Category: Birthdays

Jake LaMotta, the boxer portrayed by Robert De Niro in Raging Bull, is 90 today. He was middleweight champion of the world 1949-1951.

Earl Henry Hamner, Jr., is 88 today. It’s he who wrote Spencer’s Mountain, based on his own childhood; it became the basis for the TV series The Waltons. Hamner was the voiceover narrator for the show. Good-night, Grandpa. Good-night, John-Boy.

Canadian author Alice Munro is 80. Ms. Munro won the 2009 Man Booker International Prize, “awarded once every two years to a living author for a body of work that has contributed to an achievement in fiction on the world stage.”

Alice Munro is mostly known as a short story writer and yet she brings as much depth, wisdom and precision to every story as most novelists bring to a lifetime of novels. To read Alice Munro is to learn something every time that you never thought of before.

Man Booker International Prize judging panel

Lolita, the actress Sue Lyon, is 65 today.

Arlo Guthrie is 64.

Béla Fleck is 53.

Adrian Grenier is 35 today.

Jessica Simpson is 31.

Arthur Ashe, the first black man to win a major tennis championship, was born on this date in 1943. Ashe won Wimbledon, the U.S. and Australian Opens. He died from pneumonia, a complication of AIDS, in 1993. He contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion during surgery (not altogether uncommon before the disease was understood).

Fred Gwynne, best know perhaps as Herman Munster, was born on July 10, 1926. He died in 1993.

Two long-time television personalities were born on this date. Don Herbert, Mr. Wizard, was born on July 10th in 1917. David Brinkley was born on July 10th in 1920.

Marcel Proust was born on July 10th in 1871. His fame is based on the novel À la recherche du temps perdu, which is best translated In Search of Lost Time. Jane Smiley belongs to that tiny group that has read the entire 3,000-page work — she wrote about her experience for Salon in 2005. A brief excerpt from her story:

[I]t is time for you to begin, because reading all of Proust is not hard.

First, you buy all seven volumes in a uniform edition — mine came in a six-book set — and you arrange them in a row next to your bed, the bathtub or your favorite chair, wherever you are most comfortable reading. For a few days, let’s say no longer than a week, you glance at them from time to time and pick them up and look at the covers. You can even flip the pages — but don’t read anything. You are familiarizing yourself with this new acquaintance. You are coming to recognize his appeal. You are letting him impose upon you, because for the next 70 days or so, you are going to organize your free time around him.

Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily, began overnight on July 9-10, 1943. The amphibious landings were lead by General Bernard Montgomery with the British 8th Army and General George Patton with the American 7th Army. Overall commander was General Dwight Eisenhower, with Sir Harold Alexander second in command. The allied forces reached Messina, just across from the Italian mainland, on August 16th.

Today is the birthday

… of Kim Darby. She was the 22-year-old actress who played 14-year-old Mattie Ross of Yell County near Dardanelle, Arkansas, in the first True Grit. She is 64 today. Her given name was Deborah Zerby and she has been married five times.

… of Anjelica Huston. The third generation Oscar winner is 60. Anjelica won the best supporting actress Oscar for Prizzi’s Honor; she has two other nominations. Her father John was nominated for 15 writing, directing or acting Oscars, winning director and writing for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Grandfather Walter was nominated four times for acting Oscars, winning the supporting award for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

… of journalist and author Anna Quindlen, 59.

She wanted to be a fiction writer. But straight out of college, she got hired by the New York Post, and a few years later, by The New York Times. She was so successful that a lot of people thought she was in line to be deputy editor of the paper. She really wanted to write fiction, and had been trying all along during her tenure at the Times — she managed to publish two novels while working full time and raising kids. But she didn’t have enough time to do both, so in 1995, she quit to become a full-time writer.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, was born in Zurich, Switzerland on this date in 1926. The Writer’s Almanac informed us in 2007:

She was the first medical professional to argue that dying is a natural process, and that patients who are terminally ill should not be forced to fight the dying process every step of the way. …

Her book On Death and Dying (1969) helped start the hospice movement, which has since spread around the world. She also introduced the now-famous concept of the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Louis Jordan was born on this date in 1908.

“In the Forties, bandleader Louis Jordan pioneered a wild – and wildly popular – amalgam of jazz and blues with salty, jive-talking humor. The music played by singer/saxophonist Jordan and his Tympany Five got called “jump blues” or “jumpin’ jive,” and it served as a precursor to the rhythm & blues and rock and roll of the Fifties.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

John D. Rockefeller was born on this date in 1839. The world’s first billionaire, Rockefeller essentially retired from Standard Oil in 1911. Even so, his taxable income in 1918 was $33,000,000 and his personal worth was estimated at more than $800,000,000. By then, he had already donated about $500 million to charitable causes. Rockefeller died in 1937 at age 97. Ron Chernow has written a recent highly-regarded biography, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.. The New York Times has posted Rockefeller’s obituary.

Nelson Rockefeller, grandson of John D., was born on his grandfather’s birthday in 1908. Rockefeller was governor of New York 1959-1973 and vice president 1974-1977. He died in 1979.

Pinetop Perkins would have been 98 today; he died in March. He was still performing on the road last year. “Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie” is one of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll. Listen — but be sure you can move your feet while you do.

By this time, Pinetop had developed his own unmistakable sound. His right hand plays horn lines while his left kicks out bass lines and lots of bottom. It was Pinetop, along with Pete Johnson, Meade Lux Lewis, Albert Ammons, and Little Brother Montgomery, who provided the basic format and ideas from which countless swing bands derived their sound – whole horn sections playing out what Pinetop’s right hand was playing. Although Pinetop never played swing, it was his brand of boogie-woogie that came to structure swing and, eventually, rock ‘n’ roll.

