Category: Birthdays

Holly Hunter is 47. It appears her face is much younger.

Carl Reiner is 83. From the Encyclopedia of Television:

Carl Reiner is one of the few true Renaissance persons of 20th-century mass media. Known primarily for his work as creator, writer and producer of The Dick Van Dyke Show–one of a handful of classic sitcoms by which others are measured–Reiner has also made his mark as a comedian, actor, novelist, and film director.

Barney Miller is 74. That’s Hal Linden.

Hockey hall-of-famer Bobby Orr is 57.

Miss Hunter’s love interest in Broadcast News, William Hurt, is 55.

The Fabulous Thunderbirds’ Jimmie Vaughan (Stevie Ray’s brother) is 54.

Shelton Lee is 48. His mother called him Spike.

Bruce Willis is 50 today.

Congress approved Daylight Saving Time on this date in 1918. Word hasn’t reached Indiana and Arizona.

Bob Dylan’s first album was released on this date in 1962.

Wyatt Earp was born on this date in 1848. He died in 1929, age 80. Larry McMurtry has an essay on Wyatt, Back to the O.K. Corral, in the current New York Review of Books.

I am talking, of course, about the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, which, for starters, wasn’t fought in the O.K. Corral—the shooting occurred across the street in a vacant lot adjacent to the local photographer Camillus Fry’s rooming house. Some say the shooting only lasted fifteen seconds; others give it twenty seconds, or even thirty. Local estimate was that some thirty shots were fired, at close if not quite point blank range. Three men were killed and three wounded. The shoot-out at the O.K. Corral was neither more nor less violent than a number of shootings that had occurred in Tombstone or its environs in the few short years of the community’s existence. It solved nothing, proved nothing, meant nothing; and yet, 123 years later, the gunfight at the O.K. Corral is reenacted every day in Tombstone, Arizona, to paying customers—lots of paying customers.

The most recent O.K. Corral movie stars Kevin Costner as Wyatt; the next most recent, released a few months earlier, stars Kurt Russell as Wyatt, with Val Kilmer as Doc. There are so many gunfight-at-the O.K.-Corral movies that they constitute a kind of subgenre of the western. In the most lyrical version, John Ford’s My Darling Clementine (1946), Henry Fonda plays Wyatt Earp.

What I’m wondering is why, in this day and time, anyone should care about Wyatt Earp, or any Earp, or the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, either. The Battle of the Little Bighorn at least offers heroism, spectacle, and mass, whereas the gunfight at the O.K. Corral was merely a bungled arrest. Virgil Earp, not Wyatt, was the peace officer in charge that day. How do we get from a bungled arrest to Henry Fonda, Hugh O’Brian, Burt Lancaster, Kevin Costner, Kurt Russell, and all the other movie land Wyatts? I’d like to know.

It’ll cost you $3.00 to read the whole thing unless you subscribe, but it’s worth it. Of course, you can buy the whole issue in paper for $4.95.

… of author John Updike. “[O]ne of the chief glories of postwar American literature” is 73.

… of Grammy award winner Charley Pride. He’s 67.

… of Wilson Pickett. The singer of “some of the most incendiary soul music of the Sixties” is 64.

… of Brad Dourif. Deadwood’s Doc Cochran is 55.

… of Jazz guitar great Bill Frisell. He’s 54.

… of the first African-American Miss America. Vanessa Williams is 42.

… of Oscar nominee — for best supporting actress in Chicago — Queen Latifah. She’s 35.

Grover Cleveland, the 22nd and 24th President of the United States, was born on this date in 1837.

Mia Hamm is 33 today.

Kurt Russell is 54.

Gary Sinise 50.

Rob Lowe 41.

It’s also the birth date of two greats who died young — Nat “King” Cole (1919-1965) and Rudolf Nureyev (1938-1993).

It’s also the 100th anniversary of the marriage of Franklin D. Roosevelt and his distant cousin Eleanor Roosevelt. The wedding in New York City was attended by President Theodore Roosevelt, FDR’s fifth cousin, who gave his niece Eleanor away.

… of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She’s 72 today.

… of Alex Reiger. Judd Hirsch is 70.

Albert Einstein was born on this date in 1879. (He died in 1955.)

The Writer’s Almanac has an essay on Einstein’s early years, concluding with this:

He said, “It was as if a storm broke loose in my mind.”

