Category: Birthdays

”Don’t be afraid to trust your own common sense,” he wrote. ”What good mothers and fathers instinctively feel like doing for their babies is usually best.”

Such relaxed advice, given in the easy, practical, reassuring way that he had with parents, was light-years from the stern dictums of earlier standard works, like the 1928 book ”Psychological Care of Infant and Child” by Dr. John B. Watson. ”Never, never kiss your child,” Dr. Watson commanded. ”Never hold it in your lap. Never rock its carriage.”

Dr. T. Berry Brazelton of the Harvard Medical School, another noted pediatrician-author, once said of Dr. Spock: ”Before he came along, advice to parents was very didactic. He opened the whole area of empowered parenting. He gave parents choices and encouraged them to think things out for themselves.”

From The New York Times 1998 obituary of Benjamin Spock, World’s Pediatrician. Dr. Spock was born 107 years ago today.

Today is the feast day of St. Phillip, celebrated with the Green Corn Dance at San Felipe Pueblo. San Felipe is a Keresan-speaking pueblo on the Rio Grande about half-way between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. it is one of the 19 pueblos of New Mexico.

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Seven years ago today.

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Today is the birthday

… of Chuck Bednarik, 85. The hall-of-famer played for the Eagles. Bednarik is the last NFL player who routinely played both offense (center) and defense (linebacker). Bednarik’s most famous play was a tackle of Frank Gifford that put Gifford out of action for a year-and-a-half (and ultimately shortened his career).

… of singer Sonny James, 81. James’s big hit was “Young Love” in 1956.

… of the amazingly graceful Judy Collins. She is 71 today.

… of Rita Coolidge, 65. Some say Coolidge is the reason for the 1970 dissolution of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, when she left Stills for Nash, but it was Kris Kristofferson she married in 1973 (and divorced in 1980).

… of Dann Florek of “Law and Order.” Florek is 59.

… of Tim McGraw. Tug McGraw’s boy is 43. Tim played the husband to Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side.

Joseph Heller, author of Catch-22, was born on May 1st in 1923. He died in 1999.

God Bless Kate Smith, born 103 years ago today.

Everything about Kate Smith was outsized, including Miss Smith herself. She recorded almost 3,000 songs -more than any other popular performer. She introduced more songs than any other performer – over a thousand, of which 600 or so made the hit parade.

She made more than 15,000 radio broadcasts and, over the years, received more than 25 million fan letters. At the height of her career, during World War II, she repeatedly was named one of the three or four most popular women in America. No single show-business figure even approached her as a seller of War Bonds during World War II. In one 18-hour stint on the CBS radio network, Miss Smith sold $107 million worth of War Bonds, which were issued by the United States Government to finance the war effort. Her total for a series of marathon broadcasts was over $600 million.
…

But her identification with patriotism and patriotic themes dates from the night of Nov. 11, 1938, when, on her regular radio program, she introduced a new song written expressly for her by Irving Berlin – ”God Bless America.”

In a short time, the song supplanted ”The Star-Spangled Banner” as the nation’s most popular patriotic song. There were attempts – all unsuccessful – to adopt it formally as the national anthem.

For a time, Kate Smith had exclusive rights to perform ”God Bless America” in public. She relinquished that right when it became apparent the song had achieved a significance beyond that of just another new pop tune.

Mr. Berlin and Miss Smith waived all royalties from performances of ”God Bless America.” The royalties continue to be turned over to the Boy and Girl Scouts of America.

The New York Times (1986)

According to her very brief autobiography, Martha Jane Canary was born in Princeton, Missouri, on this date in 1852. That may or may not be any more truthful than the rest of that short work. A decent brief biography is found at the Adams Museum & House web site.

Calamity Jane went downtown and became a dance hall celebrity, frequenting E.A. Swearengen’s Gem Theater. She worked as a prostitute and dance hall girl in Deadwood and briefly managed a house of her own. Despite the fact that she was a coarse woman, adept at profanity, and drunk a great deal of the time, Calamity Jane was also known for her kindness.

What’s unbelievable is to have watched the wonderful portrayal of Jane by Robin Weigert on Deadwood, and then think that Calamity Jane was played by Doris Day in the movie Calamity Jane (1953) and Jane Alexander in the made-for-TV movie Calamity Jane (1984).

Mary Harris Jones was born on this date in 1830 (or, more likely, 1837). She is better known to us as Mother Jones. The magazine named after her has a nice biographical essay that begins:

The moniker “Mother” Jones was no mere rhetorical device. At the core of her beliefs was the idea that justice for working people depended on strong families, and strong families required decent working conditions. In 1903, after she was already nationally known from bitter mine wars in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, she organized her famous “march of the mill children” from Philadelphia to President Theodore Roosevelt’s summer home on Long Island. Every day, she and a few dozen children — boys and girls, some 12 and 14 years old, some crippled by the machinery of the textile mills — walked to a new town, and at night they staged rallies with music, skits, and speeches, drawing thousands of citizens. Federal laws against child labor would not come for decades, but for two months that summer, Mother Jones, with her street theater and speeches, made the issue front-page news.

The rock of Mother Jones’ faith was her conviction that working Americans acting together must free themselves from poverty and powerlessness. She believed in the need for citizens of a democracy to participate in public affairs.

NewMexiKen has known about Mother Jones since the eponymous magazine first came out in 1976. What amazes me is that I had no knowledge of her before that, despite majoring in American history, and even though “For a quarter of a century, she roamed America, the Johnny Appleseed of activists.”

Benjamin Latrobe, generally regarded as America’s first professional architect, was born on May 1st in 1764. We know him primarily for his work on the U.S. Capitol and the White House.

The Empire State Building opened officially 79 years ago today. It was the world’s tallest building for 41 years.

It’s Willie Nelson’s birthday. He’s 77.

He is an American icon; his voice as comforting as the American landscape, his songs as familiar as the color of the sky, his face as worn as the Rocky Mountains. Perhaps that’s why Dan Rather suggested, “We should add his face to the cliffs of Mt. Rushmore and be done with it.”

He’s recorded 250 albums, written 2,500 songs, and for half a century played countless concerts across America and around the world. He’s been instrumental in shaping both country and pop music, yet his appeal crosses all social and economic lines. Sometimes he’s called an outlaw, though from Farm Aid to the aftermath of September 11, from the resurrection of a burned-out courthouse in his own hometown to fanning the flame of the Olympics, it is Willie Nelson who brings us together.

Perhaps Emmylou Harris said it best: “If America could sing with one voice, it would be Willie’s.”

American Masters

Not only that, but Cloris Leachman is 84 and Kirsten Dunst is 28.

Dianna Agron is 24. That fills me with Glee.

Annie Dillard is 65 today. Ms. Dillard won the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction for Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974). The New York Times has a page with links to several reviews and articles about Dillard and her works. (Eudora Welty wrote the review of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.) And Ms. Dillard has a web site.

All that and you are at work, why?

Furthermore . . .

Casey Jones wrecked his train on April 30th in 1900.

John Luther Jones from Cayce (pronounced Cay-see), Kentucky, famous to us through song as a brave engineer who romantically died trying to make up time. In truth, he crashed his locomotive at high speed into a freight train that was attempting to get out of the way on a siding. According to reports he failed to heed warning signals that were out. The accident took place early in the morning of April 30, 1900. Jones was the only fatality.

Jones was known for his affability and his skill in blowing a train whistle. His engine wiper, Wallace Saunders, reportedly idolized the engineer. Saunders wrote the original song. All you might want to know can be found in this 1928 article.

George Washington took office as the first president of the U.S. on this date in 1789. His term began March 4th, but because neither the House nor Senate achieved a quorum until April, Washington’s unanimous election on February 4, wasn’t made official until April 14. Washington immediately departed Mount Vernon for New York to take the oath and was met along the way with parades and dinners in every little town. As James Madison noted, Washington was about the only aspect of the new government that really appealed to people.

Louisiana entered the union as the 18th state on this date in 1812.

It’s at least half-a-holiday. You should spend some time today listening to Duke Ellington.

Edward Kennedy Ellington was born in Washington, D.C., on this date in 1899. Duke was a childhood nickname.

