Individuals born on this date with an emphasis on American history and culture, including pop culture.
Bob Dole is 85 today.
Oscar-winning actress Louise Fletcher, Nurse Ratched, is 74.
68. How old is Jeopardy host Alex Trebek today?
One-time supporting actor Oscar nominee Albert Brooks, Danny Glover and The Eagles Don Henley all turn 61 today
Two-time Oscar nominee for best actor Willem Dafoe, aka the Green Goblin, aka Jesus, is 53.
David Spade is 44.
… of Janet Reno, the first woman attorney general of the United States. She is 70.
… of actor Edward Herrmann. He is 65.
… of Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau. He’s 60.
… of Mork. Robin Williams is 57. 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 51. Fresh!
… of Brandi Chastain. She’s 40.
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 75 today.
The Writer’s Almanac has a good short profile that includes this:
It wasn’t until the publication of All the Pretty Horses in 1992 that McCarthy finally became widely recognized. It’s about a 16-year-old Texas rancher who leaves his family and rides into northern Mexico looking to make his fortune. None of McCarthy’s first five novels had sold more than 2,500 hardcover copies, but All the Pretty Horses won the National Book Award and sold almost 200,000 copies in less than six months. It’s since been made into a Hollywood movie. McCarthy used the money to buy a new truck.
And there’s this from the Cormac McCarthy web site:
Critics have compared Cormac McCarthy’s nightmarish yet beautifully written adventure masterpiece, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West, with the best works of Dante, Poe, De Sade, Melville, Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor and William Styron. The critic Harold Bloom, among others, has declared it one of the greatest novels of the Twentieth Century, and perhaps the greatest by a living American writer. Critics cite its magnificent language, its uncompromising representation of a crucial period of American history, and its unapologetic, bleak vision of the inevitability of suffering and violence.
And, of course, McCarthy’s novel No Country for Old Men was made into last year’s Oscar winner for best picture. The Coen brothers won the Oscar for best adaptation, but the movie quite faithfully follows what McCarthy had written.
Carlos Santana was born in Autlan de Navarro, Mexico, 61 years ago today. His family migrated to the U.S. in the 1960s.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame introduces inductee Santana this way —
Guitarist Carlos Santana is one of rock’s true virtuosos and guiding lights. Since 1966, he has led the group that bears his surname, selling over 30 million albums and performing before 13 million people. Though numerous musicians have passed through Santana’s ranks, the continuing presence of Carlos Santana at the helm has insured high standards. From the earliest days, when Santana first overlaid Afro-Latin rhythms upon a base of driving blues-rock, they have been musical sorcerers. The melodic fluency and kineticism of Santana’s guitar solos and the piercing, sustained tone that is his signature have made him one of rock’s standout instrumentalists. Coupled with the polyrhythmic fury of drums, congas and timbales, the sound of Santana in full flight is singularly exciting. Underlying it all is Santana’s belief that music should “create a bridge so people can have more trust and hope in humanity.”
Howard Schultz, the developer of Starbucks, is 55 today. The Writer’s Almanac has an interesting profile that includes this:
On a vacation to Italy in 1983 he had an epiphany. Sitting at an espresso bar in Milan, he realized that there strong fresh brewed coffee was an integral part of people’s daily lives, that the coffeehouse was a third place for people after home and work. He decided that this could happen in Seattle.
George McGovern, a very good man if a very poor presidential candidate, is 86 today. This also from today’s Writer’s Almanac.
A bomber pilot in World War II, he flew 29 combat missions before his plane was badly damaged over Vienna and his navigator killed. He survived a crash landing on an island in the Adriatic Sea and won a Distinguished Flying Cross before returning for five more missions. Although both of his parents were Republicans, McGovern ran for Congress in 1956 as a Democrat and won, the first South Dakota Democrat to go to the House of Representatives in 22 years. After a losing campaign in 1960, he was elected to the Senate in 1962, and, upon re-election in ’68, emerged as a leading opponent to the war in Vietnam. He said, “I’m fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.”
Anthony Edwards, “Goose,” is 46 today.
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.
“Abe Lincoln may have freed all men, but Sam Colt made them equal.”
Phyllis Diller is 91 today. Before she became a kind of parody of herself she was actually very, very funny. The Writer’s Almanac has a good profile with a little bit of classic Diller material.
