Curated playlist
Jewish American military personnel
- Kirk DouglasKirk Douglas insisted on giving blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo an on-screen credit for Spartacus.
- Mel BrooksMel Brooks was 14 years old when he climbed onto a diving board at the Butler Lodge, a second-rate hotel in the Borscht Belt. He worked there as a pool-side tummler, an entertainer hired to keep the guests amused. On this day he wore a…
- Jack L. WarnerJack Warner once rushed onstage at the Oscars and took a trophy that was not his. The prize was for Casablanca.
- William WylerDirector William Wyler once made Henry Fonda do forty takes of one scene. His only note was the word again.
- Henry KissingerHenry Kissinger made a secret trip to China in July 1971. It helped end 23 years of diplomatic isolation.
- Stan LeeStan Lee used a pen name because comic books embarrassed him. He wanted his real name saved for a novel he never wrote.
- Paul NewmanAt the 1995 24 Hours of Daytona, Paul Newman was 70 years and eight days old, and his team won its class. That made him the oldest driver to date on a winning team in a major sanctioned race. Newman was best known as a film star, and he…
- Jack KirbyJack Kirby was drafted in 1943 and became a scout who drew reconnaissance maps in towns.
- Julius and Ethel RosenbergJulius and Ethel Rosenberg open Sylvia Plath's 1963 novel The Bell Jar, in a single sultry sentence. The line reads: "It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs..." The couple were a married pair from New…
- Jack RubyAt 11:21 on Sunday morning, the 24th of November 1963, Jack Ruby stepped out of a crowd of reporters in the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters. Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner, was holding a revolver. A few feet away stood Lee Harvey…
- Herb AlpertHerb Alpert is the only musician to top the Hot 100 as both a singer and an instrumentalist.
- Isaac AsimovIsaac Asimov coined the word "robotics" in a 1941 story, thinking it was just a natural term.
- E. L. DoctorowE. L. Doctorow won the National Book Critics Circle Award three times. He mixed real and invented people.
- Shelby FooteShelby Foote wrote every page by hand with a nib pen, then typed up a clean copy. He thought of himself first as a novelist. Yet he is remembered for a three-volume history of the American Civil War. He expected that history to take nine…
- Saul ZaentzSaul Zaentz won three Best Picture Oscars, a feat almost no one else in Hollywood has matched.
- Red AuerbachBoston restaurants once banned cigar smoking for everyone except Red Auerbach.