Just before he would have shipped to the Korean War with the rest of his outfit Clint Eastwood was reassigned to be the base lifeguard and swim instructor.
The fact that CLINT EASTWOOD is an anagram of OLD WEST ACTION was once the subject of a “Final Jeopardy!” clue.
Ron Howard has found small roles for his brother Clint (former star of the TV series **Gentle **Ben) in nearly all of his movies. Both of their parents had small roles in Apollo 13.
When the Apollo 13 Command Module was examined after its return, it was found that the crew had tried to wire up a manual deployment switch for the recovery parachutes. However - they had in fact wired the switch to the parachute jettison control. If they had decided to use their jury-rigged manual override they would have in reality released the parachutes from the command module and plunged to their deaths in the ocean below.
Paul McCartney used the alias Apollo C. Vermouth, when producing the Bonzo Dog Band’s single “I’m the Urban Spaceman.”
Vivian Stanshall, the lead singer and mad genius* of the Bonzo Dog Band was the narrator for Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells.
*Neil Innes was the sane genius.
Former quarterback and current NFL commentator Joe Theisman’s best-known malapropism was “Nobody in the game of football should be called a genius. A genius is somebody like Norman Einstein.”
In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Nth Degree”, Lt. Barclay-- whose intelligence has been dramatically enhanced by an alien probe-- is late for a staff meeting in Engineering. The computer tells Geordi that he’s in the holodeck, and Geordi heads there, obviously thinking that Barclay’s falling back into his old holo-addiction habits. Turns out he was up all night arguing Grand Unification Theory with Albert Einstein.
“The Mucking of Geordi’s Byre” is a bagpipe tune.
A Geordie is the nickname for a person from the larger Tyneside region of northeastern England. Depending on who is using it, the catchment area for the term “Geordie” can be as large as the whole of northeastern England or as small as the city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. There are rival theories about exactly how the term came about, but they all accept that it derives from a familiar diminutive form of the name George, a very common name among the coal miners of the region and once the most popular name for eldest sons there.
Curious George books appeared in 1941. Written by Hans Augusto Rey and Margret Rey, seven original Curious George books were written during HA Rey’s lifetime from 1941 to 1966. Curious George’s friend, The Man in the Yellow Hat, was modeled after Adlai Stevenson.
Will Ferrell voiced The Man in the Yellow Hat, given the name Ted, in the 2006 Curious George film. According to the Wikipedia page, he is “tricked” into buying the safari hat and accompanying yellow outfit.
(I haven’t seen the movie, so I don’t know how he’s tricked. Also, I realize I should see that movie.)
“Yellow Balloon” was a minor hit for The Yellow Balloon in 1967. Since this was a studio group and the songwriter only had written a single song, the flip side of the single was “Noollab Wolley.”
The French word for a hot-air balloon is “montgolfière”, named for the Montgolfier brothers who invented it. Étienne Montgolfier was the first human being who took flight.
U.S. minister to Paris Benjamin Franklin saw the Montgolfier brothers ballooning. When a French aristocrat sniffed, “But what use is it?,” Franklin is said to have replied, “What use is a newborn child?”
The Aristocats was the last Disney film approved by Walt Disney personally. Set in a Paris mansion, it featured the voices of Eva Gabor, Phil Harris, and Roddy Maude-Roxby. The cats in question are named Marie, Berlioz, and Toulouse.
Roddy McDowell was very good friends with Elizabeth Taylor, recently charged in a tattletale bio with having a threesome with future President John F. Kennedy and actor Robert Stack.
The Rabbitte family, in Roddy Doyle’s Barrytown Trilogy, was renamed “Curley” in the movie versions of ***The Snapper ***and The Van.
The Three Stooges’ Curly was originally spelled Curley until the E was dropped in the 1936 short “Disorder in the Court.”
Though nominally the hero of Oklahoma!, Curly shows some rather disturbing cruelty as he tries to provoke Judd to suicide.