The Fox River was part of the famous 1673–74 expedition of Louis Jolliet and Père Jacques Marquette, the first Europeans to traverse the upper Mississippi River.
Michael J. Fox got the last rental car from a Chicago agency on September 11, 2001. He started driving to Los Angeles and noticed people just walking down the road. So he stops, ask them where they are going and giving them rides.
It took him twice as long to get home, but it is an excellent example of the acts of kindness in response to the events of 9/11
Great story, Annie.
In play: Michael J. Fox drove a Porsche 356 Speedster in Doc Hollywood (1991), where he got stuck in the fictional town of Grady SC on his drive from Hollywood to NYC.
Yes. Image all those people telling their families “You will never guess who gave me a ride…”
In play: Gerard Alessandrini’s Forbidden Hollywood has a Bette Midler impersonator singing "Who’s Gay In Hollywood:
Who’s gay in Hollywood?
Who’s homosexual in Hollywood?
Since I’m Bette Midler and not Perry Como
My fans are homo, and in New York I’m a star.
But out in Brentwood no cultured gent would
Admit that he plays Gypsy while in his car.
Bette Midler came to prominence in 1970 when she began singing in the Continental Baths, a local NYC gay bathhouse where she managed to build up a core following.
Barry Manilow started out playing piano for Bette in the bathhouse. When they went their separate ways, it would be decades before they’d reunite for Bette’s tribute albums to Rosemary Clooney and Peggy Lee.
In 1985, Barry Manilow and his collaborators Bruce Sussman and Jack Feldman expanded his song Copacabana into a full length, made-for-television musical, also called Copacabana, writing many additional songs and expanding the plot suggested by the song.
This film version was then further expanded by Manilow, Feldman, and Sussman into a full-length, two-act stage musical, again titled Copacabana, which ran at the Prince of Wales Theatre on London’s West End for two years prior to a lengthy tour of the UK. An American production was later mounted that toured the US for over a year.
Barry Manilow’s song, Copacabana, was released in June 1978. The first line of the lyrics begins,
Her name was Lola
Lola Cars International was a British racing car company from 1958 to 2012. Driver Graham Hill won the 1966 Indianapolis 500 in a Lola car. Al Unser won the 1978 Indianapolis 500 in a Lola modified chassis. Lola Cars eventually went bankrupt in 2012.
English race driver Graham Hill is the only driver to have completed the Triple Crown of Motorsport, having won the Indianapolis 500, the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and the Monaco Grand Prix.
American race car driver Mario Andretti is the only driver ever to win the Indianapolis 500 (1969), Daytona 500 (1967) and the Formula One World Championship (1978).
Avenue Q and Frozen songwriter Robert Lopez is the youngest person to win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Ton Award and he did it in ten years, the quickest time ever. And then he did it again, making him the only two-time EGOT winner.
The first Grammy Awards was held in 1959 at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles. They recognized 28 categories, including composer Henry Mancini who won album of the year for Music From Peter Gunn, and Italian singer Domenico Modugno who won both record and song of the year Nel Blu Dipinto di Blu (Volare).
King Henry V of England has been played in Shakespearean performances on stage and film by actors as diverse as Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, Richard Burton, Ian Holm, Timothy Dalton, Adrian Lester, Jude Law, Robert Hardy, Kenneth Branagh, Tom Hiddleston and Timothée Chalamet.
One of Laurence Olivier’s very first films was The Temporary Widow in 1930. One of his very last films was War Requiem in 1985.
British newlyweds Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh costarred in That Hamilton Woman (1941), which was Winston Churchill’s favorite movie.
Film critic Caroline Alice Lejeune of the British newspaper The Observer is no relation to US Marine Corps General and Commandant John Archer Lejeune. Caroline Alice Lejeune recalled a conversation where Vivien Leigh talked about the coming film, Gone With The Wind. Leigh “stunned us all” with the assertion that Laurence Olivier “won’t play Rhett Butler, but I shall play Scarlett O’Hara. Wait and see.”
Lucille Ball was among the dozens of actresses considered to play Scarlett O’Hara in the big-budget film production of Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone with the Wind. There were some grumblings in the South that a Briton should not be playing so iconic a figure of antebellum womanhood, but after the movie came out the reaction was overwhelmingly positive for Leigh’s portrayal.
Tara, the plantation home in Gone with the Wind, was a set built for the 1939 movie. After filming, its facade sat on the Forty Acres backlot in Culver City CA owned by RKO Pictures and then by Desilu Productions. It looked similar to the Barkley family home in the TV western series The Big Valley which was built on the Republic studio lot in Encino CA for the John Wayne movie The Fighting Kentuckian.
ETA: images comparison
Tara, Gone with the Wind – https://www.google.com/search?q=tara+gone+with+the+wind&rlz=1C1CHBD_enUS832US832&sxsrf=ACYBGNRcx6Y7DOlIyNhd4PyPkDP-W-0crQ:1577224590977&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj-pee7o8_mAhXROn0KHcNMCtcQ_AUoAXoECBIQAw&biw=1351&bih=905
Barkley home, The Big Valley – https://www.google.com/search?q=barkley+house+the+big+valley&rlz=1C1CHBD_enUS832US832&sxsrf=ACYBGNTcGAo5_MOiqtpBaxEILAUhgUdQnA:1577224601263&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjDgdvAo8_mAhWACjQIHVQyDRkQ_AUoAnoECA8QBA&biw=1351&bih=905
The tombstone of Scarlett O’Hara’s mother Ellen is clearly visible in a graveyard scene in Gone with the Wind. According to the stone, she died on Sept. 1, 1864, the same day as the Confederate evacuation of Atlanta. The city was occupied by United States troops under the command of Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman the next day.
(Here’s more on casting the role of Scarlett, BTW: Scarlett O'Hara - Wikipedia).
William Tecumseh Sherman (1820 - 1891) graduated from West Point in 1840. While there he roomed and became good friends with another important future Civil War General, George H. Thomas. When Sherman graduated as a 2nd Lieutenant, he became an artillery officer.
Today in Washington DC, the Sherman Memorial is located in Sherman Plaza, in President’s Park.