The PBS web site for JAZZ A Film By Ken Burns sums up Ellington succinctly.

Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington was the most prolific composer of the twentieth century in terms of both number of compositions and variety of forms. His development was one of the most spectacular in the history of music, underscored by more than fifty years of sustained achievement as an artist and an entertainer. He is considered by many to be America’s greatest composer, bandleader, and recording artist.

The extent of Ellington’s innovations helped to redefine the various forms in which he worked. He synthesized many of the elements of American music — the minstrel song, ragtime, Tin Pan Alley tunes, the blues, and American appropriations of the European music tradition — into a consistent style with which, though technically complex, has a directness and a simplicity of expression largely absent from the purported art music of the twentieth century. Ellington’s first great achievements came in the three-minute song form, and he later wrote music for all kinds of settings: the ballroom, the comedy stage, the nightclub, the movie house, the theater, the concert hall, and the cathedral. His blues writing resulted in new conceptions of form, harmony, and melody, and he became the master of the romantic ballad and created numerous works that featured the great soloists in his jazz orchestra.

The Today in History page from the Library of Congress has much about Ellington. The Red Hot Jazz Archive has a number of Ellington recordings on line [RealAudio files].

Today is also the birthday

… of Celeste Holm. She’s 93. Ms. Holm was three times nominated for the best supporting actress Oscar, winning for Gentleman’s Agreement in 1948.

… of Luis Aparicio, 76.

Following his debut in 1956, Luis Aparicio helped to redefine the role and expectations of Major League shortstops with agile fielding, spray-hitting and speedy baserunning. He took Rookie of the Year honors in 1956, collected nine Gold Glove Awards, led the American League in stolen bases nine seasons and was named to the All-Star squad 10 times. When he retired in 1973, he held the career record for shortstops for games played, double plays and assists.

Baseball Hall of Fame

… of Jerry Seinfeld. He’s 56.

… of four-time Oscar nominee, two-time winner Daniel Day-Lewis. He’s 53. Lewis won for My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown and for There Will Be Blood.

… of three-time Oscar nominee Michelle Pfeiffer. She’s 52. Once upon a time, before she gave it all up to go to Hollywood, Michelle was a checker at our local Von’s supermarket.

… of Jan Brady. Eve Plumb is 52.

… of one-time Oscar nominee (Pulp Fiction) Uma Thurman. She’s 40.

… of Andre Agassi, 40.

William Randolph Hearst was born on this date in 1863. His father, George Hearst, was 42, his mother Phoebe Apperson Hearst was 20. Was Hearst the model for Charles Foster Kane? Here is what Orson Welles had to say in 1975.

… then what’s the point of even having holidays?

Harper Lee, the author of one the great classics of American literature, To Kill A Mockingbird, is 84 today. Mockingbird, published in 1960, has sold more than 30 million copies.

“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

The Writer’s Almanac had a nice essay about Lee four years ago (it includes the quotation above). There was another slightly longer variation of it the year before that NewMexiKen replicated.

And, absolutely, you must read Garrison Keillor’s essay (ostensibly a book review).

Today is also the birthday

… of James A. Baker III. The former Secretary of State is 80. NewMexiKen met Baker in 1993 during the last week of the first Bush Administration. He was the President’s chief of staff, so the meeting took place in the West Wing (one of two times I’ve been there on business). Never have I met an individual more impressive in a small meeting than Baker. When you spoke, Baker gave you his apparent undivided attention. Baker’s place in history will be enhanced I believe by his diplomatic work in forming the international coalition before the 1991 invasion of Iraq. His place in history will be diminished I believe by his work for the second Bush in the 2000 Florida election litigation.

… of Ann-Margret, 69.

… of Jay Leno. He’s 60.

… of golfer John Daly. He’s 44.

… of Penélope Cruz Sánchez, 36. Winner of several best actress awards in Europe for Non ti muovere, she’s been nominated for an acting Oscar three times, winning best supporting actress for her performance in Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

[A] recent night out at a bar in Santa Monica after an award-giving event, with Daniel Day-Lewis, Javier Bardem, Benicio Del Toro, and Sean Penn, during which “we got hammered and we all came to the conclusion we wanted to be Javier Bardem.”

George Clooney quoted in a profile, Somebody Has to Be in Control, The New Yorker, April 2008.

… of Jessica Alba. She’s 29.

Carolyn Jones was born on this date in 1929. The one-time Oscar nominee has nearly 100 credits to her name despite dying of colon cancer at age 54. She was, of course, Morticia Addams in the classic TV show.

Lionel Herbert Blythe was born on this date in 1878. We know him as Lionel Barrymore — and we know him even better as Mr. Potter in It’s A Wonderful Life — “I’d say you were nothing but a scurvy little spider.” Barrymore won the Oscar for best actor in 1931 for A Free Soul. The previous year he was nominated for best director. Both of Barrymore’s parents were actors, as were his sister Ethel (an Oscar winner) and brother John.

Lionel Barrymore once estimated that members of his famous family of the Drews and the Barrymores had appeared on the stage for 200 continuous years. He, himself, despite his protests that his interest in acting had arisen only from a necessity to eat, accounted for 61 of these years.

Mr. Barrymore, although he would have preferred to be an artist and composer, became an outstanding success of stage, screen and radio. His yearly radio interpretation of Scrooge in Dickens’ “Christmas Carol” became traditional. In his later years when a hip injury confined him to a wheelchair, it was a tribute to his popularity and ability that parts were written around him and audiences never questioned the appearance of an actor in a wheelchair.

The New York Times

And James Monroe, the fifth U.S. President, was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, on this date in 1758. He is one of three presidents (and two NewMexiKen daughters) to attend the College of William and Mary.

Today is the birthday of Carol Burnett, 77, and Bobby Rydell, 68.

Duane Eddy was born on this date in 1938, which would make him 72 today. Eddy was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

One of the earliest guitar heroes, Duane Eddy put the twang in rock and roll. “Twang” is a reverberating, bass-heavy guitar sound boasted by primitive studio wizardry. Concocted by Eddy and producer Lee Hazlewood in 1957, twang came to represent the sound of revved-up hot rods and an echo of the Wild West on the frontier of rock and roll. Eddy obtained his trademark sound by picking on the low strings of a Chet Atkins-model Gretsch 6120 hollowbody guitar, turning up the tremolo and running the signal through an echo chamber. Behind the mighty sound of twang, Eddy became the most successful instrumentalist in rock history, charting fifteen Top Forty singles in the late Fifties and early Sixties. He has sold more than 100 million records worldwide. No less an authority than John Fogerty has declared, “Duane Eddy was the front guy, the first rock and roll guitar god.” Eddy’s influence is widespread in rock and roll. A twangy guitar drove Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run,” and twang echoes in the work of the Beatles, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Dave Edmunds, Chris Isaak and many more.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum

“Cannonball,” “Rebel Rouser,” “Forty Miles of Bad Road” and I’m cruising Speedway Boulevard in Tucson all over again. Someone else is driving — I’m not that old — but nevertheless, little rock and roll is as evocative as Duane Eddy, dated as it seems now.

Bernard Malamud was born on this date in 1914. Malamud twice won the National Book Award (The Magic Barrel, The Fixer) and the 1967 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (The Fixer). He’s also the author of The Natural.

Gertrude Pridgett was born on this date in 1886. She began performing in 1900, singing and dancing in minstrel shows. In 1902, she married performer William “Pa” Rainey and became known as Ma Rainey.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum has this to say about inductee Ma Rainey.

If Bessie Smith is the acknowledged “Queen of the Blues,” then Gertrude “Ma” Rainey is the undisputed “Mother of the Blues.” As music historian Chris Albertson has written, “If there was another woman who sang the blues before Rainey, nobody remembered hearing her.” Rainey fostered the blues idiom, and she did so by linking the earthy spirit of country blues with the classic style and delivery of Bessie Smith. She often played with such outstanding jazz accompanists as Louis Armstrong and Fletcher Henderson, but she was more at home fronting a jugband or washboard band.

Jealous Hearted Blues

Frederick Law Olmsted was born on this date in 1822. He was America’s foremost landscape architect of the 19th century and the designer of New York’s Central Park.

