Category: Biography

Pat Conroy is 70 today.

Pat Sajak’s wheel of fortune has spun for 69 years.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is 68 today.

Westley is 53. That’s actor Cary Elwes.

And it’s the birthday of Mahalia Jackson, born in New Orleans 104 years ago today. As The New York Times noted in Ms. Jackson’s 1972 obituary:

“I been ‘buked and I been scorned/ I’m gonna tell my Lord/ When I get home/ Just how long you’ve been treating me wrong,” she sang in a full, rich contralto to the throng of 200,000 people as a preface to Dr. King’s “I’ve got a dream” speech.

The song, which Dr. King had requested, came as much from Miss Jackson’s heart as from her vocal cords. The granddaughter of a slave, she had struggled for years for fulfillment and for unprejudiced recognition of her talent.

She received the latter only belatedly with a Carnegie Hall debut in 1950. Her following, therefore, was largely in the black community, in the churches and among record collectors.

Although Miss Jackson’s medium was the sacred song drawn from the Bible or inspired by it, the words–and the “soul” style in which they were delivered–became metaphors of black protest, Tony Heilbut, author of “The Gospel Sound” and her biographer, said yesterday. Among blacks, he went on, her favorites were “Move On Up a Little Higher,” “Just Over the Hill” and “How I Got Over.”

Singing these and other songs to black audiences, Miss Jackson was a woman on fire, whose combs flew out of her hair as she performed. She moved her listeners to dancing, to shouting, to ecstasy, Mr. Heilbut said. By contrast, he asserted, Miss Jackson’s television style and her conduct before white audiences was far more placid and staid.

Had Mahalia Jackson been born a few decades later, when she could have sung her soul for audiences black and white, she, Mahalia Jackson, and not Aretha Franklin, would have been the Queen of Soul and the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Even so, she is an inductee.

In Jackson’s own words, “Rock and roll was stolen out of the sanctified church!” Certainly, in the unleashed frenzy of the “spirit feel” style of gospel epitomized by such singers as Mahalia Jackson, Marion Williams and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, one can hear the rousing roots of rock and roll. One of Jackson’s accompanists was keyboardist Billy Preston, who went on to great fame as a rock and R&B star. But religious passion was paramount in Jackson’s life, and no sacred-to-secular transformation would mark her career as it did so many others. “Her voice is a heartfelt express of all that is most human about us—our fears, our faith, our hope for salvation,” David Ritz wrote in his liner notes for Mahalia Jackson: 16 Most Requested Songs. “Hope is the hallmark of Mahalia Jackson and the gospel tradition she embodies.”

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum

Harry Belafonte called her “the single most powerful black woman in the United States.”

Curly Howard (Jerome Lester Horwitz) was born in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, on this date in 1903. The most popular of the Three Stooges, Curly had no formal training and was often improvising. According to older brother Moe Howard, “If we were going through a scene and he’d forget his words for a moment, you know. Rather than stand, get pale and stop, you never knew what he was going to do. On one occasion he’d get down to the floor and spin around like a top until he remembered what he had to say.” It’s said Curly squandered all his money on wine, food, women, homes, cars, and especially dogs. Sounds like good choices, but they took their toll. Curly Howard died at age 48 in 1952 after a series of strokes.

“N’yuk, n’yuk, n’yuk.”

October 4th should be a national holiday.

It’s the birthday of Susan Abigail Sarandon, born in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York, 69 years ago today.

And, as if that’s not enough for a holiday, it’s also the birthdate of John Charles Carter, born October 4, 1923. As Charlton Heston he won the best actor Oscar for Ben-Hur (1959), his only nomination.

And, as if those aren’t enough, it’s also the birthdate of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, 19th President of the United States. Hayes was born in Delaware, Ohio, on this date in 1822.