They also have a good piece today on Erle Stanley Gardner, the author of the Perry Mason mysteries, born on July 17th in 1889.
Fifties TV host Art Linkletter is 96 today. He’s the one that said “kids say the funniest things” and had a panel of them on many of his shows to prove it.
Diahann Carroll , the first African-American actress to appear in a TV series and not portray a domestic worker, is 73 today. The show was Julia and she was a nurse and single mom. Ms. Carroll was nominated for a best actress Oscar for Claudine in 1975.
Kiefer’s dad Donald is 73 today. Donald Sutherland’s breakthrough role was as Vernon Pinkley in The Dirty Dozen, then as “Hawkeye” Pierce in M*A*S*H. He has 150 credits listed at IMDb.
Camilla is 61.
And one of my favorites, Andre Royo, “Bubbles,” is 40 today.
Elbridge Gerry was born on this date in 1744. He signed the Declaration of Independence, the Article of Confederation, but was one of three delegates who did not sign the Constitution, in Gerry’s case because it did not include a Bill of Rights. Gerry was the fifth U.S. vice president, serving the first year-and-a-half under Madison’s second term before dying. And, of course, he is the person for whom gerrymandering is named. He was the Massachusetts governor who signed a particularly egregious redistricting plan in 1812.
Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger was published on this date in 1951. It’s sold about 60 million copies since. The following is excerpted from a longer piece today at The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor.
Salinger’s division hit the beach in the fifth hour of the invasion, and for the next several months Salinger saw some of the bloodiest fighting of the war, including the Battle of the Bulge. Between 50 and 200 soldiers in his division were killed or wounded every day. At the end of the war, Salinger checked into an Army general hospital in Nuremberg, suffering from a nervous breakdown. He spent several months recuperating.
It was after Salinger’s release from the hospital that he sent out for publication the first Holden Caulfield story narrated by Holden Caulfield himself, a story called “I’m Crazy.” It was published in Collier‘s in December of 1945. One year later, in 1946, The New Yorker finally published “Slight Rebellion Off Madison,” which they had been holding onto since before the war began. J.D. Salinger had finally become a New Yorker writer, something he’d been dreaming of for more than a decade.
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 41 today; Barry Sanders is 40.
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 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 73 today.
… of Tucson’s favorite daughter, Linda Ronstadt, 62 today. Miss Ronstadt has sold more than 66 million albums worldwide. The session band behind her on her third album became The Eagles. Linda went to a different high school and was behind me a year or two, but I did sit behind her cousin Margaret in many a class when the nuns had us in alphabetical order.
… of Forest Whitaker, 47. 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 Van Rijn was born in Leiden, Netherlands on this date in 1606.
… was born in Okemah, Oklahoma, on this date in 1912. We, of course, know him as Woody Guthrie.
This from David Hajdu in a review in The New Yorker earlier this year of a new biography of Guthrie:
…”This Land Is Your Land,” a song that most people likely think they know in full. The lyrics had been written in anger, as a response to Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America,” which Woody Guthrie deplored as treacle. In addition to the familiar stanzas (“As I went walking that ribbon of highway,” and so on), Guthrie had composed a couple of others, including this:
One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple
By the Relief Office I saw my people—
As they stood hungry, I stood there wondering if
God Blessed America for me.
There’s an American Masters program on Guthrie currently in circulation on PBS.
I ain’t never got nowhere yet
But I got there by hard work
Woody Guthrie died in 1967.
Harrison Ford is 66 and Richard Marin is 62 today.
Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Satchel Paige was born 102 years ago today. A huge star in the Negro Leagues, Paige began pitching in 1926 and was the oldest major league rookie ever when he joined the Cleveland Indians at age 42. Paige pitched in his last major league game in 1965 (at age 59).
In the barnstorming days, he pitched perhaps 2,500 games, completed 55 no-hitters and performed before crowds estimated at 10 million persons in the United States, the Caribbean and Central America. He once started 29 games in one month in Bismarck, N.D., and he said later that he won 104 of the 105 games he pitched in 1934.
