Author: NewMexiKen

Today is the birthday

… of Blanche Elizabeth Hollingsworth Devereaux. Rue McClanahan is 75 today.

… of Tyne Daly, 64.

… of Anthony Daniels. 3CPO is 64.

… of Alan Rickman. Professor Snape is 64.

… of Patricia Nixon Cox. The former first daughter is 64.

… of Frasier Crane. Kelsey Grammer is 55 today.

… of Mary Chapin Carpenter. Celebrating, and one hopes, feeling lucky, she’s 52 today.

… of Ellen Page. The one-time Oscar nominee is 23.

… of Corbin Bleu. He’s 21.

Erma Bombeck was born on this date in 1927. According to The Writer’s Almanac had this in 2004:

[Bombeck] became famous for her humor column called “At Wits End”, about the daily madness of being a housewife. She knew she wanted to be a journalist from the eighth grade, and she had a humor column in her high school newspaper. She got a job at the Dayton Journal-Herald writing obituaries and features for the women’s page, but when she married a sportswriter there, she chose to quit her job and stay home with the kids. She spent a decade as a fulltime mother, and then in 1964 she decided she had to start writing again or she would go crazy. She said, “I was thirty-seven, too old for a paper route, too young for social security, and too tired for an affair.”

She got a column at a small Ohio paper and wrote about the daily trials and tribulations of the average housewife. Within a few years, she was one of the most popular humor columnists in America.

NewMexiKen thought Bombeck funniest when she really was a a full-time mom. When she became rich and famous the humor often seemed more contrived and strained. But then I’d rather be rich and famous than funny, too.

Anaïs Nin was born on this date in 1903 and named Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell. I almost passed over the French author, but figured if she was good enough for a Jewel song she was good enough for NewMexiKen. Anaïs Nin was French born of Cuban parents.

The great classical guitarist Andrés Segovia was born on this date in 1893. This from his obituary in The New York Times in 1987.

The guitarist himself summed up his life’s goals in an interview with The New York Times when he was 75 years old: ”First, to redeem my guitar from the flamenco and all those other things. Second, to create a repertory – you know that almost all the good composers of our time have written works for the guitar through me and even for my pupils. Third, I wanted to create a public for the guitar. Now, I fill the biggest halls in all the countries, and at least a third of the audience is young – I am very glad to steal them from the Beatles. Fourth, I was determined to win the guitar a respected place in the great music schools along with the piano, the violin and other concert instruments.”

The Washington Monument was dedicated on this date in 1885. Malcolm X was shot and killed on this date in 1965.

Sidney Poitier is 83 today.

American Masters from PBS sums it up nicely:

More than an actor (and Academy-Award winner), Sidney Poitier is an artist. A writer and director, a thinker and critic, a humanitarian and diplomat, his presence as a cultural icon has long been one of protest and humanity. His career defined and documented the modern history of blacks in American film, and his depiction of proud and powerful characters was and remains revolutionary.

Lilies of the Field — with Poitier’s Oscar winning performance — has been one of NewMexiKen’s favorites since it was released nearly 50 years ago. If you don’t know the film, you should.

Ansel Adams was born on this date in 1902.

In a career that spanned more than 50 years, Mr. Adams combined a passion for natural landscape, meticulous craftsmanship as a printmaker and a missionary’s zeal for his medium to become the most widely exhibited and recognized photographer of his generation.

His photographs have been published in more than 35 books and portfolios, and they have been seen in hundreds of exhibitions, including a one-man show, ”Ansel Adams and the West,” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1979. That same year he was the subject of a cover story in Time magazine, and in 1980 he received the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

In addition to being acclaimed for his dramatic landscapes of the American West, he was held in esteem for his contributions to photographic technology and to the recognition of photography as an art form.

The New York Times Obituary

The Ansel Adams Gallery

Horror and science fiction writer Richard Matheson is 84 today.

