Maureen O’Hara is 89 today. Once voted one of the five most beautiful women in the world, Miss O’Hara is proabably best known now as Natalie Wood’s unbelieving mother in the classic Miracle on 34th Street; or perhaps as Esmeralda to Charles Laughton’s Quasimodo in the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Nobel Prize-winning author V.S. Naipaul is 77.
Robert De Niro is 66 today. De Niro has been nominated for the Best Actor in a Leading Role Oscar five times, winning for Raging Bull in 1981. He also won the Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role as the young Vito Corleone in Godfather II. De Niro’s other nominations were for Taxi Driver, The Deer Hunter, Awakenings and Cape Fear.
Novelist Jonathan Franzen is 50 today. His The Corrections won the 2001 National Book Award.
Oprah chose it for her Book Club, but Franzen made several ambivalent comments about the honor in his interviews. He said, “I see this as my book, my creation, and I didn’t want that logo of corporate ownership on it,” and, “She’s picked some good books, but she’s picked enough schmaltzy, one-dimensional ones that I cringe, myself, even though I think she’s really smart and she’s really fighting the good fight.” Oprah announced that Franzen was “seemingly uncomfortable and conflicted about being chosen as a book club selection,” and for the first time ever, withdrew her invitation to an author to be part of the book club. But The Corrections was still a huge best seller and won the National Book Award.
Sean Penn is 49 today. Penn has been nominated for the Best Actor in a Leading Role Oscar five times, winning for Mystic River and Milk. Penn’s other nominations were for Dead Man Walking, Sweet and Lowdown and I Am Sam.
Football coach Jon Gruden is 46.
Davy Crockett — frontiersman, soldier, three-term congressman, restless soul — was born on this day in 1786. He died at the Alamo in on March 6, 1836. Crockett opposed the Indian Removal Act.
After seeing Mae’s jewelry the coat check girl exclaims, “Goodness, what lovely diamonds!” Mae replies, “Goodness had nothing to do with it.” That’s screen legend Mae West in Night After Night. Ms. West was born on this date in 1893.
To me, Maureen O’Hara will always be known as the mom in the original Parent Trap.
Surely Annette, you like this scene about Christmas faith from Miracle on 34th Street. With 9-year old Natalie Wood and 70-year-old Edmund Gwenn; O’Hara was just 27.
Great scene. Funny how Maureen O’Hara doesn’t look that much older in The Parent Trap.