Al Molinaro of “Happy Days” is 90 today.
Mick Fleetwood is 62. “Rumours” has sold more than 19 million copies, the 9th best-selling album of all time.
Minka Kelly of “Friday Night Lights” is 29 today. Old for high school wouldn’t you say?
Jack Dempsey was born on this date in 1895 in Manassa, Colorado, which makes him about the most famous native-son of the San Luis Valley.
To many, Mr. Dempsey always remained the champion, and he always comported himself like one. He was warm and generous, a free spender when he had it and a soft touch for anybody down on his luck. After retirement from the ring, he made his headquarters in New York in Jack Dempsey’s Restaurant, first at the corner of 50th Street across Eighth Avenue from the old Madison Square Garden and later at 1619 Broadway, where his partner was Jack Amiel, whose colt, Count Turf, won the Kentucky Derby.
At almost any hour, Mr. Dempsey was on hand to greet friends and strangers with a cordial, ”Hiya, pal,” in a voice close to a boyish treble. (He wasn’t much better at remembering names than Babe Ruth, who called people ”kid.”) He posed for thousands of photographs with an arm around a customer’s shoulders or – if the customer preferred, and many males did -squared off face to face. Autographing tens of thousands of menus, he never scribbled an impersonal ”Jack Dempsey” but always took the trouble to write the recipient’s name and add ”good luck” or ”keep punching.” His ebullient good humor was even demonstrated against the occasional drunk who simply had to try out his Sunday punch on the old champion.
Grantland Rice said Mr. Dempsey was perhaps the finest gentleman, in the literal sense of gentle man, he had met in half a century of writing sports; Mr. Dempsey never knowingly hurt anyone except in the line of business.