Irish singer Van Morrison’s first name is George. “Van” is short for Ivan, his middle name.
American actor Van Heflin’s first name was Emmett. “Van” was short for Evan, his middle name.
Actor Van Johnson (whose first name was Charles, but he used his middle name “Van.”) was badly injured in a car accident while he was filming A Guy Named Joe. Producers wanted to recast the role, but costars Spencer Tracy and Irene Dunne insisted the production wait until he recovered. The accident left him with a metal plate in his forehead and several facial scars, which he hid with makeup whenever he acted during his years at MGM. Studio publicity stills of him were heavily airbrushed.
A Guy Named Joe was remade as Always, with Richard Dreyfus and Holly Hunter as the leads, and the venue changed from the Pacific in WW2 to a firefighting aviation operation in the Rockies. The Lionel Barrymore role, as the angel who helps the just-killed pilot to be a spirit guide for his still-living successor, was played by Audrey Hepburn in her final role.
Holly Hunter is deaf in her left ear.
Buddy Holly was born Charles Hardin Holley. He played and sang almost nothing but country music until he saw the effect Elvis Presley had on girls in his audience, and decided rock and roll was the future.
The famous plane crash on “The Day the Music Died” has been depicted in both Gary Busey’s The Buddy Holly Story and in Lou Diamond Phillips’ La Bamba, a bio of Richie Valens (Ricardo Valenzuela). There has as yet been no film bio of The Big Bopper (J. P. Richardson) to complete the trio.
The Big Bopper had a penchant for writing bad checks. Several of them are still thumb-tacked to the wall next to his 8 X 10 glossy photos at the KTRM studios in Beaumont, Texas, where he worked.
Albino brothers Edgar and Johnny Winter were both born and raised in Beaumont, Texas, and later became successful musicians.
Comedian Jonathan Winters was born in Dayton, OH and raised in Springfield, OH. During his senior year at Springfield High School, Winters quit school to join the U.S. Marine Corps and served two and a half years in the Pacific Theater during World War II.
Semper Fi
Marine Corps General Smedley Butler testified before Congress in 1933 that he had been approached by a group of wealthy businessmen who wanted him to helpt stage a coup d’etat to remove Franklin Roosevelt from office.
When Gary Cooper turned down the role for Rhett Butler, he was passionately against it. He is quoted saying both, “Gone with the Wind is going to be the biggest flop in Hollywood history,” and, “I’m just glad it’ll be Clark Gable who’s falling on his face and not Gary Cooper.”
Gary Cooper was name-checked in Irving Berlin’s song “Puttin’ On The Ritz”, for the movie of the same name. It was sung by Clark Gable in Idiot’s Delight, by Fred Astaire in Blue Skies, and by Gene Wilder and Peter Boyle in Young Frankensteini.
Thornton Wilder’s ***The Matchmaker ***was adapted into the musical ***Hello Dolly ***by composer Jerry Herman.
The cartoon robot Wall-E loved the movie version of Hello, Dolly, and watched it repeatedly.
In the film version of Hello Dolly, which takes place in 1890, Barbra Streisand as Dolly Levi signs a duet with Louis Armstrong, who had a #1 hit single with the title song. This is simply historically inaccurate, as a white woman associating with a “colored” man at that time would have been scandalous!
There have been 19 French kings named Louis (possibly 20, depending on one’s view of the abdication of Charles X).
Louis I, nicknamed “The Pious” and “The Debonaire” was the only surviving son of Charlemagne, and reigned from 814 to 840.
His descendant, Louis-Phillippe, was the last King of France (to date), reigning from 1830 to 1848.
The main dining room of the Union Oyster House restaurant in Boston, the oldest restaurant in the US, was previously the apartment where Louis Philippe lived during the Reign of Terror, supporting himself as a teacher of French.
In the ***Police Academy *** movie series, gay motorcycle gangs hang out at a nightclub called the Blue Oyster Bar.
Blue point oysters are no different from any other East coast American oyster. They got their name from where they were first harvested, a location in Long Island’s Great South Bay. Restaurants started using the “blue point” appellation, with the implication they were different (and better) than other oysters.
The Blue Point Grille is a swanky seafood restaurant in the Warehouse District of Cleveland, Ohio.