Month: August 2009

Today is the birthday

… of Earl Weaver. The former Orioles manager is 79.

… of Dash Crofts. The Crofts of Seals and Crofts is 69.

… of David Crosby. The Crosby of Crosby, Stills and Nash is 68. Mama Cass introduced Crosby, Stills and Nash to one another in 1968. Before that, of course, Mr. Crosby was in another Hall of Fame group, The Byrds.

… of Steve Martin, born in Waco, Texas. He’s 64 today. (And not last Friday as incorrectly posted.)

… of Susan St. James. The wife of McMillan and Wife is 63. McMillan was played by Rock Hudson.

… of Danielle Steel. The author is 62.

… of Gary Larson. The Far Side cartoonist is 59.

… of Earvin “Magic” Johnson. Magic is 50, as is actress Marcia Gay Harden.

… of Susan Olsen. Cindy, of The Brady Bunch, is 48.

… of Halle Berry. The Academy Award winner is 43.

… of Ernest Thayer, the man who wrote “Casey at the Bat,” born on this date in 1863 (and not August 7, as incorrectly reported).

Today is the 64th anniversary of the end of World War II; V-J[apan] Day or V-P[acific] Day. That’s Alfred Eisenstaedt’s famous photo. The nurse has been identified as Edith Cullen Shain. She was 27 that day. No one knows who the sailor was. Click the image for a larger version.

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is 83 today.

Ben Hogan was born on this date in 1912. Hogan was the great golfer of mid-century, overcoming injuries from a severe, near-fatal auto accident. Hogan won four U.S. Opens, two Masters, two PGAs and one British Open between 1946-53.

Alfred Hitchcock was born on this date in 1899. The director was nominated for the Academy Award for best director five times, but never won. The nominations were for Rebecca, Life Boat, Spellbound, Rear Window and Psycho. CNN did a retrospective on Hitchcock on his 100th birthday and included a list of his “ten best” films.

10. “Strangers on a Train” (1951)
9. “The Man Who Knew Too Much” (1934, 1956)
8. “To Catch a Thief” (1955)
7. “Dial M for Murder” (1954)
6. “The 39 Steps” (1935)
5. “North by Northwest” (1959)
4. “The Birds” (1963)
3. “Psycho” (1960)
2. “Vertigo” (1958)
1. “Rear Window” (1954)

Little Sure Shot — Annie Oakley — was born on this date in 1860. Larry McMurtry’s excellent essay “Inventing the West” from the August 2000 issue of The New York Review of Books tells us about this famous performer.

Annie Oakley (Phoebe Ann Moses—or Mosey) grew up poor in rural Ohio, shot game to feed her family, shot game to sell, was pressed into a shooting contest with a touring sharpshooter named Frank Butler, beat him, married him, stayed with him for fifty years, and died three weeks before he did in 1926.

When Annie Oakley and Frank Butler offered themselves to Cody the Colonel was dubious. His fortunes were at a low ebb, and shooting acts abounded. But he gave Annie Oakley a chance. She walked out in Louisville before 17,000 people and was hired immediately. Nate Salsbury, Cody’s tight-fisted manager, who did not spend lavishly and who rarely highlighted performers, happened to watch Annie rehearse and promptly ordered seven thousand dollars’ worth of posters and billboard art.

Annie Oakley more than justified the expense. Sitting Bull, normally a taciturn fellow, saw her shoot in Minnesota and could not contain himself. Watanya cicilia, he called her, his Little Sure Shot. Small, reserved, Quakerish, she seemed to live on the lemonade Buffalo Bill dispensed free to all hands. In London she demolished protocol by shaking hands with Princess Alexandra. She shook hands with Alexandra’s husband, the Prince of Wales, too, though, like his mother the Queen, she strongly disapproved of his behavior with the ladies. In France the Parisians were glacially indifferent to buffalo, Indians, cowboys, and Cody—Annie Oakley melted them so thoroughly that she had to go through her act five times before she could escape. In Germany she likened Bismarck to a mastiff.

In 1901 she was almost killed in a train wreck. Annie claimed that it was the wreck that caused her long auburn hair to turn white overnight; skeptics said her hair turned white because she left it in hot water too long while at a spa. She continued to shoot into the 1920s. In her last years she looked rather like Nancy Astor. Will Rogers visited her not long before her death and pronounced her the perfect woman. Probably not until Billie Jean King and the rise of women’s tennis had a female outdoor performer held the attention of so many people. She became part of the “invention” that is the West by winning her way with a gun: a man’s thing, the very thing, in fact, that had won the West itself.

Annie was her nickname as a child. Oakley was a stage name. Offstage she referred to herself as Mrs. Frank Butler. Photo taken 1902 when Oakley was 42. Click image for larger version.

The Aztecs surrendered to Cortés on this date in 1521.

If you know anything about mythology you probably learned about it first from Edith Hamilton, born on this date in 1867. Hamilton’s book Mythology, written after she had retired as a school head mistress, was published in 1942.

George Hamilton is 70 today.

Mark Knopfler is 60. Money for nothin’ and your chicks for free.

Pete Sampras is 38.

Cantinflas, the great Mexican comedian, acrobat and musician — and bullfighter — was born on this date in 1911. His actual name was Fortino Mario Alfonso Moreno Reyes. Cantinflas was Passepartout in Michael Todd’s 1956 Around the World in Eighty Days. In English-speaking countries, David Niven was billed as the star. Elsewhere Cantinflas took top billing — he was the highest paid actor in the world at the time. He saved the movie from the stiff Niven if you ask me.

The movie producer Cecil B. DeMille was born on August 12th in 1881. Known for his extravaganzas (e.g., The Ten Commandments), DeMille won his only Oscar for The Greatest Show on Earth.

And it’s the birthday of Zerna Sharp, born in Hillisburg, Indiana, on this date in 1889. According to The Writer’s Almanac a few years back, Ms. Sharp is the woman who —

invented the characters Dick and Jane to help teach children how to read…Sharp’s idea was to use pictures and repetition to teach children new words. She took her idea to Dr. William S. Gray, who had been studying the way children learn to read, and he hired her to create a series of textbooks. She didn’t write the books, but she created the characters Dick, Jane, their sister Sally, their dog Spot, and their cat Puff. Each story introduced five new words, one on each page.