Month: May 2008

Maude’s husband, Walter, is 86. That’s actor Bill Macy. He was recently a character named Whiskey Pete on My Name Is Earl.

The oldest (and sole surviving) Cartwright boy, Adam, is 80. That’s Pernell Roberts.

Dobie Gillis is 74. That’s actor Dwayne Hickman who played the high school chum of Maynard G. Krebs when he was 25 (and Bob Denver was 24).

Brooks Robinson is 71.

Known as The Human Vacuum Cleaner, Brooks Robinson established a standard of excellence for modern-day third basemen. He played 23 seasons for the Orioles, setting major league career records for games, putouts, assists, chances, double plays and fielding percentage. A clutch hitter, Robinson totaled 268 career home runs, at one time an American League record for third basemen. Robinson earned the league’s MVP Award in 1964 and the World Series MVP in 1970, when he hit .429 and made a collection of defensive gems.

National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum

Reggie Jackson is 62.

Reggie Jackson earned the nickname Mr. October for his World Series heroics with both the A’s and Yankees. In 27 Fall Classic games, he amassed 10 home runs – including four in consecutive at-bats – 24 RBI and a .357 batting average. As one of the game’s premier power hitters, he blasted 563 career round-trippers. A terrific player in the clutch and an intimidating cleanup hitter, Jackson compiled a lifetime slugging percentage of .490 and earned American League MVP honors in 1973.

National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum

George Strait is 56.

George Strait – Amarillo By Morning

Tina Fey is 38.

Frank Capra was born in Bisaquino, Sicily on this date in 1897.

For the next six years, he worked as everything from a prop man to a comedy writer. In 1928, he signed a contract with Columbia. Five years later he made his first big hit, the screwball comedy It Happened One Night (1933), for which he won the first of three Academy Awards for Best Director. In the next fifteen years he made a string of successful movies, most of them about a naïve and idealistic man from small-town America who goes up against greedy politicians and lawyers and journalists. Capra said the moral of his movies was: “A simple honest man, driven into a corner by predatory sophisticates, can, if he will, reach down into his God-given resources and come up with the necessary handfuls of courage, wit, and love to triumph over his environment.” 

His movies were so distinctive and so influential that the word “Capraesque” has made it into the dictionary. The 2000 American Heritage Dictionary defined it as “of or evocative of the movies of Frank Capra, often promoting the positive social effects of individual acts of courage.”

His movies include Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), and It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), which was also about a small-town hero who battles corruption, but it was darker and more cynical than any of his earlier movies, and it didn’t do very well at the box office. For some reason, Capra didn’t renew its copyright in 1974, and it fell into the public domain. PBS was the first network to play it every year around Christmas. Other stations started picking it up, and now watching It’s a Wonderful Life on TV is a holiday tradition for families across the country.

The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media

Dennis Hopper is 72.

Sugar Ray Leonard is 52, as is Bob Saget.

Jim Nance is 49.

Enya is 47.

Jane Parker (Tarzan’s Jane) and Mia Farrow’s mom was born on this date in 1911. That’s actress Maureen O’Sullivan.

One of the brightest of ingenues, the actress appeared in more than 60 films, from ”Tugboat Annie” to ”Pride and Prejudice,” starring with everyone from Robert Taylor to the Marx Brothers. But she was always identified with the lovely, legendary Jane, teaching the niceties of civilization and romance to the yowling Tarzan, Edgar Rice Burroughs’s King of the Jungle. It was a notable pairing of opposites.

Her other movie successes included ”The Thin Man,” ”The Barretts of Wimpole Street,” Greta Garbo’s ”Anna Karenina,” ”A Day at the Races,” ”A Yank at Oxford,” ”The Crowd Roars” and ”David Copperfield” (with W. C. Fields).

The New York Times

Today we acknowledge the birthdays

… of George Lucas. He’s 64. Lucas has twice received a writing Oscar nomination and a directing nomination for the same film (American Graffiti and Star Wars). He’s won none. He did get that Thalberg Award thingy though.

… of David Byrne. He’s 56. Byrne is an inductee in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Talking Heads. An excerpt:

Among the most adventuresome bands in rock history, the Talking Heads drew from funk, minimalism, and African and Brazilian music in promulgating a new sound that was both visionary and visceral. They were invariably challenging and inventive, using infectious rhythms as a form of sorcery to introduce their ever-expanding audience to exotic influences from abroad that they might otherwise have never heard. In so doing, they helped pave the way – along with the likes of Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno – for the “world music” phenomenon of the Eighties and beyond.

… of Cate Blanchett. She’s 39. Nominated for best actress twice and supporting actress three times, Ms. Blanchett won the supporting actress Oscar for playing an even more famous redhead, Kate Hepburn, in The Aviator.

… of Sofia Coppola. She’s 37. Ms. Coppola was nominated for three Oscars for Lost in Translation — best picture, best director and best original screenplay. She won for the writing.

Frank Sinatra died on this date in 1998. He probably died because it was also the date of the last Seinfeld episode and what was the point of going on.