Elizabeth Cady Stanton was born on this date in 1815.
Today is also the birthday
… of Wallace Shawn. The actor-playwright is 65. Inconceivable!
He’s the son of the former New Yorker editor William Shawn, and he’s become well known as a character actor in Hollywood movies such as The Princess Bride (1987) and Clueless (1995). Most people don’t know that he’s also an avant-garde playwright. When he got out of college, a lot of his friends took jobs writing for his father’s magazine, but Shawn supported his playwriting by working as a photocopy clerk. He then got the idea of selling stock in himself, and managed to raise $2,500 from investors, which helped him write his first plays. To this day, he sends all those early investors a small annual check. His early plays were not successes. During his first play, the audience actually shouted for the actors to shut up. But he finally had a breakthrough when he wrote and starred in the movie My Dinner with Andre (1981), which consists entirely of Shawn and the theater director Andre Gregory talking over dinner, but it became a cult classic.
… of Brian Hyland. The Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini singer is 65.
… of Booker T. Jones. The organist is 64. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:
Between 1963 and 1968, Booker T. and the MGs appeared on more than 600 Stax/Volt recordings, including classics by such artists as Otis Redding, Eddie Floyd, Rufus Thomas, Carla Thomas, Johnnie Taylor and William Bell. As a result of Stax’s affiliation with Atlantic Records, the group also worked with Wilson Pickett, Sam and Dave, and Albert King. Moreover, Booker T. and the MGs were a successful recording group in their own right, cutting ten albums and fourteen instrumental hits, including “Green Onions,” “Hang ‘Em High,” “Time Is Tight” and “Soul-Limbo.”
… of Neil Young. He’s 63. Again, according to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:
Neil Young is one of rock and roll’s greatest songwriters and performers. In a career that extends back to his mid-Sixties roots as a coffeehouse folkie in his native Canada, this principled and unpredictable maverick has pursued an often winding course across the rock and roll landscape. He’s been a cult hero, a chart-topping rock star, and all things in-between, remaining true to his restless muse all the while. At various times, Young has delved into folk, country, garage-rock and grunge. His biggest album, Harvest (1972) , apotheosized the laid-back singer/songwriter genre he helped invent. By contrast, Rust Never Sleeps (1979), Young’s second-best seller, was a loud, brawling masterpiece whose title track, an homage to Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols, contained the oft-quoted line “Better to burn out than it is to rust.”
… of journalist and author Tracy Kidder, also 63. Kidder won the Pulitzer Prize for The Soul of a New Machine (1981).
… of Megan Mullally. She’s 50.
… of Nadia Comaneci. The perfect 10 is 47.
… of Anne Hathaway, all of 26.
Oscar winner Grace Kelly was born 79 years ago today. Her oscar was for best performance by an actress in The Country Girl (1954).