Five time nominee for best actress, Susan Hayward was born on June 30th in 1917. She won the Oscar in 1958 for I Want to Live!
The magnificent Lena Mary Calhoun Horne was also born on June 30th in 1917.
Even in her eighties, the legendary Lena Horne has a quality of timelessness about her. Elegant and wise, she personifies both the glamour of Hollywood and the reality of a lifetime spent battling racial and social injustice. Pushed by an ambitious mother into the chorus line of the Cotton Club when she was sixteen, and maneuvered into a film career by the N.A.A.C.P., she was the first African American signed to a long-term studio contract. In her rise beyond Hollywood’s racial stereotypes of maids, butlers, and African natives, she achieved true stardom on the silver screen, and became a catalyst for change even beyond the glittery fringes of studio life.
Miss Horne died last year.
Florence Glenda Ballard Chapman was born 68 years ago today. It was she who named the trio she was in The Supremes. But it was also she who was fired from the group by Berry Gordy in 1967. Miss Ballard died at age 32.
Vincent D’Onofrio is 52 today. Deirdre Lovejoy, the D.A. in The Wire, is 49. Mike Tyson is 45.