Pinetop Perkins Official Web Page

And he’s played everywhere, from Arkansas juke joints and Chicago blues dens to the White House.

“I played there before with Muddy Waters,” Perkins says. “I can’t remember the name [of the president]. Since I got older, I am so forgetful of the names.”

Pinetop Perkins: At 95, A Grammy Nominee : NPR

Pierre Cardin is 89.

Carl Hilding “Doc” Severinsen is 84 today.

Author David McCullough is 78 today. His works include some of the best—and best-selling—biographies ever, Truman and John Adams. His latest is The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris. This excerpt is from an interview McCullough did with NEH Chairman Bruce Cole in 2003:

McCullough: There are certain books that I like very much. Reveille in Washington. I love Barbara Tuchman’s work, particularly The Proud Tower. Paul Horgan’s biography of Archbishop Lamy is a masterpiece. Wallace Stegner’s book on John Wesley Powell I’m fond of.

I like some of the present-day people: Robert Caro’s first volume on Lyndon Johnson was brilliant. I care for some of the best of the Civil War writing: Shelby Foote, for example, and Bruce Catton’s The Stillness at Appomattox. It was Catton’s Stillness at Appomattox that started me reading about the Civil War, and then on to people like Tuchman and others. There is a wonderful book called The Reason Why, about the Charge of the Light Brigade–and biographies–Henri Troyat’s Tolstoy, for example.

I work very hard on the writing, writing and rewriting and trying to weed out the lumber. I’m very aware how many distractions the reader has in life today, how many good reasons there are to put the book down. To hold the reader’s attention, you have to bring the person who’s reading the book inside the experience of the time: What was it like to have been alive then? What were these people like as human beings?

When I did Truman, I had no idea what woods I was venturing into. Had I known it was going to take me ten years, I never would have done it. In retrospect, I’m delighted now that I didn’t know.

I love all sides of the work but that doesn’t mean it isn’t hard. There have been times when a book was taking year after year—not with this one so much, but with The Path Between the Seas—when I’d come down to Washington to do research in the National Archives, hoping I wouldn’t find anything new because it could set me back another year or two.

By the same token, to open up a box of the death certificates kept by the French at the hospital in Ancon, at Panama City and to read the personal details of those who died—their names, their age, where they came from, height, color of eyes—was a connection with the reality of them, the mortal tale of that undertaking, that one can never find by doing the conventional kind of research with microfilm or Xeroxed copies.

It’s Ringo Starr’s birthday. He’s 71.

Shelley Duvall is 62 today.

Ralph Sampson is 51. The 7-foot-4 athlete from Harrisonburg, Virginia, was three-time College Player of the Year at the University of Virginia, the No. 1 pick in the 1983 NBA Draft, Rookie of the Year and 4-time all-star.

Robert Heinlein was born 104 years ago today.

At the time, most science fiction stories were full of gimmicks and imaginary machines that had no relationship to actual science. Heinlein was one of the first science fiction authors to look at the world the way it was and try to imagine how it might actually look in the future. And he tried to make sure that all the imaginary technology in his stories could really work. He wrote about things like atomic bombs, cloning, and gay marriage years before they became realities. And he was one of the first writers to imagine how space travel could actually be accomplished.

He’s best known for his novel Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), about a boy who is born during the first manned mission to Mars, who is raised by Martians, and who then returns to Earth to become a preacher. Stranger in a Strange Land was also the first book to describe a waterbed.

The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media

Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Satchel Paige was born 105 years ago today. A huge star in the Negro Leagues, Paige began pitching in 1926 and was the oldest major league rookie ever when he joined the Cleveland Indians at age 42. Paige pitched in his last major league game in 1965 (at age 59).

In the barnstorming days, he pitched perhaps 2,500 games, completed 55 no-hitters and performed before crowds estimated at 10 million persons in the United States, the Caribbean and Central America. He once started 29 games in one month in Bismarck, N.D., and he said later that he won 104 of the 105 games he pitched in 1934.

By the time Jackie Robinson signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 as the first black player in the majors, Mr. Paige was past 40. But Bill Veeck, the impresario of the Cleveland club, signed him to a contract the following summer, and he promptly drew crowds of 72,000 in his first game and 78,000 in his third game. (The New York Times)

“And don’t look back — something might be gaining on you.” — Satchel Paige.

On July 7th just 471 years ago, Hawikuh Pueblo attempted “to repel Francisco Vazquez de Coronado’s army, but the Indians are forced from their homes within five days. The Spanish confiscate provisions and continue their search for the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola based on fabricated stories of New Mexico.” New Mexico Magazine

Today is the birthday

… of former President George W. Bush, 65 today.

… of Sylvester Enzio Stallone, also 65 today. Stallone is one of three people to be nominated for a writing Oscar and an acting Oscar for the same movie. The others are Chaplin and Welles.

… of the woman born Anne Frances Robbins. Nancy Reagan is 90.

… of William Schallert, Patty Duke’s TV father; he’s 89. Schallert was also the somewhat goofy sheriff’s deputy in Lonely Are the Brave, the fine 1962 Kirk Douglas film shot in Albuquerque.

… of Ned Beatty. Beatty, who is 74 today, was nominated for the supporting actor Oscar for Network.

… of the “Duke, Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl, Duke, Duke” Gene Chandler, 74 today.

… of Geoffrey Rush, 60 today. Rush has been nominated for four acting Oscars, winning for Shine. He’s one of about two dozen performers with an Oscar, a Tony and an Emmy.

… of Curtis James Jackson III. He’s 36 today. You may know him better as 50 Cent.

Janet Leigh and Pat Paulson were both born on July 6th in 1927.

Bill Haley (“Rock Around the Clock”) was born on this date in 1925; he died in 1981.

