Now I've Heard Everything

Most people consider Terry Bradshaw, formerly of the NFL's Pittsburgh Steelers, to be among the greatest quarterbacks ever. 

His list of accomplishments, on and off the is impressive.

He's had a long and fruitful career as a broadcaster, and he's one some acting.

And he's also written a couple of books. That's how I met him, in 2002. 

And no, football is not the center of his life.

Today doctors call it "dissociative identity disorder" but when Chris Costner Sizemore was diagnosed and treated for it over 60 years ago, it was simply called "multiple personality disorder."

The movie "TheThree Faces of EVe" came out in 1957, changing Sizemore's name to EveWhite. Her "alters" were Eve Black .. and Jane.  Actress Joanne Woodward won an Oscar for her portrayal of Eve.

It later came out that Sizemore had something more like 22 personaliities, not just three.

I mer in 1989, when she wrote a book called A Mind of My Own.  IT told the story of how, with years of psychiatric help, she had integrated her several personalities.

He was one of the hottest young movie stars in the 1950s...

Tab Hunter -- who grew up as Artt Gelien -- was a figure skater as a teenager.  As a young man, a friend introduced him to a Hollywood agent who specialized in beefcake actors like Rock Hudson and Rober/ Wagner.  That agent dubbed Art Gelien "Tab Hunter" and by 1950 he was in the movies.

And by the mid 1950s was major star, the strapping blond hunk of a man every girl wanted.  Hunter made over 40 movies, and even recorded a hit song.

Hunger was also a witness to, and a participant in, the end of the Hollywood studio contract era. His movie and TV roles were fewer, until his last film role in 1992.

Then, in 2005, Tab Hunter wrote a memoir called Tab Hunter Confidential.  In that book, he acknowledged publicly, for the first time, that he was gay.  Turns out those gossip rags back in the day that had him romantically linked with various starlets were all fiction.

In the 1950s, few actors dominated Broadway the way Yul Brynner did.

Playing the lead in the Rodgers and Hammerstein's play “The King and I,” Brynner eEstablished himself as a top-tier performer. 

He won two Tonys for his portrayal of the King of Siam, as well as an Academy Award when the play was adapted to film.

Later he was cast in such big budget movies as the Ten Commandments, The Magnificent Seven, and Westworld. 

Naomi Judd was born "Diana Judd" not long after World War II ended. Her dad ran a gas station in Ashland, Kentucky,

By the time she was in her mid 30s, Judd was a divorced single mom with two daughters, struggling to keep a household going.

That's when she and her older daughter discovered that they liked to sing and harmonize with each other. And they got pretty good at it.

Before long, they came to the attention of the right people, and in 1983, they formed The Judds.

As a young journalist in the 1950s, Carl T. Rowan covered the emerging civil rights movement, and its leaders, including people like Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks.

The reputation he built came to the attention of President John F. Kennedy, who, in 1961, name Rowan to a high level position in the State Department. 

And in 1963, Kennedy appointed Rowan ambassador to Finland.

Row and remain in the government for three years after Kennedy's assassination, before resuming what would be a long and acclaimed journalism career.

It's not always easy to babysit money of a very famous politician.

But, perhaps, especially if you're a lesbian and your brother is one of the nation's leading right-wing conservatives.

In 1994 a republican wave took over Congress, and Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House.

And suddenly, his half-sister Candace -- who pronounces the family name “Ging-rick” -- found themselves, as they later described it, as an “accidental activist.”

For decades, going back to the 1970s, one of the most popular contemporary British mystery writers was PD James.

In a style sometimes reminiscent of Agatha Christie, James wrote about cases solved by her fictional detective she named Adam Dalgliesh.  

He was a character she named after a teacher at Cambridge High School.

Book after book, a reputation and popularity grew, until in 1991 James was amed a Life Peer in Britain's House of Lords. She was Baroness James of Holland Park.

Robert Osbourne Denver graduated from  college with a degree in political science, then caoched physical education and even taught math and history at a California elementary school.

But today, this well-educated, smart, soft-spoken man is best remembered for this... Gilligan's Island.

Gilligan's Island only lasted three seasons in the mid-1960s, but thaks to reruns and syndication the show has effectively never been off the air since.

And, like so many other popular TV actors, Bob Denver found himself typecast. 

Julia Child is probably the reason many people became professional chefs. She's also the reason many many millions of us have attempted things in the kitchen we never thought we could do.

For many years Child was America's most famous chef, thanks largely to herpublic television series The French Chef.

In 1993, as another of her TV series was premiering, Child collected culinary wisdom from some of her peers, for a book called "Cooking With Master Chefs."