Arte Johnson Arte Johnson Arthur Stanton Eric Johnson (born January 20, 1929) is an American comic actor who was a regular on television's "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In". His best-remembered characters on the sketch show were a German soldier with the catchphrase "Verrrry interesting...", and an old man who habitually propositioned Ruth Buzzi's spinster character. Johnson was born January 20, 1929, in Benton Harbor, Michigan, and is the son of Abraham Lincoln and Edythe Mackenzie (Golden) Johnson. His father was an attorney. Johnson attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he worked at the campus radio station and the UI Theater Guild
Carl Rowan bus boycott in 1955, resulting from Rosa Parks's refusal to relinquish her bus seat to a white passenger. As the only black reporter covering the story for a national newspaper, Rowan struck a special friendship with the boycott's leaders, including Martin Luther King, Jr. When news of an unlikely compromise settlement of the boycott came to Rowan's attention across the Associated Press wire, he notified King, who made quick steps to discredit the story, which was about to appear in a Montgomery newspaper, thus ensuring the continuance of the boycott. Founded in 1987 by Rowan, Project Excellence was a college