In early 1992, when there was a lot of speculation as to whether Mario Cuomo would run for president, a billboard appeared in Albany, NY – the capital of the state – saying “Run Mario Run!” There was much speculation as to what political organization was behind it, until about a week later, when the sign was changed to reveal it was an ad for the newest version of Super Mario Brothers.
Mario Cuomo’s son Andrew, the current holder of New York’s governorship, was once married to Robert Kennedy’s daughter Kerry.
John Kerry was born in the west wing of a U.S. military hospital in Aurora, Colorado. The senior U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, he was the Democratic nominee for President in 2004, and now serves as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
John McCain, who was the Republican nominee for President in 2008, was born in a military hospital in the Panama Canal Zone.
At the height of the 2008 campaign, the U.S. Senate passed a nonbinding resolution expressing its confidence that John McCain was a “natural born citizen” and thus was constitutionally eligible for the Presidency. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) voted for it.
Despite myths, Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane did not lose money on its first release. It was hurt by the Hearst newspapers denouncing the film, but it made a slight profit despite that.
After her release from prison Patty Hearst married her bodyguard and started a family, appeared in some John Waters’ films, and was given a full pardon by Bill Clinton during his lame duck presidency.
While the theory that the first names of US Presidents runs on a common-unusual-common pattern fell apart with George (Bush)-Bill (Clinton, too bad he didn’t use his middle name of Jefferson)-George (W. Bush), it’s back on track with Barrack (Obama).
At the Al Smith dinner at which candidates Obama and McCain roasted each other, Obama said that he received the name Barrack because it means ‘blessed’ in Swahili and the name Hussein ‘because my parents never expected I’d run for president’.
The first names Ronald-James-Gerald-Richard do not conform too well either. Lyndon-John-Dwight do. I am not so sure about Harry and Franklin. I’m out of gas now.
Nitpick: It’s “Barack.”
Gerald R. Ford is the only Eagle Scout to have become President of the United States. George W. Bush was briefly in Cub Scouts, and as far as I’ve been able to discover, Barack Obama was never in Scouting at all.
Gerald Ford was the longest lived U.S. President, age 93, a few months older than Reagan.
The 1950 Oscar winner for best animated short subject, Gerald McBoing Boing, was based upon a story by Dr. Seuss. The screenplay was by Phil Eastman and Bill Scott; Scott later became better known as the voice of Bullwinkle the Moose. It helped establish UFA studios as a major cartoon studio.
Myself as Witness, a novel by James Goldman who wrote The Lion in Winter and Robin and Marian, is the third work of what he considered his Plantaganet trilogy and centers on King John and his family. The narrator is an actual historical figure, Gerald of Wales, who writes as Giraldus Cambrensis and serves as John’s unwilling chronicler on a disastrous military campaign.
Nitpick - it’s UPA.
UPA’s most famous animated character was Mr. Magoo, a wealthy but near-sighted bumbler, voiced by actor Jim Backus.
Jim Backus’s most famous live-action role is as “the millionaire” on “Gilligan’s Island”.
Jim Backus plays a rich but drunken pilot who scares the wits out of Mickey Rooney and Buddy Hackett in the 1963 all-star comedy It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
A Hollywood lay line: Mickey Rooney married Ava Gardner who later married Frank Sinatra who later married Mia Farrow who had children with Woody Allen who was previously involved with Diane Keaton who was involved with Al Pacino who had twins with Beverly D’Angelo who was married to Neil Jordan. (There are many roads off of these.)
Empress Wu of Tang Dynasty China must have been right up there
with Cleopatra as a great lay:
Her rise to power begain when she entered the imperial harem.
Soon she was promoted to Emperor’s Number One Concubine.
Then the Emperor died.
Then she was promoted to Number One Concubine of the new Emperor.
Then she married the new Emperor (remember these Emperor guys got
their pick of the whole country).
Eventually I think she deposed him, and became the only offically ruling
Empress in Chinese history (the Dowager Empress of the Boxer Rebellion
era was only a de facto ruler).
The first edition of Larry Niven’s Ringworld, Louis Wu teleported eastward from city to city in order that his 200th birthday last as long as possible. In reality, this would have shortened the day. Niven corrected this in later editions, though Niven took a lot of ribbing for having the Earth turning in the wrong direction.