Actress Madeline Kahn was also nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar that year and lost to Tatum O’Neal. Both actresses were nominated for their work in Paper Moon.
David Cassidy ad his real-life stepmother Shirley Jones were the only members of the ***Partridge Family ***sitcom cast who actually sang on any of the Partridge Family’s recordings.
It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Superman was a Broadway musical with songs by Lee Adams and Charles Strouse, with a book by David Newman and Robert Benton, with Linda Lavin and Jack Cassidy in the cast (Superman was played by Bob Holliday). Despite the talent involved, it was only a modest success, though the role (as Sydney, another Daily Planet reporter) did boost Lavin’s career.
Jack Cassidy was married twice, to Evelyn Ward until 1956, and then to Shirley Jones from 1956-1974. Shirley Jones’s first movie was as the leading female star in Oklahoma!
Shirley You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman is a delightful book available for free download on the Internet. Among many other anecdotes, Feynmann recalls how he was rejected from the draft for psychiatric deficiency.
Richard Feynman played the bongo drums.
In a joking allusion to an incident that led to his arrest, Matthew McConaughey appeared nude except for a set of strategically placed bongo drums, in the movie Magic Mike.
Wow, on the same page, no less!
Matthew Harrison Brady was the William Jennings Bryan substitute in the play and movie Inherit the Wind, a fictionalized treatment of the Scopes Monkey Trial.
William Jennings Bryan received the Democratic party’s nomination for President three times, losing twice to William McKinley and once to William Howard Taft.
Bryan later served as Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson.
The Ohio town of Bryan is famous for two companies devoted to products associated with childhood. Spangler Candy Company turns out candy canes, Dum Dum suckers, and other confections. Ohio Art is primarily a supplier of lithographic components, but introduced the Etch a Sketch in 1960.
Edmund Spangler was a handyman at Ford’s Theater who held the reins of J.W. Booth’s horse on the night of the assassination. He was sentenced to six years in prison and sent to Dry Tortugas along with Dr. Mudd, with whom he was pardoned after 4 years. He spent most of the rest of his life on Mudd’s farm. (Also like Mudd he may not have been as innocent of knowledge about what he was doing as some short histories imply.)
In what turned out to be the final performance of “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theater on April 14, 1865, the show ended prematurely upon the laugh line “Well, I guess I know enough to turn YOU inside out, you sockdologizing old man-trap!”
Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War at the time of President Lincoln’s assassination, ordered Ford’s Theater closed after the President’s death. It was later purchased by the government and used as a records repository before being turned over to the National Park Service and largely restored to its condition at the time of the tragedy.
:o But at least I did give some new info.
Film critic Roger Ebert so admires Harry Dean Stanton that he created the “Stanton-Walsh Rule,” which states: “No movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad.” Ebert later admitted that Dream a Little Dream (1989), in which Stanton appeared, was a “clear violation” of this rule.
M. Emmet Walsh’s filmography lists 115 films, and Harry Dean Stanton’s lists 110, so if the Stanton-Walsh Rule is (well, generally) true then there are a lot of good movies out there.
Walsh’s Rule predicts that a molecule will adopt a shape that provides the most stability for its highest occupied molecular orbital. The rule is named after Arthur Donald Walsh, who in 1964 was elected Fellow of The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge.
A rubber tire, or any rubber object, is one giant rubber molecule.
Rubber was given its name because it was so commonly used to make pencil erasers, which are used to “rub” out mistakes.
Napoleon’s Buttons by Penny Le Couteur and Jay Burreson is a bestselling pop-science book about the role of chemistry and particular molecules in history, discussing such things as the spice trade, Vitamin C, clothing dyes, penicillin, vulcanized rubber and birth control.
Pablo Escobar’s Medellin Cartel spent US$2500 a month on rubber bands to hold all their cash.