Rutherford B. Hayes became the nineteenth U.S. president in 1877 after a bitterly contested election that pitted him against Democrat Samuel J. Tilden of New York. Tilden won the popular vote, but disputed electoral ballots from four states prompted Congress to create a special electoral commission to decide the election’s result. The fifteen-man commission of congressmen, senators, and Supreme Court justices, eight of whom were Republicans, voted along party lines to decide the election in Hayes’s favor. The electoral dispute has come to be known as the Tilden-Hayes Affair. Because of the tension surrounding this partisan decision, Hayes secretly took the oath of office in the White House Red Room. He was the first president to be sworn in at the residence.

Library of Congress

The Space Age began 58 years ago today with the launch of Sputnik (Cпутник) by the Soviet Union. The word means companion or satellite in Russian.

The wonderful Joseph Frank Keaton was born 120 years ago today. Roger Ebert wrote about “Buster” Keaton in 2002. It’s worth reading; a brief excerpt:

He said he learned to “take a fall” as a child, when he toured in vaudeville with his parents, Joe and Myra. By the time he was 3, he was being thrown around the stage and into the orchestra pit, and his little suits even had a handle concealed at the waist, so Joe could sling him like luggage. Today this would be child abuse; then it was showbiz.

The Films of Buster Keaton

Buster Keaton is considered one of the greatest comic actors of all time. His influence on physical comedy is rivaled only by Charlie Chaplin. Like many of the great actors of the silent era, Keaton’s work was cast into near obscurity for many years. Only toward the end of his life was there a renewed interest in his films. An acrobatically skillful and psychologically insightful actor, Keaton made dozens of short films and fourteen major silent features, attesting to one of the most talented and innovative artists of his time.

Born in 1895 to Joe and Myra Keaton, Joseph Francis Keaton got his name when, at six months, he fell down a flight of stairs. Reaching the bottom unhurt and relatively undisturbed, he was picked up by Harry Houdini who said the kid could really take a “buster,” or fall. From then on, his parents and the world knew him as Buster Keaton. By the age of three, Keaton joined the family’s vaudeville act, which was renamed The Three Keatons. For years he was knocked over, thrown through windows, dropped down stairs, and essentially used as a living prop. It was this training in vaudeville that prepared him for the fast-paced slapstick comedy of the silent movies.

American Masters | PBS

Angie Dickinson is 84 today.

Chances are Johnny Mathis is 80.

But here’s the scary one. Greg Brady (Barry Williams) is 61.

Die Zauberflöte — The Magic Flute — premiered in Vienna 224 years ago tonight; libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder, music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. That night Mozart conducted the orchestra, Schikaneder played Papageno. Mozart died less than 10 weeks later at age 35.

James Dean was killed 60 years ago today at the junction of California Highways 41 and 46. He was 24.

Jerry Lee Lewis is 80 today.

When he was 14, he made his public debut, playing with a local country & western band at a car dealer’s parking lot. In 1956, he went to Memphis to audition for Sam Phillips’ Sun Records label, whose stable of talent also included Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison. After a country-flavored audition for Philips in 1956, Lewis was told that if he could come up with some rock and roll, “we could probably do something.” Lewis didn’t write much himself, but he transformed other people’s songs into unbridled rock and roll that even he called “the devil’s music.”

Lewis’ debut single was a rocking recasting of Ray Price’s country hit “Crazy Arms.” He followed it with “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” which sold 6 million copies and went to Number Three, and “Great Balls of Fire,” a 5-million seller that reached Number Two. Both songs were from 1957, a watershed year for Lewis, and both songs also made it to the Top Five on the pop, country and R&B charts. The next year yielded more hits – “Breathless” and “High School Confidential” – and a role in a movie titled after the latter song. …

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Wilford Brimley is 81 today. He was 53-54 when he played the old guy in Cocoon.

Gwyneth Paltrow is 43.

William Conrad, one of the great voices of radio, was born on this date in 1920. (He died in 1994.)

