Category: Birthdays

Bill Clinton is 64 today.

It’s also the birthday

… of Ginger Baker of Cream and Blind Faith. Peter Edward Baker, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, is 71. Rolling Stone says Baker is the third greatest rock drummer ever (after Neil Peart of Rush and John Bonham of Led Zeppelin).

… of Johnny Nash. He’s 70.

I can see clearly now, the rain has gone
I can see all obstacles in my way

… of Jill St. John; she’s 70. A sixties hottie, St. John, real name Jill Oppenheim, reportedly has an IQ of 162.

… of Fred Dalton Thompson. The actor and former U.S. Senator is 68.

… of Tipper Gore. She’s 62.

… of Kyra Sedgwick, 45.

… of Matthew Perry. The Friend is 41.

Gene Roddenberry was born on August 19th in 1921. The creator of Star Trek died in 1991.

The poet Ogden Nash was born on this date in 1902.

Candy
Is Dandy
But liquor
Is quicker.

From his “Reflections on Ice-Breaking.” Or, from “The Firefly”:

The firefly’s flame Is something for which science has no name
I can think of nothing eerier
Than flying around with an unidentified glow on a
person’s posteerier.

Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel was born on this date in 1883. She died in 1971.

The British landed on the Patuxent River in Maryland on August 19th in 1814. It took them five days to reach Washington. Arsonist bastards.

Today is the birthday

… of Rosalynn Carter; she’s 83.

… of Roman Polanski, 77.

… of Rafer Johnson. The decathlete is 75. It was Johnson who lit the Olympic torch in Los Angeles in 1984.

… of Robert Redford; he’s 73. Redford has been nominated for two directing Oscars, winning for Ordinary People. His only acting nomination was for The Sting.

… of Rockabilly great Johnny Preston, singer of the classic “Running Bear.” He’s 71. (Here’s a link to YouTube, audio only. My god we were a simpler country 50 years ago.)

… of Martin Mull; he’s 67.

… of Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, 49.

… of Edward Norton; he’s 41. Norton has both a leading and a supporting Oscar nomination but no wins yet.

… of Christian Slater; he too is 41.

Roberto Clemente should have been 76 today. The Puerto Rican born Baseball Hall of Fame inductee won four National League batting titles, was MVP in 1966 and finished his shortened career with exactly 3,000 hits. Clemente died at age 38 in a plane crash while delivering supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua on New Year Year’s Eve 1972.

Antonio Salieri was born on this date in 1750. After his characterization as a villain in Peter Shaffer’s play and film Amadeus, it seems Salieri has made a bit of a comeback. According to a December 2003 article at Guardian Unlimited and other sources, while there was competition between the upstart Mozart and the established artist Salieri in Vienna, there was cooperation, too; that is, what transpired between them was typical office politics.

Meriwether Lewis was born on this date in 1774. Lewis had this to say on his 31st birthday 205 years ago today, camped just east of Lemhi Pass near the present-day Montana-Idaho border. (From the Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition Online at the University of Nebraska.)

This day I completed my thirty first year, and conceived that I had in all human probability now existed about half the period which I am to remain in this Sublunary world. I reflected that I had as yet done but little, very little indeed, to further the hapiness of the human race, or to advance the information of the succeeding generation. I viewed with regret the many hours I have spent in indolence, and now soarly feel the want of that information which those hours would have given me had they been judiciously expended. but since they are past and cannot be recalled, I dash from me the gloomy thought and resolved in future, to redouble my exertions and at least indeavour to promote those two primary objects of human existence, by giving them the aid of that portion of talents which nature and fortune have bestoed on me; or in future, to live for mankind, as I have heretofore lived for myself.—

His birthday doubts are made all the more poignant, of course, with the knowledge that just more than four years later Lewis took his own life at age 35.

Maureen O’Hara is 90 today. Once voted one of the five most beautiful women in the world, Miss O’Hara is proabably best known now as Natalie Wood’s unbelieving mother in the classic Miracle on 34th Street (filmed when O’Hara was 26); or perhaps as Esmeralda to Charles Laughton’s Quasimodo in the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Nobel Prize-winning author V.S. Naipaul is 78.

Robert De Niro is 67 today. De Niro has been nominated for the Best Actor in a Leading Role Oscar five times, winning for Raging Bull in 1981. He also won the Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role as the young Vito Corleone in Godfather II. De Niro’s other nominations were for Taxi Driver, The Deer Hunter, Awakenings and Cape Fear.

Belinda Carlisle is 52.

Novelist Jonathan Franzen is 51 today. His The Corrections won the 2001 National Book Award.

