers, including the Akron Firestone Non-Skids, the Akron Goodyear Wingfoots, the Toledo Jim White Chevrolets, and Ft. Wayne Zollner Pistons. When the Pistons joined the NBA, they dropped “Zollner” from their name and played in Ft. Wayne until moving to Detroit in 1957
Rosa Parks, her husband and her mother moved to Detroit in 1957 to escape constant death threats and find employment; in Montgomery they were essentially living on charity as both lost their jobs due to the notoriety and nobody was willing to risk hiring them. They shared the 4 BR house of her brother Sylvester, his wife, and their 13 children until they found other accommodations.
Bert Parks hosted the Miss America Pageant, live from Atlantic City, from 1955 to 1979. The winner, even today, with the pageant moved to Las Vegas, is serenaded with his version of “There She Is, Miss America”. He spoofed it in The Freshman by changing “Miss America” to “Your Komodo Dragon”, in a scene where nightclub diners feast on one.
Silent comic Harold Lloyd, whose feature films in the 1920s included The Freshman, performed his incredible feats of “thrill” comedy (e.g., dangling from the hands of a clock high above a city street, climbing up the sides of buildings, etc.) under the added handicap of missing the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.
He lost them on the set of an early short, Haunted Spooks, when a supposed fake bomb handed to him turned out to be a real one. He disguised his disability with the use of a prosthetic glove, and continued to do most of his own stunts with minimal safety precautions.
David Lloyd George was the only British Prime Minister whose first language wasn’t English. He was Welsh and grew up speaking that.
Greenacres, the sprawling Beverly Hills mansion of Harold Lloyd*, was rented from his heirs for use in, among other films, The Godfather; it’s the Woltz mansion where he wakes up with the horse head in his bed.
Lloyd Bentsen defeated George H.W. Bush in 1970 for a U.S. Senate seat from Texas. Bentsen was then Mike Dukakis’s running mate in 1988 when Bush defeated Dukakis.