The Mexican artist Frida Kahlo was born on this date in 1907 [she claimed 1910]. Ms. Kahlo died in 1954. The following is from the obituary in The New York Times when Ms. Kahlo died in 1954:

Frida Kahlo, wife of Diego Rivera, the noted painter, was found dead in her home today. Her age was 44. She had been suffering from cancer for several years.

She also was a painter and also had been active in leftist causes. She made her last public appearance in a wheel chair at a meeting here in support of the now ousted regime of Communist- backed President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman of Guatemala.

Frida Kahlo began painting in 1926 while obliged to lie in bed during convalescence from injuries suffered in a bus accident. Not long afterward she showed her work to Diego Rivera, who advised, “go on painting.” They were married in 1929, began living apart in 1939, were reunited in 1941.

Usually classed as a surrealist, the artist had no special explanation for her methods. She said only: “I put on the canvas whatever comes into my mind.” She gave one-woman shows in Mexico City, New York and elsewhere, and is said to have been the first woman artist to sell a picture to the Louvre.

Some of her pictures shocked beholders. One showed her with her hands cut off, a huge bleeding heart on the ground nearby, and on either side of her an empty dress. This was supposed to reveal how she felt when her husband went off alone on a trip. Another self-portrait presented the artist as a wounded deer, still carrying the shafts of nine arrows.

Robbie Robertson of The Band is 68.

Julie Nixon Eisenhower, daughter of one president and granddaughter-in-law of another, is 63. It’s her husband David Eisenhower for whom presidential retreat Camp David is named.

Huey Lewis is 61.

Rich “Goose” Gossage is 60.

Bill Watterson is 53. He’s the creator of Calvin & Hobbes.

Edie Falco is 48.

David Farragut was born on July 5th in 1801. He entered the U.S. Navy as a 9-year-old; as a 12-year-old he took command of a prize ship and brought her to port during the War of 1812. Though a native of Tennessee, Farragut honored his oath to the United States and remained with the Union. A naval force under his command took control of New Orleans in 1862. In August 1864 he led the victory at Mobile Bay where he is reported to have said, “Damn the torpedoes, Full speed ahead!”

Aboard Hartford, Farragut entered Mobile Bay, Alabama, 5 August 1864, in two columns, with armored monitors leading and a fleet of wooden ships following. When the lead monitor Tecumseh was demolished by a mine, the wooden ship Brooklyn stopped, and the line drifted in confusion toward Fort Morgan. As disaster seemed imminent, Farragut gave the orders embodied by these famous words. He swung his own ship clear and headed across the mines, which failed to explode. The fleet followed and anchored above the forts, which, now isolated, surrendered one by one. The torpedoes to which Farragut and his contemporaries referred would today be described as tethered mines.

Famous Navy Quotes

Phineas Taylor Barnum was born on this date in 1810.

In his 80 years, Barnum gave the wise public of the 19th century shameless hucksterism, peerless spectacle, and everything in between — enough entertainment to earn the title “master showman” a dozen times over. In choosing Barnum as one of the 100 most important people of the millennium, LIFE magazine dubbed him “the patron saint of promoters.”
. . .

In 1841, Barnum purchased Scudder’s American Museum on Broadway in New York City. He exhibited “500,000 natural and artificial curiosities from every corner of the globe,” and kept traffic moving through the museum with a sign that read, “This way to the egress” — “egress” was another word for exit, and Barnum’s patrons would have to pay another quarter to reenter the Museum!
. . .

One of Barnum’s biggest successes — literally! — came in 1882 with his acquisition of Jumbo. Dubbed “The Towering Monarch of His Mighty Race, Whose Like the World Will Never See Again,” Jumbo arrived in New York on April 9, 1882, and attracted enormous crowds on his way to his name becoming a part of the language.

The Greatest Show on Earth

Get Ur Freak On, Missy Elliott was 40 yesterday.

… is the birthday

… of Olivia de Havilland, 95 today. Miss de Havilland was nominated for an acting Oscar five times, winning for To Each His Own and The Heiress. She lost the best supporting actress Oscar for Gone With the Wind to Hattie McDaniel. (Her sister Joan Fontaine is 93.)

… of Cpl. Klinger. Jamie Farr is 77.

… of hockey great Rod Gilbert, 70.

… of Twyla Tharp. The choreographer is 70.

… of one-time Oscar nominee for best actress Geneviève Bujold. She’s 69. The nomination was for Anne of the Thousand Days. (Richard Burton and Anthony Quayle were also nominated for that film.)

… of Deborah Harry of Blondie. She’s 66.

… of Louis Winthorpe III. Canadian-born Dan Aykroyd is 59. Aykroyd was nominated for the best supporting actor Oscar for Driving Miss Daisy.

… of Alan Ruck. He’s 55. Ruck was Cameron Frye in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. And he’s 55!

… of Olympic gold medalist Carl Lewis, 50.

… of The Lord of the Rings‘s Arwen Undómiel, she’s 32. That’s Steven Tyler’s daughter Liv. Her mother, Bebe Buell, model, singer, and former Playboy Playmate, named her for actress Liv Ullmann.

Diana, Princess of Wales, should have been 50 today.

Michael Landon died 20 years ago today. Marlon Brando died seven years ago today.

Five time nominee for best actress, Susan Hayward was born on June 30th in 1917. She won the Oscar in 1958 for I Want to Live!

The magnificent Lena Mary Calhoun Horne was also born on June 30th in 1917.

