Rosalynn Carter is 84.
Roman Polanski is 78.
Attorney Vincent Bugliosi is 77. Bugliosi came to fame as the prosecutor of Charlie Manson and family.
It’s the birthday of Rafer Johnson. The decathlete is 76. It was Johnson who lit the Olympic torch in Los Angeles in 1984.
Robert Redford is 74. Redford has been nominated for two directing Oscars, winning for Ordinary People. His only acting nomination was for The Sting.
Rockabilly great Johnny Preston, singer of the classic number one song “Running Bear,” was born 72 years ago today. “Running Bear” was written by J.P. Richardson, The Big Bopper. It was number one for three weeks in 1960. The Indian chants were by Richardson and George Jones. Yes, that George Jones.
The original above. Johnny singing the song a couple years ago below. He died in March.
Martin Mull is 68.
Patrick Swayze would have been 59 today.
Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner is 50. He is the 75th person to have that job. Alexander Hamilton was first.
Edward Norton is 42 today. Norton has both a leading and a supporting Oscar nomination but no wins yet.
Christian Slater is 42 today too.
Malcolm-Jamal Walker is 41. He was Cosby’s son Theo on the TV show.
Andy Samberg is 33.
Roberto Clemente Walker should have been 76 today.
Roberto Clemente Walker’s pride and humanitarianism won him universal admiration. Despite an unorthodox batting style, the Pirates great won four batting crowns and amassed 3,000 hits. He was equally brilliant in right field, where he displayed a precise and powerful arm. Clemente earned National League MVP honors in 1966, but achieved his greatest fame in the 1971 World Series, in which he batted .414. Tragically, Clemente’s life ended at age 38 — the victim of a plane crash while flying relief supplies to Nicaraguan earthquake victims.
Max Factor was born on August 18, 1904.
Shelly Winters would have been 91 today. Miss Winters won best supporting actress twice and had two other nominations for that honor. She died five years ago.
Antonio Salieri was born on this date in 1750. After his characterization as a villain in Peter Shaffer’s play and film Amadeus, it seems Salieri has made a bit of a comeback. According to a December 2003 article at Guardian Unlimited and other sources, while there was competition between the upstart Mozart and the established artist Salieri in Vienna, there was cooperation, too; that is, what transpired between them was typical office politics.
Meriwether Lewis was born on this date in 1774. Lewis had this to say on his 31st birthday 205 years ago today, camped just east of Lemhi Pass near the present-day Montana-Idaho border. (From the Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition Online at the University of Nebraska.)
This day I completed my thirty first year, and conceived that I had in all human probability now existed about half the period which I am to remain in this Sublunary world. I reflected that I had as yet done but little, very little indeed, to further the hapiness of the human race, or to advance the information of the succeeding generation. I viewed with regret the many hours I have spent in indolence, and now soarly feel the want of that information which those hours would have given me had they been judiciously expended. but since they are past and cannot be recalled, I dash from me the gloomy thought and resolved in future, to redouble my exertions and at least indeavour to promote those two primary objects of human existence, by giving them the aid of that portion of talents which nature and fortune have bestoed on me; or in future, to live for mankind, as I have heretofore lived for myself.—
His birthday doubts are made all the more poignant, of course, with our knowledge that just more than four years later Lewis took his own life at age 35.