Sean Penn is 50 today. Penn has been nominated for the Best Actor in a Leading Role Oscar five times, winning for Mystic River and Milk. Penn’s other nominations were for Dead Man Walking, Sweet and Lowdown and I Am Sam.

Football coach/commentator Jon Gruden is 47.

Davy Crockett — frontiersman, soldier, three-term congressman, restless soul — was born on this day in 1786. As congressman 1827-1831 and 1833-1835, Crockett opposed many of President Andrew Jackson policies, particularly the Indian Removal Act. Crockett published A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett. Written by Himselfin 1834. When he lost reelection that year he went to Texas, where he died at the Alamo on March 6, 1836.

After seeing Mae’s jewelry the coat check girl exclaims, “Goodness, what lovely diamonds!” Mae replies, “Goodness had nothing to do with it.” That’s screen legend Mae West in Night After Night. Ms. West was born on this date in 1893.

Before August 17, 1896, Americans had little interest in Alaska, a far off “district”—not even a territory—full of wolves and ice and forests. That attitude started to change [114] years ago today, when a Tagish Indian known as Skookum Jim spotted something shimmering among the stones in a creek near the Yukon River. The Klondike Gold Rush began as soon as news of the discovery reached the states, and between 1897 and 1899 1 in every 700 Americans abandoned home and set out for the “Golden River.”

There’s more at American Heritage, including this nugget: “At a time when workers were lucky to make 10 cents an hour, gold was worth $17 an ounce.”

Today it’s the birthday

… of cartoonist Pat Oliphant, 75.

… of Ruth Buzzi, 74.

… of Cosmo Kramer. Michael Richards is 61 today.

… of Wonder Woman. Lynda Carter is 59.

… of Pam Tillis, 53.

… of Barry Bonds. He’s 46.

… of Kristin Chenoweth. The Tony award-winner from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, is 42, all 4-foot-11 of her.

… of J Lo. Jennifer Lopez is 41.

… of Anna Paquin. An Oscar winner at age 11, she’s now 28.

Amelia Earhart was born on July 24th in 1897. She disappeared at age 40.

It was on this date in 1847 that Brigham Young gazed at Utah’s Valley of the Great Salt Lake and made his famous declaration: “This is the place.”

Daniel Radcliffe is 21 today.

At the other end of the acting spectrum, Gloria DeHaven is 85.

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is 74. Ginsburg (76) and Scalia (73) are older; Breyer will be 71 next month.

Actor Ronny Cox is 72. Cox, a Cloudcroft, New Mexico native, is perhaps most famous as Lt. Andrew Bogomil of the Beverly Hills Police Department, but he has more than 120 credits listed at IMDB.

Don Imus is 70 today.

Woody Harrelson is 49. Harrelson was nominated for best actor for The People vs. Larry Flynt and won one Emmy for playing Woody on Cheers.

Saul Hudson is 45. He’s better known as Slash of Guns N’ Roses.

Oscar-winner Philip Seymour Hoffman is 43.

Alison Krauss is 39.

Raymond Chandler was born on July 23rd in 1888.

His parents were Irish, and after his father left the family, his mom moved them back to Ireland, and he grew up there and in England. He moved back to America and settled in California.

He wrote pulp fiction about the city of Los Angeles and a detective there named Philip Marlowe. Chandler’s first novel was The Big Sleep (1939), which sold well and was made into a movie in 1946 with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall — William Faulkner co-wrote the screenplay. Chandler wrote seven more novels featuring Philip Marlowe, who became the quintessential “hard-boiled” private eye, tough and street-smart and full of wise cracks. In Farewell, My Lovely (1940), Marlowe says: “I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun.”

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

Bob Dole is 87 today.

Oscar de la Renta is 78.

Oscar-winning actress Louise Fletcher, Nurse Ratched, is 76.

Tom Robbins is 73 today.

He’s known for novels such as Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976), Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (1994), and Villa Incognito (2003). He says that when he starts a book, he has no idea of what the story will be. He never outlines and never revises. He just works on each sentence until he thinks it’s perfect, sometimes for more than an hour, and then he moves on to the next one. He said, “I’m probably more interested in sentences than anything else in life.”

The Writer’s Almanac (2009)

70. How old is Jeopardy host Alex Trebek today?

One-time supporting actor Oscar nominee Albert Brooks, Danny Glover and Don Henley of The Eagles all turn 63 today

Author S.E. Hinton is 62 today. She was born Susan Eloise Hinton.