Even in her eighties, the legendary Lena Horne has a quality of timelessness about her. Elegant and wise, she personifies both the glamour of Hollywood and the reality of a lifetime spent battling racial and social injustice. Pushed by an ambitious mother into the chorus line of the Cotton Club when she was sixteen, and maneuvered into a film career by the N.A.A.C.P., she was the first African American signed to a long-term studio contract. In her rise beyond Hollywood’s racial stereotypes of maids, butlers, and African natives, she achieved true stardom on the silver screen, and became a catalyst for change even beyond the glittery fringes of studio life.

American Masters

Miss Horne died last year.

Florence Glenda Ballard Chapman was born 68 years ago today. It was she who named the trio she was in The Supremes. But it was also she who was fired from the group by Berry Gordy in 1967. Miss Ballard died at age 32.

Vincent D’Onofrio is 52 today. Deirdre Lovejoy, the D.A. in The Wire, is 49. Mike Tyson is 45.

Harmon Killebrew would have been 75 today.

Today is the birthday

… of best actor Oscar nominee Gary Busey. He’s 67. The nomination was for The Buddy Holly Story.

… of Football Hall of Famer Dan Dierdorf, 62.

… of Maria Conchita Alonso, 54. The singer-actress was Miss Teenager of the World in 1971.

… of violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter. She’s 48.

Eva Narcissus Boyd was born 68 years ago today. She was the babysitter for songwriters Carole King and Gerry Goffin and, as Little Eva, she recorded “The Loco-Motion.” Boyd’s abuse by her boyfriend gave King and Goffin the notion for “He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss),” recorded by The Crystals. Little Eva died in 2003.

Louis Burton Lindley, Jr. was born 92 years ago today. As the actor Slim Pickens, we know him best as the bomber pilot in Dr. Strangelove and as Taggart in Blazing Saddles. He was in Willie Nelson’s band — and was Amy Irving’s father — in Honeysuckle Rose. Pickens died in 1983.

The sculptor and painter Allan Houser was born on June 29th in 1914. Houser (or Haozous) was a Chiricahua Apache born in Oklahoma. His father was a grand nephew of Geronimo. By the end of the 1930s Houser’s work was being shown at the New York World’s Fair and the Golden Gate International Exposition, and he painted murals in the Department of the Interior Building in Washington. His work is now seen in collections throughout the United States and in Europe. An exhibition of his work at the National Museum of the American Indian, 2004—2005, was viewed by more than three million visitors. Houser died in 1994. The sculpture pictured is Houser’s “Fabricated Buffalo” (1993) found at the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, Wyoming. The mural below, “Breaking Camp during Wartime” (1938) is in the Stewart Lee Udall Department of the Interior Building in Washington.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was born on June 29 in 1900. In January 2003, Outside Magazine listed its 25 essential books for the well-read explorer. At the top was Antoine de Saint-Exupéry:

Like his most famous creation, The Little Prince, that visitor from Asteroid B-612 who once saw 44 sunsets in a single day, Saint-Exupéry disappeared into the sky. Killed in World War II at age 44, “Saint Ex” was a pioneering pilot for Aéropostale in the 1920s, carrying mail over the deadly Sahara on the Toulouse-Dakar route, encountering cyclones, marauding Moors, and lonely nights: “So in the heart of the desert, on the naked rind of the planet, in an isolation like that of the beginnings of the world, we built a village of men. Sitting in the flickering light of the candles on this kerchief of sand, on this village square, we waited out the night.” Whatever his skills as a pilot—said to be extraordinary—as a writer he is effortlessly sublime. Wind, Sand and Stars is so humane, so poetic, you underline sentences: “It is another of the miraculous things about mankind that there is no pain nor passion that does not radiate to the ends of the earth. Let a man in a garret but burn with enough intensity and he will set fire to the world.” Saint-Exupéry did just that. No writer before or since has distilled the sheer spirit of adventure so beautifully. True, in his excitement he can be righteous, almost irksome—like someone who’s just gotten religion. But that youthful excess is part of his charm. Philosophical yet gritty, sincere yet never earnest, utterly devoid of the postmodern cop-outs of cynicism, sarcasm, and spite, Saint-Exupéry’s prose is a lot like the bracing gusts of fresh air that greet him in his open cockpit. He shows us what it’s like to be subject—and king—of infinite space.

Actress Jayne Mansfield, just 34, was killed 44 years ago today when her car struck a trailer truck near Slidell, Louisiana. The driver and Ms. Mansfield’s companion, Sam Brody, were also killed. Three of her children asleep in the backseat survived.

Those who have seen Field of Dreams or read the book on which it was based, Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella, will remember the character “Moonlight” Graham, played by Burt Lancaster in the film. Archibald Wright Graham (1876-1965) was an actual player, and a doctor. Graham played in one game for the New York Giants on June 29, 1905 (in the movie it was the last game of the season in 1929). Graham played two innings in the field but never batted in the major leagues; he was on deck when his one game ended.

Mel Brooks is 85, Kathy Bates 63, John Elway 51, and John Cusack and Mary Stuart Masterson are each 45.

Leon Panetta, about to become Secretary of Defense, is 73.

Gilda Radner would have been 65 today.

The Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens was born on June 28 in 1577. That’s his self portrait from when he was in his mid-40s. He died in 1640.

Richard Rodgers was born on June 28th in 1902. This from his New York Times obituary in 1979.

“The Garrick Gaieties,” “A Connecticut Yankee,” “Babes in Arms,” “The Boys From Syracuse,” “Pal Joey,” “Oklahoma!” “Carousel,” “South Pacific,” “Flower Drum Song,” “The King and I,” “The Sound of Music.” What binds together these disparate musical comedies is a single phrase spanning 55 years of Broadway: “Music by Richard Rodgers.”

The phrase connoted the seemingly endless flow of wonderfully singable, danceable melodies that poured out of Mr. Rodgers. And coupled with the names of his two principal lyricists, Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein 2d, the phrase also symbolized the evolution of American musical comedy into an art form of stature, in which plot, music and dancing were closely integrated and frequently employed to explore serious, even tragic, themes.