John James Audubon was born on this date in 1785.

He decided he would create a portfolio of America’s avifauna, and that he would produce the most realistic depictions of birds ever made. He and his wife set off down the Mississippi River. He brought along a gun and his art supplies, and his wife kept them from starving by earning money tutoring wealthy families on plantations. An Edinburgh printer was the first to publish his collection, Birds of America. The book, containing 435 images, accounted for every known bird species in America at the time, and it remains one of the most important contributions to the field of ornithology.

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

Ella, Murrow, Albert King, Jerry Leiber, Al Pacino, Hank Azaria, Tim Duncan — is this not enough for you?

Ella Fitzgerald was born in Newport News, Virginia, on this date in 1918. Scott Yanow’s essay for the All Music Guide is first rate. It begins:

“The First Lady of Song,” Ella Fitzgerald was arguably the finest female jazz singer of all time (although some may vote for Sarah Vaughan or Billie Holiday). Blessed with a beautiful voice and a wide range, Fitzgerald could outswing anyone, was a brilliant scat singer, and had near-perfect elocution; one could always understand the words she sang. The one fault was that, since she always sounded so happy to be singing, Fitzgerald did not always dig below the surface of the lyrics she interpreted and she even made a downbeat song such as “Love for Sale” sound joyous. However, when one evaluates her career on a whole, there is simply no one else in her class.

There are many great Fitzgerald CDs but an excellent, inexpensive place to start is The Best of the Song Books.

Egbert Roscoe Murrow was born on this date in 1908. He died in 1965.

A Murrow radio report from a bombing raid over Berlin (he made 25 bombing runs):

The clouds were gone and the sticks of incendiaries from the preceding waves made the place look like a badly laid out city with the streetlights on. The small incendiaries were going down like a fistful of white rice thrown on a piece of black velvet. As Jock hauled the Dog up again, I was thrown to the other side of the cockpit, and there below were more incendiaries, glowing white and then turning red. The cookies—the four-thousand-pound high explosives—were bursting below like great sunflowers gone mad. And then, as we started down again, still held in the lights, I remembered the Dog still had one of those cookies and a whole basket of incendiaries in its belly, and the lights still held us. And I was very frightened.

The above from a fine article two years ago by Nicholas Lehmann in The New Yorker.

Albert Nelson was born on this date in 1923 (he died in 1992). We know him as Albert King.

Albert King is truly a “King of the Blues,” although he doesn’t hold that title (B.B. does). Along with B.B. and Freddie King, Albert King is one of the major influences on blues and rock guitar players. Without him, modern guitar music would not sound as it does — his style has influenced both black and white blues players from Otis Rush and Robert Cray to Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan. It’s important to note that while almost all modern blues guitarists seldom play for long without falling into a B.B. King guitar cliché, Albert King never does — he’s had his own style and unique tone from the beginning.

Albert King plays guitar left-handed, without re-stringing the guitar from the right-handed setup; this “upside-down” playing accounts for his difference in tone, since he pulls down on the same strings that most players push up on when bending the blues notes. King’s massive tone and totally unique way of squeezing bends out of a guitar string has had a major impact.

All Music

Jerry Leiber is 77 today. Leiber and partner Mike Stoller are in the Rock and Roll and Songwriters halls of fame.

By the time they were 20, in just three years of working together, their early songs had been recorded by a collection of true all-stars in the rhythm and blues genre including Jimmy Witherspoon, Little Esther, Amos Milburn, Charles Brown, Little Willie Littlefield, Bull Moose Jackson, Linda Hopkins, Ray Charles and Willie Mae (Big Mama) Thornton who actually first recorded “Hound Dog” in 1952. Atlantic Records executives, Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler among them, were impressed, and in 1955 signed Leiber and Stoller to the first independent production deal, forever changing the course of production in the record industry.

For the next decade, well into the late ’60s the hits of Leiber and Stoller were constantly at the top of the charts, including the memorable “Stand By Me,” “Spanish Harlem” and “I (Who Have Nothing),” by Ben E. King; “On Broadway,” “Dance With Me” and “Drip Drop” by The Drifters; LaVern Baker’s “Saved” and Ruth Brown’s “Lucky Lips.”

During this same productive period, there were other Leiber and Stoller smashes, including “Love Potion #9,” by The Clovers, “Only In America” by Jay and The Americans, “I Keep Forgettin,” by Chuck Jackson, Wilbert Harrison’s “Kansas City,” The Drifters’ “There Goes My Baby” and “Fools Fall In Love,” “Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots” by The Cheers and “Ruby Baby” by Dion DiMucci. [And virtually everything by The Coasters.]

Following the triumph of “Hound Dog,” Elvis Presley actually went on to record more than 20 Leiber and Stoller songs, including such highlights as “Loving You,” “Bossa Nova Baby,” “She’s Not You” and “Santa Claus Is Back In Town.” [And “Jailhouse Rock.”]

Songwriters Hall of Fame

Ted Kooser, former poet laureate of the United States (2004–2006), author of many poetry collections, and winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry is 71 today.

Eight-time Oscar nominee Al Pacino is 70. He won for Scent of a Woman, but not for The Godfather or Godfather II. Pacino was nominated for a supporting actor Oscar for the first Godfather, which seems odd until one remembers that Caan and Duvall were also nominated for supporting and Brando won for lead.

Another Godfather cast member, Talia Shire is 64 today. Connie Corleone-Rizzi in the Godfather movies, Miss Shire was Adrian in the Rocky films. She was nominated for the best supporting actress Oscar for Godfather II (1974) and for the best actress Oscar for Rocky (1976). Talia Shire’s actual name is Talia Rose Coppola. She is the sister of director Francis Ford Coppola, which makes her the aunt of Sofia Coppola (daughter of Francis Coppola) and the aunt of Nicolas Cage (son of another Coppola brother).

Agador Spartacus is 46 today. So are Moe Szyslak, Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, Chief Wiggum, Professor Frink, Comic Book Guy and Dr. Nick Riviera. All are played by the multi-talented Hank Azaria, who was born on this date in 1964. Agador Spartacus is the Guatemalan houseboy in The Birdcage. Azaria appeared on Friends six times and 13 times on Mad About You.

Renee Zellweger is 41. Twice nominated for best actress, Miss Zellweger won the Oscar for a supporting role in Cold Mountain (without her that film would have died of its own weight). She was born in Katy, Texas, but her parents were born in Switzerland and Norway.

Earl Hickey’s name isn’t Earl at all; it’s Jason Lee and he’s 40 today.

Tim Duncan is 34.

Today is the birthday of

. . . Shirley MacLaine, five-time nominee for the Oscar for best actress — winning for Terms of Endearment in 1984 — was born Shirley MacLean Beaty in Richmond, Virginia, 76 years ago today. She and brother Warren grew up in Arlington, Virginia (both attended Washington-Lee High School, as did Sandra Bullock, Gena Rowlands and Forrest Tucker).

. . . Barbra Streisand was born in Brooklyn 68 years ago today. Miss Streisand has been nominated for the best actress Oscar twice, winning for Funny Girl in 1969. She also shared the Oscar with Paul Williams for best original song in 1977 for A Star is Born.

Reportedly MacLaine and Streisand celebrate their birthday together each year.

And yesterday was the birthday of Shirley Temple. She is 82.

Valerie Bertinelli turned 50 yesterday.

William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes both died 394 years ago yesterday.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, aka Mark Twain, died 100 years ago today. The rumors of his death were no longer exaggerated.

It’s the birthday

. . . of Elizabeth R. Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith is 84 today. Her name is Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor. She signs Elizabeth R. (R for Regina, Latin for Queen.)

. . . of Elaine May, 78.

. . . of Charles Grodin, 75.

. . . of Iggy Pop, 63.

. . . of Tony Danza, 59.

. . . of Andie MacDowell, 52.

. . . of Tony Romo, 30.

Charlotte Bronte was born on this date in 1816.

John Muir was born on this date in 1838.

. . . of Justice John Paul Stevens, 90 today. He went on the Court in 1975.

. . . of Mr. Sulu. That’s actor George Takei of Star Trek. He’s 73

. . . of Ryan O’Neal, nominated for best actor for Love Story, but never again. He’s 69.