By the time Jackie Robinson signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 as the first black player in the majors, Mr. Paige was past 40. But Bill Veeck, the impresario of the Cleveland club, signed him to a contract the following summer, and he promptly drew crowds of 72,000 in his first game and 78,000 in his third game. (The New York Times)
Paige first published his Rules for Staying Young in 1953. This version is from his autobiography published in 1962, Maybe I’ll Pitch Forever.
95 today and still making music.
Pinetop will be appearing this Saturday at the Mont Tremblant, Quebec, Blues Festival. Next week he’ll be at the Master Musicians Festival in Somerset, Kentucky. August 1st and 2nd at Notodden Blues Festival in Notodden, Norway.
Historian and author David McCullough is 75 today. His works include some of the best—and best-selling—biographies ever, Truman and John Adams, and the more recent miliary history 1776.
NewMexiKen thought this excerpt from an interview McCullough did with NEH Chairman Bruce Cole was interesting:
McCullough: There are certain books that I like very much. Reveille in Washington. I love Barbara Tuchman’s work, particularly The Proud Tower. Paul Horgan’s biography of Archbishop Lamy is a masterpiece. Wallace Stegner’s book on John Wesley Powell I’m fond of.
I like some of the present-day people: Robert Caro’s first volume on Lyndon Johnson was brilliant. I care for some of the best of the Civil War writing: Shelby Foote, for example, and Bruce Catton’s The Stillness at Appomattox. It was Catton’s Stillness at Appomattox that started me reading about the Civil War, and then on to people like Tuchman and others. There is a wonderful book called The Reason Why, about the Charge of the Light Brigade–and biographies–Henri Troyat’s Tolstoy, for example.
I work very hard on the writing, writing and rewriting and trying to weed out the lumber. I’m very aware how many distractions the reader has in life today, how many good reasons there are to put the book down. To hold the reader’s attention, you have to bring the person who’s reading the book inside the experience of the time: What was it like to have been alive then? What were these people like as human beings?
When I did Truman, I had no idea what woods I was venturing into. Had I known it was going to take me ten years, I never would have done it. In retrospect, I’m delighted now that I didn’t know.
I love all sides of the work but that doesn’t mean it isn’t hard. There have been times when a book was taking year after year—not with this one so much, but with The Path Between the Seas—when I’d come down to Washington to do research in the National Archives, hoping I wouldn’t find anything new because it could set me back another year or two.
By the same token, to open up a box of the death certificates kept by the French at the hospital in Ancon, at Panama City and to read the personal details of those who died—their names, their age, where they came from, height, color of eyes—was a connection with the reality of them, the mortal tale of that undertaking, that one can never find by doing the conventional kind of research with microfilm or Xeroxed copies.
McCullough also says this: “You stand in front of one of those great paintings or you pick up Samuel Johnson’s essays or Francis Parkman’s works on the French and Indian War, and it’s humbling. But it also is affirming in the sense that you realize that you’re working in a great tradition.”
Today we honor two venerable American institutions.
On this date in 1864 Abraham Lincoln signed the land grant preserving Yosemite Valley.
According to the Library of Congress:
The legislation provided California with 39,000 acres of the Yosemite Valley and the nearby Mariposa Big Tree Grove “upon the express conditions that the premises shall be held for public use, resort, and recreation.”
The newly-appointed Yosemite Board of Park Commissioners confronted the dual task of preserving the magnificent landscape while providing for public recreation. With amazing foresight, board member and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted noted these goals could conflict. In his August 9, 1865 Draft of Preliminary Report upon the Yosemite and Big Tree Grove, Olmsted warns “the slight harm which the few hundred visitors of this year might do, if no care were taken to prevent it, would not be slight, if it should be repeated by millions.”
And Lena Horne is 91 today.
Even in her eighties, the legendary Lena Horne has a quality of timelessness about her. Elegant and wise, she personifies both the glamour of Hollywood and the reality of a lifetime spent battling racial and social injustice. Pushed by an ambitious mother into the chorus line of the Cotton Club when she was sixteen, and maneuvered into a film career by the N.A.A.C.P., she was the first African American signed to a long-term studio contract. In her rise beyond Hollywood’s racial stereotypes of maids, butlers, and African natives, she achieved true stardom on the silver screen, and became a catalyst for change even beyond the glittery fringes of studio life.
Elsewhere —
Vincent D’Onofrio is 49.