Today is the birthday

… of Ross Perot. He’s 81.

… of Bruce Babbitt. The former Governor of Arizona and Secretary of the Interior is 73.

… of Vera Wang. The designer is 62.

… of Tobey Maguire. Peter Parker is 36.

Robert James Keeshan was born on this date in 1927. He was known as Bob Keeshan, and even better known as Captain Kangaroo. Before that he was know as Clarabell the Clown.

As the easy-going Captain with his big pockets and his bushy mustache, Keeshan lured children into close engagement with literature, science, and especially music, adopting an approach which mixed pleasure and pedagogy. Children learned most easily, he argued, when information and knowledge became a source of delight. Keeshan’s approach represented a rejection of pressures towards the increased commercialization of children’s programming as well as a toning-down of the high volume, slapstick style associated with earlier kid show hosts, such as Pinky Lee, Soupy Sales and Howdy Doody‘s Buffalo Bob.

The Museum of Broadcast Communications

Jerome Solon Felder was born 86 years ago today. As Doc Pomus he wrote such songs as “A Teenager in Love,” “Save The Last Dance For Me,” “This Magic Moment,” “Can’t Get Used to Losing You,” “Little Sister,” “Suspicion” and “Viva Las Vegas.” He also wrote, though it was radically changed for The Coasters by Leiber and Stoller, “Young Blood.” Pomus died in 1991.

Helen Keller was born on June 27 in 1880. The following is from her obituary in The New York Times when she died in 1968.

For the first 18 months of her life Helen Keller was a normal infant who cooed and cried, learned to recognize the voices of her father and mother and took joy in looking at their faces and at objects about her home. “Then” as she recalled later, “came the illness which closed my eyes and ears and plunged me into the unconsciousness of a newborn baby.”

The illness, perhaps scarlet fever, vanished as quickly as it struck, but it erased not only the child’s vision and hearing but also, as a result, her powers of articulate speech.

Her life thereafter, as a girl and as a woman, became a triumph over crushing adversity and shattering affliction. In time, Miss Keller learned to circumvent her blindness, deafness and muteness; she could “see” and “hear” with exceptional acuity; she even learned to talk passably and to dance in time to a fox trot or a waltz. Her remarkable mind unfolded, and she was in and of the world, a full and happy participant in life.

What set Miss Keller apart was that no similarly afflicted person before had done more than acquire the simplest skills.

But she was graduated from Radcliffe; she became an artful and subtle writer; she led a vigorous life; she developed into a crusading humanitarian who espoused Socialism; and she energized movements that revolutionized help for the blind and the deaf.

Photo of Helen Keller and her teacher Anne Sullivan, 1888.

Today is the birthday

… of three-time Oscar nominee for best actress Eleanor Parker. She’s 89. Ms. Parker was nominated for Caged in 1950, Detective Story in 1951 and Interrupted Melody in 1955.

… of Gilberto Gil. The Brazilian singer is 69.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3e1S2UGHA0

… of Chris Isaak, 55.

… of Derek Jeter, 37.

… of Michael Vick, 31.

Author Walter Farley was born on June 26, 1916.

He grew up loving horses and went on to write the novel The Black Stallion (1941). It’s the story of a boy and a wild stallion who survive a shipwreck and become friends on a deserted island. The book was so popular that Farley went on to write twenty novels about the horse, including The Black Stallion Returns (1945), The Black Stallion Revolts (1953), and The Black Stallion’s Ghost (1969).

The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media (2007)

NewMexiKen’s favorite was always The Island Stallion.

Mildred (Babe) Didrikson Zaharias was born 100 years ago today. Ms. Zaharias was named the top female athlete of the first half of the 20th century. She excelled in track and field, then took up golf at age 21, often hitting more than 1,000 golf balls a day as she learned the game. Eventually she won every important championship. Babe Zaharias died of colon cancer at age 42.

Pearl S. Buck was born on June 26, 1892. Ms. Buck won the Noble Prize for literature in 1938 “for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces.”

LeRoy Neiman was born Leroy Runquist 90 years ago today. This painting is featured today at Neiman’s website.

Barbara Bush is 86.

Jerry Stiller is 84. Stiller and Anne Meara have been married since 1954 and they are, of course, Ben and Amy Stiller’s parents.

Joan Alexandra Molinsky is 78. That’s Joan Rivers. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Barnard College.

Moondoggie is 75. James Darren to us; born James William Ercolani.

Nancy Sinatra is 71. Her boots have done a lot of walkin’.

Robbie Douglas is 67. That’s the second of “My Three Sons,” Don Grady.

Boz Scaggs is 67, Kathy Baker is 61 and Tony Rice, the guitarist, is 60.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee is 56 today. He is credited with the invention of the World Wide Web (in 1990, more or less). In the simplest terms, Sir Tim, with the help of Robert Cailliau, developed the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) for managing documents on the Internet.

Scott Adams (“Dilbert”) is 54.

Keenen Ivory Wayans is 53.

Julianna Margulies is 45.

Kanye West is 34.

Eddie Gaedel was born on this date in 1925. The 3-feet 7-inch Gaedel came to bat for the St. Louis Browns in 1951. He was, according to Browns owner Bill Veeck, “the best darn midget who ever played big-league ball.” As told in the first chapter of Veeck’s autobiography, Veeck as in Wreck — “When Eddie went into that crouch, his strike zone was just about visible to the naked eye. I picked up a ruler and measured it for posterity. It was 1½ inches. Marvelous.”

Francis Crick was born on June 8th in 1916. Crick is best known as one of two co-discoverers of the structure of DNA in 1953, along with James D. Watson.

