Category: Biography

. . . is the birthday

… of Russ Tamblyn. Riff, “a Jet to his dying day,” is 81.

… of Sandy Koufax. The most dominant pitcher in the game in the early 1960s — the man who threw four no-hitters including a perfect game — is 80.

… of Noel Paul Stookey. Paul of Peter, Paul & Mary is 78.

… of James Burrows. The director of “Taxi,” “Cheers” and “Will and Grace” is 75.

… of Fred Ward. The actor (Gus Grissom in The Right Stuff and Earl Bassett in the greatest movie ever, Tremors) is 73.

… of Monkees Michael Nesmith (73) and Davy Jones, who died in 2012; he would have been 70 today.

… of Patti Smith. Punk rock’s poet laureate is 69.

… of Jeff Lynne. Electric Light Orchestra, Traveling Wilburys, The Move, and The Idle Race — 68 today.

… of Meredith Vieira, 62 today, and Matt Lauer, 58 today.

… of Tracey Ullman. She’s 56.

… of Eldrick Woods. Tiger is 40.

… of LeBron James. He’s 31 today.

The Genius Among Geniuses, Alfred Einstein, was born on December 30, 1880.

And a genius of another kind, Bo Diddley was born on this date in 1928. (He died in 2008.)

Music historian Robert Palmer has described Bo Diddley as “one of the most original and fertile rhythmic intelligences of our time.” He will forever be known as the creator of the “Bo Diddley beat,” one of the cornerstone rhythms of rock and roll. He employed it in his namesake song, “Bo Diddley,” as well as other primal rockers like “Mona.” This distinctive African-based rhythm pattern (which goes bomp bomp bomp bomp-bomp) was picked up from Diddley by other artists and has been a distinctive and recurring element in rock and roll through the decades.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Twas a week before Christmas
And all through the house
Not a creature was stirring
Except these birthday folks

Today is the birthday

… of Keith Richards. The Rolling Stone is 72.

… of Steven Spielberg. The director is 69.

… of Ray Liotta. The actor, a good fella, is 60.

… of Brad Pitt, 52.

Elizabeth Ruth Grable was born on this date in 1916. She was known as Betty Grable and, according to Wikipedia, “Hosiery specialists of the era often noted the ideal proportions of her legs as: thigh (18.5″) calf (12″), and ankle (7.5″). Grable’s legs were famously insured by her studio for $1,000,000 with Lloyds of London.”

James Fletcher Hamilton Henderson, Jr. was born December 18, 1897.

“Fletcher Henderson … led the most important of the pioneering big bands, which helped to set the pattern for most later big jazz bands playing arranged music.” (PBS – JAZZ – Fletcher Henderson)

The electrical engineer and inventor Edwin H. Armstrong was born on December 18, 1890. Armstrong was instrumental in the development of early radio and the inventor of FM.

Ty Cobb was born on this date in 1886.

Ty Cobb may have been baseball’s greatest player, if not the game’s fiercest competitor. His batting accomplishments are legendary — a lifetime average of .367, 297 triples, 4,191 hits, 12 batting titles (including nine in a row), 23 straight seasons in which he hit over .300, three .400 seasons (topped by a .420 mark in 1911) and 2,245 runs. Intimidating the opposition, The Georgia Peach stole 892 bases during a 24-year career, primarily with the Detroit Tigers.

National Baseball Hall of Fame

Paul Klee was born on this date in 1879. That’s his “Red Balloon” (1922).

Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili was born on this date in 1878. We know him as Joseph Stalin (Иосиф Виссарионович Сталин).

The 25 Women Who Frank Sinatra Dated (or Married)

Frank Sinatra Has a Cold

Gay Talese’s celebrated article from 1966.

Must reading on Sinatra’s 100th birthday today.

Melvil Dewey was born on December 10th in 1851. You know — Dewey, as in Dewey decimal system.