Einstein spent the next several weeks writing a paper on his theory, which came to be called the Special Theory of Relativity, the theory that if the speed of light is constant and if all natural laws are the same in every frame of reference, then both time and motion are relative to the observer. In other words, time and motion appear differently to someone traveling in a rocket ship than they would to someone standing on the ground as the rocket ship flies by.

That same year, 1905, Einstein published three more papers, each of which was as revolutionary as the first, including the paper that included his most famous equation: E = mc2, which means that there is tremendous energy trapped inside all particles. That equation was the theoretical basis for nuclear weapons. Years later, after the creation of the atom bomb, Einstein said, “If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.”

… of Ed McMahon. Johnny’s sidekick is 82.

… of Rob Reiner. “Meathead” is 58.

circumnavigator of the globe and Pacific Crest Trail thru-hiker, was born in Flint, Michigan, on this date in 1957. He hiked the PCT from Mexico to Canada in 2002, amazingly enough providing a journal along the way (on the tiniest of keyboards). Here’s an excerpt from NewMexiKen’s younger brother:

For the first time since I began this Odyssey I fear my life-long dream to do a single season thruhike of the Pacific Crest Trail could be in serious jeopardy.

Four consecutive days of 110 degrees didn’t stop me.

Streams deep and icy enough to make all men equal didn’t stop me.

High mountain passes clogged with ice and snow didn’t stop me.

Rattlesnakes, cougars, bears, howling packs of coyotes, ticks, wasps, bees, hornets, gnats, biting flies, and mosquitoes did not deter me.

Raging fires with smoke thick enough to give me headaches and a sore throat have not chased me off the trail.

God help me even a broken heart didn’t stop me.

So what insidious thing could hold me back on the threshold of my dream? The huckleberry!

“But how,” you ask? By slowing my progress to a veritable standstill! One can walk by only by so many bushes teeming with these succulent purple orbs of orgiastic delight without stopping! My God, I’m not made of stone!

So my pace seems to be half of what it was. Instead of the mighty 30 mile days I had looked forward to in Oregon I will be very lucky to eke out a meager 15 or less. There just isn’t enough time to reach British Columbia before winter sets in. I fear the only hope to salvage my trek may be to enlist the aid of a top-notch hypnotist to attempt to persuade my subconscious that I really don’t like wild huckleberries, at least until I get to Manning Park. Drastic measures indeed, but what else can I do?

… of Gavin MacLeod. The captain of the Love Boat and Mary Tyler Moore’s wisecracking news writer is 74.

… of Dean Smith. The hall-of-fame basketball coach is 74. Knew when to retire, too.

… of Mario Andretti. He’s in the left lane with his blinker on at age 65.

… of Bubba Smith. The football star turned actor is 60.

… of Bernadette Lazzara, known to us as Bernadette Peters. The star of stage, screen and television (beginning at age 3) is 57 today.

… of Academy Award winning actress Joanne Woodward. She’s 75 today. Miss Woodward won the best actress Oscar for The Three Faces of Eve (1957). She was nominated for best actress three other times. Woodward and Paul Newman have been married 47 years.

… of two-time Academy Award winning actress Elizabeth Taylor. She’s 73 today. Miss Taylor won best actress Oscars for Butterfield 8 (1960) and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). Miss Taylor is probably best known, however, for being the voice of Maggie on The Simpsons.

… of Betty Hutton. The actress is 84.

… of Antoine “Fats” Domino. The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer is 77.

… of Mitch Ryder. He’s 60. No report on the ages of the Detroit Wheels.

… of Michael Bolton. The singer is 52. The computer programmer’s age isn’t known.

… of Jennifer Grant. Cary Grant and Dyan Cannon’s daughter is 39.

… of Abe Vigoda. Fish on Barney Miller and Sal Tessio of The Godfather is 84.

… of Steven Hill. Adam Schiff on Law and Order is 83.

… of Dominic Chianese. Uncle Junior on The Sopranos is 74.

… of Edward James Olmos. Jaime Escalante of Stand and Deliver is 58.

… of Don Pardo. The original “Jeopardy!” and “Saturday Night Live” announcer is 87.

… of Senator Edward Kennedy. He’s 73.

… of Julius Erving. Dr. J is 55.

… of Steve Irwin. The Crocodile Hunter is 43.

… of Vijay Singh. He’s 42.

… of Blanche Elizabeth Hollingsworth Devereaux. Rue McClanahan is 70 today.

… of Mary Beth Lacey. Tyne Daly is 59.

… of Patricia Nixon Cox. The former first daughter is 59.

… of Frasier Crane. Kelsey Grammer is 50 today.

