Contrary to Hollywood legend, Max Schreck was a relatively well-known stage and screen actor when he appeared as Count Orlock in the 1922 German film production of Nosferatu.
I used that one some pages back.
Robin Williams, who had worked for Shrek co-producer Jeffrey Katzenberg on Aladdin and had a bitter falling out with him and the Walt Disney Company over marketing agreements, has hinted that he refused a role in Shrek, because it would mean working for Katzenberg again. He would not state which role he had refused.
Welsh author Emlyn Williams wrote the 1980 comic novel Headlong, in which a British actor becomes King John II after a Hindenburg-style dirigible disaster befalls the entire Royal Family in 1935. It loosely inspired the John Goodman movie King Ralph.
The Waltons episode The Inferno had small-town Verginia reporter John-Boy winning a newspaper contest to cover the docking of the Hindenburg in New Jersey, thus becoming a witness to the disaster.
Herbert Morrison was the radio journalist whose cry “Oh the humanity!” became the best known part of the live coverage of the Hindenberg; it was parodied, among other times, by Les Nessman in the famous “turkey drop” episode of WKRP and by Sheldon in a recent episode of Big Bang Theory upon learning a valuable research grant may go to the liberal arts college of his school.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, based on a story by Ian Fleming, is one of the few children’s movies that was originally released with a scheduled intermission. It is timed as a cliffhanger, just after Dick Van Dyke’s character has inadvertently driven the magical car off, well, a cliff.
Dick Van Dyke’s significant other from 1976 until her death in 2009 was Michelle Triola (Marvin), the former domestic partner of actor Lee Marvin who she sued for support in a famous and precedent setting palimony suit. She received no money from Marvin.
A Van Dyke is a style of facial hair including a goatee and a mustache, with the cheeks shaved. It is commonly misnamed a goatee, which is only the portion of the hair hanging from the chin like a billy goat. The hair style is named for 17th century Flemish painter Anthony Van Dyck, whose portrait subjects, including King Charles I of England, where Van Dyck worked, often wore it, as did he himself.
Van Johnson was working to be a star in Hollywood when he was cast in the movie A Guy Named Joe. During shooting, Johnson was involved in a terrible car accident, which left him with a scarred forehead and a metal plate in his head. MGM wanted to replace him, but co-stars Irene Dunne and Spencer Tracy insisted that he continue in the role. He finished the movie and became a star, partly because the metal plate made him ineligible for military service during WWII, making him available for roles when other actors were in the army.
Van Johnson was originally cast as Elliott Ness in the television series The Untouchables. He quit in a dispute over salary days before the first episode was to be fimed, and Robert Stack was hurredly signed to play the part.
Robert Stack only reluctantly signed on to play a seasoned but slightly off-kilter pilot in Airplane!, concerned that the goofy role would hurt his serious, macho image.
Stack’s role in Airplane! echoed his (melo)dramatic role in 1954’s The High and the Mighty, one of the truly seminal airline-disaster movies (a genre of which your humble servant is an aficionado), as captain of a crippled DC-4 over the Pacific. At one point, co-pilot John Wayne slaps him in the face to end a panic attack - Stack’s reply “Thanks, I needed that” recurred in a series of Aqua-Velva aftershave commercials also involving face slaps. Two years later, in Julie, stewardess Doris Day also landed a DC-4 on the same runway at San Francisco International Airport.
In *Airport 1975 *stewardess Karen Black had to fly a stricken jet through the Wasatch Mountains while trying to help a rescue pilot crawl in through a hole in the fuselage.
In 1962, St. Bona of Pisa, a 12th century nun who helped lead travelers on pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, where St. James the Greater is honored, was canonised by Pope John XXIII as patron saint of flight attendants.
During World War II, the Allies discovered the Germans were using the Leaning Tower of Pisa as an observation post. An American Army sergeant was briefly entrusted with the fate of the tower, and his decision not to call in an artillery strike kept it from being destroyed.
The U.S. declaration of war against Germany and Japan in December 1941 during World War II, after both countries had done so against the U.S., was the last time that Congress actually approved a declaration of war using its constitutional power to do so. Every American war since then has not been declared.
After the War of the Triple Alliance, Paraguay suffered so many casualties that their legalized polygamy for several years afterwards in order to repopulate the country.
Skating’s Axel jump was named after Axel Paulsen, the first skater to perfect it. Canadian skater Vern Taylor was the first to land a Triple Axel in competition at the 1978 World Figure Skating Championships
The band Guns N’ Roses was named after lead singer Axl Rose and lead guitarist Tracii Guns. Apparently, Tracii wasn’t very reliable and got replaced by Slash.
The Guns of Navarone is a 1961 action-adventure movie set in World War II, about a group of Allied commandoes attempting to blow up a large German artillery installation in Greece. It starred Gregory Peck, David Niven and two Anthonys: Quinn and Quayle.