Dr. Dewey had a passion for efficiency, for time and labor saving methods. He was born at Adams Centre, Jefferson County, N.Y. on Dec. 10, 1851. He was graduated from Amherst College in 1874 and received a Master’s degree there in 1877. While in college he was honorary assistant in the library, desiring to learn its technique. He decided that much could be done in education by building up the library systems and set about to apply his ideas. The college library drifted into his management, and at the end of his junior year he was asked by the trustees to become acting librarian.

It was here that he developed the system of classifying and cataloguing books by decimal numbers, a system now known by his name and used in practically all libraries in this country.

New York Times obituary, 1931

Emily Dickinson was born on this date in 1830.

Emily Dickinson selected her own society, and it was rarely that of other people. She preferred the solitude of her white-washed poet’s room, or the birds, bees, and flowers of her garden to the visitations of family and friends. But for three occasions in her life she never left her native Amherst, MA; for the last twenty of her fifty-six years, she rarely left her house. And yet her reclusive existence in no way restricted her abundant life of the imagination. Her letters and poems, all except seven published posthumously, revealed her to be an inspired visionary and true original of American literature.

PBS: I Hear America Singing

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading – treading – till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through –

And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum –
Kept beating – beating – till I thought
My Mind was going numb –

And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space – began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race
Wrecked, solitary, here –

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down –
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing – then –

Emily Dickinson Museum

“Hoss” Cartwright was born 87 years ago today. That’s the actor Dan Blocker. Blocker was a west Texas boy, a teacher and coach at Carlsbad, New Mexico’s Eddy School among other places, before getting into acting. Hoss’s given name on Bonanza was Eric. Blocker, who weighed around 300 pounds, died in 1972 at age 43.

Philip Hart was born 103 years ago today. Hart was United States Senator from Michigan 1959-1976. The third of the three Senate office buildings is named for him — the vote to do so was 99-0. He died shortly after.

Chet Huntley was born 104 years ago today. After proving a popular success at the 1956 political conventions, the team of Huntley (from New York) and David Brinkley (from Washington) anchored the NBC evening news program. Huntley left the show in 1970. He died in 1974. “Good night, Chet” — “Good night, David — “and good night for NBC News.”

And happy birthday to my brother-in-law Ken. That’s a book he wrote below. Best wishes, Bro.

Kirk Douglas is 99 today. The three-time Oscar nominee was born Issur Danielovitch Demsky in Amsterdam, New York.

The 10 Best Kirk Douglas Movies

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.”

Dame Judith Olivia “Judi” Dench is 81.

Lloyd Vernet “Beau” Bridges III, Jeff’s big brother, is 74 today. No Oscars for Beau, but he has three wins from 10 Emmy nominations.

John Malkovich, a two-time Oscar nominee, is 62.

The actor Broderick Crawford was born 104 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 104 years ago today as well. 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, 109 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.

Grace Hopper was born in New York City 109 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.

The Writers Almanac from American Public Media (2006)

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.

Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Eli Wallach. This from his Times obituary in 2014:

A self-styled journeyman actor, the versatile Mr. Wallach appeared in scores of roles, often with his wife, Anne Jackson. No matter the part, he always seemed at ease and in control, whether playing a Mexican bandit in the 1960 western “The Magnificent Seven,” a bumbling clerk in Ionesco’s allegorical play “Rhinoceros,” a henpecked French general in Jean Anouilh’s “Waltz of the Toreadors,” Clark Gable’s sidekick in “The Misfits” or a Mafia don in “The Godfather: Part III.”

Despite his many years of film work, some of it critically acclaimed, Mr. Wallach was never nominated for an Academy Award. But in November 2010, less than a month before his 95th birthday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded him an honorary Oscar, saluting him as “the quintessential chameleon, effortlessly inhabiting a wide range of characters, while putting his inimitable stamp on every role.”

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Willa Cather was born in Back Creek Valley, Virginia, on this date in 1873. The following is from her New York Times obituary in 1947.

