The sf cop thriller/comedy Robocop was set in Detroit, Michigan, but primarily filmed in Dallas, Texas.
Many, many movies are primarily filmed in Toronto, including Chicago (2002). (I think Canadian tax breaks significantly lower filming costs.)
Alex Cross was filmed in Cleveland, passing for Detroit; Kill the Irishman was filmed in Detroit, passing for Cleveland.
In 1960 Frank “Trader” Lane of the Cleveland Indians traded Rocky Colavito to the Detroit Tigers for Harvey Kuenn. The trade was spectacularly unpopular with fans of both teams.
Harvey Korman played the scheming Hedley Lamarr in Mel Brooks’s 1974 comedy Blazing Saddles. Word got around Hollywood that aging starlet Hedy Lamarr was not pleased to have her name thus spoofed.
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Harvey Comics, best known for humor comics like **Casper the Friendly Ghost, Richie Rich, Little Audrey, ** and Hot Stuff the Little Devil, used a jack-in-the-box named “Joker” as its logo.
On one episode of “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson” back in the late ‘70s, Steve Allen, dressed in a tuxedo and standing behind a candlelit lectern, presented a formal reading of the lyrics from Donna Summers’ “Hot Stuff.” While Carson and the audience were laughing hysterically, Allen never once so much as cracked a smile.
Heeeeeeeeere’s Johnny, who joined the US Navy during WWII in 1943 and was on the heavy battleship, USS Pennsylvania (the Pennsylvania, BTW, was at Pearl Harbor but in dry dock on the 7 Dec 1941 attack). While in the Navy, Johnny Carson was an amateur boxer.
In his private life, in addition to being a skilled prestidigitator, Johnny Carson was an avid amateur astronomer.
Performing magic tricks helped get Johnny Carson’s show-biz career going. Steve Martin’s, too.
Steve Martin frequented the Main Street magic shop during the years he worked by selling guidebooks at Disneyland.
Stephen Harper (incorrectly called “Steve” by George W. Bush) replaced Paul Martin as Prime Minister of Canada in 2006.
Paul Martin plays NHL hockey for the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Dean Paul Martin, son of entertainer Dean Martin, was a pilot in the US Air National Guard. He was killed instantly on 21 March 1987 when his F-4 Phantom flew into one of California’s San Bernardino Mountains during a snowstorm.
In 1987 in Berlin, in a speech commemorating the city’s 750th anniversary, U.S. President Ronald Reagan challenged Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall!” 29 months later, the Berlin Wall was indeed torn down, and shortly thereafter, Germany was reunified.
Ronald Reagan professed, “Peace through superior firepower.” Indeed, “Peace through strength” was a recurring theme during his administration, at a time when the Cold War was active and expensive.
The motto of the USS Ronald Reagan is, “Peace Through Strength.”
The original name of the Volkswagen was “KDF-Wagen”, for the Nazi recreational organization Kraft durch Freude, “Strength through Joy”.
While the actual brand name Keurig comes from the Dutch term for “excellence," the famous K-cup company is located in Redding, Massachusetts.
(Psst … it’s “Reading”. South of North Reading, the anti-Catholic town: No. Reading Mass.)
The Dodge Aries and Plymouth Reliant were known internally at Chrysler as the K series. The name “K car” became public and popular for them both, in small part due to its mention in the Barenaked Ladies’ song “If I Had $1,000,000”. The K-car derivative called the Caravan was the first wide-selling minivan and is credited with saving the moribund company. Chrysler is now effectively owned by Fiat.