October 15th

Today is the birthday

… of Lee Iacocca. The former Ford executive and Chrysler chairman is 87.

… of Barry McGuire. The rock/folk singer is 76. His “Eve of Destruction” is even closer at hand.

… of Linda Lavin. Television’s “Alice” is 74.

… of Carole Penny Marshall. The actress turned director is 69.

… of Jim Palmer. The baseball hall-of-famer is 66. Palmer won World Series games in three decades (1966, 1970 and 1971, 1983).

Jim Palmer was the high-kicking, smooth-throwing hurler of Baltimore’s six championship teams of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. His impressive numbers include 268 victories, a .638 winning percentage, eight 20-win seasons and a 2.86 ERA over 19 seasons. He also pitched his entire career without allowing a grand slam. Intensity was the trademark of this three-time Cy Young Award winner, who combined intelligence, strength, competitiveness and consistency to become the Orioles’ all-time winningest pitcher.

Baseball Hall of Fame

… of Richard Carpenter. Karen’s brother is 65.

… of Emeril Lagasse. The TV chef is 52.

… of Dominic West, foremost Detective Jimmy McNulty of The Wire, 42.

In his honor, the 100 greatest lines from the best TV series ever.

ABSOLUTELY NOT SAFE FOR WORK AND SOME SPOILERS!

The economist John Kenneth Galbraith was born 103 years ago today. Galbraith once wrote a speech for President Lyndon Johnson. Galbraith was a very prominent economist and not a speech writer, but he worked diligently on the draft and was impressed with what he produced. It was given to LBJ who, out of respect for the economist, told him personally what he thought. “Ken,” LBJ said. “Writing a speech is a lot like wetting your pants. What feels warm and comforting to you can just seem cold and sticky to everyone else.” Galbraith died in 2006.

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. was born 94 years ago today. By the time of his death in 2006 Schlesinger had become a celebrity — a person known mostly for being well-known — but he was the winner of two Pulitizer Prizes in history — The Age of Jackson and A Thousand Days.

Before Schlesinger, historians thought of American democracy as the product of an almost mystical frontier or agrarian egalitarianism. The Age of Jackson toppled that interpretation by placing democracy’s origins firmly in the context of the founding generation’s ideas about the few and the many, and by seeing democracy’s expansion as an outcome of struggles between classes, not sections. More than any previous account, Schlesinger’s examined the activities and ideas of obscure, ordinary Americans, as well as towering political leaders. While he identified most of the key political events and changes of the era, Schlesinger also located the origins of modern liberal politics in the tradition of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, and in their belief, as he wrote, that future challenges “will best be met by a society in which no single group is able to sacrifice democracy and liberty to its interests.”

Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln

Mario Puzo was born on October 15th in 1920. The Writer’s Almanac told us this in 2004:

[Puzo is] best known as the author of the novel The Godfather (1969), which was made into a movie in 1972. People had written novels and made movies about the mafia before, but the mafia characters had always been the villains. Puzo was the first person to write about members of the mafia as the sympathetic main characters of a story. The son of Italian immigrants, he started out trying to write serious literary fiction. He published two novels that barely sold any copies. He fell into debt, trying to support his family as a freelance writer. One Christmas Eve, he had a severe gall bladder attack and took a cab to the hospital. When he got out of the cab, he was in so much pain that he fell into the gutter. Lying there, he said to himself, “Here I am, a published writer, and I am dying like a dog.” He vowed that he would devote the rest of his writing life to becoming rich and famous. The Godfather became the best-selling novel of the 1970s, and many critics credit Puzo with inventing the mafia as a serious literary and cinematic subject. He went on to publish many other books, including The Sicilian (1984) and The Last Don (1996), but he always felt that his best book was the last book he wrote before he became a success – The Fortunate Pilgrim (1964), about an ordinary Italian immigrant family.

Puzo died in 1999.

Edith Bolling Galt Wilson was born on October 15, 1872. The 59-year-old president and widower Woodrow Wilson married the 43-year-old widow Mrs. Galt in 1915. (Michael Douglas was 51 and Annette Benning 37 when they played a fictional “first couple” in the 1995 film The American President.)

[President Wilson’s] health failed in September 1919; a stroke left him partly paralyzed. His constant attendant, Mrs. Wilson took over many routine duties and details of government. But she did not initiate programs or make major decisions, and she did not try to control the executive branch. She selected matters for her husband’s attention and let everything else go to the heads of departments or remain in abeyance. Her “stewardship,” she called this. And in My Memoir, published in 1939, she stated emphatically that her husband’s doctors had urged this course upon her.

The White House

Mrs. Wilson lived until 1961.