One of the most distinguished of American novelists, Willa Sibert Cather wrote a dozen or more novels that will be long remembered for their exquisite economy and charm of manner. Her talent had its nourishment and inspiration in the American scene, the Middle West in particular, and her sensitive and patient understanding of that section of the country formed the basis of her work.

Much of her writing was conceived in something of an attitude of placid reminiscence. This was notably true of such early novels as “My Antonia” and “O Pioneers!” in which she told with minute detail of homestead life on the slowly conquered prairies.

Perhaps her most famous book was “A Lost Lady,” published in 1923. In it Miss Cather’s talents were said to have reached their full maturity. It is the story of the Middle West in the age of railway-building, of the charming wife of Captain Forrester, a retired contractor, and her hospitable and open-handed household as seen through the eyes of an adoring boy. The climax of the book, with the disintegration of the Forrester household and the slow coarsening of his wife, is considered a masterpiece of vivid, haunting prose.

Another of her famous books is “Death Comes for the Archbishop,” 1927, in which she tells in the form of a chronicle a simple story of two saints of the Southwest. Her novel, “One of Ours,” won the Pulitzer Prize in 1922.

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Richard Warren Sears was born December 7, 1863, in Stewartville, Minnesota. In 1886, seeking to make some extra money, he took a number of watches on consignment and sold them all to fellow railroad stations agents. Within six months he quit the railroad and formed the R.W. Sears Watch Company, a mail-order business. He joined with watch repairman Alvah C. Roebuck the next year. Sears, Roebuck and Co. moved to Chicago in 1893.

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Today is the birthday also

… of Ellen Burstyn. Alice is 83. Ms. Burstyn has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress five times, winning for Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore in 1975. She was also nominated for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for The Last Picture Show.

… of Johnny Bench. The Hall of Fame catcher is 68.

As one of the most impressive defensive catchers, Johnny Bench was also considered to be an outstanding hitter. A durable catcher, noted for his excellent baseball intelligence, Bench won 10 Gold Glove Awards, two Most Valuable Player Awards and the Rookie of the Year Award during his 17-year National League career. A skilled hitter, the 14-time All-Star selection belted 389 home runs and led the league in RBIs three times as a leader of the Big Red Machine teams of the 1970s.

Baseball Hall of Fame

… of Tom Waits. He’s 66. His voice is 138.

… of Larry Bird. The Basketball Hall of Famer is 59.

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Harry Chapin was born on this date in 1942. He died in 1981. “Cat’s in the Cradle” was his only number one song.

My child arrived just the other day
He came to the world in the usual way
But there were planes to catch and bills to pay
He learned to walk while I was away
And he was talkin’ ‘fore I knew it, and as he grew
He’d say “I’m gonna be like you dad
You know I’m gonna be like you”

And the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man on the moon
When you comin’ home dad?
I don’t know when, but we’ll get together then son
You know we’ll have a good time then

Today is the birthday of The Dude and Mona Lisa Vito.

Jeff Bridges. The six-time Oscar nominee — three for supporting, three for leading, winning for Crazy Heart — is 66. He received his first Oscar nomination in 1972 and his most recent in 2011..

The Dude: Let me explain something to you. Um, I am not “Mr. Lebowski”. You’re Mr. Lebowski. I’m the Dude. So that’s what you call me. You know, that or, uh, His Dudeness, or uh, Duder, or El Duderino if you’re not into the whole brevity thing.

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Marisa Tomei. The three-time Oscar nominee — winning for best supporting actress in My Cousin Vinny — is 51.

Judge Chamberlain Haller: Would you please answer the counselor’s question?

Mona Lisa Vito: No, I hate him.

Vinny Gambini: Your Honor, may I have permission to treat Ms. Vito as a hostile witness?

Mona Lisa Vito: You think I’m hostile now, wait ’til you see me tonight.

Gilbert Stuart was born on this date in 1755.

Because he portrayed virtually all the notable men and women of the Federal period in the United States, Gilbert Stuart was declared the “Father of American Portraiture” by his contemporaries. Born in Rhode Island, the artist trained and worked in London, England, and Dublin, Ireland, from 1775 to 1793. He then returned to America with the specific intention of painting President Washington’s portrait.