Growing up, she loved to read, but her biggest dream in life was to be a cowboy. So she wrote a couple of books about cowboys, and then when she was 15 she started working on a book called The Outsiders. She wrote and edited much of her novel during her junior year of high school, the same year that she got a D in her creative writing class. The Outsiders was the story of two rival gangs, based on the gangs at her high school in Tulsa — one of them was a group of kids from working-class families, the other, children of rich families.

The Outsiders was published in 1967, during her first year of college at the University of Tulsa. It became one of the most popular young adult books ever, selling more than 14 million copies, and continues to sell hundreds of thousands each year.

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

Two-time Oscar nominee for best actor Willem Dafoe, aka the Green Goblin, aka Jesus, is 55.

David Spade is 46.

Selena Gomez is 18 today. She started in show business on Barney & Friends at age 7.

Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy was born on July 22nd in 1890. She lived until January 22, 1995.

Amy Vanderbilt was born on July 22nd in 1908.

70

It’s the birthday

… of Janet Reno, the only woman attorney general of the United States. She is 72.

… of actor Edward Herrmann. He is 67.

… of actor Wendell Burton, 63. Burton was Liza Minnelli’s boyfriend in The Sterile Cuckoo.

… of Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau. He’s 62.

… of Yusuf Islam, also 62. He was born Steven Demetre Georgiou. Much of his life he was known as Cat Stevens and he sold 60 million albums. Stevens wrote “The First Cut is the Deepest,” a hit for four artists, most recently Sheryl Crow. In 2006, he returned to music after nearly 30 years; his new stage name is Yusuf.

… of Mork. Robin Williams is 59. Williams has been nominated for the best actor Oscar three times without winning. He did win the best supporting actor Oscar for Good Will Hunting.

… of Jon Lovitz. He’s 53. Fresh!

… of Brandi Chastain. She’s 42.

… and of C.C. Sabathia, 30.

Ernest Hemingway was born on this date in 1899. He died a few weeks before his 62nd birthday in 1961. Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954 “for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style.” The New York Times has an extraordinary wealth of reviews, articles, interviews and other material collected on Hemingway.

Marshall McLuhan was born on this date in 1911.

Cormac McCarthy is 77 today, Dianna Rigg is 72 and Carlos Santana is 63.

George McGovern, a very good man if a very poor presidential candidate, is 88 today.

Florencia Bisenta de Casillas Martinez Cardona was born in El Paso 69 years ago today. We know her as Vikki Carr. She had three top 40 hits, including “It Must Be Him,” which topped at number 3 in 1966.

Howard Schultz, the developer of Starbucks, is 57 today.

Anthony Edwards, “Goose,” is 48 today.

The artist Edgar Degas was born in Paris on this date in 1834. He is especially identified with dance as a subject. Degas is considered an Impressionist, even a founder of the school, but he rejected the term. That’s Degas’s L’Absinthe.

Sam Colt was born on this date in 1814.

Sam Colt’s success story began with the issuance of a U.S. patent in 1836 for the Colt firearm equipped with a revolving cylinder containing five or six bullets. Colt’s revolver provided its user with greatly increased firepower. Prior to his invention, only one- and two-barrel flintlock pistols were available. In the 163 years that have followed, more than 30 million revolvers, pistols, and rifles bearing the Colt name have been produced, almost all of them in plants located in the Hartford, Connecticut, area. The Colt revolving-cylinder concept is said to have occurred to Sam Colt while serving as a seaman aboard the sailing ship Corvo. There he observed a similar principle in the workings of the ship’s capstan. During his leisure hours, Sam carved a wooden representation of his idea. The principle was remarkable in its simplicity and its applicability to both longarms and sidearms.

Colt History

Nelson Mandela is 92 today.

John Glenn is 89.

Dion (DiMucci) of Dion and The Belmonts is 71.

James Brolin is 70.

Joe Torre is 70 as well.

Martha (Reeves) of Martha and The Vandellas is 69.

Author Elizabeth Gilbert is 41.

Even M.I.A. is 35.

Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger was published on this date in 1951. It’s sold about 60 million copies since.

Major John Glenn, USMC, set a transcontinental (Los Angeles to New York) speed record of 3 hours, 23 minutes and 8 seconds on this date in 1957. Average speed: 723 mph.

Will Ferrell is 43 today; Barry Sanders is 42. And Phoebe Cates is 47.

Two Hollywood greats, Ruby Catherine Stevens and Virginia Katherine McMath were born on July 16th.

We know Stevens better as Barbara Stanwyck, born in 1907, she was a four time best actress Oscar nominee. Anthony Lane wrote an excellent review of Stanwyck’s work last year for The New Yorker.

