Today is the birthday
… of Blanche Elizabeth Hollingsworth Devereaux. Rue McClanahan is 75.
… of Richard Beymer. Tony from West Side Story is 70.
… of Mary Beth Lacey. Tyne Daly is 63.
… of 3CPO. Anthony Daniels is 63.
… of Alan Rickman. Professor Snape is 63.
… of Patricia Nixon Cox. The former first daughter is 63.
… of Frasier Crane. Kelsey Grammer is 54 today.
… of Mary Chapin Carpenter. Celebrating, and one hopes, feeling lucky, she’s 51 today.
… of Charlotte Church. The singer, who raised lots of money for PBS, and did even better for herself, is 23.
… of Ellen Page. Last year’s Oscar nominee is 22.
… of Corbin Bleu. He’s 20. Out of high school one hopes.
Erma Bombeck was born on this date in 1927. According to The Writer’s Almanac:
[Bombeck] became famous for her humor column called “At Wits End”, about the daily madness of being a housewife. She knew she wanted to be a journalist from the eighth grade, and she had a humor column in her high school newspaper. She got a job at the Dayton Journal-Herald writing obituaries and features for the women’s page, but when she married a sportswriter there, she chose to quit her job and stay home with the kids. She spent a decade as a fulltime mother, and then in 1964 she decided she had to start writing again or she would go crazy. She said, “I was thirty-seven, too old for a paper route, too young for social security, and too tired for an affair.”
She got a column at a small Ohio paper and wrote about the daily trials and tribulations of the average housewife. Within a few years, she was one of the most popular humor columnists in America.
NewMexiKen thought Bombeck funniest when she really was a a full-time mom. When she became rich and famous the humor often seemed more contrived and strained. But then I’d rather be rich and famous than funny, too.
Anaïs Nin was born on this date in 1903. I almost passed over Nin but figured if she was good enough for a Jewel song she was good enough for NewMexiKen.
The great classical guitarist Andrés Segovia was born on this date in 1893. This from his obituary in The New York Times in 1987.
The guitarist himself summed up his life’s goals in an interview with The New York Times when he was 75 years old: ”First, to redeem my guitar from the flamenco and all those other things. Second, to create a repertory – you know that almost all the good composers of our time have written works for the guitar through me and even for my pupils. Third, I wanted to create a public for the guitar. Now, I fill the biggest halls in all the countries, and at least a third of the audience is young – I am very glad to steal them from the Beatles. Fourth, I was determined to win the guitar a respected place in the great music schools along with the piano, the violin and other concert instruments.”
The Washington Monument was dedicated on this date in 1885. Malcolm X was shot and killed on this date in 1965.