. . . of Coach Steve Spurrier, 65.

. . . of Andrew Tobias. He’s 63.

. . . of six-time Oscar nominee and two-time winner Jessica Lange. Lange won best supporting actress for Tootsie and best actress for Blue Sky. She’s 61.

. . . of Ron Howard’s brother, 51. (See separate entry.)

. . . of Carmen Electra, 38.

Daniel Chester French was born on this date in 1850.

French studied in Boston and New York prior to receiving his first commission for the 1875 statue The Minute Man. Standing near the North Bridge in Concord, in the Minute Man National Historical Park, this work commemorates events at the North Bridge, the site of “the shot heard ’round the world”. An American icon, images derivative of The Minute Man statue appeared on defense bonds, stamps, and posters during World War II.

With the success of The Minute Man came opportunities to study abroad. After a year in Italy, French opened a studio in Washington, D.C. Additional trips to Europe and a friendship with fellow sculptor Augustus Saint Gaudens resulted in more ambitious work beginning with the impressive General Lewis Cass executed for the U.S. Capitol in 1888.

By the turn of the century, French was America’s preeminent monumental sculptor. The Angel of Death Staying the Hand of the Sculptor, created for Boston’s Forest Hills Cemetery; John Harvard, located at Harvard University; and a standing Abraham Lincoln at the west entrance to the Nebraska State Capitol are a few of the important monuments French produced during a long and productive career.

Library of Congress

Adolph Hitler was born on this date in 1889.

Harold Lloyd was born on this date in 1893.

“The King of Daredevil Comedy,” Harold Lloyd is best remembered today as the young man dangling desperately from a clock tower in the 1923 classic Safety Last. At the height of his career, Lloyd was one of the most popular and highest-paid stars of his time. While his achievements have been overshadowed by the work of contemporaries Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, he made more films than the two of them combined. With hits like his 1922 film Grandma’s Boy, Lloyd became a strong force in bringing about the advent of the “feature-length” film.

American Masters

Lionel Hampton was born on this date in 1908.

Hampton was not the first jazz musician to take up vibraphone (Red Norvo had preceded him in the late 1920s), but it was he who gave the instrument an identity in jazz, applying a wide range of attacks and generating remarkable swing on an instrument otherwise known for its bland, disembodied sound. Undoubtedly his best work was done with the Goodman Quartet from 1936-1940, when he revealed a fine ear for small-ensemble improvisation and an unrestrained, ebullient manner as a soloist. The big band format was probably better suited to the display of his flamboyant personality and flair for showmanship, but after a few early successes, especially the riff tunes Flying Home, Down Home Jump, and Hey Bab-Ba-Rebop, the group was too often content to repeat former triumphs for its many admirers. Hampton has at times also appeared as a singer, played drums with enormous vitality, and performed with curious success as a pianist, using only two fingers in the manner of vibraphone mallets.

PBS – JAZZ A Film By Ken Burns

Luther Vandross was born on this date in 1951. His album Never Too Much is one of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s Definitive 200 (albums that every music lover should own). Vandross died in 2005.

Ted Williams made his debut on this date 71 years ago (1939). Edgar Alan Poe published the first detective story, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, on this date 169 years ago (1841).

Ron Howard will be celebrating his brother’s 51st birthday today.

Ron Howard’s brother is credited at present with 198 film and television programs including roles in many of his brother’s films — Cocoon, Apollo 13, Cinderella Man and Frost/Nixon come to mind. Many will remember Ron Howard’s brother also as the 8-year-old kid in the TV series Gentle Ben. Howard’s younger sibling was also the voice of Roo in the Disney Winnie the Pooh films, and more recently the voice of the balloon man in Curious George.

. . . in Massachusetts. (Well, I guess it’s the third Monday now, but that’s today so whatever.) Happy Patriot’s Day.

Today we celebrate the birthday

. . . of TV’s Wyatt Earp. Hugh O’Brian is 85 (or 87).

. . . of Elinor Donahue. Donahue has nearly 100 credits listed at IMDB, but foremost she was the oldest daughter on famed 1950s sitcom “Father Knows Best.” Betty “Princess” Anderson is 73.

. . . of Ashley Judd, 42.

. . . of Oscar-nominee (2001) Kate Hudson. She’s more than almost famous at 31.

. . . of Troy Polamalu. He’s 29.

. . . of Oscar-nominee (2005) Catalina Sardino Moreno. She’s full of grace at 29.

. . . of Maria Sharapova, 23.

Ole Evinrude was born on this date in 1877. Guess what he invented.

Eliot Ness was born on this date in 1903.

Ever since Eliot Ness first published The Untouchables in 1957, the public has fallen in love with the adventures of this authentic American hero. His book was a runaway best seller because it was the exciting true story of a brave and honest lawman pitted against the country’s most successful gangster, Al Capone. The television series that followed in the 1950’s and the Kevin Costner movie in 1987 built fancifully on the same theme.

The Crime Library

Vera Jayne Palmer was born on this date in 1933. We know her as Jayne Mansfield.

Grace Kelly became Her Serene Highness Princess Grace on this date in 1956.

By 1956, Grace Kelly was calling it quits after a movie-acting career of only five years—but what a career it was. Her 11 films included the 1952 classic High Noon, the 1956 musical High Society, and the Alfred Hitchcock-directed masterpieces Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, and To Catch a Thief. She had won an Oscar for her role in 1954’s The Country Girl—and all this before her twenty-seventh birthday.

American Heritage.

Today is the birthday

. . . of Pollyanna. Hayley Mills is 64.

. . . of two-time Oscar nominee James Woods. He’s 63.

. . . of Rick Moranis, 57.

. . . of Daphne Moon. Jane Leeves of “Frasier” is 49.

. . . of Conan O’Brien. He’s 47.

. . . of America Ferrera; anything but ugly, she’s 26.

Lawyer and author Clarence Darrow was born on this date in 1857.

Darrow became famous for defending some of the most unpopular people of his time. In the 1925 Monkey Trial, he defended high school teacher John Scopes for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution in a Tennessee school. In “The Crime of the Century,” in 1924, he successfully defended two confessed teenage murderers, Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, from receiving the death penalty.
. . .

He once said: “I never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with a lot of pleasure.”

The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media

The San Francisco earthquake was on April 18, 1906. It was magnitude 8.3; 3,000 people are estimated to have died.

The first game was played at Yankee Stadium on this date in 1923.

War correspondent, and Albuquerquean, Ernie Pyle was killed by Japanese gunfire on the Pacific island of Ie Shima, off Okinawa, on this date in 1945.

Albert Einstein died at age 76 on this date in 1955.

And it was on this date in 1775 that Paul Revere and others began their ride to warn their countryman that British troops were mobilizing.

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

Continue reading Paul Revere’s Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Today we celebrate the birthday

. . . of Emily, official younger daughter of NewMexiKen. Happy Birthday, Emily! And don’t fret. Byron will get back from Britain eventually and you won’t have to coach his flag-football team for more than a few weeks tops.

. . . of Olivia Hussey. Sixteen when she played Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, she’s 59 today.

. . . of Nick Hornby. He’s 53.

The book was called Fever Pitch (1992), and it came out at a time when football fans were generally looked down upon by the British upper class. But the book became something of a phenomenon in Great Britain, selling hundreds of thousands of copies, making it one of the best-selling books about sport ever published in the English language. Part of what made the book so popular was that it captured the way people can rely on a sports team to give their lives drama and meaning. Hornby wrote, “The natural state of the football fan is bitter disappointment, no matter what the score.”

The Writer’s Almanac (2007)

. . . of Liz Phair. She’s 43.

. . . of Jennifer Garner. She’s 38.

J. P. Morgan was born on this date in 1837.

[Morgan] began his career in 1857 as an accountant, and worked for several New York banking firms until he became a partner in Drexel, Morgan and Company in 1871, which was reorganized as J.P. Morgan and Company in 1895. Described as a coldly rational man, Morgan began reorganizing railroads in 1885, becoming a board member and gaining control of large amounts of stock of many of the rail companies he helped restructure. In 1896, Morgan embarked on consolidations in the electric, steel (creating U.S. Steel, the world’s first billion-dollar corporation, in 1901), and agricultural equipment manufacturing industries. By the early 1900s, Morgan was the main force behind the Trusts, controlling virtually all the basic American industries. He then looked to the financial and insurance industries, in which his banking firm also achieved a concentration of control.

