Earl Stanley Gardner named Perry Mason after the Perry Mason Company, [publisher of Youth’s Companion, a magazine best known for producing the original Pledge of Allegiance.
Nitpick: Gardner spelled his first name Erle.
For play: The author of the Pledge was Francis Bellamy, whose cousin Edward Bellamy wrote Looking Backward: 2000-1887, a socialist utopian novel which created such a sensation that over 160 “Bellamy Clubs” were formed throughout the USA to discuss and publicize the book’s ideas.
In His Girl Friday, Cary Grant has to describe what Hildy Johnson’s fiancé looks like, and says " He looks like that fellow in the movies - Ralph Bellamy." Bellamy was playing the role.
In the sitcom Bosom Buddies Kip (Tom Hanks) and Henry (Peter Scolari) are roommates who pose as women named Hildy and Buffy to live in an all-female apartment building because it’s the only one they can afford.
Buffy Sainte-Marie was born on a Cree reservation in Saskatchewan. Her best known song, Until It’s Time for You to Go has been recorded by Elvis Presley, Barbara Streisand and the Boston Pops orchestra, among others. During the 1970s she made frequent appearances on Sesame Street.
Elvis Presley is just one of many singers to cover Will Thompson’s old hymn “Softly and Tenderly,” which was prominently featured in the 1985 movie The Trip to Bountiful, starring Geraldine Page.
When Rip Torn was married to Geraldine Page, their home was naturally called “Torn Page”.
In an episode of the Simpsons, Bette MIddler and kruSTY the clown bought a race horse together. Naturally they named the horse “Krudler.”
When Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford were married, they naturally named their mansion Pickfair.
One of the first television production studios was formed by Desi Arnez and Lucille Ball (you know what is coming). Naturally, they named it Desilu
When Thomas Disch collaborated with John Sladek on the thriller novel Black Alice, they used the portmanteau pseudonym Thom Demijohn.
Sirius Black, a powerful wizard and an escaped prisoner of Azkaban, was Harry Potter’s godfather in the books by J.K Rowling. He was played by Gary Oldman in the movies.
There is an Oldman River in southern Alberta. Presumably it just keeps rollin’ along.
Southern Alberta is also the location of Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and home of a museum of Blackfoot culture (the tribe uses the name Piegan in Canada). The Piegans used the natural cliff formation to stampede buffalo herds to their incapacitation and easy slaughter. However the name refers to an Indian boy who watched from below just for fun one day, and couldn’t run out of the way of a plummeting bison fast enough to save his skull.
Because it was known there were enormous bison herds on the great plains and because bones from wooly mammoths (called ‘American olyphants’ in some writings of the time) had been found in the eastern states, Thomas Jefferson hoped Lewis and Clark would bring back reports of wild elephants still living in North America. There weren’t of course, but they did send him back some great fossils and some pet prairie dogs and other flora and fauna.
Elephants have the largest brains in comparison to body weight than any other animal besides humans.
The word “jumbo,” meaning large, derives from Jumbo, the name of an elephant exhibited in the US by P. T. Barnum.
In addition to his fame as a promoter and impressario, P.T. Barnum also was a teetotaler who spent years as a temperance lecturer and served two terms in the Connecticut legislature.
The US’ most prominent temperance activist prior to Prohibition was Carry A. Nation, a large, mean-looking woman from a family plagued with mental illnesses (her mother thought she was Queen Victoria). Nation’s trademark was to invade saloons with a hatchet, after she heard a message from God and lost patience with the more-mainstream Women’s Christian Temperance Union.
Queen Victoria mourned her husband Prince Albert for so many years in virtual seclusion, withdrawing from almost all public appearances, that Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli became concerned that public support for the monarchy would dwindle, making a British republic more likely.