Julie Andrews Edwards has written several children’s books, including Dumpy the Dumptruck, The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles, and The Great American Mousical.
A party song Willie Dixon wrote for Howlin’ Wolf, “Wang Dang Doodle”, was disliked by both men but became a major blues hit anyway. It has been covered, saith Wiki, by Love Sculpture, Koko Taylor, Z. Z. Hill, Ted Nugent, the Pointer Sisters, PJ Harvey, Grateful Dead, Ratdog, Savoy Brown, Charlie Watts, Booker T. & The MG’s, Hindu Love Gods and the Dutch blues band Livin’ Blues.
The Duras sisters, Lursa and B’Etor, were bucktoothed and busty Klingon schemers and recurring villains in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
The Douras sisters Reine, Marion, and Rose were the daughters of a NYC judge and his wife, an Irish born stage mother. The sisters used the stage name Davies when performing. Marion became the most famous because of her 30+ year relationship with much older publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst. Reine’s son Charles Lederer became a director/screenwriter of some importance and may have worked on Citizen Kane. Rose’s daughter Patricia is believed by many biographers to have been the biological daughter of Marion and Hearst; she married Arthur Lake, best known as Dagwood in the Blondie movies.
The Soong sisters, Ai-Ling, Ching-Ling, and May-Ling, each married a man who became a very senior official in post-dynastic China, as were their three brothers. Ai-Ling married H.H. Kung, the country’s richest man and later its finance minister. Ching-Ling’s husband, Sun Yat-Sen, was the founder of the Republic of China, and she herself was honorary President of China under the Communist regime. And May-Ling became much better known as Madame Chiang Kai-Shek.
Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing were two Giant Pandas given to the United States as gifts by the government of China following President Richard Nixon’s visit in 1972. In return, the U.S. government sent China a pair of musk oxen.
Panda Express is a Chinese fast-food chain which was founded in Pasadena, CA in 1973. Originally a single restaurant, it expanded after being asked to open a second facility at the Glendale Galleria. It now has franchises in 37 states and Puerto Rico. Panda Express food contains no MSG.
The Grateful Dead spinoff group, the country-rock-tinged New Riders of the Purple Sage, released their first album in 1969 with Jerry Garcia on pedal steel guitar and Spencer Dryden of the Jefferson Airplane on drums, with songs like “I Don’t Know You,” “Dirty Business,” and “Glendale Train.”
[del]The Brady Kids cartoon featured the six Brady children (no Oliver, though Jan was upgraded to “really groovy”), their dog MopTop (no mention of Tiger), Ping & Pong the pandas, and a magical bird named Marlin. Opening theme.[/del]
The city of Glendale, Missouri was incorporated in 1916, primarily to avoid being annexed by the neighboring city of Kirkwood. By 1920 arguments between the neighborhoods on the north side and south side had grown so contentious that residents voted to split the city in two, with the southern portion being incorporated as the city of Oakland.
Grand Central Terminal in Glendale, CA, the primary air-carrier airport for Los Angeles in the 1930’s, appeared in numerous motion pictures (most of Shirley Temple’s “Bright Eyes”, including the “On the Good Ship Lollipop” scene, was shot there). Amelia Earhart bought her first airplane, a Kinner Airster, from the factory on the field.
Although what is left of the runway is now a street and most of the airport is an industrial park, the distinctive terminal building remains and is the subject of efforts to make it a historical landmark.
In Arthur Kopit’s play Chamber Music, the primary characters are eight inmates of an insane asylum. Each claims to be a famous woman – Gertrude Stein, Joan of Arc, Susan B. Anthony, Queen Isabella I of Spain, Constanze Mozart, Amelia Earhart, Pearl White, and Osa Johnson.
Susan B. Anthony was the first woman to appear on a U.S. coin, on a dollar coin that found little acceptance among the public when it was introduced in 1979. A dollar coin introduced in 2000 and featuring Sagacawea, Lewis & Clark’s Shoshone guide, also was a flop. They remain the only two women shown on U.S. currency.
The “Sacky” dollar is the only US coin ever to depict an infant - Sacagawea’s son, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, born of her liaison with a French trapper.
Joe Charbonneau won the American League Rookie of the Year award in 1980, when he hit 23 home runs and batted .289 for Cleveland. However, injuries rendered him ineffective the next season and he played his last major league game in 1982.
Dragnet was originally a police-procedural radio program, created by Jack Webb, who also played the main character, Sergeant Joe Friday. The radio program eventually led to four separate television series (two starring Webb – one in the 1950s, one in the 1960s), three movies (two starring Webb, the other a comedy, with Dan Aykroyd as Friday’s nephew), and a newspaper comic strip.
In the 1987 Dragnet movie starring Dan Aykroyd, Tom Hanks played his partner and Christopher Plummer played the villain. One Hollywood historian said that the movie had the first condom joke in a mainstream motion picture.
Harry Morgan, who played Joe Friday’s partner Bill Gannon in the 1960’s iteration of Dragnet reprised the role in the 1987 movie, this time as Aykroyd and Hanks’ superior.
Harry Morgan co-starred as Johnny’s best friend Cully in the Elvis movie Frankie & Johnny in which he sings with Elvis on the song Chesay (a song about a gypsy drink). Frankie was played by Donna Douglas, best known for playing Ellie Mae on The Beverly Hillbillies.
In her pre-Elly May days, Donna Douglas was crowned both Miss Baton Rouge and Miss New Orleans (not at the same time).