Conrad estimated that he appeared in over 7,500 roles on radio. He was regularly heard inviting listeners to “get away from it all” on CBS’ Escape. Conrad’s other radio credits include appearances on The Damon Runyon Theater, The Lux Radio Theater, Nightbeat, Fibber McGee and Molly and Suspense. For “The Wax Works,” a 1956 episode of Suspense, Conrad demonstrated his versatility by performing all the roles.

Conrad’s longest-running role was that of U.S. marshal Matt Dillon on the groundbreaking radio western Gunsmoke, which aired on CBS radio from 1952 to 1961.

When the golden age of radio was over, Conrad could be heard delivering the urgent narration for Jay Ward’s classic Bullwinkle Show. He later starred on the television series Cannon and Jake and the Fatman.

Radio Hall of Fame

James Kenneth McManus was born in Philadelphia on September 24, 1921 (he died in 2008). What in the Wide World of Sports is a-going on here that September 24th, Jim McKay’s birthday, is not a national holday?

And if that wasn’t enough!

James Maury “Jim” Henson was born on September 24th in 1936 (he died in 1990).

Hiram Williams was born 92 years ago today (1923). We know him as Hank. Arguably he is one of the two or three most important individuals in American music history. Hank Williams is an inductee of both the Country Music (the first
inductee) and Rock and Roll (its second year) halls of fame.

Entering local talent talent contests soon after moving to Montgomery in 1937, Hank had served a ten-year apprenticeship by the time he scored his first hit, “Move It on Over,” in 1947. He was twenty-three then, and twenty-five when the success of “Lovesick Blues” (a minstrel era song he did not write) earned him an invitation to join the preeminent radio barndance, Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry. His star rose rapidly. He wrote songs compulsively, and his producer/music publisher, Fred Rose, helped him isolate and refine those that held promise. The result was an unbroken string of hits that included “Honky Tonkin’,” “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” “Mansion on the Hill,” “Cold, Cold Heart,” “I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still in Love with You),” “Honky Tonk Blues,” “Jambalaya,” “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” and “You Win Again.” He was a recording artist for six years, and, during that time, recorded just 66 songs under his own name (together with a few more as part of a husband-and-wife act, Hank & Audrey, and a more still under his moralistic alter ego, Luke the Drifter). Of the 66 songs recorded under his own name, an astonishing 37 were hits. More than once, he cut three songs that became standards in one afternoon.

American Masters

The words and music of Hank Williams echo across the decades with a timelessness that transcends genre. He brought country music into the modern era, and his influence spilled over into the folk and rock arenas as well. Artists ranging from Gram Parsons and John Fogerty (who recorded an entire album of Williams’ songs after leaving Creedence Clearwater Revival) to the Georgia Satellites and Uncle Tupelo have adapted elements of Williams’ persona, especially the aura of emotional forthrightness and bruised idealism communicated in his songs. Some of Williams’ more upbeat country and blues-flavored numbers, on the other hand, anticipated the playful abandon of rockabilly.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Hank Williams’s legend has long overtaken the rather frail and painfully introverted man who spawned it. Almost singlehandedly, Williams set the agenda for contemporary country songcraft, but his appeal rests as much in the myth that even now surrounds his short life. His is the standard by which success is measured in country music on every level, even self-destruction.

Country Music Hall of Fame

Again from American Masters:

It all fell apart remarkably quickly. Hank Williams grew disillusioned with success, and the unending travel compounded his back problem. A spinal operation in December 1951 only worsened the condition. Career pressures and almost ceaseless pain led to recurrent bouts of alcoholism. He missed an increasing number of showdates, frustrating those who attempted to manage or help him. His wife, Audrey, ordered him out of their house in January 1952, and he was dismissed from the Grand Ole Opry in August that year for failing to appear on Opry-sponsored showdates. Returning to Shreveport, Louisiana, where he’d been an up-and-coming star in 1948, he took a second wife, Billie Jean Jones, and hired a bogus doctor who compounded his already serious physical problems with potentially lethal drugs.