The American Experience

Karen Dinesen was born on this date in 1885. We know her as Isak Dinesen.

[S]o she decided to write about her experiences in Africa. Instead of writing an ordinary memoir, she wrote about her time in Africa as though it was a half-remembered dream in her book Out of Africa (1937).

She wrote, “Looking back on a sojourn in the African high-lands, you are struck by your feeling of having lived for a time up in the air.”

And, “[I watched] elephants … pacing along as if they had an appointment at the end of the world … [and I once saw a] lion … crossing the grey plain on his way home from the kill, drawing a dark wake in the silvery grass, his face still red up to the ears.”

The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media (2008)

Nikita Khrushchev was born on this date in in 1894. Khrushchev was Soviet Premier from 1954-1964. The New York Times has posted its lengthy obituary from 1971. One of the more infamous moments at the United Nations took place when Khrushchev visited there in 1960 and reportedly banged his shoe on the desk in a protest. Or maybe he didn’t. Read what NewMexiKen posted about this incident in 2004.

Thornton Wilder was born on this date in 1897.

Wilder’s breakthrough novel was The Bridge Of San Luis Rey (1927), an examination of the fate of five travelers who fall to their deaths from a bridge in 18th-century Peru. Seeking to discover meaning in the lives lost, a scholarly monk named Brother Juniper explores the lives of the five victims, an endeavor that leads to his own death at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition. The book earned Wilder his first Pulitzer Prize. . . .

While living in Chicago, Wilder became close friends with fellow lecturer Gertrude Stein and her companion, Alice B. Toklas. In fact, Stein’s novel The Making of Americans (1925) is said to have inspired Wilder’s Our Town (1938). Tracing the childhood, courtship, marriage, and death of Emily Webb and George Gibbs, the play finds universal meaning in the ordinary lives lived in Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire. (The fictional town was based on Peterborough, New Hampshire, where Wilder spent summers at the MacDowell Colony.) A huge success on Broadway, Our Town earned Wilder his second Pulitzer, making him the only American author to win Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction and drama.

Masterpiece Theatre

William Holden was born on this date in 1918. Holden was nominated three times for the Best Actor Oscar, winning for Stalag 17 in 1954. His other nominations were for Sunset Blvd. and Network. Holden is probably as well known for his portrayal of Hal Carter opposite Kim Novak in Picnic and as the leader of the demolition team intent on destroying Alec Guiness’ Bridge on the River Kwai.

Today we celebrate (or at least acknowledge) the birthday

. . . of Pope Benedict XVI, infallible at 83.

. . . of Bobby Vinton, his roses are still red my love at 75.

. . . of Queen Margrethe II, the Queen of Denmark. Sorry Queen, I wanted to come to your party, but with the Iceland volcano and airports closed and all.

. . . of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, 63.

. . . of Bill Belichick, 58.

. . . of Ellen Barkin, 56.

. . . of Peter Billingsley. Ralphie is 38.

Wilbur Wright was born on this date in 1867. He died of typhoid fever in 1912. Wilbur, four years older than Orville, was the more mechanical of the two and took the lead in developing their flyer. (Orville outlived his brother by 36 years.)

Charlie Chaplin was born on this date in 1889.

In a 1995 worldwide survey of film critics, Chaplin was voted the greatest actor in movie history. He was the first, and to date the last, person to control every aspect of the filmmaking process — founding his own studio, United Artists, with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith, and producing, casting, directing, writing, scoring and editing the movies he starred in. In the first decades of the 20th century, when weekly moviegoing was a national habit, Chaplin more or less invented global recognizability and helped turn an industry into an art. In 1916, his third year in films, his salary of $10,000 a week made him the highest-paid actor — possibly the highest paid person — in the world.

TIME 100

Henry Mancini was born Enrico Nicola Mancini on this date in 1924. He died of pancreatic cancer in 1994.

Mancini won four Oscars and twenty Grammys, the all-time record for a pop artist. For 1961’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s alone, Mancini won five Grammys and two Oscars. Breakfast at Tiffany’s includes the classic “Moon River” (lyrics by Johnny Mercer), arguably one of the finest pop songs of the last 50 years. At last count, there were over 1,000 recordings of it. His other notable songs include “Dear Heart,” “Days of Wine and Roses” (one Oscar, two Grammys), and “Charade,” the last two with lyrics by Mercer. He also had a number one record and won a Grammy for Nino Rota’s “Love Theme From Romeo and Juliet.” Among his other notable film scores are The Pink Panther (three Grammys), Hatari! (one Grammy), Victor/Victoria (an Oscar), Two for the Road, Wait Until Dark, and 10. His television themes include “Peter Gunn” (two Grammys, recorded by many rock artists), “Mr. Lucky” (two Grammys), “Newhart,” “Remington Steele,” and The Thorn Birds television mini-series.

allmusic

Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O’Brien was born on this date in 1939. We know her as Dusty Springfield. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in March 1999, just 13 days after she died of breast cancer.

One of the finest pop-soul vocalists ever, Dusty Springfield was blessed with a powerful, smoky voice that ran the emotional gamut from cool sophistication to simmering passion. Over the course of a long, episodic career, she tackled adult pop, Memphis R&B and Motown-style soul, traditional folk and country, and contemporary dance music. She’s been called “one of the five mighty pop divas of the Sixties”-the others being Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick, Diana Ross and Martha Reeves-and no less an authority than Berry Gordy credits her for helping the Motown sound take root in the U.K. Moreover, Springfield forcefully asserted herself as an artist and personality at a time when women were generally not given much leeway in the music industry. In 1964, she became Britain’s most popular female vocalist, and her popularity proved durable, as she enjoyed hits in four successive decades.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Today is Ruination Day, but still we celebrate the birthday

… of Loretta Lynn. The coal miner’s daughter was born in Butcher Holler, Kentucky, 75 years ago.

Loretta Webb was born in a one-room log cabin and was the second of eight children. At thirteen she attended a pie social, bringing a pie she had baked using salt instead of sugar. The highest bidder not only won the pie but also got to meet the girl who had baked the pie. Mooney Lynn had just returned home after having served in the army. A month after they had first met, still three months short of her fourteenth birthday, Loretta and Mooney married.

Country Music Hall of Fame

… of four-time Oscar nominee for best actress Julie Christie. She’s 70. Miss Christie won the Oscar for Darling but be sure to see the film Away from Her from 2007.

… of Pete Rose. You can bet that Pete is 69 today.

… of Brad Garrett, 50. Garrett is 6-8½.

… of Greg Maddux, 44. A friend has a grandson named, Maddux.

… of Adrien Brody. The Oscar winner (best actor for The Pianist) is 37.

… of Sarah Michelle Gellar. Buffy is 33.

… of Abigail Breslin. The Oscar-nominated actress is 14. That means she was born in 1996.

Three time Oscar-nominated actor Rod Steiger was born on this date in 1925. Steiger won for Best Actor for his portrayal of the sheriff in the movie In the Heat of the Night. He was nominated for best actor for The Pawnbroker and for best supporting actor for On the Waterfront. The Pawnbroker (1964) was one of the first films to deal with the emotional aftermath of the Nazi concentration camps. Steiger died in 2002.

Helen Keller’s teacher Anne Sullivan Macy was born on April 14 in 1866.

James Cash Penney opened his first retail store, called the Golden Rule Store, in the mining town of Kemmerer, Wyoming, on this date in 1902. In 1913, the chain incorporated as J.C. Penney Company, Inc.

The first store, as seen in 1904.

RMS Titanic hit an iceberg at 11:40 PM (Titanic time) on this date in 1912. She was at 41° 46′ north latitude , 50° 14′ west longitude in the Atlantic. The ship went under at 2:20 AM on the 15th.

Noah Webster published his American Dictionary of the English Language on April 14, 1828. The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor has some of the story.