And we know McMath better as Ginger Rogers, born in 1911, and an Oscar winner for best actress for Kitty Foyle. This from the abstract of a 1995 New Yorker item by Arlene Croce about Rogers.

Ginger Rogers was a star because she was unique and representative at the same time; she was complicatedly iconographic. Her very name tells us all we need to know. First of all, it’s euphonious (those three soft “g”s), and then what the first name specifies–something delicious–the last name, a half rhyme, pluralizes.

Apollo 11 left Florida for the moon on this date in 1969.

Today is the birthday

… of Clive Cussler, 79.

… of Alex Karras, All-American, Heisman runner-up (and he was a lineman), Outland Award winner, NFL star (1958-1971), Monday Night Football sportscaster, TV sitcom actor and — most notably — Mongo in Blazing Saddles. He’s 75 today.

… of Tucson’s favorite daughter, Linda Ronstadt, 64 today. Miss Ronstadt has sold more than 66 million albums worldwide. The session band behind her on her third album became The Eagles.

… of Arianna Stassinopoulos, 60. Born in Greece, educated at Cambridge, wealthy by her marriage to Michael Huffington, she is an actress, commentator, author of a dozen books, re-born liberal and founder of the Huffington Post.

… of Forest Whitaker, 49. Whitaker has been in more than 60 films and television productions, most notably Good Morning, Vietnam, The Crying Game and as Charlie “Bird” Parker in Bird (which earned him best actor at Cannes). He won the best actor Oscar, of course, for portraying Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland.

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born in Leiden, Netherlands, on this date in 1606.

The 38th President of the United States, Gerald R. Ford was born 97 years ago today. He was born Leslie Lynch King Jr. on this date in 1913. He took the name Gerald Rudolff Ford Jr. when adopted by his stepfather as a small child (later using Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr.).

When Ford died in 2006 he had lived longer than any president (93 years, 165 days), passing Ronald Reagan, who died at age 93 years, four months. John Adams and Herbert Hoover both lived to be 90.

I had several meetings with President Ford in the years after he left office in 1977. In fact it can be said that on one two-day occasion in 1979 I helped him clean his garage. The most astonishing incident, however, was in 1981.

The Gerald R. Ford Museum was about to be dedicated in Grand Rapids. As the representative of the National Archives nearest Ford’s retirement office in Rancho Mirage, California, I was called with an urgent request. Flags had not been ordered for the replica Oval Office in the Museum. President Ford would lend them his. I was asked to go to his office, pick them up and ship them to Michigan.

The next morning I was ushered into the former President’s office. He was standing at his desk browsing through some papers. After the routine “Hello, Ken” and “Hello, Mr. President” exchange, I went about my business with the flags. He continued his business with the papers.

The U.S. flag was on a brass stand with two wooden staff pieces screwed together at the middle and a brass eagle, wings outstretched, at the top, about seven feet from the floor. I began to unscrew the two pieces of the staff, a task made difficult by the weight of the flag and the eagle above.

As I lowered the top half at an angle, the eagle took flight. It was just set on the top of the staff, not screwed on as it should have been.

Stop and picture this. The former President of the United States is a few feet away. His gorgeous Oval Office presidential desk is even closer. And we have a brass eagle weighing several pounds in free fall. I’m holding the flag and can’t do anything but watch.

Poor President Ford I thought, he is about to be in the news for being clunked (or worse!) by a flagpole eagle in his own office — and this after years of being portrayed by Chevy Chase on Saturday Night Live as a clumsy, stumble-prone klutz. (In reality Gerald Ford was an All-American football player at Michigan in the 1930s and still looked exceptionally fit at 68.)

It wasn’t my fault the eagle hadn’t been attached but I was about to be a footnote to history.

Amazingly, the eagle missed Mr. Ford. Even more miraculously, it missed the historic desk and fell harmlessly to the carpet with a thud.

The former President had to have noticed. He never said a word. For that alone he has my enduring admiration.

Today is the birthday

… of Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Patrick Stewart is 70.

… of Bob Falfa. That’s Harrison Ford. He’s 68. And yes, Ford, who at one time had been in seven of the ten top grossing films of all time, has an Oscar nomination — for best actor in Witness.

… of Roger McGuinn, an inductee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Byrds. He’s 68.