… of Mary Chapin Carpenter. Celebrating, one hopes, at the Twist and Shout, she’s 47 today.

… of Charlotte Church. She’s 19. Hasn’t she been one of the PBS fund drive specials for about 20 years?

… of “Dragline.” George Kennedy is 80.

… of the woman who broke up the Beatles. She’s 72 today. In 2003 Time Asia published an informative profile of the complex artist Yoko Ono.

… of Vinnie Barbarino. He’s 51 today. So are Vincent Vega, Chili Palmer, Michael, Buford ‘Bud’ Uan Davis, Tod Lubitch, Danny Zuko and Tony Manero. And so is John Travolta.

… of the letter lady. Vanna White is 48 today.

… of Jack Palance (86), Cybill Shepherd (55), Matt Dillon (41), and Molly Ringwald (37).

was born on this date in 1936.

Brown was listed as the 4th greatest athlete of the 20th century by ESPN.

Brown played only nine seasons for the Cleveland Browns — and led the NFL in rushing eight times. He averaged 104 yards a game, a record 5.2 yards a pop. He ran for at least 100 yards in 58 of his 118 regular-season games (he never missed a game). He ran for 237 yards in a game twice, scored five touchdowns in another game and four times scored four touchdowns. He rushed for more than 1,000 yards in seven seasons, scorching opponents for 1,527 yards in one 12-game season and 1,863 in a 14-game season.

“For mercurial speed, airy nimbleness, and explosive violence in one package of undistilled evil, there is no other like Mr. Brown,” wrote Pulitzer Prize winning sports columnist Red Smith.

Read the entire ESPN essay on Jim Brown: Brown was hard to bring down.

Michael Jordan is 42 today.

… of LeVar Burton. Kunta Kinte is 48.

… of Ice-T. Det. Odafin ‘Fin’ Tutuola is 47.

… of John McEnroe. Super-Brat is 46.

first person to break the sound barrier, was born on this date in 1923.

Yeager broke the sound barrier on October 14, 1947, reportedly with two ribs broken two nights before in a drunken horseback ride. The plane, Glamorous Glennis, is hanging from the Air & Space Museum ceiling. Glennis was Mrs. Yeager.

Yeager is the basis for the character played by Sam Shepard in The Right Stuff. Glennis was played by Barbara Hershey.

In his wonderful book The Right Stuff Tom Wolfe explains that West Virginian Yeager is the reason why all airline pilots talk with a drawl — to be like Yeager, “the most righteous of all the posessors of the right stuff.”

Actress Julie Warner is 40 today. Seems like an occasion to watch Doc Hollywood.

… of Carole King. She’s feeling the earth move under her feet at 63 today.

… of Joe Pesci. No longer a “yute,” he’s 62.

… of Alice Walker. One assumes her birthday cake is the color purple as she turns 61 today.

… of Mia Farrow. The former Mrs. André Previn, Mrs. Frank Sinatra and significant other of Woody Allen is 60.

was born on this date in 1931. Here’s what I posted a year ago.

… of Ted Koppel. Alfred E. Newman’s brother is 65.

… of Nick Nolte. Twice nominated for the best acting Oscar, he’s 64.

… of Mary Steenburgen. The Oscar-winning actress is 52.

… of John Grisham. The attorney turned best-selling author is 50.

… of Gary Coleman. Arnold is 37.

Aaron Burr (1756)
Babe Ruth (1895)
Ronald Reagan (1911)
Eva Braun (1912)
Zsa Zsa Gabor (1917)
Mike Farrell (1939)
Tom Brokaw (1940)
Fabian (1943)
Bob Marley (1945)

Happy birthday to me
Happy birthday to me
Happy birthday dear NewMexiKen
Happy birthday to me

It’s also the birthday

… of Byron Nelson. The hall-of-fame golfer is 93.

… of Miss Rosa Parks. The soul of the civil rights movement is 91.

… of Betty Friedan. The feminist leader is 84.

… of Conrad Bain. The actor (Maude, Diff’rent Strokes) is 82.

… of John Steel. The Animals drummer (and therefore Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee) is 64.

… of David Brenner. The comedian is 60. Good day. Good age.

… of Dan Quayle. The former VP is 58.

… of Alice Cooper. The rocker is 57.

… of Clint Black. The country music star is 43.
Ain’t it funny how a melody can bring back a memory,
Take you to another place and time,
Completely change your state of mind.

Charles Lindbergh was born on this date in 1902.