- Was close friends with Jack Nicholson. They appeared together in four films: The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), The Fortune (1975), and The Shining (1980).
- Like Mark Twain (1835-1910), he was born the year Halley's Comet returned to Earth (April 20, 1910) and died the year the comet came back around (November 22, 1986).
- He was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6712 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California on April 8, 1981.
- Continued to work on television after being diagnosed with lung cancer (1985), which then spread to his esophagus.
- His nickname is from his skill at singing "scat". This is a form of bebop jazz that involves the rhythmic singing of nonsense syllables in a complex and musical way (such as "be-ba-doo-wah"). Famous scat singers include such stars as Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, and Louis Armstrong. The complex scat melodies segued back into versions with lyrics by such artists as Joni Mitchell. Scat is the direct ancestor of "doo-wop" singing and one of the ancestors of hip-hop.
- Passed away 11 days after the passing of Roger C. Carmel. Their final feature film was The Transformers: The Movie (1986), where they voiced two characters on opposing sides: Jazz, the Autobot (Crothers) and Cyclonus, the Decepticon (Carmel).
- He was awarded the 1981 Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor as Dick Hallorann in Stanley Kubrick's horror classic The Shining (1980).
- Posthumously inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in Oakland, California (1987).
- Stanley Kubrick's horror classic The Shining (1980) was released in the theaters of the United States on his 70th birthday (May 23, 1980).
- Following his death, he was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills) in Los Angeles, California.
- He has appeared in two films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and The Shining (1980).
- Had appeared as a guest musician on the local music program The Spade Cooley Show (1957). Cooley, a white Western swing musician, hosted the show for a local Los Angeles television station.
- Had one daughter: Donna Crothers (born 1949).
- Some sources erroneously credit him as Billie Holiday's jilting lover in the Duke Ellington one-reeler, "Symphony in Black" (1936), a role actually portrayed by Earl 'Snake Hips' Tucker. The song Billie sang was "Saddest Tale".
- Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume Two, 1986-1990, pages 215-216. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons (1999).
- Born on the same date as Artie Shaw.
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