Today is the birthday
… of Richard Ford. The Pulitzer-winning novelist is 66.
Richard Ford writes out almost everything in longhand, with a Bic pen. Before he started to write The Lay of the Land, he spent six months filling a three-ring binder with notes, placing his notes in sections marked “realty” or “Frank” or “New Jersey.” And he keeps all his notes and manuscripts in the freezer, so that if the house burns down, he might not lose all his work.
Above excerpted from longer piece at The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor.
… of LeVar Burton. Kunta Kinte is 53.
… of Ice-T. Detective Odafin “Fin” Tutuola of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is 52. His real name is Tracy Marrow and his son is Tracy Marrow Jr., not Ice-T Jr.
… of John McEnroe. The tennis hall-of-famer is 51.
… of Jerome Bettis. “The Bus” is 38.
Edgar Bergen was born on this date in 1903.
Born in Decatur, Michigan in 1903, Edgar Bergen developed a talent for ventriloquism at a young age. When Bergen asked a local carpenter to create a dummy, the wisecracking Charlie McCarthy was born. The duo began their career as talent show headliners, performing in Chicago while Bergen attended Northwestern University. Bergen eventually left Northwestern to concentrate on performing, but Charlie received an honorary degree from the school in 1938, a “Master of Innuendo and Snappy Comebacks.”
Bergen and McCarthy made their radio debut on Rudy Vallee’s Royal Gelatin Hour in 1936 and were an instant success. In 1937, they were given their own show for Chase & Sanborn. Almost immediately, The Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy Show became one of radio’s highest-rated programs, a distinction it enjoyed until it left the air in 1956.
During the show’s two decades on the air, Bergen added new characters to the show, including the slow-witted Mortimer Snerd and the man-hungry spinster Effie Klinker. Today, Charlie McCarthy, Mortimer Snerd and Effie Klinker are on permanent display at the Radio Hall of Fame.
Edgar Bergen died on October 1, 1978. He is, of course, the father of actress Candice Bergen.
Henry Adams was born on this date in 1838. Adams was the son of Charles Francis Adams (Lincoln’s ambassador to Great Britain), grandson of John Quincy Adams and great-grandson of John Adams. After serving as his father’s secretary in England, Henry decided on a life as a journalist and historian, writing histories of the Jefferson and Madison administrations but being best known perhaps for his autobiographical The Education of Henry Adams (1907), which won a Pulitzer Prize and remains highly regarded. Adams died in 1918.