The mini-skirt fashion style of the 1960’s was also a British innovation, originating with Mary Quant’s clothing shop Bazaar in King’s Road, Chelsea. British model Jean Shrimpton caused a sensation with hers at the 1965 Derby Day, first day of the annual Melbourne Cup Carnival in Australia.
Verne Troyer’s (Mini-Me in the Austin Powers movies) first movie appearance was as a stunt double for a 9-month-old baby on a film called Baby’s Day Out.
Paul Bettany played Lord Melbourne in the 2009 film The Young Victoria (and quite well, too, I thought), despite being much younger than the historic Prime Minister.
A running joke in the movie This Is Spinal Tap was that the band’s drummers always died, often in bizarre ways. At the end of the film, drummer Mick Shrimpton spontaneously combusted on stage (as had previous Spinal Tap drummer Peter James-Bond), and was replaced by Joe “Mama” Besser.*
*That was another running joke- several drummers in the movie were named after members of the Three Stooges.
Christopher Guest, member of Spinal Tap and the 5th Baron Haden-Guest, is married to Jamie Lee Curtis.
Jamie Lee’s father, Tony Curtis, served with F Troop actor Larry Storch in the Navy from 1942-45 aboard a submarine tender. Curtis witnessed the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay from a vantage point 300 yards away. He and Storch had a lifelong friendship.
A short takeoff and landing (STOL) Fieseler F.156 *Storch *(Stork) was used by German commandos to rescue Mussolini from the top of the Gran Sasso mountain, so he could be reinstalled as ruler of the so-called Republic of Salo in northern Italy. Another, flown by famous test pilot Hanna Reitsch out of the Tiergarten, was the last Nazi aircraft to escape Berlin. Captured Storchen were used as personal aircraft by Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, Air Vice Marshal Arthur Coningham and Air Vice Marshal Harry Broadhurst.
The two rogue lions known as The Ghost and The Darkness (who inspired a mediocre movie starring Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas) were killed and stuffed. They can be viewed today at Chicago’s Field Museum.
Batman creator Bob Kane said in a Cinescape interview that of all the actors to have played Batman up to that point, he felt Val Kilmer had given the best interpretation in Batman Forever.
Journeyman NFL QB Billy Kilmer was one of the best at his position in personal leadrship quality, but one of the worst in throwing arm strength. The trajectory of his passes were said to resemble the terminal flight of a dying duck.
Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas were the second most successful band managed by Brian Epstein of Beatles fame.
Robert Hegyes played Juan Luis Pedro Felipo de Huevos Epstein, a Puerto Rican Jew, on “Welcome Back, Kotter”. He often brought in excuse notes to Mr. Kotter signed “Epstein’s Mother”.
Kathy Lee Gifford’s maiden name was Epstein; her father was a member of a Jewish immigrant circus family- his father was a snake charmer among other jobs. Her mother was French-Canadian Catholic and the household was largely irreligious until Kathy Lee and her brother became born again Baptists in their teens.
The Big Bang Theory was first proposed by Georges Lemaitre, a Belgian Catholic priest, who originally called his theory “the primeval atom.”
Ray Cummings published his short story The Girl in the Golden Atom in 1919.
Giacomo Puccini’s opera La Fanciulla del West (Girl of the Golden West), notably featuring a saloonful of California gold prospectors singing in beautiful Italian, debuted at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 1910 with Arturo Toscanini conducting, and Enrico Caruso as Dick Johnson, whose alter ego was Ramerrez, a Mexican bandito.
The opera La Fanciulla del West has a key role in Vance Bourjaily’s Now Playing at Canterbury, a modernized retelling of the Canterbury Tales with each chapter told not only from a different character’s point of view but in a different literary style.
Vivian Vance, of I Love Lucy fame, won the first Best Supporting Actress Emmy, in 1954.
One of actor Courtney Vance’s earliest film roles was as sonarman Seaman Jones in The Hunt for Red October, Tom Clancy’s book-turned-movie.
The Eugene O’Neill play The Emperor Jones is the story of an African-American convict named Brutus Jones who escapes to a Caribbean island, sets himself up as dictator, and induces the natives to rebel against his rule. Paul Robeson starred in the film version.