Deirdre Lovejoy — Rhonda Pearlman of The Wire — is 46.
Mike Tyson is 42.
37 years ago today the 26th amendment was ratified by Ohio, the required 38th state. The amendment lowered the voting age to 18.
Today is the birthday
… of Harmon Killebrew, 72. Not only is Killebrew in the Hall of Fame, but his is the profile on the Major League Baseball logo.
… of best actor Oscar nominee Gary Busey. He’s 64. The nomination was for The Buddy Holly Story.
… of Football Hall of Famer Dan Dierdorf, 59.
… of Maria Conchita Alonso, 51.
Actress Jayne Mansfield, just 34, was killed 41 years ago today when her car struck a trailer truck near Slidell, Louisiana. The driver and Ms. Mansfield’s companion, Sam Brody, were also killed. Three of her children asleep in the backseat survived.
Today is the birthday
… of three-time Oscar nominee for best actress Eleanor Parker. She’s 86.
… of Derek Jeter, 34.
… of Michael Vick, 28.
Author Walter Farley was born on June 26, 1916.
He grew up loving horses and went on to write the novel The Black Stallion (1941). It’s the story of a boy and a wild stallion who survive a shipwreck and become friends on a deserted island. The book was so popular that Farley went on to write twenty novels about the horse, including The Black Stallion Returns (1945), The Black Stallion Revolts (1953), and The Black Stallion’s Ghost (1969).
NewMexiKen’s favorite was always The Island Stallion.
Mildred (Babe) Didrikson Zaharias was born on June 26, 1914. Ms. Zaharias was named the top female athlete of the first half of the 20th century. She excelled in track and field, then took up golf at age 21, often hitting more than 1,000 golf balls a day as she learned the game. Eventually she won every important championship. Babe Zaharias died of cancer at age 42.
Pearl Buck was born on June 26, 1892. Ms. Buck won the Noble Prize for literature in 1938 “for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces.” This is an excerpt from The Writer’s Almanac:
On the ship to America she started writing a new novel called East Wind, West Wind, which was published in 1930 and became a small success. The following year, she published The Good Earth (1931), about a Chinese peasant who becomes a wealthy landowner. At the time, Westerners saw China as one of the most exotic places on earth. Pearl Buck was the first writer to portray the ordinary lives of Chinese people for a Western audience. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for literature and became an international best seller.
Al Molinaro of “Happy Days” is 89 today.
Mick Fleetwood is 61. “Rumours” has sold more than 19 million copies, the 10th best-selling album of all time.1
Minka Kelly of “Friday Night Lights” is 28 today. Old for high school wouldn’t you say?
Jack Dempsey was born on this date in 1895 in Manassa, Colorado, which makes him about the most famous native-son of the San Luis Valley.
1
… of Justice Clarence Thomas. He’s 60.
… of American Idol’s Randy Jackson. He’s 52.
… of Oscar-winner Frances McDormand. She’s 51. Miss McDormand has had three Oscar nominations for best supporting actress in addition to her winning best actress performance in Fargo.
… of K.T. Tunstall. Kate is 33.
Her face is a map of the world
Is a map of the world
You can see she’s a beautiful girl
She’s a beautiful girl
And everything around her is a silver pool of light
The people who surround her feel the benefit of it
It makes you calm
She holds you captivated in her palm
Suddenly I see (Suddenly I see)
This is what I wanna be
Suddenly I see (Suddenly I see)
Why the hell it means so much to me
… of LaDainian Tomlinson. He’s 29.
Choreographer Bob Fosse was born on this date in 1927.
According to many sources, Killer Angels author Michael Shaara was born on this date in 1929. According to his biography at son Jeff Shaara’s web site, the father was born in 1928. The Killer Angels, which won the Pulitzer Prize and is regarded by many as the best Civil War novel, “was rejected by the first fifteen publishers who saw the manuscript.”
Alfred Charles Kinsey was born on this date in 1894. And so was Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, who, at age 42, gave up his throne for the woman he loved. After just 10 months as king, Edward VIII defied the British establishment to marry Mrs. Bessie Wallis Warfield Simpson, a twice-divorced American. One wonders what Henry VIII would have thought of the fuss. (The House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was renamed the House of Windsor in 1917.)