Today we celebrate the birthday

. . . of Jane Withers, 84. Withers earned her first fame as an 8-year-old playing the spoiled, doll-ripping, tricycle-riding brat who terrorized sweet, wonderful little Shirley Temple in Bright Eyes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltsEms2SkGI

. . . of Herbie Hancock. He’s 70 today.

. . . of Clarence ‘Lumpy’ Rutherford. Actor Frank Bank of Leave It to Beaver is 68.

. . . of Ed O’Neill. He’s 64. O’Neill was nominated for two Golden Globes for playing shoe salesman Al Bundy on Married … with Children.

. . . of David Letterman. He’s 63, but a part of him seemingly never left the 8th grade.

. . . of Tom Clancy. He’s 63.

He was an insurance salesman, and he was doing well for himself, but he’d always wanted to be a writer. He had spent all his spare time reading magazines about military technology, such as Combat Fleets of the World and A Guide to the Soviet Navy, and one day he began to wonder what would happen if a Soviet submarine tried to defect to the United States. That became the basis for his first novel, The Hunt for Red October (1984).

Instead of focusing on the interactions between his characters, Clancy focused more on the technology. He described the soviet submarine in intricate detail, the way it moved and maneuvered, and all its weaponry and hardware. Since he didn’t think the novel would appeal to a mass audience, he published it with a small military publishing house called the Naval Institute Press. But the book got passed around among officers and generals, and eventually made its way to Ronald Reagan, who said he loved it. That endorsement from the president helped turn The Hunt for Red October into a huge best-seller.

The Writer’s Almanac

. . . of Scott Turow. He’s 61. He wanted to be a writer but went to law school so he’d have a day job. His first novel was Presumed Innocent, published in 1987.

. . . of David Cassidy. Once a teen heart throb, he’s now 60.

. . . of Andy Garcia. He’s 54. Garcia was nominated for an Oscar for his supporting role in The Godfather: Part III.

. . . of Vince Gill. He’s 53.

. . . of Shannen Doherty, 39.

The photographer Imogen Cunningham was born on this date in 1883.

It was on April 12 in 1633 that Galileo Galilei went on trial. The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor has the story. An excerpt:

At some point Galileo did become interested in the theory of the universe expressed by Copernicus, and then he discovered something that he thought would prove the theory beyond question: the telescope. A Dutch eyeglass maker is credited with inventing it in 1608, and as soon as he heard about it, Galileo set one up himself, and became the first person to use it to observe the sky. He deduced that the moon was illuminated by a reflection of the sun on the Earth, he saw that Jupiter was orbited by moons, and he studied Venus and realized that the only explanation for its changing phases was that it orbited the sun. He thought that, finally, no one could disagree that the planets orbited the sun, so he started talking openly about his ideas. He wrote and lectured for the educated public, figuring that they were a more receptive audience than scholars.

But of course people did disagree: The Church claimed it was at odds with the Bible, particularly a verse in the Book of Joshua that describes God stopping the sun in the sky, and one in Psalms that says Earth was put on its foundations and would not move. Galileo responded publicly by explaining that the truth of the Bible was not always literal, that it used metaphorical imagery. He wrote: “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them. He would not require us to deny sense and reason in physical matters which are set before our eyes and minds by direct experience or necessary demonstrations.”

Ignorance knows no age.

Ethel Kennedy is 82 today.

Joel Grey is 78.

Louise Lasser — remember Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (No? Neither do I.) Anyway, Louise is 71 today.

Columnist and author Ellen Goodman is 69.

She worked as a researcher for Newsweek magazine, when all of the writers there were men. But she got a job as a reporter in Detroit, then for The Boston Globe, where she started writing a column in 1974. It was syndicated in 1976, eventually picked up by more than 300 newspapers. She wrote about domestic life, personal relationships, gender issues, and cultural changes over the decades. She just wrote her last column at the beginning of this year.

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

Mark Teixeira is 30.

And Joss Stone is 23, old enough to buy shoes.

President Truman relieved General Douglas MacArthur of his commands on this date in 1951.

The U.S. Navy acquired its first submarine 110 years ago today.

On April 11, 1900, the U.S. Navy acquired its first submarine, a 53-foot craft designed by Irish immigrant John P. Holland. Propelled by gasoline while on the surface and by electricity when submerged, the Holland served as a blueprint for modern submarine design. By the eve of World War I, Holland and Holland-inspired vessels were a part of large naval fleets throughout the world.

Designs for underwater boats date back to the 1500s. In the nineteenth century, the first truly practical submarines began to appear, with a period of intense development occurring at the end of the century as nations strived to establish their sea power. Seizing upon the latest military technology, the United States used subs in both the War of 1812 and the Civil War. It was not until World War I, however, that submarines emerged as major weapons.

Library of Congress

On this date in 1689, William III and Mary II were crowned joint sovereigns of Britain.

And it was on this date in 1945 that American troops entered Buchenwald, second only to Auschwitz in its horrors.

Many of the soldiers who entered Buchenwald on this day had been fighting in World War II since D-Day. They had participated some of the bloodiest battles in history. But nothing they’d seen prepared them for what they saw at Buchenwald. Several of the soldiers carried Kodak cameras, and so they took photographs of the surviving prisoners and the dead, so that people would believe what they had seen. Their photographs showed human beings so emaciated that they could barely walk, and victims’ bodies were stacked around the camp like piles of wood.

Sergeant Fred Friendly, who would go on to work as a CBS producer, wrote to his mother, “I want you to never forget or let our disbelieving friends forget, that your flesh and blood saw this.”

One of the reporters who covered the liberation of Buchenwald was Edward R. Murrow. He was so disturbed by what he saw that he couldn’t write about it for days, and let a subordinate break the story.

One of the children liberated at the camp that day was a teenager named Elie Wiesel, who would go on to win the Nobel Peace Prize. He had been forced to march from Auschwitz to Buchenwald a few weeks earlier, and his father had recently died in the camp. He saw American jeeps rolling into the camps, and he later wrote, “I will never forget the American soldiers and the horror that could be read in their faces. I will especially remember one black sergeant, a muscled giant, who wept tears of impotent rage and shame. … We tried to lift him onto our shoulders to show our gratitude, but we didn’t have the strength. We were too weak to even applaud him.”

The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media (2008)

Bob Dylan’s New York City debut occurred at Gerdes’ Folk City 49 years ago tonight.

Today we celebrate the birthday

… of Harry Morgan. Colonel Sherman Potter is 95. IMDb lists 161 credits for Morgan. If you’d like to see him as a relatively young actor, check out the 1943 classic “The Ox-Bow Incident.” Morgan was Henry Fonda’s sidekick. Great, great film.

You may not know the name Verna Felton, but you know the voice. She was the character actress heard in many Disney animations — a matriarchical elephant in Dumbo, the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella, the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland, Aunt Sarah in Lady and the Tramp. She also appeared with Harry Morgan in an early fifties sitcom December Bride — and its 1960 spinoff Pete and Gladys. She died in 1966, but Morgan kept Felton’s photo on Sherman Potter’s desk on the M*A*S*H set to portray Mrs. Potter.

That’s Morgan in the photo, with Felton (right) and Spring Byington, who played the title role on the TV series, December Bride.

… of Max von Sydow, 81.

… of Omar Sharif. Dr. Zhivago is 78. Sharif was nominated for a best supporting actor Oscar for Lawrence of Arabia.

… of John Madden. He’s 74. Madden was the Raiders head coach for 158 games, including post season. His team won 112 of them including Super Bowl XI.

… of Don Meredith. He’s 72. “Turn out the lights, the party’s over.”

… of Paul Theroux (rhymes with through). He’s 69.

It’s the birthday of novelist and travel writer Paul Theroux, born in Medford, Massachusetts (1941). After college he decided to join the Peace Corps in 1963. He later said, “I had thought of responsibilities I did not want—marriage seemed too permanent, grad school too hard, and the army too brutal.” He said the Peace Corps was a kind of “Howard Johnson’s on the main drag to maturity.”

The Peace Corps sent him to live in East Africa. He was expelled from Malawi after he became friends with a group that planned to assassinate the president of the country. He continued traveling around Africa, teaching English, and started submitting pieces to magazines back in the United States. While living in Africa, he became friends with the writer V.S. Naipaul, who became his mentor and who encouraged him to keep traveling.

