The Mammoth Book of Useless Information. Noel Botham
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• A record 8,552 animals were featured in Around the World in Eighty Days (1956).
• In 1925, MGM ran a contest to find a new name for Lucille LeSueur. They settled on Joan Crawford.
• The shortest-ever Hollywood marriage is the six-hour union of Rudolph Valentino and Jean Acker.
• Laurence Olivier is the only actor to direct himself in an Oscar-winning performance – in Hamlet (1948).
• The only soundtrack to out-gross the movie is that for Superfly (1972).
• Paul Newman was the joint owner of an Indy car racing team.
• The date 29 August 1997 is that of Judgement Day in Terminator 2 (1991).
• The Braveheart sword was auctioned in New York in 2001 for $135,000.
• The Wizard of Oz was released in England with an X certificate.
• MGM’s Irving Thalberg rejected Gone with the Wind (1939), saying ‘No Civil War picture ever made a nickel!’
• As a prop, E.T. was insured for $1.3 million.
• In Star Wars, when the storm troopers break into the control room where R2-D2 and C-3PO are hiding, one of them smacks his head on the door and falls backwards.
• One in twenty American film-goers saw Star Wars more than once in 1977, its opening year.
• Actor Henry Winkler, aka the Fonz in US TV series Happy Days, was considered for the part of Danny Zuko in Grease (1978).
• MGM had a reputation for being the most glamorous film studio, based on its having white telephones.
• Comedian, director, actor and author Billy Crystal has won three Emmy awards for hosting the Oscars.
• In the 1959 film Ben-Hur, nine chariots start the chariot race, but six crash and four finish, making a total of ten.
• In Casablanca (1942), Humphrey Bogart ad-libbed the line ‘Here’s looking at you, kid.’
• The names of the companies responsible for the end of the world in the Terminator movies, Skynet and Cyberdyne Systems, are actually names of real companies.
• In Gladiator (2000), during the battle with the Barbarian Horde, one of the chariots is turned over – revealing a gas cylinder in the back.
• The roar of the T. Rex in Jurassic Park (1993) is a blast from a baby elephant mixed with alligator growls and tiger shrieks.
• George Harrison was president of the George Formby Appreciation Society.
• The difference between animated chipmunks Chip ’n’ Dale is that Chip has one tooth and Dale has two.
• Billie Holiday was known as ‘Lady Day’.
• There are five basic foot positions in ballet.
• Thirteen or more players are needed for a big band.
• The heavy metal band Black Sabbath got their name from a 1963 horror film of the same name starring Boris Karloff.
• Johann Strauss was seven years old when he wrote his first waltz.
• Super-heroine Wonder Woman’s real name is Diana Prince.
• Verdi’s opera Aida was commissioned to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869.
• Popeye lives on the Island of Sweetwater.
• The Fine Young Cannibals won Best British Group at the 1990 Brit Awards. The band members returned their trophies, however, saying that the awards show was being used to promote Margaret Thatcher.
• Prince’s nickname is ‘His Royal Badness’.
• Johnny Cash recorded albums live in Folsom State Prison and San Quentin State Prison, both in California, but contrary to popular belief was never imprisoned himself.
• The TV series Battlestar Galactica was the subject of lawsuits from 20th Century Fox, as the company alleged it was a ‘steal’ from Star Wars.
• The cartoon strip ‘Peanuts’ has appeared in some 2,600 newspapers in seventy-five countries, and has been translated into twenty-one languages.
• Chopin made his debut as a pianist at the age of eight.
• Billy Batson must say the name of the ancient wizard ‘Shazam’ to transform into Captain Marvel.
• Dolly Parton owns a theme park called Dollywood in the Great Smoky Mountains, Tennessee.
• There are 20,000 television commercials made each year that are aimed exclusively at children in the USA, with 7,000 for sugared breakfast cereals.
• Ancient Chinese artists freely painted scenes of nakedness but would never depict a bare female foot.
• Nearly 80 per cent of Japanese adverts use celebrities, the majority being local stars. Of the foreign celebrities, the most popular are Arnold Schwarzenegger, promoting noodles, and Steven Spielberg, endorsing whiskey.
• The average American sees or hears 560 advertisements a day.
• War photographer Robert Capa’s famous photos of D-Day were selected from only 11 exposures that survived the developing process. Although he had shot four rolls of film, most of the photos were ruined by heat.
• In Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting The Last Supper, a salt cellar near Judas Iscariot is knocked over. This is said to have started the superstition that spilt salt is unlucky.
• The oldest piano still in existence was built in 1720.
• The average medium-sized piano has about 230 strings, each string having about 165lb (75kg) of tension, with the combined pull of all strings equalling approximately 18 tons (18,288kg).
• X-rays of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa reveal there to be three completely different versions of the same subject, all painted by da Vinci, under the final portrait.
• The sculpture by Auguste Rodin that has come to be called The Thinker was not meant to be a profile of a man in thought, but a representation of the poet Dante.
• Because of the precautions taken to prevent photographers from showing the public what occurred on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, the first published picture of the venue, in 1907, was made through an empty coat sleeve that concealed a camera.
• The harp’s ancestor is a hunting bow.
• Violins weigh less than 16oz (approximately 448g) yet resist string tension of over 65lb (29kg).
• It took four months to synchronise the three-minute fight scene between live actors and animated skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts (1963).
• The highest-paid animal actors are bears, which can earn $20,000 a day.
• The real names of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were Frederic Austerlitz Jr and Virginia Katherine McMath respectively.
• Film star Audrey Hepburn was fluent in English, French, Dutch, Flemish, Spanish and Italian, and was a member of the Dutch Resistance in World War II from the age of 15.
• ‘Success is a great deodorant. It takes away all your past smells.’ Elizabeth Taylor
• Leonard Nimoy owned a pet store in the 1960s before playing Mr Spock in Star Trek.
• ‘The duration of a film should not exceed the capacity of the human bladder.’ Alfred Hitchcock
• In the movie Rear Window (1954), Grace Kelly