Sleeping Muse and Falling Rocket

In 1971, the National Theatre produced The Architect and the Emperor of Assyria, by Fernando Arrabal. In the middle of the first dress rehearsal, the director spontaneously ordered his two actors to take off all of their clothes. Jim Dale refused. Not so, Anthony Hopkins, however, who stripped right down So comfortable was he, in fact, that some time later, Hopkins had to be urged to please put his clothes back on. 

 Watching an old Antiques Roadshow, this painting by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema is assessed. The expert refers to him as "Tadema" rather than as "Alma-Tadema."  The portrait is of fellow artist Leopold Lowenstam.

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso

  Greta Garbo and Leopold Stokowski?

On the Bob Newhart Show, Howard Borden's brother Gordon Borden, the warden from Jordan, was played by William Redfield, the author of Letters from an Actor, an account of rehearsals for the role of Guildenstern in the 1964 Richard Burton/John Gielgud Hamlet.

  ,  The first time I visited Stratford-upon-Avon, I was told that Hall's Croft, the home of Shakespeare's daughter Susanna and her husband John, had been owned and lived in by the actor Anthony Quayle. This before he donated the property to the Shakespeare Trust in 1949. I was lied to. At the time the property was owned by Elizabeth Montagu (no relation), who was leasing it to actor John Slater and his 'vicious dog.' Montagu sold the property to the cash-strapped Trust for ten times the going rate. And a pound of flesh.

  I always confuse Prokofiev's The Love for Three Oranges with Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts.

  Muggle Studies professor Charity Burbage, here suspended over the  Death Eaters' board meeting, was portrayed in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by actress Carolyn Pickles. Carolyn Pickles' aunt is Christina Pickles, who portrayed Ross and Monica's mother on Friends.

 "Stay away from the cans!"

My daughter held out a list, in my hand writing. "Deeds! Explain!" My memory was fuzzy, but slowly I remembered that some 15 years ago I had been unable to recall the name of the Southwest Native-American trickster character, Kokopelli. The list was my little brain's attempt to recall the answer. Number three is my favorite. The last was the name I "settled" on. Pinky Montalban Baruch Matucka Imogene Coca Koko-ri-ko Bristle McThornbody Kinky Friedman Chuckie Cheese Fatty Fatty Two-by-Four Otis Loco icky and finally: Chucky Peyote

 "She gave me for my pains a world of sighs." -- Othello "I gave her my heart. She gave me a pen." -- Lloyd Dobler

 Remembering that Bernstein scored On the Waterfront