Jane Russell is 87 today. She was 36D when she made The Outlaw for Howard Hughes. He discovered her at his dentist, where she was a receptionist.
Meredith Baxter and Michael Gross, the wife and husband on the TV sitcom Family Ties, are both 61 today. Alex, their son on the show, was played by Michael J. Fox, who was 46 on June 9th.
Novelist Ian McEwan is 60.
Kathy Mattea is 48.
Juliette Lewis is 35 today. She was 18 when she played the daughter in Cape Fear, and received a best supporting actress Oscar nomination.
Prince William is 26.
It doesn’t really matter but existentialist philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre was born on this date in 1905.
Sartre became a teacher. At a time when the European teaching style was lecturing from a distance, he drank with his students at local bars, played cards and ping-pong with them, and joined them for picnics on the beach. In his spare time he began to write a novel called Nausea (1938). The book was his first major success, and it made him famous. People called him the French Kafka. He went on to write Being and Nothingness (1943), about the meaning of freedom. He wrote, “Hell is other people.” And, “If you are lonely when you’re alone, you are in bad company.”
Today is the birthday
… of Olympia Dukakis. She’s 77. Miss Dukakis won the Oscar for best supporting actress for Moonstruck.
… of Martin Landau. He’s 77. Mr. Landau has been nominated for three best supporting actor Oscars, winning of course for Ed Wood.
… of Danny Aiello. He’s 75. Mr. Aiello was nominated for the best supporting actor Oscar for Do The Right Thing.
… of John Mahoney. This retired Seattle cop, the father of two psychiatrists, is 68. You know, Frasier’s dad, Martin Crane.
… of Brian Wilson; he’s 66. Perhaps the greatest American composer of popular music of the past 40+ years, Wilson is an inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as the self-destructive, yet creative genius behind the Beach Boys.
… of Anne Murray, 63.
… of Bob Vila. He’s 62, so it’s not just “This Old House” that’s old anymore.
… of Lionel Richie, 59.
… of John Goodman. He’s 56. Goodman has been nominated for eight Emmys without a victory. He did win a Golden Globe for playing Roseanne’s husband Dan.
… of Nicole Kidman. She’s 41. Nominated for best actress twice, Miss Kidman won the Oscar for The Hours.
Chet Atkins was born on June 20th in 1924. He died of lung cancer in 2001.
Few guitarists have had more influence on the instrument than Chet Atkins. In Atkins’ case, his influence extends from the country-music realm into rock and roll, as well. As a studio musician, he appeared on records by Elvis Presley, the Everly Brothers, Hank Williams, Roy Orbison, and countless country musicians. Atkins’ thumb-and-fingerpicking style influenced George Harrison, Duane Eddy, the Ventures, Eddie Cochran, Eric Clapton and Mark Knopfler, as well as innumerable country pickers. Even the likes of Ted Nugent has credited Atkins with inspiring him to take up the instrument. ”I think he influenced everybody who picked up a guitar,” said Duane Eddy.
Errol Flynn was born on June 20th in 1909. Flynn was from Tasmania, Australia — his mother was descended from one of the Bounty mutineers. The role that made him a sensation was Captain Blood in 1935. Most of his movie portrayals were of the swashbuckle type. Drugs and alcohol took their toll, and Flynn died at age 50.
Flynn’s yacht registration was among the records NewMexiKen once managed. The purpose for the vessel he wrote on the government form was: “Pleasure! Pleasure! Pleasure!”
Lillian Hellman was born on June 20th in 1905.
Her first big success was The Children’s Hour — which premiered on Broadway in 1934 — about a pompous boarding school child who damaged the reputations of the two school directors by accusing them of being lesbians. The play was banned in many places, including Boston and Chicago. Hellman later adapted the play for film, changing the scandalous relationship into a love triangle, and it came out as These Three in 1936.
She wrote several volumes of memoirs, including An Unfinished Woman (1969), about her New Orleans childhood; Pentimento (1973), which inspired a film; and Scoundrel Time (1976), which included an account of her testimony before the Un-American Activities House Committee.
Hellman said, “People change and forget to tell each other.”
Today is the birthday
… of Gena Rowlands. She’s 78. Miss Rowlands has been nominated for the best actress Oscar twice — A Woman Under the Influence (1974) and Gloria (1980).
… of Salman Rushdie. He’s 61.
