Last night on Jeopardy! no one recognized Gregory Peck??

All glory is fleeting. I'm sure the same contestants wouldn't have recognized Mozart, FDR, or Mahatma Gandhi.

Jeez, Zolotoy, didn't you get enough contentiousness on the Classics board about this?! Of course, here you're safe from some of the CFB loopies!

My wife did see that whole Jeopardy episode and was amazed as well.

Hi hobnob. No, I didn't really have any problems with the responses on my parallel thread over on CFB. And really, I'm not making a big deal out of three guys who just happened not to recognize someone who I thought was as notable and recognizable as Peck. Hey, it happens, but it just seemed a tad surprising, that's all! 

And, I know it's also true that there are people who go through life and just get absorbed with their own work, business, profession, what have you, and tend not to pay any notice at all to anything having to do with Hollywood (my dad was that way, for example: he didn't give two chits for anything out of the entertainment industry). So I don't hold it against any of those guys on Jeopardy! for not knowing who Peck is/was... everybody has their own priorities in life, I guess.

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Yes, I suppose you're right about people on one plane kind of being unaware of what's going on on others. I once read that during the 1930s J. Robert Oppenheimer was so absorbed in his work in nuclear physics that he never knew the Great Depression had occurred until something like 1939! Now that's being pretty out of it!

Coincidentally, last night Jeopardy had a category about Oscar winners and the first four were all about winners in the 1990s and 2000s. But the last clue was (approximately): "1962 - Atticus! Atticus!". After a brief hesitation the champion finally rang in and asked, "Who is Gregory Peck?" and won her $1000. But I have to say the other two had somewhat baffled expressions on their faces.

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that he never knew the Great Depression had occurred until something like 1939!
He must've been way out of it not to have heard about the Depression going on!

Yeah, I mean there were things like newspapers and radio, and every once in a while you'd figure he'd hear someone talking about it. I guess he never noticed the local Hooverville or wondered how so many people could earn such a lucrative living selling apples.

But I suppose if you're closeted enough in your own little intellectual dream world whatever penetrates would have to be a really powerful subatomic particle.

I will also absolutely guarantee he never found out who Gregory Peck was, or more properly, that a Gregory Peck existed on this plane!

I am reminded of when I was stationed in Maine back in my service days. I used to get out as much as possible and explore various parts of the state. I remember one time I was talking to this old-timer who told me that back in the period of the Great Depression, rural people in Maine didn't realize there was a depression going on because times were always hard for them, they always had to scrape to get by. So they scoffed at the idea of an economic depression. The 1930s were no different for them than other decades. (Being Mainers, they probably said, "Depression?... Pshaw!"

Hahhaha too bad I missed it