The song Sunshine Superman was the first product from the highly successful three-year collaboration between composer and musician Donovan Leitch and producer Mickie Most and is generally considered to be one of the first examples of the musical genre that came to be known as psychedelia. The song features styles of psychedelic folk, psychedelic pop and folk rock.
An image of Superman appeared in the background at least once in every episode of Seinfeld. Jerry Seinfeld has long been a fan of the character, and even played him once in a 1992 Saturday Night Live sketch.
In a well-known 1979 Saturday Night Live sketch, featuring guest host Margot Kidder, Superman (played by Bill Murray) and Lois Lane (Kidder) host a cocktail party for Superman’s superhero friends. The guests include Flash (Dan Aykroyd), Hulk (John Belushi), and an unappreciated Ant-Man (Garrett Morris).
“Come Saturday Morning”, a song with music by Fred Karlin and lyrics by Dory Previn, was first performed by The Sandpipers on the soundtrack of the 1969 film The Sterile Cuckoo starring Liza Minnelli. The song was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song, but lost to “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” from the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
A dory is a flat bottomed rowing boat, once extremely common in the fishing and coastal communities of New England, the Maritimes, and Newfoundland.
Sir Humphrey Gilbert, a half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, was a pioneer of the English colonial empire in North America. In 1583 he claimed Newfoundland as England’s first overseas colony. Thus, Newfoundland is considered Britain’s oldest colony.
The province of Newfoundland, which did not join Canada until 1949, officially changed its name to “Newfoundland and Labrador” in 2001.
The origin of the name “Newfoundland” is obvious, I suppose; Labrador is named after Portuguese explorer Joao Fernandes Lavrador, whose name means “farmer.”
(Today I learned that Newfoundland wasn’t always a part of Canada!)
In play:
Journalist and author George Plimpton wrote a number of books in which he chronicled his attempts to compete in professional sports. He was best known for the book Paper Lion, in which he documented his experience as a backup quarterback in training camp with the Detroit Lions in 1963.
While the Lions’ coaches and management knew that Plimpton was a journalist, and was not seriously trying out for the team, the Lions players were not initially let in on this information. Plimpton claimed to them that he had been playing quarterback for a semi-pro team, the Newfoundland Newfs. However, when practices actually started, it became evident to the other players that Plimpton was not much of an athlete, and had no idea how to play quarterback.
The book was later adapted into a 1968 film, with Alan Alda playing Plimpton.
Actor Alex Karras played such characters as the villain Booker Llewellyn in Hardcase (1972), a US Marine saved by Hawkeye Pierce in MASH*, James Garner’s closeted gay bodyguard in Victor Victoria (1982), a villain in Against All Odds (1984), the husband George Zaharias of legendary athlete Babe Didrikson Zaharias in Babe (1975), and the western cowboy thug goon Mongo in Blazing Saddles (1974).
Karras had a career prior to acting, as an NFL football lineman for the Detroit Lions from 1958 to 1970. His interest in acting developed from his working with author George Plimpton when Plimpton was doing research with the Lions for his book. When the book became a movie in 1968, Karras acted as himself.
Mongo knocks out a horse. A great scene from a movie full of great scenes:
In play: *Blazing Saddles* was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actress (Madeline Kahn), Best Film Editing, and Best Music, Original Song. However, it did not win in any of these categories.But, in 2006, Blazing Saddles was deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
“Blazing a tree” means to make a mark on the tree by slashing the bark. It is a technique used to mark trails in wilderness areas.
In 1865, a British Columbia surveyor, Walter Moberly, discovered Eagle Pass through the Gold Range. He found it by shooting his rifle near an eagle nest. The eagles flew away and up a valley. He followed them, on the theory that eagles wouldn’t fly towards a deadend. His intuition was correct and he found the pass.
He later recalled that he blazed a tree and wrote on the bare wood: “This is the Pass of the Overland Railway.”
He was proved right. The CPR went through Eagle Pass some 20 years later, and the last spike was driven near the spot where he blazed the tree.
The NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers began play in 1970 and won the league championship once, in 1977 with Finals MVP Bill Walton over the Philadelphia 76ers with Dr. J and George McGinnis. The Trail Blazers are the only NBA team based in the bi-national Pacific Northwest, after the Vancouver Grizzlies relocated to Memphis and became the Memphis Grizzlies in 2001 and the Seattle SuperSonics relocated to Oklahoma City and became the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2008.
As a young man, basketball player Bill Walton suffered from stuttering, which exacerbated his self-consciousness and shyness. When he was in his late 20s, Walton worked with sports announcer Marty Glickman on his speech patterns, and was able to overcome his stuttering. After his playing career, Walton was thus able to become a sports broadcaster, himself.
The Waltons was a TV series that aired on CBS from 1972 through 1981. It was based on a book and movie called Spencer’s Mountain, and it was about a family in rural Virginia during the Great Depression and World War II.
The show and its cast won 10 Emmy awards over the course of its run, and, in 2013, TV Guide ranked it No. 34 on its list of the 60 Best Series of All Time.
American author Robert B. Parker never gave a first name to his wiseass but well-read Boston private eye Spenser, the protagonist of his novels, an Eighties TV series and later several TV movies.
Spenser’s name was a tribute to Edmund Spenser, an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I.
Actor Robert Urich, who played Spenser in TV’s Spenser: For Hire, died at the young age of 55 from synovial sarcoma, a rare form of cancer that attacks soft tissue. He and his wife, Heather Menzies-Urich, founded the Urich Fund for the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center to raise funds for cancer research.
Sir Robert Menzies was Australia’s longest serving Prime Minister. He was in office in two separate terms, 1939-1941, and 1949-1966, for a total of 18 years.
Former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke was previously the world record holder for the fastest drinking of a yard of beer, when he downed a sconce pot in eleven seconds as part of a traditional Oxford college penalty.
Harry Robbins “Bob” Haldeman was Richard Nixon’s Chief of Staff, but ended up spending 18 months at Lompoc Federal Prison.
Haldeman’s conversations with President Nixon were recorded but one from June 20, 1972 was accidentally erased. Here’s a transcript of their conversation 3 days after the erased conversation. The “Bay of Pigs thing” was supposedly code for the JFK assassination.