Orson Bean was a first cousin twice removed of Calvin Coolidge.
Orson was the boss of Mork, back on Ork, on “Mork and Mindy”. The role, in which Mork had occasionally trancelike conversations across the lightyears, was satirized as Big Giant Head (played by William Shatner) on “Third Rock from the Sun”, in which Harry had the FTL conversations.
William Shatner and John Lithgow appeared in the orginal Twilight Zone episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” and the Twilight Zone movie remake of it. When they “met” on Third Rock from the Sun, they mentioned each having seen a monster on the wing of their airplane.
For John Lithgow’s over-the-top portrayal of John Worfin/Dr. Emilio Lizardo in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai across the 8th Dimension, he envisioned the alien-possessed character and being like a giant crab trapped in human form, and acted accordingly.
The role of transsexual Roberta Muldoon in The World According to Garp was originally offered to Christopher Reeve. He turned it down, feeling that going from portraying Superman to portraying a woman was too much of a stretch.
The role instead went to John Lithgow, earning him his first Oscar nomination best supporting actor (for portraying a woman!).
Roberts Muldoon is the lead character in “What Holds Up the Moon?”, a children’s story by a Saskatchewan author.
Roberta goes around asking people what holds up the moon, and gets a different answer from each profession (" ‘Stamps,’ said the postman.")
Most people think it’s the falling apple that led Sir Isaac Newton to think on and define gravity’s properties, but that’s only part of the story. As Newton was looking upward towards the tree branches where the apples were falling from, also in his line of sight was the moon and he wondered if the same force that caused the apple to fall to earth also kept the moon in orbit.
Howard Johnson is considered one of the foremost jazz/rock tuba players, playing for Taj Mahal. the Band, John Lennon, and in the Saturday Night Live studio band. His all-tuba musical group, Gravity, performed on SNL.
Rock Ridge was the frontier town in Blazing Saddles (1974) where every resident had the last name of Johnson, including a “Howard Johnson”, a “Dr. Samuel Johnson”, a “Van Johnson” and an “Olson N. Johnson”.
Olsen & Johnson’s biggest hit, Hellzapoppin’, was a Broadway and movie success. It was a mixture of the best and worst of burlesque and vaudeville, glorying in the broadest type of comedy with no sketch too lowbrow to be included.
CJ Olson’s fruit stand has been in the same location since 1899 in the heart of the Silicon Valley, in downtown Sunnyvale, CA. Silicon Valley used to be predominantly orchards and farmland but now it’s largely high-tech companies.
Sunnydale, CA was the location of the Hellmouth, the portal to the underworld where all the nasties escaped from, in “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer”.
The Sunnydale Housing Projects in San Francisco are where some of the worst crimes in The City occur.
Robert Shaw played conquistadore Francisco Pizarro in the movie version of Peter Shaffer’s play The Royal Hunt of the Sun.
The conquistador Francisco Pizarro González grew up illiterate.
Texas Rangers outfielder Juan Gonzalez won two American League MVP awards, much to the dismay of sabremetrcians, who regarded him as wholly undeserving of either.
Austin, the state capital of Texas, is politically much more liberal than almost the entire rest of the state.
The British television series “*Adam Adamant Lives!” *was a strong influence behind the Austin Powers movies. The series was about a Edwardian adventurer whom is revived in 1966 after being frozen by his evil arch-nemesis The Face. Adam is bewildered by “Swinging 60’s London” and fights evil, with help from the beautiful Granddaughter of his sidekick and helps him to adapt to life in “Swinging 60’s London”.
Atom Ant was a Hanna Barbera cartoon in the 1960’s.
Canadian film director Atom Egoyan was born to Armenian-Egyptian parents in Cairo in 1960; his first name was intended to mark the completion of Egypt’s first nuclear reactor.