Now I've Heard Everything

The 2020 Democratic National Convention is getting underway this week. It'll look a lot different from any past convention, though, because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Let's go back 48 years, to 1972, when the Democratic party nominated South Dakota Senator George McGovern as their standard-bearer.

Running on a liberal, anti-war platform, McGovern lost badly to Republican incumbent Richard Nixon -- who, less than two years later, resigned in disgrace over the Watergate scandal.

When I interviewed George McGovern 2004, in he had just published a book advocating for those same traditional liberal values.

Irish-born redhead Maureen O'Hara knew from an early age she wanted to act.  After years of training, she was finally "discovered," if you will, as ayoung woman  by Charles Laughton, considered one of thye world's finest actors.  

Her first movie came in 1938, and it launched an award-winning career that spanned decades. 

I met her in 2004. She had just written a memoir that included her recollections of working with some of the greatest names in movie history:  director John Ford. Her longtime friend and co-star John Wayne. Even John Candy.

or decades the USSR -- the Soviet UInion -- was a major world power, but it was held together largely through force and intimidation.

Things began to unravel in the late 1980s -- the momentum built after President Ronald Reagan delivered these words at the Berlin Wall: 

The wall did come down two years later, and two years after that, the Soviet Union came to an end.

Watching it all, from a front-row seat, was high-profilpe Soviet journalist and broadcaster Vladimir Pozner, who was also a freqeuent guest on American television, largely because in his youth, he spent a lot of time in tghe U.S. abd vecame fluent in English.  

She burst onto the American television scene in the late 1980s, when she hosted her own show on the fledgling Fox network. 

And Tracey Ullman has been a favorite in this country ever since.

Her Fox show ended in 1990, and she next appeared on American television in 1996, on the HBO series Tracey Takes On.

I met her in early 1998, when she published a book that was companion to the HBO series. 

Mrs. Fields Cookies can be found in hundreds of cities across America, and around the world.  It's one of the largest names in the snack food industry.

It all started back in 1977, when Debbi Fields and her husband started a small business selling homemade-style cookies.

It grew into a major enterprise, which Debbi Fields sold in 1993.

When I met her in 1996, she had just published a book of dessert recipes -- traditional classics ti which she had added the Mrs. Fields touch.

Tomorrow, August 6th, is the 75th anniversary of the first-ever use of a nuclear weapon in war, when the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.

At the controls of the B-29 called the Enola Gay was a young pilot named Paul Tibbetts.

After the war, Tibbetts returned to a very humble and private life in Ohio.

As the 1990s were drawing to a close, Chicago Tribune columnist and author Bob Greene was finally, after years of trying, to get PaulTibbetts to talk about his history-making flight.

A few years before he was an Illinois state senator,  long before he became a U.S. Senator and years before the nation elected him our first African-American president, Barack Obama was a law professor and community organizer. 

Just before he went off to law school, Obama traveled to Kenya to learn more about his father, and to try and put some perspective on his mixed-race heritage. 

The result was his book "Dreams From My Father."

One of the most popular, and most iconic series from the early days of television was "The Adventures of Superman," which ran from 1952 to 1958.

George Reeves was Superman / Clark Kent.  Jack Larson played young photographer Jimmy Olson, and Noel Neill was reporter Lois Lane. 

But, like so many TV stars, Neill saw her career take a new and unexpected path, and not necessarily the path she had planned.

In all of major league baseball history, going back well over a hundred years, there has been only a handful of pitchers who have won30 or more games in a single season.

That very short list includes names like Cy Young, Grover Cleveland Alexander, and Dizzy Dean.

And .. the last to do it -- righthander Denny McLain.

If you know Jim Gaffigan's comedy, you know he has a big family, five kids.  

He was one of six kids, his wife was one of nine.  So they know big famililes.

I met Jim in 2013, when he wrote a memoir that was funny and poignant and reflective -- as was our interview.