Jeff Beck provided some guitar work on Stevie Wonder’s ***Talking Book album, and later did a cover of “Superstition” on the Beck, Bogert and Appice ***album.
Beck’s is the world’s best-selling German beer.
The Belgian conglomerate InBev produces such beers as Budweiser, Corona, Stella Artois, Beck’s, Brahma and Lowenbrau.
Stella Dallas, the story of a self-sacrificing mother, earned Barbara Stanwyck her first Oscar nomination in 1938. She was nominated three more times, but never won, though she later won Emmys for The Big Valley
Steve Dallas was a sleazy, sunglasses-wearing lawyer often appearing in Berke Breathed’s cartoon Bloom County.
In 1944, Barbara Stanwyck was the highest-paid woman in the United States.
ETA: Ninja’d!
Berkeley Breathed conceived the comic strip that was to become Bloom County while a student at the University of Texas.
John Nance Garner and Lyndon Johnson were both Texas Democrats who served as Vice President in the first terms of popular Presidents from northern states - Franklin Roosevelt from New York, and John F. Kennedy from Massachusetts.
John Kennedy Toole’s prize-wnning novel ***A Confederacy of Dunces ***was not published until several years after he committed suicide. His mother got the book published with the assistance of Walker Percy.
In New Orleans, a bronze statue of Ignatius J. Reilly (the main character in A Confederacy of Dunces) can be found under the clock on the down-river side of the 800 block of Canal Street.
Louis Armstrong was born in New Orleans.
Louis Armstrong was named a “goodwill ambassador” for the United States by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. His allegedly prodigious intake of marijuana was either not known, or was ignored, by the White House at the time.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) code for Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, MSY (or KMSY in the international system), comes from the previous occupant of the site, Moisant Stock Yards.
Though Joan of Arc was widely known as the Maid of Orleans, she was actually from Lorraine.
Joan of Arc appears as a historical personage scooped up by the titular heroes of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. She is inspired to lead a women’s exercise class at a suburban California shopping mall.
Bill and Ted star Alex Winter’s first job as a child actor was a TV commercial for Kentucky Fried Chicken, in which he appeared with the actual Colonel Harlan Sanders. According to Winter, the Colonel was a miserable, cranky old man who complained about how awful KFC’s food was (especially the mashed potatoes, which he referred to as “library paste”).
In the movie Rebecca, Lawrence Olivier was disappointed that his significant other, Vivan Leigh, was turned down for the part of Mrs. de Winter in favor of Joan Fontaine. He reportedly whispered obscenities in Fontaine’s ear in their love scenes together. Director Alfred Hitchcock was aware of what was going on, but didn’t stop it, since they gave Fontaine a nervousness that fitted her character.
Bandleader Lawrence Welk, a native of North Dakota, spoke only German until he started school.
His last hit single, “Calcutta,” was #1 on the Billboard charts on February 16, 1961 the dayI was born.
Alfred Hitchcock chose Evan Hunter to adapt Daphne Du Maurier’s short story into a screenplay. Hitchcock told him to develop new characters and a more elaborate plot, while keeping Du Maurier’s title and concept of unexplained bird attacks.
Hunter later wrote a book Hitch and Me about the experience.
Joan Fontaine won the 1941 Best Actress Academy Award for her performance in Suspicion. It was the only Oscar ever handed out for a performance in a Hitchcock film.
On 07 December 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and sank the USS Arizona, my father’s uncle survived the attack: Patrocinio Pablo, OS1c; listed here.
In the 1970s “Lolo Enyong”, as we kids would call him, showed me the letter of appreciation as a USS Arizona survivor signed by the president (FDR? Truman? -don’t recall but I think it was FDR) and he shared with me how he swam to Ford Island to escape the burning, sinking ship, clearing the burning oil on the surface as he’d come up for air.
Lolo Enyong lived in San Jose, CA at that time and was one of our Greatest Generation.