Today is the birthday
… of Kirk Douglas. The three-time Oscar nominee is 95. He was born Issur Danielovitch Demsky. NewMexiKen’s favorite Douglas performance is in Lonely Are the Brave. “Filmed on location in New Mexico, Lonely are the Brave was adapted by Dalton Trumbo from Edward Abbey’s novel Brave Cowboy.”
… of Dina Merrill. Nedenia Marjorie Hutton is 86 today. Her father was E.F. Hutton. Her mother was Marjorie Merriweather Post (of Post cereal). She has 107 acting credits at IMDb and was Mrs. Cliff Robertson for 20 years.
… of Buck Henry, 81 today. Henry was nominated for Oscars for directing, with Warren Beatty, Heaven Can Wait and co-writing The Graduate.
… of Dame Judi Dench. The six-time Oscar nominee, one-time winner for Shakespeare in Love, is 77.
… of Beau Bridges. Jeff’s big brother is 70. No Oscars for Beau, but he has three wins from 10 Emmy nominations.
… of Dick Butkus, 69. The Butkus Award is given each year to the best college linebacker, so I guess that tells you what kind of a linebacker Butkus was.
… of Tom Kite. He’s 62. Kite won the U.S. Open in 1992.
… of John Malkovich. The two-time Oscar nominee is 58.
… of Donny Osmond, 54. Fifty. Four.
… of Felicity Huffman. The Oscar nominee and Desperate Housewife is 49.
… of Jakob Dylan, son of Bob. Jakob is 42 today. He’s the youngest of his dad’s four children with first wife Sara Lownds, the Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.
… of Imogen Heap, 34.
The actor Broderick Crawford was born 100 years ago today. Crawford won the best actor Oscar in 1950 for his portrayal of politician Willie Stark in All the King’s Men. He has 141 acting credits at IMDb.
The actor Lee J. Cobb was born 100 years ago today. Cobb was twice nominated for the best supporting actor Oscar: On the Waterfront and The Brothers Karamazov. I thing he was superb as Juror #3 in 12 Angry Men. He has 104 acting credits listed on IMDb.
The screenwriter and novelist Dalton Trumbo was born in Montrose, Colorado, 105 years ago today. Trumbo was nominated for three writing Oscars, winning twice, for Roman Holiday and The Brave One. Because he was blacklisted for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, both Oscars were awarded to fronts. The records were changed only years later after Otto Preminger and Kirk Douglas fought the blacklisting and credited Trumbo’s screenwriting for Exodus and Spartacus respectively. Trumbo’s novel Johnny Got His Gun is a classic that everyone should read.
The famed circus clown Emmett Kelly was born on December 9, 1898. Kelly was known for his character Weary Willie, in makeup as a bum sweeping up. His was a revolutionary character; clowns always appeared in white face before Kelly. He was a star performer with Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus when I was a kid.
Grace Hopper was born in New York City 105 years ago today.
She began tinkering around with machines when she was seven years old, dismantling several alarm clocks around the house to see how they worked. She studied math and physics in college, and eventually got a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale.
Then World War II broke out, and Hopper wanted to serve her country. Her father had been an admiral in the Navy, so she applied to a division of the Navy called WAVES, which stood for Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service. They turned her down at first[;] they said she was too old at 35, and that she didn’t weigh enough, at 105 pounds. But she wouldn’t give up, and they eventually accepted her. With her math skills, she was assigned to work on a machine that might help calculate the trajectory of bombs and rockets.
Hopper learned how to program that early computing machine, and wrote the first instruction manual for its use. And she went on to help write an early computer language known as COBOL — “Common Business-Oriented Language.” She remained in the Navy, and eventually she became the first woman ever promoted to rear admiral.
Clarence Birdseye was born on this date in 1886. Birdseye, fishing with Inuit in the Arctic, observed that fish flash frozen at Arctic temperatures, when thawed, tasted much better and fresher than fish frozen at higher temperatures, as was being done commercially. That is, Birdseye came up with the approach that made frozen food acceptable. The company he founded eventually became General Foods.