Preston Sturges was the first director to win an Oscar for the first movie he directed – for best screenplay. Two other first-time directors who won best screenplay Oscars were Orson Welles and Mel Brooks.
The screenplay of the Bradley Cooper technothriller Limitless was adapted from Irish author Alan Glynn’s novel The Dark Fields, but was outrageously overlooked by the Academy for a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar nomination.
Gary Cooper worked as a Yellowstone Park guide for several seasons before becoming an actor.
The cartoon character Yogi Bear lived in “Jellystone” Park.
Yogi Berra used to have a one-minute move-critic show on national TV.
Growing up, Yogi Berra lived a few doors away from another future major league catcher, Joe Garagiola. Garagiola was no where as successful as Berras, but he did win a world championship with St. Louis in 1946.
Muhammad Ali, Alice Cooper,and Joe Garagiola were neighbors in a golf course suburb of Phoenix, AZ.
On that 1946 St. Louis Cardinals team, Garagiola’s uniform number was 17, and Stan Musial’s was 8. Enos Slaughter’s was 9.
Stan Laurel always thought his “whining face” was humiliating, but the producers forced him to do it in most of his movies since the public loved it.
The unlikely Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young hit “Our House” was written by Nash about the mundane domesticity he enjoyed with Joni Mitchell in the Laurel Canyon home they shared.
(Just out of curiosity, would it be kosher to connect the above trivia domino with one about a sinkhole opening up “in the middle of [the] street”? Or is that too far from the actual text for the “rules”?)
Not sure about Leaper’s question, but playing on…
Graham Nash wrote Our House one day in 1969, in about one hour. The song has been covered by Sheena Easton and Helen Reddy.
(Leaper, those are two different songs, but what the hell.)
Sheena, Queen of the Jungle was the first female comic-book character with her own title, preceding Wonder Woman. Irish McCalla played her in the 1950’s TV series, and Tanya Roberts did in the later film version.
Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni, led the Britins in revolt, burning Londinium, but was ultimately defeated by the Romans at the Battle of Watlin Street.
Quaker Street is a small hamlet in upstate NY. There is no Quaker Street in Quaker Street, though there is a Quaker Lane.
The Quaker City (previously the US Navy Civil War sidewheel steamship USS Quaker City, active in the blockade of Southern ports) was the vessel used by Mark Twain and his fellow travelers in the long Mediterranean voyage to southern Europe and the Middle East that he described so entertainingly in The Innocents Abroad.
Mark Hamill was originally cast as David Bradford on Eight Is Enough and asked to be released from his contract before Star Wars came out, because he sensed the movie would be successful and he wanted to focus on his movie career. ABC refused to release him from his contract, thinking that having a successful movie star connected with the show would help. Hamill was then in a car crash in December 1976 and injured his face. This made him unavailable for shooting the TV series, and ABC was forced to recast the role of David, which then went to Grant Goodeve.
When Dave Eggers was editor of Might magazine, a bimonthly mag in San Francisco, he wrote an article on the death of Eight is Enough star Adam Rich. The article was a complete hoax, Rich was in on the hoax and posed for pictures of his own “tragic last days”, and there was a disclaimer stating it was a hoax, but the media reported the story as true and it was announced on several news shows that Adam Rich had died. Among those who was not in on the joke was Rich’s TV dad, Dick Van Patten, who had actually taken Rich in and supported him during some of his troubled days and was on vacation when news of his “death” was announced; Van Patten was devastated and returned home, then was relieved and furious to learn it was a hoax.
According to DC Comics statistics, Batman stands 6’ 2". Of all the actors who have played Batman, Adam West is the only one who stood the same height.
Honey West was a 60s half-hour show starring Anne Francis as the title character, one of the first female detectives to be featured on US TV. Modeled on Emma Peel in the Avengers, Francis kept a pet ocelot and wore animal print clothing.