Mel Brooks is 85, Kathy Bates 63, John Elway 51, and John Cusack and Mary Stuart Masterson are each 45.
Leon Panetta, about to become Secretary of Defense, is 73.
Gilda Radner would have been 65 today.
The Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens was born on June 28 in 1577. That’s his self portrait from when he was in his mid-40s. He died in 1640.
Richard Rodgers was born on June 28th in 1902. This from his New York Times obituary in 1979.
“The Garrick Gaieties,” “A Connecticut Yankee,” “Babes in Arms,” “The Boys From Syracuse,” “Pal Joey,” “Oklahoma!” “Carousel,” “South Pacific,” “Flower Drum Song,” “The King and I,” “The Sound of Music.” What binds together these disparate musical comedies is a single phrase spanning 55 years of Broadway: “Music by Richard Rodgers.”
The phrase connoted the seemingly endless flow of wonderfully singable, danceable melodies that poured out of Mr. Rodgers. And coupled with the names of his two principal lyricists, Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein 2d, the phrase also symbolized the evolution of American musical comedy into an art form of stature, in which plot, music and dancing were closely integrated and frequently employed to explore serious, even tragic, themes.