Sure he wasn’t from the movie Yesterday?
That is ultracute.
I only know Heinlein from others mentioning him here at SDMB. The beginning and end of his biography, to me, is ‘influential science fiction writer.’ From the 1920s? 60s? No idea. At least I can put a face to Asimov.
HP Lovecraft is another I only know by reputation here.
I was a kid in the 70’s and I knew about Bunyan and Appleseed because in school they showed us the Disney cartoons all the time. Not the Pecos Bill cartoon, though. Possibly because of the gunplay.
Ditto to both, along with Terry Pratchett.
(Re: Heinlein, a friend of mine used to go on and on about this supposedly amazing book called The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress - but he never once said the author’s name out loud!)
That’s quite all right, there are other Showers of the Way to bring down the wrath of The Old Ones upon your head. Live in fear. 
When I taught guitar, one of my students was a kid named John Williams. I thought about making bar bets, but figured there’d be at least one egghead in the bar who’d ask, “the British guitarist, or the American composer?”
I was surprised my niece did NOT know who Zamfir was. He has been The Master of the Pan Flute for over 50 years.
I wonder if UK Dopers would be surprised to know that most Americans have never heard of Eva Cassidy even though she was from the DC area.
Never heard of her. Most of my knowledge of only Brit famous stars comes from watching Graham Norton. I don’t watch so much anymore but I still catch clips.
I mentioned her back in post #126. The interesting thing is that it wasn’t until well after her death that an album of hers was finally released in the U.K. Then one of her songs got played on a U.K. radio show. Then a video of her singing got played on a U.K. television. Then the album became #1 on a U.K. chart, four and a half years after her death. She’s had three number one albums in the U.K. charts so far. She’s become fairly well known in many countries now. She’s sold a thousand times as many albums at this point as she did before her death. I first learned about Cassidy when I read a news story in The Washington Post just after her first number one album in the U.K. I went to a concert a few years ago (here in the Washington D.C. area) where several singers sang her songs.
Another place where she became known is Iceland. Her brother, also a musician, moved to Iceland at some point. She visited him there once and played her only concert outside the U.S. A few years ago I talked about Cassidy to someone who grew up in Iceland but who has lived in the U.S. for a while. She didn’t know about Cassidy when I first mentioned her. Later, she said that she mentioned Cassidy in a telephone call to her father back in Iceland. Her father said something like “Oh, I’ve talked about Eva Cassidy with you before, and I’m surprised you don’t remember it.”
As has been mentioned, a lot of this lack of recognition can be generational. But what amazes me is how narrow the time gaps are, between “Oh yeah!” and “Huh…?”
For example, my nephews-in-law are only ten years younger than me. I’m in my 60s, and grew up in the '60s. They, on the other hand, were children during the 1970s, when I was already a teen. During the course of conversation, I commented on something by imitating the character Dr. Smith from the TV series Lost in Space: “Oh, the pain! The pain!” They had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.
After I explained it, they said, “Lost in Space? What about Land of the Lost! Ooh, those Sleestaks were scary!”
I had heard of Land of the Lost, and generally knew what it was about–but I had never watched that series, so I had never heard of Sleestaks. Then they had to explain about that to me. 
Again: only a ten-year gap.
Perhaps not so surprising. Back in those days, popular half-hour series that had left the networks were put into syndication for local stations to run wherever they needed to fill time. Hour-long series, however, were rarely put into syndication because local stations often didn’t have 60-minute gaps to fill. Maybe if your city had an independent station they would have room for it, but otherwise shows like that fell into a black hole and were never seen again. (“Star Trek” was one notable exception. That actually gained in popularity due to syndication.)
I worked for a pretty good indy station in the 1980s that ran every popular syndicated off-network show they could get their hands on, even some hour-long shows, and they were told LIS wasn’t available. So if you didn’t see it on CBS in 1964-65-66, you’d likely never see it. Lost in Space was kind of specialized too because of its subject matter. It was a sci-fi adventure comedy. In what time slot would you run it? MeTV is running it, at 1am late Saturday night! Not exactly a ringing endorsement of its popularity.
So I’m not surprised your nephews-in-law had never heard of it.
I am not old enough to have seen Lost in Space during it original run. It was on in syndication my entire childhood.
What does being from the DC area have to do with how well-known she is?
In that she’s American, known well across the pond, but no so much here.
I’m your age but I found that show too dumb to watch. While I knew plenty about the Dr. Smith character from the times I tried to watch it, I don’t recognize that phrase.
I watched the hell out of the show as a kid, but I don’t recall the phrase (or really much at all about the episodes.)
Oh, got it. Thanks. I was thinking being from DC was specific to that city/district.
Same here.
You’re exaggerating if you think that Eva Cassidy is well known in the U.K. and unknown in the U.S. She’s better known in the U.K. than she is in the U.S., relative to the population of each country, but it’s certainly not true that she is unknown in the U.S. For instance, about a year ago, Kelly Clarkson sang the song “Bridge over Troubled Water” on her show. She explicitly referred to it as an Eva Cassidy song, not as a Simon and Garfunkel song. She knew of course that it was originally a Simon and Garfunkel song, but she was deliberately singing it to match the version done by Cassidy.