Hank Williams died in the back seat of his Cadillac. He was found and declared dead on New Year’s Day 1953. He was 29.

… essayist and editor, was born on September 12th in 1880.

• The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it …
• It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.
• Courtroom — A place where Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot would be equals, with the betting odds in favor of Judas.
• Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.
• A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
• It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
• The first kiss is stolen by the man; the last is begged by the woman.
• The only really happy folk are married women and single men.
• It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.
• Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
• No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.
• Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
• I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.
• In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for. As for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.

Jesse Owens was born on September 12th in 1913. ESPN.com ranked Owens the sixth best athlete of the 20th century:

On May 25 [1935] in Ann Arbor, Mich., Owens couldn’t even bend over to touch his knees. But as the sophomore settled in for his first race, he said the pain “miraculously disappeared.”

3:15 — The “Buckeye Bullet” ran the 100-yard dash in 9.4 seconds to tie the world record. 3:25 — In his only long jump, he leaped 26-8 1/4, a world record that would last 25 years.

3:34 — His 20.3 seconds bettered the world record in the 220-yard dash.

4:00 — With his 22.6 seconds in the 220-yard low hurdles, he became the first person to break 23 seconds in the event.

For most athletes, Jesse Owens’ performance one spring afternoon in 1935 would be the accomplishment of a lifetime. In 45 minutes, he established three world records and tied another.

But that was merely an appetizer for Owens. In one week in the summer of 1936, on the sacred soil of the Fatherland, the master athlete humiliated the master race.

This from Owens’ New York Times obituary in 1980:

The United States Olympic track team, of 66 athletes, included 10 blacks. The Nazis derided the Americans for relying on what the Nazis called an inferior race, but of the 11 individual gold medals in track won by the American men, six were won by blacks.

The hero was Mr. Owens. He won the 100-meter dash in 10.3 seconds, the 200-meter dash in 20.7 seconds and the broad jump at 26 feet 5 1/2 inches, and he led off for the United States team that won the 400-meter relay in 39.8 seconds.

His individual performances broke two Olympic records and, except for an excessive following wind, would have broken the third. The relay team broke the world record. His 100-meter and 200-meter times would have won Olympic medals through 1964, his broad- jump performance through 1968.

Actually, Mr. Owens had not been scheduled to run in the relay. Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller were, but American Olympic officials, led by Avery Brundage, wanted to avoid offending the Nazis. They replaced Mr. Glickman and Mr. Stoller, both Jews, with Mr. Owens and Ralph Metcalfe, both blacks.

Hitler did not congratulate any of the American black winners, a subject to which Mr. Owens addressed himself for the rest of his life.

“It was all right with me,” he said years later, “I didn’t go to Berlin to shake hands with him, anyway. All I know is that I’m here now, and Hitler isn’t.

“When I came back, after all those stories about Hitler and his snub, I came back to my native country, and I couldn’t ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I couldn’t live where I wanted. Now what’s the difference?”

Owens received no official recognition from the U.S. — no presidential phone call, no White House visit — until 1976 when he was presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

… was born 74 years ago today in Dawson, Georgia. He, his manager, and four teen-age members of The Bar-Kays, were killed when their plane crashed into Lake Monona on approach to Madison, Wisconsin, early December 10, 1967.

Although his career was relatively brief, cut short by a tragic plane crash, Otis Redding was a singer of such commanding stature that to this day he embodies the essence of soul music in its purist form. His name is synonymous with the term soul, music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of funky, secular testifying. Redding left behind a legacy of recordings made during the four-year period from his first sessions for Stax/Volt Records in 1963 until his death in 1967. Ironically, although he consistently impacted the R&B charts beginning with “Pain In My Heart” in 1964, none of his singles fared better than #21 on the pop Top Forty until the posthumous release of “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay.” That landmark song, recorded just four days before Redding’s death, went to #1 and stayed there for four weeks in early 1968. …

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum

[The Bar-Kays trumpeter survived the crash. The bass player was on another plane.]