As Roger McGuinn once said of the Byrds, “It was Dylan meets the Beatles.” The Byrds combined the upbeat, melodic pop of the Beatles with the message-oriented lyrics of Bob Dylan into a wholly original amalgam that would be branded folk-rock. If only for their harmony-rich versions of Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” and Pete Seeger’s “Turn! Turn! Turn!,” drenched in the 12-string jangle of McGuinn’s Rickenbacker guitar, the Byrds would have earned their place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Yet the group continually broke ground during the Sixties, creating revelatory syntheses of sound that were given such hyphenated names as space-rock (“5D [Fifth Dimension]”), psychedelic-rock (“Eight Miles High”) and country-rock (their Sweethearts of the Rodeo album). At a time when rock and roll was exploding in all fronts, the Byrds led the way with an insatiable curiosity about the forms and directions pop music could take. In so doing, they became peers and equals of their mentors, Dylan and the Beatles.

… of Pedro de Pacas. Richard ‘Cheech’ Marin is 64.

Nathan Bedford Forrest was born on July 21st in 1821. This from his 1877 obituary in The New York Times:

In an article published in The New-York Times immediately before the close of the war, the characteristic types of the soldiers of the South were sketched. It was pointed out that while Virginia, and what might be called the “old South,” produced gallant soldiers and dignified gentlemen, the South-west, the rude border country, gave birth to men of reckless ruffianism and cut-throat daring. The type of the first was Gen. Robert E. Lee; that of the latter, Gen. Bedford Forrest. At the date this article was written, (March, 1865,) Forrest seems to have been considered by many as the most formidable cavalry commander then in the Armies of the South; but he was so essentially guerrilla-like in his methods of warfare, and withal was so notoriously bloodthirsty and revengeful, that it was thought he would, when the other Southern commanders surrendered, an event then seen to be inevitable, collect around him all the desperate and discontented elements of the Southern Armies and maintain a guerrilla warfare on the South-western borders. This expectation was not realized, for when the crash came, everything went down in the grand ruin, and Forrest had had more than enough fighting to satisfy him.

Forrest rose through the ranks from private to general. After the war he was the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

Today is the birthday

… of Bill Cosby. He’s 73.

… of Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac. She’s 67.

… of Gaius Julius Caesar, born on July 12th around 100 BCE (some say July 13th). Caesar was named for his father, Gaius Julius Caesar III, and he had two sisters, both named Julia. If Caesar was named for a caesarean section, it was an ancestor’s birth, not his. The explanation for the name that Julius Caesar himself seemed to favor was that it came from the Moorish word caesai for elephant.

Caesar, of course, died on March 15, 44 BCE. Caesar never said “Et tu, Brute?” That’s Shakespeare (though not original with him). Some contemporaries said Caesar did say “καὶ σύ, τέκνον,” Greek for “You too, child.” If he said it, it may have been intended as a curse (this will happen to you) as much as a feeling of abandonment by Brutus.

It was Julius Caesar who fixed the calendar at 365 days with a leap day every fourth year. His formula had to be tweaked in 1582 with three less leap years every 400 years, but it stands pretty much as Caesar established it, the Julian Calendar, in 46 BCE.

Henry David Thoreau was born on this date in 1817; George Eastman in 1854; George Washington Carver in 1864; and Buckminster Fuller in 1895.

Oscar Hammerstein II was born on July 12th, 1895. Hammerstein won eight Tonys and two Oscars, for “The Last Time I Saw Paris,” and “It Might as Well Be Spring.”

Jake LaMotta, the boxer portrayed by Robert De Niro in Raging Bull, is 89 today. He was middleweight champion of the world 1949-1951.

Canadian author Alice Munro is 79. 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 Internation Prize judging panel

Lolita, the actress Sue Lyon, is 64 today.

Arlo Guthrie is 63.

Bela Fleck is 52.

Adrian Grenier is 34 today.

Jessica Simpson is 30.

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).

Marcel Proust was born on July 10th in 1871. His fame is based on the novel The Remembrance of Things Past — À la recherche du temps perdu is actually better translated In Search of Lost Time and that has become in recent years the more common title. 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.

Today is the birthday

… of Anjelica Huston. The third generation Oscar winner is 59. 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, 58.

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.

… of Kevin Bacon. He’s 52. And no, Kevin Bacon has never been nominated for an Oscar. He’s only a few degrees of separation however, from many who have.

Steve Lawrence is 75 and Jerry Vale is 78. Or vice versa, I forget.

Jeffrey Tambor is 66. Toby Keith is 49. (I like that bar too, Toby.) Joan Osborne is 48. Billy Crudup is 42. Beck is 40.

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. NewMexiKen once attended a conference hosted by Rockefeller and saw him stirring his coffee with the temple of his eyeglasses. It was kind of endearing.

Today is the birthday

… of former President George W. Bush, 64 today.

… of Sylvester Enzio Stallone, also 64 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 89.

… of William Schallert, Patty Duke’s TV father, (88). 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 73 today, was nominated for the supporting actor Oscar for Network.

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.