The Last Day of January

Today is the birthday

… of Carol Channing. Broadway’s Dolly Gallagher Levi is 89.

… of Ernie Banks. The baseball hall-of-famer is 79. Let’s play two.

… of composer Philip Glass. He’s 73.

The new musical style that Glass was evolving was eventually dubbed “minimalism.” Glass himself never liked the term and preferred to speak of himself as a composer of “music with repetitive structures.” Much of his early work was based on the extended reiteration of brief, elegant melodic fragments that wove in and out of an aural tapestry. Or, to put it another way, it immersed a listener in a sort of sonic weather that twists, turns, surrounds, develops.

Philip Glass: Biography

… of Queen Beatrix. She’s 72. Do you know what country is she queen of?

… of Nolan Ryan. The baseball hall-of-famer is 63.

… of KC. He’s 59. And his band was?

Minnie Driver is 40. Justin Timberlake is 29.

Suzanne Pleshette, Emily on the ”The Bob Newhart Show” and Annie (the teacher) in The Birds, would have been 73 today. She died two years ago.

Jean Simmons would have been 81 today; she died nine days ago. The actress was in such classic films as The Robe, Spartacus, Elmer Gantry and was twice nominated for an Oscar — Hamlet (supporting) and The Happy Ending (leading).

Norman Mailer was born 87 years ago today. He died in November 2007. Here’s a previous NewMexiKen entry on Mailer.

Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born on this date in 1919.

As a competitor, Robinson was the Dodgers’ leader. In his 10 seasons, they won six National League pennants–1947, 1949, 1952, 1953, 1955 and 1956. They lost another in the 1951 playoff with the New York Giants, and another to the Philadelphia Phillies on the last day of the 1950 season.

In 1949, when he batted .342 to win the league title and drove in 124 runs, he was voted the league’s Most Valuable Player Award. In 1947, he had been voted the rookie of the year.

“The only way to beat the Dodgers,” said Warren Giles, then the president of the Cincinnati Reds, later the National League president, “is to keep Robinson off the bases.”

He had a career batting average of .311. Primarily a line drive hitter, he accumulated only 137 home runs, with a high of 19 in both 1951 and 1952.

But on a team with such famous sluggers as Duke Snider, Gil Hodges and Roy Campanella, who was also black, he was the cleanup hitter, fourth in the batting order, a tribute to his ability to mover along teammates on base.

But his personality flared best as a baserunner. He had a total of 197 stolen bases. He stole home 11 times, the most by any player in the post-World War II era.

The New York Times

Thomas Merton was born on this date in 1915. Here’s a previous NewMexiKen entry on Merton.

John O’Hara was born on this date in 1905.

[O’Hara] went on to become one of the most popular serious writers of his lifetime, writing many best-selling novels, including Appointment in Samarra (1934) and A Rage to Live (1949). Most critics consider his best work to be his short stories, which were published as the Collected Stories of John O’Hara (1984). He holds the record for the greatest number of short stories published by a single author in The New Yorker magazine.

The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media

And Pearl Zane Grey, the first American millionaire author, was born on this date in 1872. Here’s a previous NewMexiKen entry on Grey.