“We will sell no wine before its time” was the slogan of a famous Paul Masson winery advertising campaign.
Lung cancer victim Yul Brynner, who died the same day as Orson Welles, who appeared in the “sell no wine” Paul Masson ads, did a “don’t smoke” TV spot that aired after his death.
While trying to break out of his endless tourings of The King and I Yul Brynner accepted the lead in a musical version of The Odyssey entitled Home Sweet Homer with music by Mitch “Man of La Mancha” Leigh, a book by Erich “Love Story” Segal, and a cast made up of live actors and puppets. It was a complete disaster that involved almost nightly dialogue and music changes during the tour, a near fatal case of food poisoning that took down half the cast for several days, Segal pulling out and the entire script having to be re-written, numerous lawsuits, and almost unanimously terrible reviews. Brynner returned to The King and I, performing the play around 5,000 times (the exact number varies by source).
The physician attending British King George V on his deathbed in 1936 disclosed in his diary that he had hastened the moribund monarch’s death by a large dose of cocaine and morphine, both to prevent further strain on the family and so that the King’s death could be announced in the morning edition of The Times.
Although Eric Clapton performed the best-known version of the song Cocaine, the tune was composed by JJ Cale. Cale also wrote After Midnight, another Clapton standard.
Nevermind
Well damned…a long post was bested by Sternvogel.
The swimming baby on the cover of Nirvana’s album Nevermind is Spencer Elden. Elden also appeared on the cover of cEvin Key’s album The Dragon Experience twelve years later.
Ex-Nirvana drummer, current Foo Fighters drummer/vocalist/guitarist/keyboard player Dave Grohl is pretty much the Kevin Bacon of the rock 'n roll world : he’s been involved in so many bands and projects over the years (be it as musician, singer, producer, advisor, close friend…) that you can probably link any musician to him in 7 steps or less.
The famous Internet Kevin Bacon Number game was inspired by the film Six Degrees of Separation, starring Will Smith, who had previously performed as a rap artist under the name of “The Fresh Prince” with his partner, DJ Jazzy Jeff.
British scientist Francis Bacon seems to have died of pneumonia, caught when he stuffed a chicken with snow* in order to see if freezing preserved meat.
*Note: not a euphemism>
SCTV once had a parody show where Bacon and Shakespeare were two crime fighting buddies. The title of the show was Shake ‘n’ Bake.
Dame Judi Dench’s portrayal of Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love was, at about 8 minutes, the shortest screen time performance ever to win an Oscar.
Dame Judi Dench has directed stage productions of Much Ado About Nothing, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet.
Judith “Judy” Jetson, daughter of George and Jane, was a huge fan of rock singer Jet Singer (voiced by Howard “Ernest T. Bass” Morris), who recorded the song “Eep Opp Ork Ah-Ah (Means I Love You)” written by her and her brother Elroy; the song has since been covered by real life bands The Dickies and Violent Femmes among others.
Mr. Spacely, George Jetson’s boss, faced off with Kevin Spacey in Maxim magazine’s feature “mano a mano” or some such silly name. I forget who won.
Mike Meyers had agreed to appear in a movie based on his Sprockets sketches from SNL. But he decided the concept was not strong enough for a movie and wanted to back out of the deal. The studio however did not want to cancel the project and threatened to sue him if he did not fulfill the contract. But Meyers got out of the movie legally by invoking his contractual right as the movie’s producer to refuse to approve the script - which he himself had written.
A foreclosed on cotton plantation outside of Montgomery, AL was used by the Wright Brothers for their first flight school and evolved into the Air University of Maxwell Air Forced Base, which is also home to a federal prison that housed, among other famous convicts, Studio 54 founders Steve Rubell (played by Mike Meyers in 54) and Ian Schrager.
[Not for play, but one can only imagine how awful the Sprockets screenplay must have been considering he approved The Love Guru.]
On Jack Benny’s radio and TV shows, he had a running gag that he was so cheap he still drove a beat-up old Maxwell car - a make that had disappeared in 1925. Mel Bland provided the sounds of the sputtering car. Benny had a cameo sitting in his Maxwell in the 1963 film “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World”, which included virtually every comic actor in Hollywood.
In the extremely regrettable 1978 film version of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which starred the Bee Gees and Peter Frampton as the band members, Steve Martin played Dr. Maxwell Edison (famous for his Silver Hammer).
When a Pope dies, the camerlengo uses a silver hammer to ritually destroy his papal seal and ring. Unconfirmed legend has it that he also taps the dead Pope’s head with it to ensure he’s really most sincerely dead.