When Ernie Kovacs died in a car accient, he owed huge amounts of back taxes to the IRS. His widow, Edie Adams, refused offers of helpt from their friends, preferring to work almost non-stop, including a stint as the “Muriel Cigar Lady,” until she was able to pay off his debts.
Was he any relation to P!nk?
There was a Commissioner of Internal Revenue appointed by President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, before there was even an Internal Revenue Service. The first U.S. income tax was created on the recommendation of Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase at the time.
In 1870, the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, declared the Legal Tender Act – allowing the US Government to print paper money – to be unconstitutional. The law was passed during the Civil War, and the first paper money was designed and overseen by Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase.
(Yes, same guy.)
According to 1990 figures, the U.S. is the world’s leading salmon-fishing country-335,600 metric tons of salmon annually caught. Japan is second, with 263,600 metric tons.
In 1885, veterinary assistant Theobald Smith isolated a genus of bacteria and decided to name the discovery after his boss. Since that surgeon’s name was Daniel Elmer Salmon, the bacterium is now known as Salmonella.
Paul de Kruif’s book Microbe Hunters is often cited by doctors as the reason they went into that profession. It a bunch of mini-biographies, written in heroic style, about the early discoverers of germ theory. The people covered are Anton van Leeuwenhoek; Lazzaro Spallanzani (disproving spontaneous generation); Louis Pasteur; Robert Koch; Emile Roux and Emil von Behring (diphtheria); Elie Metchnikoff (Phagocytes); Theobald Smith (Tick-bourne diseases); David Bruce (Sleeping sickness); Ronald Ross and Battista Grassi (malaria); Walter Reed (Yellow Fever); and Paul Ehrlich (Syphilis).
Robert Baratheon won the throne of Westeros in an uprising against a mad Targaryen king and is near the end of his reign in George R.R. Martin’s novel A Game of Thrones. King Robert is played by Mark Addy in the current HBO miniseries, just renewed for a second season.
Records produced by the “fifth Beatle” George Martin have achieved 30 #1 singles and 16 #1 albums in the UK and 23 #1 singles and 19 #1 albums in North America.
When Martin first discovered the Beatles, he was somewhat on the outs, working for the minor label Parlophone. He was concentrating primarily on comedy albums, having produced work by The Goon Show, Flanders and Swan (they sold steadily for 25 years) and Beyond the Fringe (featuring Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett, and Jonathan Miller). He was looking for a rock act to add when the Beatles auditioned.
One reason he was impressed by the Beatles was their sense of humor: After criticizing their audition, he asked if there was anything they wanted to say. George Harrison said, “Yes. I don’t like your tie.” Martin’s subordinates were aghast, but Martin saw it as a sign of their sense of humor and it influenced his decision to sign them.
George R.R. Martin’s first published short story, “Sandkings,” appeared in the now-defunct Omni magazine and has been often anthologized since then. A very bad episode of the reborn Outer Limits TV show, starrying Beau Bridges, was loosely based on the story.
Sandkings was the last story adapted in DC Comics’ Science Fiction Graphic Novels series. Others include Harlan Ellison’s Demon With a Glass Hand, which was also an Outer Limits episode, this time from the original series.
“Sandkings” was not Martin’s first published story. He had already been nominated for a Hugo and Nebula for “A Song for Lya” in 1973; “Sandkings” came out 1979, and Martin had already had The Dying of the Light as a novel in 1977.
“Rage, rage against the dying of the light” is a line from Dylan Thomas’ villanelle “Do not go gentle into that good night”. Rodney Dangerfield recited it in his 1986 college party-animal film Back to School.
Rodney Dangerfield pioneered the “triple Lindy” dive.
Lindy’s was a classic New York City deli, renowned for its cheesecake. It location in the theater district made it a popular hangout for Broadway stars. It was referred to in the musical Guys and Dolls, but the name was changed to “Mindy’s” (probably just for the movie).
In the film version of Guys and Dolls, Robert Keith played Lieutenant Brannigan, a cop whose targets included Sky Masterson (Marlon Brando). Earlier, Keith had portrayed Chief Harry Bleeker, who confronted Brando’s rebel biker Johnny Strabler in The Wild One.
The official poster for the 1992 Broadway revival of “Guys and Dolls” (seen here) featured a pair of very suspect dice.
The “Dead Man’s Hand” held by Wild Bill Hickok at the time of his murder
consists of this two pair: aces and eights. Many versions also specify the
black suits.
(Lindy’s was named Mindy’s in the Damon Runyon short stories, too).
The top hit by Jan and Dean was 1964’s “Dead Man’s Curve”, about an LA street drag race gone bad between a Corvette Sting Ray and a Jaguar XKE down Sunset Boulevard. The curve is at North Whittier Drive. Jan himself later had a bad crash near Dead Man’s Curve, in front of Roman Polanski’s house.
When Tony Curtisd dropped by unexpectedly at the filming of Rosemary’s Baby to visit with his friend Mia Farrow, Roman Polanski persuaded him to do the voice of Donald Baumgart without letting Farrow know.
The scene was done in one take, with Mia giving a great performance as she wondered “Whose voice is that?” Her completely real puzzlement shines through.