“When people talk about genre, I guess they mention my name first, but without Richard Matheson I wouldn’t be around. He is as much my father as Bessie Smith was Elvis Presley’s mother.” … He wrote for television shows, including The Twilight Zone and Star Trek, and he wrote more than 20 novels and 100 short stories. His most famous books include I Am Legend (1954), The Shrinking Man (1956), later retitled The Incredible Shrinking Man, and What Dreams May Come (1978).

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

Nancy Wilson is 73. Buffy Sainte-Marie is 69. Sandy Duncan is 64. J. Geils is 64, as well. Patty Hearst is 56. Charles Barkley is 47. And Cindy Crawford is 44.

Today is the birthday

… of William “Smokey” Robinson, born in Detroit 70 years ago today.

Some Smokey Robinson trivia:

• The nickname Smokey was given him as a child by an uncle.
• The Robinsons were neighbors of the Franklins; Smokey is two years older than Aretha.
• They both attended Detroit’s Northern Senior High School (as did NewMexiKen’s mom).
• Smokey wrote both “My Guy” and “My Girl.”
• Bob Dylan called Smokey “America’s greatest living poet.”
• Smokey has written more than 4,000 songs.

… of author Amy Tan, 58 today.

When Tan was 15, her father and older brother both died of brain tumors, within six months of each other. Her mother became convinced spirits were cursing the family, and she moved Tan and her younger brother to Switzerland. Tan continued to rebel against her mother, who wanted her to become a part-time concert pianist and a full-time brain surgeon. Instead, Tan became an English and linguistics major, and fell in love with an Italian. She and her mother didn’t speak for six months.

Tan worked as a freelance business writer, working 90-hour weeks to keep up with demand. But she eventually realized she was addicted to work she didn’t like. She went into counseling and began writing short stories.

When her mother went into the hospital in 1985, Tan promised herself that if her mother survived, she would take her to China and learn her mother’s stories. It was a trip that would change Tan’s perspective. She said later, “When my feet touched China, I became Chinese.”

Tan’s short stories became The Joy Luck Club (1989), a novel about four Chinese immigrant mothers and their relationships with their American-born daughters. It was an instant best seller and was made into a film. Tan has written five novels, all best sellers, including The Kitchen God’s Wife (1991) and The Bonesetter’s Daughter (2001). Her most recent novel is Saving Fish from Drowning (2005).

The Writer’s Almanac (2008)

… of Jeff Daniels, 55. Daniels has been nominated for several acting awards, most recently for The Squid and the Whale.

… of “Family Ties” actress Justine Bateman. Mallory Keaton is 44.

… of Benicio Del Toro. The supporting actor Oscar winner, for Traffic, is 43. Del Toro was nominated for the supporting actor Oscar again for 21 Grams.

Author Carson McCullers was born on in Columbus, Georgia, on this date in 1917.

Her most famous novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, published in 1940, delves into the “lonely hearts” of four individuals—an adolescent girl, an embittered radical, a black physician, and a widower who owns a cafe—struggling to find their way in a Southern mill town during the Great Depression.

Library of Congress

The great jockey Eddie Arcaro was born on this date in 1916.

Today is the birthday

… of Helen Gurley Brown, 88.

… of Oscar winner George Kennedy. Dragline is 85. Kennedy won the best supporting actor Oscar for that role in Cool Hand Luke.

… of Toni Morrison, “who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.” That’s what they said when she won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.

… of the woman who broke up the Beatles. She’s 77 today. That’s Yoko Ono.

… of Cybill Shepherd. She’s 60.

… of Vinnie Barbarino. He’s 56 today. So are Vincent Vega, Chili Palmer, Michael, Buford ‘Bud’ Uan Davis, Tod Lubitch, Danny Zuko and Tony Manero. And so is John Travolta.

… of the letter turner. Vanna White is 53 today.

… of one-time Oscar nominee Matt Dillon, 46.

… of Andre Romelle Young. Dr. Dre is 45.

… of Molly Ringwald. She’s 42.

Wallace Stegner was born on this date in 1909.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published February 18, 1885.