He had published several novels when he decided to go on a four-month trip through Asia by train. He wrote every day on the journey, and he filled four thick notebooks with material that eventually became his first best-seller, The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia (1975).

The Writer’s Almanac

… of Steven Seagal. He’s 59. No Oscar nominations for Seagal, but he has been nominated for several Razzies and won once.

… of Anne Lamott. She’s 56.

It’s the birthday of novelist and essayist Anne Lamott, born in San Francisco, California (1954). In the late 1970s, her father was diagnosed with brain cancer, and she began to write short pieces about the effect of the disease on him and other members of her family, and these pieces became chapters of her first novel, Hard Laughter (1980).

She wrote three more novels over the next decade, but she didn’t have any big literary successes. Then, in her mid-thirties, she accidentally got pregnant and her boyfriend left her when she decided to keep the baby. For her first year as a single mother, she found herself on the edge of financial and emotional disaster. She was too busy to write fiction, so she just kept a daily journal of experiences as a parent, and that became her memoir Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year (1993). It was her first best-seller.

The Writer’s Almanac (2006)

“You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” Anne Lamott, quoted at The Writer’s Almanac narrative for her this year.

… of Mandy Moore, 26.

The Pulitizer Prize winning author David Halberstam should have been 76 today.

One of America’s most successful authors, David Halberstam began his career as a journalist in the 1950s, first as a reporter for The Daily Times Leader in West Point, Mississippi and later for the Nashville Tennessean. In 1960 he joined The New York Times and shortly thereafter was assigned to the paper’s bureau in Saigon. Halberstam was among a small group of reporters there who began to question the official optimism about the growing war in Vietnam. Halberstam’s work from Vietnam so rankled official Washington that President Kennedy once asked the publisher of The New York Times to transfer Halberstam to another bureau. In 1964, at age 30, Halberstam earned a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting from Vietnam. His best-selling book, The Best and The Brightest, chronicles America’s deepening involvement in Vietnam through the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

Reporting America at War | PBS

Joseph Pulitzer himself was born in Budapest, Hungary, on this date in 1847.

He came to this country, moved to New York City and bought The New York World newspaper. He said, “There is room in this great and growing city for a journal that is not only cheap but bright, not only bright but large, not only large but truly democratic — dedicated to the cause of the people rather than that of purse potentates — devoted more to the news of the New than the Old World; that will expose all fraud and sham; fight all public evils and abuses; that will serve and battle for the people with earnest sincerity.” With his profits, he endowed the Columbia School of Journalism as well as the annual Pulitzer Prizes for journalism, literature, drama, music.

The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media (2008)

Frances Perkins, the first woman presidential cabinet member — FDR’s Secretary of Labor — was born on this date in 1880. Perkins and Interior Secretary Harold Ickes were the only cabinet members to serve Roosevelt’s entire 12+ years. The Department of Labor Building in Washington is named for Secretary Perkins.

When Frances Perkins married in 1913 she had to go to court to win the right to keep her own name.

Today we celebrate the birthdays

… of Hugh Hefner. Hef is 84. Be sure to read his website biography.

… of Michael Learned. Momma Walton is 71.

… of Jerry Lee Lewis, Gordon Cooper, Doc Holliday, Sam Houston and, lest we forget, New Orleans Det. Remy McSwain. Dennis Quaid is 56.

… of Cynthia Nixon. The Sex in the City star is 44. Nixon played the maid hired by Salieri to spy on Mozart in the film Amadeus.

… of Rudy Huxtable. Keshia Knight Pulliam is 31.

Paul Robeson was was born on this date in 1898.

Paul Robeson was the epitome of the 20th-century Renaissance man. He was an exceptional athlete, actor, singer, cultural scholar, author, and political activist. His talents made him a revered man of his time, yet his radical political beliefs all but erased him from popular history. Today, more than one hundred years after his birth, Robeson is just beginning to receive the credit he is due.

Read more from the profile of Robeson at the PBS site for American Masters. Listen to Robeson sing Ol’ Man River.

Today we celebrate the birthdays

. . . of Betty Ford, 92.

. . . of journalist Seymour Hersh, 73.

He worked as a reporter for various wire services, including the Associated Press, and eventually as a Pentagon correspondent. But he kept trying to push the limits of his job, reporting on things that the military was trying to cover up, and when he wrote an extensive piece on chemical and biological warfare that the AP cut to just a fraction of its original size, he quit to become a freelance investigative reporter. He got a tip from a lawyer that a lieutenant, William Calley was being court-martialed for killing innocent civilians in Vietnam. Hersh decided that he was going to get that story no matter what. He drove around from base to base, waking people up to ask them where Calley was, pulling all his Pentagon strings, and finally he found him and got Calley to tell him what had happened. Hersh couldn’t get the story published at first — big places like Life and Look refused it. But his neighbor ran a small syndicate and helped Hersh sell it. And when the story hit newspapers, it made a huge impact on the public perception of the Vietnam War. Hersh became famous, and in 1970, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting.

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

. . . of John Havlicek, 70.

Known for clutch performances in big games, Havlicek posted impressive numbers during his illustrious 16-year career. In 1,270 regular-season games he scored 26,395 points and averaged 20.8 points to rank as the Celtics’ all-time leading scorer and the sixth-highest scorer in NBA history. He also grabbed 8,007 rebounds, recorded 6,114 assists, and played on eight Boston championship teams. He appeared in 13 consecutive NBA All-Star Games, earned 11 selections to the All-NBA First or Second Team, and was named to the NBA All-Defensive First or Second Team eight times.

NBA.com

. . . of Mousketeer Darlene (Gillespie). She’s 69.

. . . of Peggy Lennon (69) and Julian Lennon (47). They are not related.

. . . of Gary Carter, 56.

A rugged receiver and enthusiastic on-field general, Gary Carter excelled at one of baseball’s most demanding positions, as both as offensive and defensive force. A three-time Gold Glove Award winner, Carter belted 324 home runs in his 19-season major league career. “Kid” showed a knack for the big-time, twice earning All-Star Game MVP awards in his 11 selections. His clutch 10th-inning single in Game Six of the 1986 World Series sparked a dramatic Mets’ comeback victory, ultimately leading to a World Series title.

National Baseball Hall of Fame

. . . of Barbara Kingsolver, 55.

She grew up in a house in an alfalfa field in rural Kentucky, where her dad was the county doctor. When she was seven, her father moved the family to the Congo for a year so he could work as a medical missionary, and she started keeping a diary. They came back to Kentucky, and she kept writing in her journal, eventually writing stories and poems. She was tall and thin and bookish, and she felt like an outsider at school — she said, “I wanted to read Anna Karenina and everybody else wanted to do stuff in the back of cars.”

She was a good writer. She was also a good pianist, and so she got a scholarship to DePauw University for piano. Even though she really wanted to be a writer, she didn’t think it was any more lucrative than music, so she switched her major from music to biology. She moved to Tucson and wrote a thesis on termite behavior for her master’s degree at the University of Arizona, but she decided academia wasn’t for her and she didn’t want to finish her Ph.D. She got a job doing technical writing for the Office of Arid Land Studies at the university, and she wrote stories on her own, but she didn’t show them to anyone. Finally she decided to enter a short-story contest sponsored by an alternative weekly paper in Phoenix. She never heard anything from them, and it was more than a year later that a friend mentioned reading her story, and she realized that she had won and the paper had forgotten to tell her.

The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media

There’s more about Kingsolver at the link.

. . . of the Princess bride and Forrest’s Jenny. Robin Wright Penn is 44.

Gladys Marie Smith was born on this date in 1892. We know her as Mary Pickford. Miss Pickford won the Oscar for best actress for Coquette. The first big female movie star, Pickford was an industry leader as well, helping found United Artists and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Jim “Catfish” Hunter was born on this date in 1946.

The bigger the game, the better he pitched. Jim “Catfish” Hunter, with his pinpoint control, epitomized smart pitching at its finest. He pitched a perfect game in 1968, won 21 or more games five times in a row, and claimed the American League Cy Young Award in 1974. Arm trouble ended his career at age 33, but he still won 224 games and five World Series rings. The likable pitching ace died in 1999 at age 53 – a victim of ALS, the same disease that cut short the life of Lou Gehrig.

