Sherwood Schwarz, who created The Brady Bunch, Gilligan’s Island and other low-brow but highly popular sitcoms, worked as a biology teacher, a writer for U.S. Armed Forces radio, and a joke writer for Bob Hope before his career as a television writer.
Bob Hope was born in England but became a naturalized citizen of the U.S., spending time in Cleveland, Ohio as a child. There is now a U.S. Navy transport ship named after him, honoring his many visits to warzones as a USO entertainer: MV Bob Hope - Wikipedia
Howard Sackler’s The Great White Hope, which was based loosely on the life of heavyweight champ Jack Johnson, won the 1969 Tony award for Best Play.
The Great White Hope star James Earl Jones has one of the most famous and admired voices on Earth (in part due to speaking the part of Darth Vader), but as a boy he rarely spoke until he was in high school due to a very severe stutter.
Stephanie Tubbs Jones was a Cleveland judge and a county prosecutor before winning election to Congress. Much to the community’s shock, she died of complications from a brain hemorrhage in 2008.
Merv Griffin turns out to be a serial killer in Steve Martin’s The Man With Two Brains.
Possibly* the first depiction of a serial killer on film was Peter Lorre’s portrayal of Hans, a schizophrenic pedophile and murderer and the character to whom the title refers in Fritz Lang’s 1931 masterpiece M.
*NOT FOR PLAY: That’s a guess- I don’t have a cite, but certainly I’m sure the Keystone Kops never chased a pedophilic schizophrenic serial killer nor would I guess Al Jolson sang about one, and even Germany in the 20s couldn’t have had that many films on the subject.
Glenn Beckert played 2nd base for the Chicago Cubs in the 1960s.
In 1961 and 1962, Cubs owner Phillip Wrigley tried a strategy of using a “college of coaches” instead of a single manager throughout the season. A total of five coaches served as “head coach” during the two years, all of whom had losing records.
Bandleader Kay Kyser made his name with his “Kollege of Musical Knowledge” show, and made famous the catchphrase “That’s right – you’re wrong” (contestants were supposed to give the wrong answer).
The German title “Kaiser” was the German form of “Caesar.”
“The Dick Van Dyke Show” was, essentially, a fictionalized (and WASP-ified) version of Carl Reiner’s life as a writer for Sid Caesar, on “Your Show of Shows.” Carl Reiner himself played egomaniacal star Alan Brady, who represented Caesar.
King Kaiser (Joe Bologna) in the film (and later musical play) My Favorite Year was a thinly veiled portrayal of Sid Caesar, while Allan Swann (Peter O’Toole) was a thinly veiled Errol Flynn; the story was based on one the screenwriter was told by Mel Brooks and Howard “Ernest T. Bass” Morris, both of whom worked for the tyrannical and violent comedy legend Caesar.
Aragorn becomes High King of Gondor and Arnor in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, taking the throne under the name of Elessar, of the House of Telcontar. He marries Arwen, daughter of Elrond the Elf-lord, and they eventually have a son, Eldarion, and an indeterminate number of daughters.
In the Harvard Lampoon parody, Bored of the Rings, the characters were all named for commercial products: Frodo was “Frito”; Sam, “Spam”; Gandalf, “Goodgulf”; and Aragorn, “Arrowroot.”
“Hawaii Five-O” star Jack Lord was born to an Irish family in the Bronx, and his real name was Jack Ryan. He played James Bond’s CIA pal Felix Leiter in “Dr. No.”
Eight different actors have played Felix Leiter, but only two have done so more than once: David Hedison and Jeffrey Wright.
The opening of The Odd Couple TV series began with a voiceover:
“On November 13, Felix Unger was asked to remove himself from his place of residence. That request came from his wife. Deep down, he knew she was right, but he also knew that someday, he would return to her. With nowhere else to go, he appeared at the home of his childhood friend, Oscar Madison. Sometime earlier, Madison’s wife had thrown him out, requesting that he never return. Can two divorced men share an apartment without driving each other crazy?”
In the sitcom The Odd Couple, Al Molinaro played the role of Murray the Cop.
The team nickname for Murray State University in western Kentucky is the “Racers” and pictures a racing Thoroughbred, even though the school is over 120 miles from the nearest Thoroughbred track.