Frank Lloyd Wright was born on this date in 1867. PBS has a locator to the more than 60 Wright buildings open to the public. It includes building names, locations, photographs and maps.

For more than 70 years, Frank Lloyd Wright showed his countrymen new ways to build their homes and see the world around them. He created some of the most monumental, and some of the most intimate spaces in America. He designed everything: banks and resorts, office buildings and churches, a filling station and a synagogue, a beer garden and an art museum.

The linguist and author Deborah Tannen is 66. “Saying that men talk about baseball in order to avoid talking about their feelings is the same as saying that women talk about their feelings in order to avoid talking about baseball.”

Tom Jones is 71.

Oscar nominee (for Schindler’s List) Liam Neeson is 59.

Author Louise Erdrich is 57.

Louise Erdrich is the author of 13 novels as well as volumes of poetry, short stories, children’s books, and a memoir of early motherhood. Her novel “Love Medicine” (1984) won the National Book Critics Circle Award and “The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse” (2001) was a finalist for the National Book Award. Most recently, “The Plague of Doves” (2008) won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Louise lives in Minnesota and is the owner of Birchbark Books, an independent bookstore.

Erdrich is descended from a father of German descent and a mother of the Turtle Mountain Chippewas, a Native American tribe in North Dakota. Her maternal grandfather was a tribal chief and her ancestral homestead (which she is currently restoring) is one of the oldest extant structures on the Turtle Mountain Reservation.

Louise Erdrich | Faces of America | PBS

Prince Rogers Nelson is 53.

Allen Iverson is 36.

Anna Kournikova is 30 and Michael Cera is 23.

Jessica Tandy was born on this date in 1909. Tandy won an Oscar at age 81 for Driving Miss Daisy, a Tony, an Emmy and a Golden Globe. She was the mother who didn’t like Tippi Hedren much in The Birds.

Dino Paul Crocetti was born on June 7th 94 years ago today. We know him as Dean Martin.

Levi Stubbles was born in Detroit 75 years ago today. As Levi Stubbs for more than 40 years he was the lead vocalist of The Four Tops.

“The Four Tops deserve to be recognized both for their achievements and their longevity. On the latter count, the group performed for over four decades together without a single change in personnel — a record of constancy that is mind-boggling in the notoriously changeable world of popular music. As for their accomplishments, the Four Tops cut some of Motown’s most memorable singles during the label’s creative zenith, including “Baby I Need Your Loving,” “I Can’t Help Myself,” “It’s the Same Old Song,” “Reach Out I’ll Be There,” “Standing in the Shadows of Love” and “Bernadette.” The Four Tops’ greatest records were recorded at Motown with the in-house songwriting and production team of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland between 1964 and 1967.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

It’s Stubbs who sings:

Now if you feel that you can’t go on
Because all of your hope is gone
And your life is filled with much confusion
Until happiness is just an illusion
And your world around is tumbling down
Darling reach out
C’mon girl
Reach on out for me
Reach out for me

You will note it was never Levi Stubbs and the Tops, unlike Smokey Robinson and the Miracles or Diana Ross and the Supremes. Stubbs had the opportunity to lead or go solo, but he stayed loyal to his friends for life. He died in 2008.

It must be a “Quarter to Three” because Garry U.S. Bonds is 72 today.

Tennis Hall of Famer Bjorn Borg is 55.

Paul Giamatti is 44. He was nominated for an Oscar for his supporting role in Cinderella Man.

Cleo Virginia Andrews was born on June 6th in 1923. Her most famous work, as V.C. Andrews, is Flowers in the Attic.

Hall of Fame Yankee catcher Bill Dickey was born on June 6th, 104 years ago today. Not as well known as some other Yankees perhaps, Dickey nevertheless is one of the team whose number has been retired (with Yogi Berra’s — they both wore 8). FYI Martin 1, Ruth 3, Gehrig 4, DiMaggio 5, Mantle 7 and Maris 9 are among other numbers retired. Jeter wears 2.

1929 Nobel laureate, the German author, Thomas Mann was born on this date in 1875.

Nathan Hale was born on June 6th in 1755. “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country,” he said when hanged by the British in 1776 as an American spy. Hale had volunteered to report on British positions in New York.

Adam Smith was born in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, on June 5th in 1723.

Smith published his first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, in 1759, to general acclaim, but it’s his second, The Wealth of Nations (1776), for which he is chiefly known today. It took him 10 years to write, and in it he posits that the pursuit of individual self-interest will lead, as if by an “invisible hand,” to the greatest good for all. He tended to oppose anything — government or monopolies — that interfered with pure competition; he called his laissez-faire approach “perfect liberty.” He’s been painted by some in recent years as a staunch defender of free market capitalism, supply-side economics, and limited government; other economists argue that this image is somewhat misleading, and that his devotion to the laissez-faire philosophy has been overstated. For example, he had a favorable view of taxes in general and progressive taxes in particular, as he wrote in Wealth of Nations: “The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state. … The rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.” He did argue, however, that the tax law should be as simple and transparent as possible.

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

John Maynard Keynes was born in Cambridge, England, on June 5th in 1883.

Lord Keynes first won public attention through his resignation from the British Treasury’s mission to the Paris Peace Conference and his subsequent prediction that the Treaty of Versailles would prove more harmful to the nations dictating it than to Germany.

The reasons for his opposition were set forth in a book, “The Economic Consequences of the Peace,” published in 1919, and included his premise that the reparations clauses were too severe and that other measures in the treaty were equally unwise.

The book created a storm of controversy but was so widely in demand that it ran five editions the first year and was translated into eleven languages. Lord Keynes was not again associated with the British Government in any official capacity until the spring of 1940, by which time much of what he had prophesied had come true.