Stuart resided in New York (1793-1795); Philadelphia (1795-1803), where he did his first portrait of George Washington; and the new capital at Washington, D.C. (1803-1805). In 1805 he settled in Boston and painted the Gibbs-Coolidge Set, the only surviving depiction of all five first presidents. Before his death at seventy-two, Stuart also taught many followers. A charming conversationalist, Stuart entertained his sitters during long hours of posing to sustain the fresh spontaneity of their expressions. To emphasize facial characterization, he eliminated unnecessary accessories and preferred dark, neutral backgrounds and simple, bust- or half-length formats.

Stuart often was irritatingly slow in completing commissions, in spite of his swift, bravura brushwork. Though he inevitably commanded high prices, Stuart lived on the verge of bankruptcy throughout his career because of his extravagant lifestyle and inept business dealings. In London, for instance, he had owned a carriage, an unheard-of presumption for a commoner. And Stuart’s years in Ireland, both coming and going, had been ploys to escape debtors’ prison.

National Gallery of Art

George B. McClellan was born on this date in 1826. McClellan was the commander of Union forces in the east during much of the first two years of the War of the Rebellion. He loved to organize and feared to fight. McClellan was the unsuccessful Democratic candidate for President in 1864, receiving 21 to Lincoln’s 212 electoral votes.

“Many say they would almost worship you, if you would put a fighting general in the place of McClellan. This would be splendid weather for an engagement.” Mary Todd Lincoln to Abraham Lincoln, November 2, 1862 — Lincoln removed McClellan November 7th

Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski was born on this date in 1857. Born in the Ukraine of Polish descent, Joseph Conrad learned English in the British merchant marine in his twenties. He began writing in the 1890s and published his first novel, Almayer’s Folly, in 1895. Lord Jim (1900) and Heart of Darkness (1902) are his most famous works.

Daryl Hannah is 55 today. So is Julianne Moore. Together they have five Oscar nominations, three for leading actress — a win last year — and two for supporting actress. All are Moore’s, of course.

Andrew Carnegie was born on this date in 1835. He died in 1919.

Until he was a septuagenarian, Andrew Carnegie believed that he was born in 1837. Then on a return visit to his native town in Scotland he learned that the date 1837 in the church records merely meant that the records were commenced in that year, and he was listed as a living child in the first census. He announced his correction of the date of his birth by clicking the news to his brother telegraphers on a miniature telegraph instrument at his plate at the dinner they were giving in his honor, supposing it to be his seventy-first when it was really his seventy-third birthday.

The New York Times

“The day is not far distant when the man who dies leaving behind him millions of available wealth, which were free for him to administer during life, will pass away ‘unwept, unhonored, and unsung,’ no matter to what use he leaves the dross which he cannot take with him. Of such as these the public verdict will be, ‘The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.'”

— Andrew Carnegie (1898)

Karl Benz, the inventor of the gasoline-powered automobile (1885), was born on this date in 1844.

Between 1885 and 1887, three versions of the three-wheeler were designed: the Model 1 which Benz donated to the Deutsches Museum in 1906, the Model 2 which was probably altered and rebuilt several times, and lastly the Model 3 with wood-spoked wheels which Bertha Benz took on the first long-distance journey in 1888.

By 1886 the existing production facilities could no longer cope with the insatiable demand for stationary engines and “Benz & Co. Rheinische Gasmotoren-Fabrik” moved to a larger factory building in Waldhofstrasse in which motor vehicle engines were manufactured until 1908. The appearance in 1890 of new partners, Friedrich von Fischer and Julius Ganß, marked the growth of “Rheinische Gasmotoren-Fabrik” into Germany’s second-largest engine factory. In 1893 Karl Benz introduced the axle-pivot steering system into automobile construction and in 1896 he developed the “contra” engine which was to become the precursor to today’s horizontally opposed piston engine.

