When Ron Popeil titled his 1995 autobiographical book The Salesman of the Century it was not the kind of exaggeration used in the “As seen on TV” style of ads…
Year: 2021
“Luke, I am your father!” — the most famous movie misquote ever?
On May 21, 1980, The Empire Strikes Back, the second film in the original Star Wars movie trilogy, had an initial release at a limited number of theaters in the…
“Elvis has left the building.”
Even people who aren’t Elvis Presley fans know the line “Elvis has left the building.” Credit for popularizing this famous quote goes to Al Dvorin, a Chicago bandleader and…
“About one-fifth of the people are against everything all of the time.”
Some observers have expressed surprise that two populist, anti-establishment candidates who many people view as “extremists” won sizeable percentages of the votes in the 2016 presidential primary elections. But in…
The origins of the “The Domino Effect”…
Contrary to what many sites on the Internet say, President Dwight D. Eisenhower did not coin the famous Cold War term “the Domino Effect.” He did use the phrase “falling…
“Open the pod bay doors, HAL.”
On April 6, 1968, director Stanley Kubrick’s visionary science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey was released to movie theaters nationwide in the United States. The film, developed from the…
The story behind the famous movie misquote: “Me Tarzan, you Jane.”
On March 25, 1932, the classic film Tarzan the Ape Man, starring former Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan, premiered in New York City. The famous movie misquote associated with…
“I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.”
I’m a big fan of the Mario Puzo’s 1969 novel The Godfather and the movie that was made from it in 1972. I am also a big fan of vintage…
The story behind “Comin’ in on a wing and a prayer”
The idiomatic expression “on a wing and a prayer” is a now widely used to describe doing something under extremely difficult or disadvantageous circumstances and hoping that sheer luck, determination and/or…
“Only God can make a tree.” But Joyce Kilmer’s poem inspired many people to plant and preserve them…
On a chilly winter afternoon in 1913, at his home in New Jersey, poet Joyce Kilmer jotted down the first two lines of a new poem in his notebook, along…