In 1970, Richard Nixon had the White House guards dressed in what Timedescribed as “Graustarkian dress uniforms festooned with gold braid and nipped at the waist with black leather gunbelts. The black vinyl hats trimmed in gold suggested, by turns, a Ruritanian palace guard, a Belgian customs inspector, and Prince Danilo in The Merry Widow.” After much similar public derision, the uniforms were donated to a high school marching band.
Not for play: The above description made me want to see a visual but the closest I can find is of the hats. I’ll keep looking.
Varina Howell Davis, wife of Jefferson Davis and later First Lady of the Confederate States of America, was the de facto First Lady of the Franklin Pierce White House. The reasons included that Mrs. Pierce rarely attended White House functions due to lifelong social anxiety and during her husband’s presidency extreme depression: she spent part of everyday upstairs writing letters to her sons (which may not seem odd until one learns they were all dead (the last one dying in a terrible accident his parents witnessed weeks before the inauguration) and she also disapproved of alcohol being served at White House functions (though Pierce would not let her ban it, in part because he was an alcoholic). In addition there was no Vice President at all after the first month of the Administration (thus no Second Lady) and of the Cabinet member wives Mrs. Davis was Mrs. Pierce’s handpicked surrogate. By all accounts she was a success as White House hostess; she was mostly despised as Confederate First Lady.
The nickname of Pierces opponent in the 1852 election, General Scott, was “Old Fuss and Feathers”. He would be the last candidate the Whigs would nominate for President.
(A little fuzzy, but here’s a photo)
[not for play: very Third World Dictator/NYC doorman.]
Back on track now:
The title of Woody Allen’s 1975 book Without Feathers referred to an Emily Dickinson line, “Hope is the thing with feathers.” It included the essays “The Whore of Mensa”, “If the Impressionist Had Been Dentists”, and “A Guide to the Lesser Ballets”.
Sheriff Woody, as originally described and designed in the early drafts of Pixar’s Toy Story, was much taller than Buzz Lightyear, and considerably nastier than in the final version. Tom Hanks has provided his voice for all three movies.
From May 1939 to January of the following year, Woody Guthrie wrote a column for The Daily Worker. While the paper was an organ of the Communist Party, Guthrie was never a full-fledged “Commie”, just an enthusiastic “fellow traveler”.
Woody Guthrie was very close friends with Will Geer, the singer/actor/botanist best remembered for playing Grandpa Walton and who introduced Guthrie to Communism; during a period when both men were blacklisted they lived together in a bohemian community that included their wives, children, Geer’s lover Harry Hay, and other blacklisted proto-hippie types on a small farm Geer owned in California.
John Milton Hay, one of President Lincoln’s top two White House aides, later served as a diplomat and as Secretary of State to William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. He is buried in Cleveland’s Lakeview Cemetery, along with James A. Garfield and John D. Rockefeller.
NBC was so sure that “Mr. Television” Milton Berle’s domination of television would continue that, in 1951, they signed him to a 30-year contract. Berle’s show was canceled in 1956, with NBC on the hook for the other 25 years.
One of Millton Berle’s “accomplishments” during his NBC tenure was hosting Jackpot Bowling for six months in late 1960 and early '61.
Bowling Green, Virginia is known as the “cradle of American horse racing”, the home of the second-oldest Masonic Lodge, and the current location of the oldest continuously inhabited residence in Virginia. It was named for the plantation of its founder, Major john Thomas Hoomes, also the site of one of the earliest American race tracks.
Del Mar Racetrack in Del Mar, California (near San Diego) was built by a consortium of celebrity horse racing enthusiasts that included Jimmy Durante, Bing Crosby, Pat O’Brien (the character actor, not Insider guy), and Oliver Hardy. Georgia born Hardy owned several race horses and interest in numerous race tracks at his high point but unfortunately liked being on the betting side of the window more than the office side and after heavy losses had to sell his interest in Del Mar to Crosby.
Despited being the most famous race at Pimlico Race Course, the Preakness has been held at a variety of locations. For 15 years, it was held at Gravesend Race Track in Brooklyn, moving back to Pimlico permanently in 1908. Its date has also changed – for two years, it was held on the same day as the Kentucky Derby, making a triple crown impossible (of course, this was before the term was coined). It was also held before the Derby 11 times and has been run on every day of the week except Sunday. And when Sir Barton won it on the way to winning the first triple crown, the Preakness was only four days after the Derby was run.
There have been three U.S. Navy warships named the USS Brooklyn, the latest a World War II light cruiser later transferred to the navy of Chile. She was eventually sold for scrap but sank off Pitcairn Island in 1992 while under tow to shipbreakers in India.
Joseph Martin, Bruce Barton and Hamilton Fish, were conservative Republicans during the 1930s and early 1940s. When Franklin Roosevelt decided he couldn’t really criticize the internationalist policies of opponent Wendell Wilkie, he instead lambasted the team of “Martin, Barton and Fish.”
Bruce Springsteen is currently the focus of a special exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. Among the many items on display is the first guitar which he bought for himself; according to the exhibit signage, he paid (he’s not sure) $180 or $185 for it, which was a fortune for him at the time.
Bruce Springsteen once played with the rock bottom remainders, a group formed by published authors.
Heheh. I remember that. You left out my favorite part, though; Barry also wrote something like, “If you roll a guitar down a flight of stairs, it will very likely play ‘Gloria’ all by itself.”
Gloria Vanderbilt is the mother of Anderson Cooper.