Between 1894 and 1901 the Benz “Velo” was built at Benz & Co. It was a reasonably priced, light automobile for two people which signaled the breakthrough to higher sales and, with total production of some 1200 units, can be legitimately described as the first series production car. As the turn of the century approached, Benz & Co. had grown into the world’s leading automotive manufacturer. In 1899 the firm was converted into a joint-stock company.

— Mercedes-Benz USA

Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was born on this date in 1881. He became Pope John XXIII in 1958 (and died in 1963).

Joseph Wood Krutch was born on this date in 1893. He graduated from the University of Tennessee and received an M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia. He became an author and lecturer and was drama critic for The Nation during the years 1924-1952. He wrote two criticially acclaimed biographies, Samuel Johnson (1944) and Henry David Thoreau (1948).

Krutch moved to Tucson in 1952 and turned his focus primarily to nature writing. Among his notable works were The Desert Year, The Voice of the Desert and The Great Chain of Life.

From The Voice of the Desert:

Here in the West, as in the country at large, a war more or less concealed under the guise of a “conflict of interests” rages between the “practical” conservationist and the defenders of the national parks and other public lands; between cattlemen and lumberers on the one hand, and the “sentimentalists” on the other. The pressure to allow the hunter, the rancher, or the woodcutter to invade the public domain is constant and the plea is always that we should “use” what is assumed to be useless unless it is adding to material welfare. But unless somebody teaches love, there can be no ultimate protection to what is lusted after. Without some “love of nature” for itself there is no possibility of solving “the problem of conservation.”

Joe DiMaggio was born on this date in 1914. He died in 1999.

Joe DiMaggio was a cultural icon; he married Hollywood starlets Marilyn Monroe and Dorothy Arnold, he was immortalized in Paul Simon’s hit song Mrs. Robinson, to a generation he was the face of Mister Coffee, and he was regarded as one of the greatest players who ever played the game. He was an American hero. Hall of Fame teammate Phil Rizzuto recalled “There was an aura about him. He walked like no one else walked. He did things so easily. He was immaculate in everything he did. Kings of State wanted to meet him and be with him. He carried himself so well. He could fit in any place in the world”.

Baseball Hall of Fame

John F. Kennedy Jr. was born on this date in 1960. He died in 1999. The photo was taken on his third birthday.

Today is the birthday

… of Don DeLillo. The winner of the National Book Award for fiction is 79 today. He won for White Noise and was also nominated for Underworld.

… of comedian Dick Smothers. The straight man of the duo is 76. (Tom is 78.)

… of Vice President Joe Biden. He’s 73.

… of Joe Walsh of The Eagles. He’s 68. Life’s been good to him so far.

I have a mansion forget the price
Ain’t never been there they tell me it’s nice
I live in hotels tear out the walls
I have accountants pay for it all

They say I’m crazy but I have a good time
I’m just looking for clues at the scene of the crime
Life’s been good to me so far

Walsh joined The Eagles in 1976. The first album with Walsh in the band was Hotel California, which says all you ever need to know about both The Eagles and Joe Walsh.

… of Bo Derek. She’s now five 10s and a 9.

Robert F. Kennedy might have been 90 today. He was assassinated at age 42.

Astronomer Edwin Hubble was born on this date in 1889.

During the past 100 years, astronomers have discovered quasars, pulsars, black holes and planets orbiting distant suns. But all these pale next to the discoveries Edwin Hubble made in a few remarkable years in the 1920s. At the time, most of his colleagues believed the Milky Way galaxy, a swirling collection of stars a few hundred thousand light-years across, made up the entire cosmos. But peering deep into space from the chilly summit of Mount Wilson, in Southern California, Hubble realized that the Milky Way is just one of millions of galaxies that dot an incomparably larger setting.