NY Times Obituary

Bill Moyers is 77 today.

Author Ken Follett is 62.

Suze Orman is 60.

Kenneth Gorelick is 55. You know, Kenny G.

Peter Gibbons is 44, and no longer turning out TPS reports and going to Chotchkie’s. That’s actor Ron Livingston.

Mark Wahlberg is 40.

Chuck Klosterman is 39.

Richard Scarry was born on June 5, 1919. Scarry has written more than 300 books for children and, according to The Writer’s Almanac, “said that what made him happiest as an author was receiving letters from people telling him that their copies of his books were all worn out, or were held together with Scotch tape.” Scarry died in 1994.

Doroteo Arango was born on June 5, 1878. We know him as Pancho Villa.

William Boyd, better known as Hopalong Cassidy, was born on this date in 1895. After success as a leading man in silent film, Boyd’s career was going nowhere in 1935 when he was cast to play the cowboy, Hopalong Cassidy. He made 54 films in the role for producer Harry Sherman, then 12 more on his own. In 1948, in one of the great prescient moves ever made in Hollywood, Boyd bought the rights to all the films, selling his ranch to raise the money. Television needed Saturday morning fare and Boyd had it.

One medium fed on the other, and by 1950 [William] Boyd was at the center of a national phenomenon. For two years he was as big a media hero as the nation had seen. In personal appearances he was mobbed: 85,000 people came through a Brooklyn department store during his appearance there. His endorsement for any product meant instant sales in the millions. It meant overnight shortages, frantic shopping sprees, and millions of dollars for Boyd. There were Hopalong Cassidy bicycles, rollerskates (complete with spurs), Hoppy pajamas, Hopalong beds. The demand for Hoppy shirts and pants was so great that a shortage of black dye resulted. His investment in Hopalong Cassidy paid off to an estimated $70 million.

Why a man of 52 years appealed to so many children remains a mystery. Possibly some of it had to do with the novelty of television: just as Amos ‘n’ Andy had capitalized on the newness of radio a generation earlier, a TV sensation was bound to occur. And the hero had a no-nonsense demeanor: he was steely-eyed and quick on the draw, and he meted out justice without the endless warbling and sugar-coated romance that came with the others. As for Boyd, he became Cassidy in a real sense. His personal habits changed; he gave up drinking and carousing and lived with his fifth wife until his death in 1972.

John Dunning, On the Air

Elizabeth was crowned Queen on June 2nd, 58 years ago today. (She turned 85 in April.)

Sally Kellerman is 74. Kellerman was Hot Lips in the movie M*A*S*H. She received an Oscar supporting actress nomination for the portrayal.

Charlie Watts, the Rolling Stones’ drummer, is 70.

That fine actor Stacy Keach is also 70.

Composer Martin Marvin Hamlisch is 67.

Jerry “The Beaver” Mathers is 63 today.

Comedian Dana Carvey is 56.

Johnny Weissmuller was born on June 2nd in 1904.

Few of the millions of Tarzan lovers who thrilled to Mr. Weissmuller swooping from tree to tree or locking in lethal combat with lions or crocodiles ever knew him as the swimming phenomenon who won five Olympic gold medals and set 67 world records in the 1920’s.

Sports enthusiasts then thought that the records, all set before Mr. Weissmuller was 25 years old, would endure for decades. But most of them were eclipsed by the time the casual, carefree Mr. Weissmuller went to Hollywood and filmmakers in 1932 began molding his image as a brawny, monosyllabic friend of apes and elephants.

He made close to 20 Tarzan films, the last one in 1949. In all of them he was something of a howling jungle Superman in loincloth, the benevolent protector of his African domain and the treetop home of his wife, Jane, and his son, Boy, and the vanquisher of villains, marauders and ivory hunters.

Obituary, The New York Times, 1984

Martha Washington was born on June 2nd in 1731.

Donatien Alphonse François de Sade was born on June 2nd in 1740. We know him as the Marquis de Sade.

An odd but enchanting look at Marilyn Monroe by Larry McMurtry. Norma Jean was born 85 years ago today.

Clint Eastwood is 81 today.

Peter Yarrow, the Peter of Peter, Paul and Mary, and the author of “Puff the Magic Dragon,” is 73.

Joe Namath is 68.

Tom Berenger is 61, Lea Thompson is 50, Brooke Shields is 46 and Colin Farrell is 35.

Fred Allen was born on May 31st in 1894.

Allen was a radio comedian for nearly two decades who, as early as 1936, had a weekly radio audience of about 20 million. When he visited The Jack Benny Show to continue their long running comedy feud, they had the largest audience in the history of radio, only to be later outdone by President Franklin Roosevelt during a Fireside Chat. The writer Herman Wouk said that Allen was the best comic writer in radio. His humor was literate, urbane, intelligent, and contemporary. Allen came to radio from vaudeville where he performed as a juggler. He was primarily self-educated and was extraordinarily well read. . . .

Allen’s program was imbued with literate, verbal slapstick. He had ethnic comedy routines in Allen’s Alley, appearances by celebrities such as Alfred Hitchcock, musical numbers with talent from the likes of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, and social commentaries on every conceivable subject, especially criticisms of the advertising and radio industry. . . .

In 1946-47 Allen was ranked the number one show on network radio. World War II was over, Americans were beginning a new era of consumerism. And a very few consumers had recently purchased a new entertainment device called television. When Fred Allen was asked what he thought of television, he said he didn’t like furniture that talked. . . .

Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819.

American poet, journalist, and essayist … [His] verse collection Leaves of Grass is a landmark in the history of American literature.

