Today is the birthday
… of Kim Darby. She was the 22-year-old actress who played 14-year-old Mattie Ross of Yell County near Dardanelle, Arkansas, in the first True Grit. She is 64 today. Her given name was Deborah Zerby and she has been married five times.
… of Anjelica Huston. The third generation Oscar winner is 60. Anjelica won the best supporting actress Oscar for Prizzi’s Honor; she has two other nominations. Her father John was nominated for 15 writing, directing or acting Oscars, winning director and writing for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Grandfather Walter was nominated four times for acting Oscars, winning the supporting award for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
… of journalist and author Anna Quindlen, 59.
She wanted to be a fiction writer. But straight out of college, she got hired by the New York Post, and a few years later, by The New York Times. She was so successful that a lot of people thought she was in line to be deputy editor of the paper. She really wanted to write fiction, and had been trying all along during her tenure at the Times — she managed to publish two novels while working full time and raising kids. But she didn’t have enough time to do both, so in 1995, she quit to become a full-time writer.
… of Kevin Bacon. He’s 53. And no, Kevin Bacon has never been nominated for an Oscar. He’s only a few degrees of separation however, from many who have.
Steve Lawrence is 76 and Jerry Vale is 79. Or vice versa, I forget.
Jeffrey Tambor is 67. Toby Keith is 50. (I like that bar too, Toby.) Joan Osborne is 49. Billy Crudup is 43. Beck is 41.
Roone Arledge was born 80 years ago today. He died in 2002.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, was born in Zurich, Switzerland on this date in 1926. The Writer’s Almanac informed us in 2007:
She was the first medical professional to argue that dying is a natural process, and that patients who are terminally ill should not be forced to fight the dying process every step of the way. …
Her book On Death and Dying (1969) helped start the hospice movement, which has since spread around the world. She also introduced the now-famous concept of the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Louis Jordan was born on this date in 1908.
“In the Forties, bandleader Louis Jordan pioneered a wild – and wildly popular – amalgam of jazz and blues with salty, jive-talking humor. The music played by singer/saxophonist Jordan and his Tympany Five got called “jump blues” or “jumpin’ jive,” and it served as a precursor to the rhythm & blues and rock and roll of the Fifties.
John D. Rockefeller was born on this date in 1839. The world’s first billionaire, Rockefeller essentially retired from Standard Oil in 1911. Even so, his taxable income in 1918 was $33,000,000 and his personal worth was estimated at more than $800,000,000. By then, he had already donated about $500 million to charitable causes. Rockefeller died in 1937 at age 97. Ron Chernow has written a recent highly-regarded biography, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
Nelson Rockefeller, grandson of John D., was born on his grandfather’s birthday in 1908. Rockefeller was governor of New York 1959-1973 and vice president 1974-1977. He died in 1979.