National Baseball Hall of Fame

Hunter died in 1999. He had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Perhaps it should be renamed Lou Gehrig’s and Catfish Hunter’s disease.

Edgar Y. (Yip) Harburg was born on this date in 1896. One of the great lyricists, Harburg would be loved by us all if only for —

Somewhere over the rainbow way up high
There’s a land that I’ve heard of once in a lullaby
Somewhere over the rainbow skies are blue
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true

Some day I’ll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far behind me
Where troubles melt like lemon drops
Away above the chimney tops
That’s where you’ll find me

Somewhere over the rainbow blue birds fly
Birds fly over the rainbow
Why then, oh why can’t I?
If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow
Why oh why can’t I?

The Harburg Foundation provides this biographical sketch:

Edgar Y. (Yip) Harburg (1896-1981) was born of Russian-Jewish immigrant parents of modest means on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. He attended the City University of New York. In high school (Townsand Harris) he met his lifelong friend, Ira Gershwin and discovered that they shared a mutual love for the works of Gilbert and Sullivan. Yip and Ira were frequent contributors of poetry and light verse to their high school and college papers.

The years after college found Yip slipping further away from writing and eventually into the world of business. After the electric appliance business Yip had helped develop over seven long years was decimated by the stock market crash of 1929, Yip turned his attention back full time to the art of writing lyrics. His old friend Ira Gershwin became a mentor, co-writer and promoter of Yip’s.

Mr. Harburg’s Broadway achievements included Bloomer Girl, Finnian’s Rainbow, Flahooley and Jamaica.

His most noted work in film musicals was in The Wizard of OZ for which he wrote lyrics, was the final editor and contributed much to the script (including the scene at the end where the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion are rewarded for their efforts by the Wizard). He also wrote lyrics for the Warner Brothers movie, Gay Purr-ee.

Yip was “blacklisted” during the 50’s by film, radio and television for his liberal views.

In all, Yip wrote lyrics to 537 songs including; “Brother Can You Spare a Dime”, “April In Paris”, “It’s Only a Paper Moon”, “Hurry Sundown”, “Lydia the Tattooed Lady”, “How Are Things In Glocca Mora” and of course his most famous… “Over the Rainbow”.

Today is the birthday

. . . of Ravi Shankar. Norah Jones’ father is 90. That’s Ravi last month with daughter Anoushka Shankar. Click the link. The music is lovely.

Shankar is not one-dimensional. Apart from pursuing a career as a classical performer, he has also experimented outside this field. For this reason he has attracted criticism from purists. Some of this, especially during the Beatles era, undoubtedly had an element of jealousy to it; some was certainly warranted, because Shankar did take many chances. In fact, that was one of the things that kept his music exciting. To use a cricketing image — baseball would be wholly inappropriate — Shankar’s batting average has remained high throughout a long and illustrious career.

allmusic

. . . of Hendley “The Scrounger,” Bret Maverick and Jim Rockford. That’s James Garner, 82 today.

. . . of Trapper. Wayne Rogers is 77.

. . . of Governor Moonbeam. Jerry Brown is 72.

. . . of Francis Ford Coppola. The Oscar-winning writer and director is 71. Coppola has been nominated 14 times overall, winning five, three for writing (Patton, Godfather and Godfather II). He won the best director and best picture Oscars for Godfather II.

. . . of David Frost. The journalist, television celebrity is 71.

. . . of Russell Crowe. The 3-time best actor Oscar nominee is 46. He won for Gladiator.

. . . of Tiki and Ronde. The Barber brothers are 70 today.

Eleanora Fagan was born on this date in 1915. We know her as Billie Holiday.

Miss Holiday set a pattern during her most fruitful years that has proved more influential than that of almost any other jazz singer, except the two who inspired her, Louis Armstrong and the late Bessie Smith.

Miss Holiday became a singer more from desperation than desire. She was named Eleanora Fagan after her birth in Baltimore. She was the daughter of a 13-year-old mother, Sadie Fagan, and a 15-year-old father who were married three years after she was born.

The first and major influence on her singing came when as a child she ran errands for the girls in a near-by brothel in return for the privilege of listening to recordings by Mr. Armstrong and Miss Smith.
. . .

At Jerry Preston’s Log Cabin, a night club, she asked for work as a dancer. She danced the only step she knew for fifteen choruses and was turned down. The pianist, taking pity on her, asked if she could sing. She brashly assured him that she could. She sang “Trav’lin’ All Alone” and then “Body and Soul” and got a job–$2 a night for six nights a week working from midnight until about 3 o’clock the next afternoon.

Miss Holiday had been singing in Harlem in this fashion for a year or two when she was heard by John Hammond, a jazz enthusiast, who recommended her to Benny Goodman, at that time a relatively unknown clarinet player who was the leader on occasional recording sessions.

She made her first recording, “Your Mother’s Son-in-Law” in November, 1933, singing one nervous chorus with a band that included in addition to Mr. Goodman, Jack Teagarden, Gene Krupa and Joe Sullivan.

Two years later Miss Holiday started a series of recordings with groups led by Teddy Wilson, the pianist, which established her reputation in the jazz world. On many of these recordings the accompanying musicians were members of Count Basie’s band, a group with which she felt a special affinity. She was particularly close to Mr. Basie’s tenor saxophonist, the late Lester Young.

It was Mr. Young who gave her the nickname by which she was known in jazz circles–Lady Day. She in turn created the name by which Mr. Young was identified by jazz bands, “Pres.” She was the vocalist with the Basie band for a brief time during 1937 and the next year she signed for several months with Artie Shaw’s band.

The New York Times (1959)

Billie Holiday, Francis Ford Coppola and James Garner — it ought to be a national holiday.

Today is the birthday

… of Andre Previn. The composer-conducter and 13-time Oscar nominee — he won for Gigi, Porgy and Bess, Irma la Douce and My Fair Lady — is 81. Previn was married to Mia Farrow for most of the 1970s. They had three children and adopted three more.

… of Merle Haggard. The Country Music Hall of Fame inductee is 73.

Haggard has recorded more than 600 songs, about 250 of them his own compositions. (He often shares writing credits as gestures of financial and personal largess.) He has had thirty-eight #1 songs, and his “Today I Started Loving You Again” (Capitol, 1968) has been recorded by nearly 400 other artists.

In addition, Haggard is an accomplished instrumentalist, playing a commendable fiddle and a to-be-reckoned-with lead guitar. He and the Strangers played for Richard Nixon at the White House in 1973, at a barbecue on the Reagan ranch in 1982, at Washington’s Kennedy Center, and 60,000 miles from earth—courtesy of astronaut Charles Duke, who brought a tape aboard Apollo 16 in 1972. Haggard has won numerous CMA and ACM Awards including both organizations’ 1970 Entertainer of the Year awards, been nominated for scores of others, was elected to the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame in 1977, and won Country Music Hall of Fame membership in 1994. In 1984 he won a Grammy in the Best Country Vocal Performance, Male category for “That’s the Way Love Goes.”

Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum

… of Billy Dee Williams. Lando Calrissian is 73. Williams played Gale Sayers in the classic 1971 TV movie Brian’s Song.

“There’s always been a lot of misunderstanding about Lando’s character. I used to pick up my daughter from elementary school and get into arguments with little children who would accuse me of betraying Han Solo.”

… of Barry Levinson. The six-time Oscar nominee (writing, directing) won for best director for Rain Man. He’s 68.

… of John Ratzenberger. Best known as Cliff Clavin the mailman on Cheers, Ratzenberger is also the voice of Hamm the Piggy Bank in the Toy Story movies and Yeti in Monsters, Inc. Ratzenberger is 63.

… of Jason Hervey. Wayne Arnold of “The Wonder Years” is 38.

… of Zach Braff of Scrubs. He’s 35 today.

Oscar-winner and four-time nominee Walter Huston was born on this date in 1884. Huston won Best Supporting Actor Oscar for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, one of the great performances. Walter was the father of John and grandfather of Anjelica.