Photos of Bill Murray on the Set of “Caddyshack” (1980)

by | Sep 22, 2026 | Yesteryear

Bill Murray’s performance as the unhinged groundskeeper Carl Spackler in Caddyshack (1980) became iconic precisely because of how unstructured, improvisational, and short his time on set actually was.

Murray was originally cast in a minor, near-silent cameo role. Because of his tight Saturday Night Live shooting schedule, he was only available on set at the Rolling Hills Golf Club in Davie, Florida, for six days. Director Harold Ramis and co-writer Douglas Kenney had only a basic frame for the character, allowing Murray complete freedom to build Carl Spackler on the fly.

Virtually none of Murray’s iconic dialogue was written in the script. The speech where Carl imagines himself winning the Masters while taking a grass whip to a bed of chrysanthemums was completely ad-libbed. Ramis simply instructed Murray to act out a kid imagining a sports fantasy, and Murray did the entire scene in two takes. His story about caddying for the Dalai Lama (“Gunga galunga… total spiritual enlightenment on your deathbed”) was improvised on the spot.
Because Murray and Chevy Chase were the film’s two biggest SNL stars, executive producer Jon Peters realized midway through shooting that they didn’t have a single scene together. Ramis wrote a brief setup where Chase’s character, Ty Webb, accidentally plays a golf ball into Carl’s dilapidated shack at night. Murray and Chase ad-libbed the entire exchange in one evening shoot, creating the famous scene where Carl offers Ty a drink of “a hybrid of bluegrass, Kentucky bluegrass, feathertex and northern California sinsemilla.”
The production of Caddyshack was famously chaotic, fueled by heavy drug use, late-night partying, and erratic weather. Murray was known for staying in character between takes, wandering around the golf course harassing real country club members, driving groundskeeping equipment into water hazards, and playing pranks on the cast and crew.

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Members of the Short Tail Gang Gathered Under a Pier at Corlears Hook in New York City, ca. 1887

by | Sep 22, 2026 | Yesteryear

Captured in 1889 by Jacob Riis, the only known photograph of the notorious Short Tail Gang offers a rare and chilling window into New York City’s underworld. Pictured beneath the pier at the foot of Jackson Street near Corlears Hook, the gang members sit hunched on damp wooden planks, eating from tin cans. Their distinctive short-tailed jackets, practical yet defiant, gave the gang its name and served as a makeshift uniform in the harsh world of tenement life and street survival.

The Short Tail Gang, also known as the Short Tails for their distinctive short-tailed jacket coats, were an 1880s–1890s Irish gang located in the Corlear’s Hook section of the Lower East Side, on Rivington Street in the vicinity of Mangin and Goerck Streets of Manhattan, in New York City. The Eastman Gang was also headquartered around Corlear’s Hook and may have had its beginnings as a breakaway gang of the Short Tail Gang.
The Short Tails, along with rival gangs the Daybreak Boys, the Patsy Conroy Gang, the Swamp Angels, and the Hook Gang, worked the New York City waterfront, plundering ships of their cargo on the East River. The Short Tail Gang was photographed in 1887, under a pier by noted photographer Jacob Riis, being one of the few 19th-century New York gangs to allow its members to be photographed. In fear of being identified and arrested by the law, usually individual police mug shots were the only criminal pictures known to exist.

Big Brother: Pharoah’s Curse Egyptian EVICTION – [SPOILER] Sent to Jury!

by | Sep 22, 2026 | Culture Pop!

Hey Big Brother fans, looks like Rick Devens’ HOH came to an abrupt end today because of the pharaoh’s curse and his Head of Household run is official done. The veto ceremony happened with Drew Campbell using his medal, a renom and then the abrupt elimination of one of the final five.

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