Whitman grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and at age 12 began to learn the printing trade. Over time he moved from printing to teaching to journalism, becoming the editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in 1846. He began experimenting with a new form of poetry, revolutionary at the time, free of a regular rhythm or rhyme scheme that has come to be known as ‘free verse.’ In 1855, Whitman published, anonymously and at his own expense, the first edition of Leaves of Grass. Revolutionary too was the content of his poems celebrating the human body and the common man. Whitman would spend the rest of his life revising and enlarging Leaves of Grass; the ninth edition appeared in 1892, the year of his death.

Library of Congress

Hubert Humphrey was born in Wallace, South Dakota, on this date in 1911. Humphrey was first elected mayor of Minneapolis in 1945 and U.S. Senator in 1948. Senator Humphrey introduced his first bill in 1949; it became law in 1965 and we know it as Medicare. Humphrey became Vice President with the election of President Lyndon Johnson in 1964. After Johnson withdrew from the 1968 campaign, and after Robert Kennedy was killed, Humphrey was nominated as the Democratic candidate for President. He lost to Richard Nixon in one of the closest elections in history. Some commented that with the vote trending as it did, had the election been one or two days later Humphrey would have won.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Herman Wouk is 96 today. Wouk served in the United States Navy during World War II, background for his great novel The Caine Mutiny. Other works include Majorie Morningstar, Youngblood Hawke, and The Winds of War and War and Remembrance.

Henry Kissinger is 88. They say the good die young.

Lou Gossett Jr. is 75 today. Gossett won the Oscar for best supporting actor for his portrayal of Gunnery Sgt. Emil Foley in An Officer and a Gentleman and an Emmy as the slave Fiddler in Roots.

Toby Ziegler is 56. That’s actor Richard Schiff, best known for The West Wing.

Roz is 50 today. That’s actress Peri Gilpin of Frasier.

Todd Bridges is 46 today. “Watchoo talkin’ ’bout, Willis?”

Best-selling mystery author Tony Hillerman was born in Sacred Heart, Oklahoma, on this date in 1925; he died in Albuquerque in 2008. The Shape Shifter was the 18th and last in Hillerman’s series centered on Navajo Tribal policemen Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee. Hillerman told us that:

Leaphorn emerged from a young Hutchinson County, Texas, sheriff who I met and came to admire in 1948 when I was a very green ‘crime and violence” reporter for a paper in the high plains of the Panhandle. He was smart, he was honest, he was wise and humane in his use of police powers–my idealistic young idea of what every cop should be but sometimes isn’t. 
. . . 

Jim Chee emerged several books later. I like to claim he was born from an artistic need for a younger, less sophisticated fellow to make the plot of PEOPLE OF DARKNESS make sense–and that is mostly true. Chee is a mixture of a couple of hundred of those idealistic, romantic, reckless youngsters I had been lecturing to at the University of New Mexico, with their yearnings for Miniver Cheever’s “Days of Old” modified into his wish to keep the Navajo Value System healthy in universe of consumerism.

John Cheever was born on this date in 1912.

He wrote for more than 50 years and published more than 200 short stories. He’s known for writing about the world of American suburbia. Even though he was one of the most popular short-story writers of the 20th century, he once said that he only earned “enough money to feed the family and buy a new suit every other year.”

In 1935 he was published in The New Yorker for the first time, and he would continue to write for the magazine for the rest of his life. His stories were collected in books including The Way Some People Live (1943) and The Enormous Radio and Other Stories (1953). The Stories of John Cheever, published in 1978, won the Pulitzer Prize and became one of the few collections of short stories ever to make the New York Times best-seller list.

The Writer’s Almanac (2008)

Cheever died in 1982.

Sam Snead was born on May 27th in 1912. Snead won 82 PGA events; seven majors — three Masters, three PGA Championships and a British Open. Great as he was, he never won the big one.

Vincent Price, an actor noted primarily for his horror and suspense roles, was born 100 years ago today.

Rachel Carson was born on this date in 1907. Carson’s writing, most notably Silent Spring (1962), was instrumental in establishing environmental awareness. Silent Spring lead to a ban on DDT and the creation of the EPA.

Mystery writer Samuel Dashiell Hammett was born on this date in 1894.  Hammett departed from the intellectualized mysteries of earlier detective novels (Sherlock Holmes for example) and transformed the genre with his less-than-glamorous realism.  He is considered one of the most influential writers of the 20th century.  

Hammett actually was a detective with Pinkerton for a few years just before World War I. Contracting TB during military service, he realized his health would keep him from resuming as a detective.  He turned to writing.  He published his first story in 1922, and then about 80 more, many in the popular pulp crime magazine Black Mask. Hammett’s first novel was Red Harvest, published in 1929.  His most famous character, Sam Spade, made his appearance in Hammett’s third novel, The Maltese Falcon (1930). (It was the third—and only successful—attempt to turn that novel into a film when Humphrey Bogart played the role in 1941.) The Thin Man (1934) was the last of Hammett’s novels. 

By the early-thirties, Hammett was established and famous.  He began a relationship with playwright Lillian Hellman that lasted for 30 years despite his drinking and womanizing.  Though both eventually divorced their spouses, they never married. Hammett served in the Army in World War II, enlisting as a private at age 48.  His involvement in left-wing politics and unwillingness to testify about it before Congress however, and the continued drinking, diminished his stature.  Hammett died in 1961.

James Butler Hickok was born May 27, 1837. As Wild Bill Hickok, he was killed while playing poker at Nuttal & Mann’s Saloon No. 10 in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, at age 39. It’s said he was holding a pair of aces and a pair of eights, all black (but most doubt the tale).

And today is Annette’s birthday, or “annette” when she appears among the NMK comments. Very best birthday wishes, annette.

“But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.”

Rachel Carson, born on May 27, 1907