… for Pope Benedict XVI — 79 on Easter Sunday.
… for Bobby Vinton, 71 today. Here’s hoping his roses are still red, my love.
… for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar — 59.
… for Ellen Barkin. She’s 52.
… for Peter Billingsley — the kid who wants a BB-gun for Christmas so he can shoot his eye out. He’s 34.
Four time Oscar-winner, and 18 time nominee, Henry Mancini was born on this date in 1924.
“The Pink Panther”
“Peter Gunn”
“Moon River”
“Charade”
“Days of Wine and Roses”
“Mr. Lucky”
Charlie Chaplin was born on this date in 1889.
In a 1995 worldwide survey of film critics, Chaplin was voted the greatest actor in movie history. He was the first, and to date the last, person to control every aspect of the filmmaking process — founding his own studio, United Artists, with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith, and producing, casting, directing, writing, scoring and editing the movies he starred in. In the first decades of the 20th century, when weekly moviegoing was a national habit, Chaplin more or less invented global recognizability and helped turn an industry into an art. In 1916, his third year in films, his salary of $10,000 a week made him the highest-paid actor — possibly the highest paid person — in the world. By 1920, “Chaplinitis,” accompanied by a flood of Chaplin dances, songs, dolls, comic books and cocktails, was rampant. Filmmaker Mack Sennett thought him “just the greatest artist who ever lived.” Other early admirers included George Bernard Shaw, Marcel Proust and Sigmund Freud. (The Time 100)