Hubble went on to trump even that achievement by showing that this galaxy-studded cosmos is expanding — inflating majestically like an unimaginably gigantic balloon — a finding that prompted Albert Einstein to acknowledge and retract what he called “the greatest blunder of my life.” Hubble did nothing less, in short, than invent the idea of the universe and then provide the first evidence for the Big Bang theory, which describes the birth and evolution of the universe. He discovered the cosmos, and in doing so founded the science of cosmology.

Source: TIME 100: Edwin Hubble

Kenesaw Mountain Landis was born on this date in 1866. His name, misspelled, came from the place and battle in Georgia (Kennesaw Mountain) where his father fought and lost a leg for the Union. Landis was appointed Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905 — and continued to serve for the first few months after he became the first Commissioner of Baseball in 1920. He was commissioner for 24 years.

It was Landis that cleaned up the gambling that had led to the Black Sox scandal. It was also Landis who kept baseball segregated. That dam broke only after his death in November 1944. Like many, Landis held the job far too long — long enough to go from savior to obstacle.

Larry King, 82.
Dick Cavett. He’s 79.
Ted Turner, 77.
Ann Curry. She’s 59.
Jodie Foster, 53.

Hall of Fame catcher Roy Campanella was born on November 19, 1921.

A star with both the bat and glove, Roy Campanella was agile behind the plate, had a rifle arm and was an expert at handling pitchers. He was named National League MVP three times, including a 1953 selection when he set single-season records for catchers with 41 homers and a National League best 142 RBI. Before signing with the Dodgers, the broad-shouldered receiver starred with the Negro National Leagues’ Baltimore Elite Giants for seven seasons. His career was cut short by a tragic auto accident prior to the 1958 season.

National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum

Bandleader and trombonist Tommy Dorsey was born on November 19, 1905.

Though he might have been ranked second at any given moment to Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Glenn Miller, or Harry James, Tommy Dorsey was overall the most popular bandleader of the swing era that lasted from 1935 to 1945. His remarkably melodic trombone playing was the signature sound of his orchestra, but he successfully straddled the hot and sweet styles of swing with a mix of ballads and novelty songs. He provided showcases to vocalists like Frank Sinatra, Dick Haymes, and Jo Stafford, and he employed inventive arrangers such as Sy Oliver and Bill Finegan. [Dorsey] was the biggest-selling artist in the history of RCA Victor Records, one of the major labels, until the arrival of Elvis Presley, who was first given national exposure on the 1950s television show [Tommy Dorsey] hosted with his brother Jimmy.

VH1.com

Evangelist Billy Sunday was born on November 19, 1862. Sunday played professional baseball for the Chicago White Stockings, Pittsburgh Alleghenies and Philadelphia Phillies 1883-1890. Following a conversion in 1886, Sunday became the most influential preacher of the era.

In the early 1900s, Billy Sunday sold what was then a unique brand of muscular, testosterone-laden Christianity.

Today, ministers in some of the country’s largest churches preach in shirtsleeves and talk about God in terms of football or golf. Billy Sunday was one of the first to do this. He was a professional baseball player turned tent preacher who became the richest and most influential preacher of his time.
. . .

Sunday, says Martin, was “one of the most acrobatic evangelists of the age.” One newspaper columnist at the time estimated that Sunday traveled about a mile during each sermon.

NPR : Billy Sunday, Man of God

“I’m against sin. I’ll kick it as long as I’ve got a foot, and I’ll fight it as long as I’ve got a fist. I’ll butt it as long as I’ve got a head. I’ll bite it as long as I’ve got a tooth. And when I’m old and fist less and footless and toothless, I’ll gum it till I go home to Glory and it goes home to perdition!”

James Garfield, the 20th president of the United States, was born on this date in 1831. He was assassinated two months before his 50th birthday.

But James A. Garfield – president for less than four months before he was shot is 1881 – is for most Americans an historical footnote.

And that, says author Candice Millard, is a great shame.

“He was without question one of the most extraordinary men ever elected president,” she told Rocca. “He was absolutely brilliant. He was born into incredible poverty – the last of the ‘log cabin presidents.’ His father died before he was two years old, so to put himself through college his first year, he was a janitor and a carpenter. By his second year they made him assistant professor of literature and ancient languages.