When Rushdie published The Satanic Verses in 1988, most Western critics didn’t notice that it would be offensive to Muslims. In the book, Rushdie makes a lot of obscure jokes about the Islamic religion, he names the whores in a Mecca brothel after the Prophet Muhammad’s wives, and he suggests that the Koran is not the direct word of God. The book was banned in India the month after publication and then subsequently in other countries. It was also publicly burned. There were bomb threats called in to the publishing house. Translators of the work suffered assassination attempts; the Italian translator was wounded, the Japanese translator killed, and the fire set by Islamic extremists to the Turkish translator’s hotel left 40 people dead.
The above excerpted from The Writer’s Almanac, which has much more.
… of Phylicia Rashad. Clair Hanks Huxtable is 60. (Bill Cosby, Dr. Huxtable, is 11 years older.)
… of Kathleen Turner. She’s 54. Miss Turner was nominated for the best actress Oscar for Peggy Sue Got Married (1986).
… of Paula Abdul. She’s 46. A former Lakers cheerleader, Miss Abdul had six number one records 1988-1991. She topped the charts for 15 weeks altogether.
Lou Gehrig was born on June 19 in 1903.
Lou Gehrig teamed with Babe Ruth to form baseball’s most devastating hitting tandem ever. “The Iron Horse” had 13 consecutive seasons with both 100 runs scored and 100 RBI, averaging 139 runs and 148 RBI; set an American League mark with 184 RBI in 1931; hit a record 23 grand slams; and won the 1934 Triple Crown. His .361 batting average in seven World Series led the Yankees to six titles. A true gentleman and a tragic figure, Gehrig’s consecutive games played streak ended at 2,130 when he was felled by a disease that later carried his own name.
Gehrig died in 1941. As Christopher Moltisanti of The Sopranos puts it, “You ever think what a coincidence it is that Lou Gehrig died of Lou Gehrig’s disease?”
Moses Horwitz was born on June 19th 110 years ago. That’s the boss stooge, Moe Howard. “I’ll squeeze the cider out of your Adam’s apple.”
The Statue of Liberty arrived at Bedloe’s Island in New York harbor on June 19, 1885.
The statue is constructed of hand-shaped copper sheets, assembled on a framework of steel supports designed by engineers Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc and Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel. For transit to America, the figure was broken down into 350 separate pieces and packed in 214 crates. The Statue of Liberty sits within the star-shaped walls of the former Fort Wood, rising to a height of 305 feet on a pedestal designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt.
Worldwide about 16½ million people have their birthday today, among them …
Lou Brock, who’s 69.
Recognized as one of the most gifted base runners in baseball, Lou Brock helped to revolutionize the art and science of this element of the game as he totaled 938 stolen bases during his 19-year career. A six-time All-Star selection, Brock also accumulated more than 3,000 hits to help lead the St. Louis Cardinals to three National League pennants and two World Series championships. Although his stolen base records have been eclipsed, the National League honors each year’s stolen base leader with the Lou Brock Award.
Paul McCartney. He’s 66.
Between his work with the Beatles and as a solo artist and leader of Wings, McCartney has written or cowritten more than 50 Top Ten singles. With and without Wings, McCartney has been extremely prolific, averaging an album a year since the appearance of McCartney. Moreover, he’s been eclectic as well, not only recording pop and rock but also dabbling in various classical forms and ambient dance music. In the post-Beatles era McCartney has cracked the Top Forty 35 times. When combined with the Beatles’ 49 Top Forty U.S. singles, it is a matter of statistical fact that Paul McCartney is the most successful pop-music composer ever and the second greatest hitmaker, behind Elvis Presley. Without question he is one of the most important musicians of the 20th century.
The first film critic to win the Pulitizer Prize for distinguished criticism, Roger Ebert is 66 today.
Best actress Oscar nominee Carol Kane is 56
So is Isabella Rossellini, the daughter of the two legends, Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman.
Not eligible for the Pro Football Hall of Fame until next year, Bruce Smith is 45 today. Smith was Virginia Tech’s first great football player.
George Mikan was born on June 18 in 1924. At 6-10 Mikan was the first “big man” in basketball leading the Minneapolis Lakers to five NBA titles in six years. The widening of the lane, the NBA shot clock and the rule against defensive goaltending were brought about by Mikan’s dominance. He was named one of the 50 best ever in the NBA in 1996. George Mikan died in 2005.
