Oscar-winner Ernest Borgnine is 95 today. Borgnine won the best actor Oscar in 1956 for the lead in Marty. The film also won best picture, director and screenplay (Paddy Chayefsky). Borgnine is however, perhaps best known as Lieutenant Commander Quinton McHale of the sitcom McHale’s Navy.
Jerry Maren is 92 today. Maren was the center member of the Lollipop Guild in The Wizard of Oz.
Prima ballerina Maria Tallchief is 87. The Oklahoma native danced with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and New York City Ballet. Her father was chief of the Osage Nation.
Neil Diamond is 71.
Neil Diamond is among the greatest pop songwriters of the modern age. He is among the top-grossing performers and best-selling recording artists of all time. Diamond’s prolific half-century as a professional musician has yielded one of the most enduring catalogs in American popular music.
To date he has placed 56 singles in Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart and 48 albums (including compilations) on its Top 200 album chart. He has sold more than 125 million records and set attendance records at venues all over the world.
Aaron Neville will have to “Tell It Like It Is” today. It is 71.
Mary Lou Retton is 44. Ed Helms is 38. Mischa Barton is 26.
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Edith Wharton was born on January 24th in 1862. She won for The Age of Innocence, published in 1920.
The director Henry King was born on January 24, 1886. He was one of the 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, but never won an Oscar. He was nominated twice, for Wilson and The Song of Bernadette.
John Belushi should have been 63 today. Warren Zevon would have been 65.
Gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill on this date in 1848.