“By the time he was 26 he was his college’s president. He had just an off-the-charts mind.”

His loss is all the more heartbreaking because Garfield (Millard writes in a new book) didn’t need to die – even after he was shot.

How Doctors Killed President Garfield, CBS News, 2012

Millard’s Destiny of the Republic about Garfield’s death is first-rate, an excellent read.

Ed Asner is 86 today.

Sam Waterston is 75.

Petula Clark is 83. “Downtown” was 51 years ago!

When you’re alone
And life is making you lonely
You can always go
Downtown

Georgia O’Keefe was born November 15, 1887.

In 1929 O’Keeffe took a vacation with her friend Beck Strand to Taos, New Mexico. The trip would forever alter the course of her life. In love with the open skies and sun-drenched landscape, O’Keeffe returned every summer to travel and to paint. When Steiglitz in 1946 died, O’Keeffe took up permanent residence there. More than almost any of her other works, these early New Mexico landscapes and still lifes have come to represent her unique gifts. The rich texture of the clouds and sky were similar to her earlier, more sensuous representations of flowers. But beneath these clouds one found the bleached bones of animals long gone.

American Masters

Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe

Today is the birthday of Astrid Lindgren, born Astrid Ericsson in Sweden in 1907.

She’s the creator of Pippi Longstocking, a nine-year-old girl with no parents who lives in a red house at the edge of a Swedish village with her horse and her pet monkey, Mr. Nilsson. She has red pigtails, and she wears one black stocking and one brown, with black shoes twice as long as her feet. She eats whole chocolate cakes and sleeps with her feet on the pillow, and she’s the strongest girl in the world.

The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media (2006)

Composer Aaron Copland was born on November 14, 1900, in Brooklyn to Russian-Jewish immigrants.

In 1942, Copland began working with Martha Graham on Appalachian Spring, a ballet that eventually won the 1944 Pulitzer Prize in music. The Library of Congress’s Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation commissioned the work from Graham and Copland. Between July 1942 and July 1943, Graham sent three scripts to Copland. On receiving the third script, Copland wrote the music we know as Appalachian Spring.

Hearing the music, Graham revised the action yet again:

I have been working on your music. It is so beautiful and so wonderfully made. I have become obsessed by it. But I have also been doing a little cursing, too, as you probably did earlier over that not-so-good script. But what you did from that has made me change in many places. Naturally that will not do anything to the music, it is simply that the music made me change. It is so knit and of a completeness that it takes you into very strong hands and leads you into its own world. And there I am.

In the end, no script accompanied what Copland called “Ballet for Martha” and Graham retitled, Appalachian Spring. A splendid collaboration between American masters of music and dance, the ballet premiered at the Library of Congress’s Coolidge Auditorium in 1944.

Library of Congress

First Lady Mamie Eisenhower was born on this date in 1896. She died in 1979.

Joseph McCarthy was born on this date in 1908. Fortunately he died in 1957.

Claude Monet was born on this date in 1840. He died in 1926.

The term “impressionist” is derived from Monet’s painting Impression, soleil levant.

Wallace Shawn (72).

Al Michaels (71).

Booker T. Jones (71).

Anne Hathaway (33).

Grace Kelly (1929).

And the 200th anniversary of the birth of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (d. 1902).

November 12th has definite holiday prospects.

Today really ought to be a national holiday.

Oh, wait, it is a holiday.

Leonardo DiCaprio is 41 today.

Calista Flockhart, Mrs. Harrison Ford, is 51. (He’s 73. [(73/2) + 7] = 44. They’re good.)

The late Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was born on November 11, 1922.