That’s Mikan with Abdul-Jabbar and Shaq.
Emmy-award winning actor E.G. Marshall was born on June 18 in 1914. Marshall appeared in more than 100 television programs, most famously for The Defenders.
The famed oil firefighter Red Adair was born on June 18 in 1915. A generation ago Adair’s feats were well-known enough to inspire a John Wayne movie, Hellfighters.
Bud Collyer was born on June 18 in 1908. Collyer was the voice of Superman on the radio 1940-1951, but known better now as one of the first TV game show hosts, in particular for Beat the Clock.
Barry Manilow is 65. He was born Barry Alan Pincus, but raised by his mother and grandparents named Manilow. Some sources say he is 62.
Thomas Haden Church is 47. Church was nominated for a supporting actor Oscar for Sideways.
Greg Kinnear is 45. Kinnear was nominated for a supporting actor Oscar for As Good As It Gets. Kinnear is a graduate of The University of Arizona (1985).
Venus Williams is 28.
M.C. Escher was born on June 17th in 1898.
Ralph Bellamy was born on June 17th in 1904. Bellamy was nominated for a supporting actor Oscar for The Awful Truth in 1937. He received an Honorary Oscar in 1987. Bellamy starred in an early TV series, Man Against Crime.
John Hersey was born on June 17th in 1914. Hersey won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1945 for A Bell for Adano but is perhaps better known for Hiroshima.
After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945, he was one of the first Western reporters to arrive and document the aftermath. In his reporting, he deciding to write about how individual persons were affected, and he focused his stories on the lives of six people in Hiroshima at the time of the explosion: a minister, a seamstress who had been widowed, two doctors, a minister, a Catholic priest, and a young factory worker.
The editor of The New Yorker decided to devote the last issue in August of 1946 to Hersey’s articles. Later, the collected articles appeared in book form, Hiroshima, published in 1946.
Several sources give June 16, 1829, as Geronimo’s date of birth. It’s not clear to NewMexiKen that the Apaches were using the Gregorian calendar at that time. And, indeed, one of those sources, The New York Times, stated in its obituary of Geronimo in February 1909 that he was nearly 90 — not 79 as this birth date would indicate. But, he had to be born some time. So why not June 16?
In her excellent 1976 biography of Geronimo, Angie Debo concludes:
Geronimo was born in the early 1820’s near the upper Gila in the mountains crossed by the present state boundary [Arizona-New Mexico], probably on the Arizona side near the present Clifton. …
He was given the name Goyahkla, with the generally accepted meaning “One Who Yawns,’ why or under what circumstances is not known.
As an adult in battle he was called Geronimo by Mexican soldiers, perhaps because they could not pronounce Goyahkla, or perhaps to invoke Saint Jerome (Geronimo is Spanish for Jerome). The name was adopted for him by his own people.
Novelist Joyce Carol Oates is 70 today.
She published her first story, “In the Old World,” in Mademoiselle magazine (1959) just before her senior year of college, and she published her first book of short stories, By the North Gate, a few years later, in 1963. She has gone on to become one of the most prolific writers of her generation, writing more than 70 books in 40 years, including novels, short stories, plays, poetry, and essays. She writes almost everything in long hand before typing, and she usually cuts out a few hundred pages from every novel before it is published.
Lamont Dozier is 67. Who is Lamont Dozier you say? Along with Eddie and Brian Holland, Dozier wrote a few songs you may know, among them:
Baby I Need Your Loving
Baby Love
Bernadette
Come See About Me
Nowhere To Run
I Hear a Symphony
My World Is Empty Without You
Reach Out, I’ll Be There
How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You
(Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch) I Can’t Help Myself
Stop! In The Name Of Love
This Old Heart Of Mine
It’s The Same Old Song
Jimmy Mack
Roberto “No Mas” Duran is 57. In a 1980 fight with Sugar Ray Leonard, with 16 seconds remaining in the 8th round, Duran had enough. He told the referee, “No mas, no mas.”
Phil Mickelson —Lefty — is 38 today. He’s watching the playoff on TV with the rest of us.
Happy birthday to you too Uncle Rich.
