The made-for-TV movie “Duel,” which pitted Dennis Weaver against a homicidal truck driver, made the previously unknown Steven Spielberg one of the hottest young directors in Hollywood.
I’ve used that duel as one.
Dennis Weaver starred in THE ORDEAL OF DR. SAMUEL MUDD, a television movie about the doctor who was sentenced to life at hard labor for assisting John Wilkes Booth following Lincoln’s assassination; the movie was heavily romanticized, for unlike the simple country doctor who helped a stranger in the movie the real Mudd was a virulent racist who most certainly recognized Booth (contrary to the movie) and who deliberately misdirected Federal troops even after learning Booth had killed Lincoln.
The picture won, but Best Director went to John Ford for Grapes of Wrath.
The folk group “The Weavers” took their name from a play by a certain Gerhart Hauptmann about an 1844 uprising staged by Silesian weavers (the “certain” indicating that I had never heard of him or it before looking it up just now).
Pete Seeger, who wrote “If I had a hammer” and co-founded The Weavers, was blacklisted because of his support for civil rights and disarmament.
Future rap star Stanley Burrell was once a batboy for the Oakland A’s, who gave him the nickname “Hammer” Because they thought he looked like a young Hank Aaron.
Arm & Hammer Baking soda is 155 years old.
Occidental Petroleum business tycoon, Armand Hammer, parlayed his business contacts into an unofficial diplomatic career. He bragged during his long and storied life that he was the only man who could count both Ronald Reagan and Vladimir Lenin as friends.
Lenin took command of the Bolshevik Revolution at Finland Station in Petrograd, arriving home from exile aboard a sealed train.
Lenin’s real name was Vladimir Illyich Ulyanov. He took the pen name of Lenin when he started writing. The works were signed as “N. Lenin,” the “N” indicating that Lenin was a pen name. Many outside of Russia thought the N stood for his name, and decided that it was short for “Nickolai.” By the 1950s, anticommunists routinely referred to him as “Nickolai Lenin.” Later, “Vladimir” took its rightful place.
Vladimir (“Didi”) and Estragon (“Gogo”), the two tramps in Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” were inspired by Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.
[del]Pinko is a dergogatory term for a person who is thought to be or is sympathetic to communism. Pink is a lighter shade of red.
[/del]
Er, I mean Laurel and Hardy first worked together in the silent film The Lucky Dog.
[del](Anyone know how to do a strikethrough?)[/del]
(Never mind, found it)
A laurel wreath was the traditional Greek symbol of honor and praise, which allowed Mel Brooks a pun by having the residents of Rock Ridge welcome their new sheriff with “a laurel. . . and hearty handshake” in the movie Blazing Saddles.
In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Lincoln at Gettysburg, Garry Wills analyzed the Gettysburg Address and noted its roots in classical Greek funeral oratory.
On the day after Christmas, it used to be a tradition for little Irish boys to kill a wren, then take it door to door, collecting money, supposedly for its funeral.
The tomb of Christopher Wren in the crypt of St. Paul’s Cathedral, which he designed, has the inscription “Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice” (Reader, if you seek his monument, look around you).
Brian Cox first played Hannibal Lecktor (spelled that way) in the film Manhunt, which was loosely based on the book Red Dragon by Thomas Harris.
Don’t we have a no-repeats rule? By now, should we? Anyway …
Col. Hannibal Smith, commander of the A-Team, was played by George Peppard on the TV show and will be played by Liam Neeson in the upcoming film.
Liam Neeson played Jesus in his big-screen debut, the 1978 film Pilgrim’s Progress.
…
Liam Neeson became a widower when his wife, Natasha Richardson, sustained a fatal head injury in a skiing accident in Quebec.