“Do you realize that all great literature — Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, A Farewell to Arms, The Scarlet Letter, The Red Badge of Courage, The Iliad and The Odyssey, Crime and Punishment, the Bible, and ”The Charge of the Light Brigade” — are all about what a bummer it is to be a human being?” — Kurt Vonnegut

George Patton was born on November 11, 1885. From his New York Times obituary in 1945:

Gen. George Smith Patton Jr. was one of the most brilliant soldiers in American history. Audacious, unorthodox and inspiring, he led his troops to great victories in North Africa, Sicily and on the Western Front. Nazi generals admitted that of all American field commanders he was the one they most feared. To Americans he was a worthy successor of such hardbitten cavalrymen as Philip Sheridan, J. E. B. Stuart and Nathan Bedford Forrest.

His great soldierly qualities were matched by one of the most colorful personalities of his period. About him countless legends clustered–some true, some untrue, but all testifying to the firm hold he had upon the imaginations of his men. He went into action with two pearl-handled revolvers in holsters on his hips. He was the master of an unprintable brand of eloquence, yet at times he coined phrases that will live in the American Army’s traditions.

“We shall attack and attack until we are exhausted, and then we shall attack again,” he told his troops before the initial landings in North Africa, thereby summarizing the military creed that won victory after victory along the long road that led from Casablanca to the heart of Germany.

Patton died in Germany on December 21, 1945, as a result of injuries from an automobile accident.

“Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm…”

Opening line of Gone with the Wind, written by Margaret Mitchell, who was born 115 years ago today (1900).

Miss O’Hara is 16 when the book begins; her waist was 17. (Vivien Leigh was 25 when the movie was filmed during 1939.) I was told, by someone who had once had dinner with Margaret Mitchell, that as first drafted Scarlett’s name was Pansy.

“This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.”

Will Rogers, born 136 years ago today (1879) in Oologah, Oklahoma.

[Foremost factoid about Oklahoma City — its airport is named for a guy who died in a plane crash, Will Rogers.]

Walter Cronkite would be 99 today. And that’s the way it is.

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I’ve seen a few celebrities including politicians, met a couple of former presidents, and seen five sitting U.S. presidents, talked to Lady Bird Johnson a few times, had a business meeting in the West Wing, seen Dylan, and Benny Goodman, and Edward G. Robinson, attended a reception with Edward Kennedy present, another with John Glenn mingling, went to a movie premiere with two of the Apollo 13 astronauts.

But I’ve always considered two people I’ve seen in person in a class above all the others.

Earl Warren and Walter Cronkite.

… is Daniel Boone’s birthday. He was born in 1734 in Berks County, Pennsylvania, and died in 1820 in Missouri.

Presidents James Knox Polk (1795 North Carolina) and Warren G. Harding (1865 Ohio) were born on November 2nd.

Just over a year ago, the Library of Congress released a trove of steamy love letters that Harding wrote to his mistress, Carrie Fulton Phillips, in the decade before he became the nation’s 29th president. (How steamy? Let’s just say they feature a character named Jerry, and it’s a body part, not a person.) And on Thursday, The New York Times broke the news that DNA testing had confirmed that Harding, who was married for 33 years until his death in 1923, had fathered a child with a second paramour, Nan Britton, during the same period in which he was penning love notes to Phillips.

The Atlantic

Why is today not a national holiday?

Grace Slick is 76.

Otis Williams of The Temptations is 74.

Henry “The Fonz” Winkler is 70.

And, bless me, Rudolfo Anaya is 78.

Bill Gates, the former resident of Albuquerque, is 60 today.

Julia Roberts is 48 today.

The developer of the first polio vaccine, Dr. Jonas Salk was born on this date in 1914.

He created the vaccine at the height of a polio epidemic in the mid-1950s, when parents were so worried about their children that they kept them home from swimming pools in the summer. Salk’s discovery was that a vaccine could be developed from a dead virus, and he tested the vaccine on himself, his family, and the staff of his laboratory to prove it was safe. The vaccine was finally released to the public in 1955, and the number of people infected by polio went down from more than 10,000 a year to fewer than 100. Salk was declared a national hero.

The Writer’s Almanac (2007)

If like I you were around for the 1950s polio scare, you’d realize what ignorant fools today’s anti-vaxxers are.