Harmon Killebrew would have been 75 today.
Today is the birthday
… of best actor Oscar nominee Gary Busey. He’s 67. The nomination was for The Buddy Holly Story.
… of Football Hall of Famer Dan Dierdorf, 62.
… of Maria Conchita Alonso, 54. The singer-actress was Miss Teenager of the World in 1971.
… of violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter. She’s 48.
Eva Narcissus Boyd was born 68 years ago today. She was the babysitter for songwriters Carole King and Gerry Goffin and, as Little Eva, she recorded “The Loco-Motion.” Boyd’s abuse by her boyfriend gave King and Goffin the notion for “He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss),” recorded by The Crystals. Little Eva died in 2003.
Louis Burton Lindley, Jr. was born 92 years ago today. As the actor Slim Pickens, we know him best as the bomber pilot in Dr. Strangelove and as Taggart in Blazing Saddles. He was in Willie Nelson’s band — and was Amy Irving’s father — in Honeysuckle Rose. Pickens died in 1983.
The sculptor and painter Allan Houser was born on June 29th in 1914. Houser (or Haozous) was a Chiricahua Apache born in Oklahoma. His father was a grand nephew of Geronimo. By the end of the 1930s Houser’s work was being shown at the New York World’s Fair and the Golden Gate International Exposition, and he painted murals in the Department of the Interior Building in Washington. His work is now seen in collections throughout the United States and in Europe. An exhibition of his work at the National Museum of the American Indian, 2004—2005, was viewed by more than three million visitors. Houser died in 1994. The sculpture pictured is Houser’s “Fabricated Buffalo” (1993) found at the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, Wyoming. The mural below, “Breaking Camp during Wartime” (1938) is in the Stewart Lee Udall Department of the Interior Building in Washington.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was born on June 29 in 1900. In January 2003, Outside Magazine listed its 25 essential books for the well-read explorer. At the top was Antoine de Saint-Exupéry:
Like his most famous creation, The Little Prince, that visitor from Asteroid B-612 who once saw 44 sunsets in a single day, Saint-Exupéry disappeared into the sky. Killed in World War II at age 44, “Saint Ex” was a pioneering pilot for Aéropostale in the 1920s, carrying mail over the deadly Sahara on the Toulouse-Dakar route, encountering cyclones, marauding Moors, and lonely nights: “So in the heart of the desert, on the naked rind of the planet, in an isolation like that of the beginnings of the world, we built a village of men. Sitting in the flickering light of the candles on this kerchief of sand, on this village square, we waited out the night.” Whatever his skills as a pilot—said to be extraordinary—as a writer he is effortlessly sublime. Wind, Sand and Stars is so humane, so poetic, you underline sentences: “It is another of the miraculous things about mankind that there is no pain nor passion that does not radiate to the ends of the earth. Let a man in a garret but burn with enough intensity and he will set fire to the world.” Saint-Exupéry did just that. No writer before or since has distilled the sheer spirit of adventure so beautifully. True, in his excitement he can be righteous, almost irksome—like someone who’s just gotten religion. But that youthful excess is part of his charm. Philosophical yet gritty, sincere yet never earnest, utterly devoid of the postmodern cop-outs of cynicism, sarcasm, and spite, Saint-Exupéry’s prose is a lot like the bracing gusts of fresh air that greet him in his open cockpit. He shows us what it’s like to be subject—and king—of infinite space.
Actress Jayne Mansfield, just 34, was killed 44 years ago today when her car struck a trailer truck near Slidell, Louisiana. The driver and Ms. Mansfield’s companion, Sam Brody, were also killed. Three of her children asleep in the backseat survived.
Those who have seen Field of Dreams or read the book on which it was based, Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella, will remember the character “Moonlight” Graham, played by Burt Lancaster in the film. Archibald Wright Graham (1876-1965) was an actual player, and a doctor. Graham played in one game for the New York Giants on June 29, 1905 (in the movie it was the last game of the season in 1929). Graham played two innings in the field but never batted in the major leagues; he was on deck when his one game ended.