Category: Birthdays

to three TV favorites. Abe Vigoda (Fish on Barney Miller) is 83. Steven Hill (Adam on Law and Order) is 82. Dominic Chianese (Uncle Junior on The Sopranos) is 73.

And Edward James Olmos is 57.

Novelist, 77, enjoys notoriety of being the Gerber Baby; picture sketched by family friend

From the Associated Press via SFGate.

Kristin Davis of Sex in the City is 39.

Patricia Richardson of Home Improvement is 53.

Samuel Pepys was born in London on this date in 1633. Pepys kept a diary from 1659-1669, writing about the major events of the time, but also the day-to-details of his life.

Here’s the entry from Pepys’ Diary for February 22, 1660/1661.

All the morning at the office. At noon with my wife and Pall to my father’s to dinner, where Dr. Thos. Pepys and my coz Snow and Joyce Norton. After dinner came The. Turner, and so I home with her to her mother, good woman, whom I had not seen through my great neglect this half year, but she would not be angry with me. Here I staid all the afternoon talking of the King’s being married, which is now the town talk, but I believe false. In the evening Mrs. The. and Joyce took us all into the coach home, calling in Bishopsgate Street, thinking to have seen a new Harpsicon that she had a making there, but it was not done, and so we did not see it. Then to my home, where I made very much of her, and then she went home. Then my wife to Sir W. Batten’s, and there sat a while; he having yesterday sent my wife half-a-dozen pairs of gloves, and a pair of silk stockings and garters, for her Valentine’s gift. Then home and to bed.

is 49 today. Kelsey Grammer, that is.

Celebrating, one hopes, at the Twist and Shout is Mary Chapin Carpenter. She’s 46 today.

Charlotte Church is 18. Hasn’t she been one of the PBS fund drive specials for about 20 years?

is 77 today.

American Masters from PBS sums it up nicely:

More than an actor (and Academy-Award winner), Sidney Poitier is an artist. A writer and director, a thinker and critic, a humanitarian and diplomat, his presence as a cultural icon has long been one of protest and humanity. His career defined and documented the modern history of blacks in American film, and his depiction of proud and powerful characters was and remains revolutionary.

Lilies of the Field — with Poitier’s Oscar winning performance — has been one of NewMexiKen’s favorites since it was released more than 40 years ago. If you don’t know the film, you should.

Happy birthday to William “Smokey” Robinson, born in Detroit on this date in 1940.

Some Smokey Robinson trivia:

• The nickname Smokey was given him as a child by an uncle.
• The Robinsons were neighbors of the Franklins; Smokey is two years older than Aretha.
• They both attended Detroit’s Northern Senior High School (as did NewMexiKen’s mom).
• Smokey wrote both “My Guy” and “My Girl.”
• Bob Dylan called Smokey “America’s greatest living poet.”
• Smokey has written more than 4,000 songs.

… to the woman who broke up the Beatles. She’s 71 today. In 2003 Time Asia published an informative profile of the complex artist Yoko Ono.

… to Vinnie Barbarino. He’s 50 today. So are Vincent Vega, Chili Palmer, Michael, Buford ‘Bud’ Uan Davis, Tod Lubitch, Danny Zuko and Tony Manero. And so is John Travolta.

… to the letter turner. Vanna White is 47 today.

… to Jack Palance (83 or 84 or 85), Cybill Shepherd (54), and Matt Dillon (40).

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 41 today.

In 1961-1962 Oscar Robertson averaged a triple-double for the season: 30.8 points, 12.5 rebounds and 11.4 assists. For the season!

Source: Morning Briefing, Los Angeles Times

was born on this date in 1820. As The New York Times said in her obituary in 1906, “Susan Brownell Anthony was a pioneer leader of the cause of woman suffrage, and her energy was tireless in working for what she considered to be the best interests of womankind.”

was born in Portland, Oregon, 50 years ago today. The Writer’s Almanac has this biographical essay on the creator of The Simpsons.

[Matt Groening] hated grade school, because his teachers were always confiscating his notebook drawings and tearing them up. He began keeping a diary when he was in fifth grade, vowing that he would never forget the injustice he suffered.

He drew cartoons for his high school newspaper and once ran for class president as a joke. In his campaign, he said he was the founding member of “Teenagers for Decency.” He was shocked when he got elected. He tried, unsuccessfully, to rewrite the school’s constitution to make himself absolute dictator.

Groening decided to move to Los Angeles after college to try to make it as a writer. He lived in a neighborhood full of drug dealers and thieves, and got a job ghostwriting the memoirs of an 88-year-old filmmaker. After that, he worked at a convalescent home, a waste treatment plant, and a graveyard. He started writing a comic strip based on his daily troubles called “Life in Hell.” The main character was a miserable rabbit named Binky. He made the comics into booklets and mailed them off to everyone he knew. He started to sell the booklets in record stores, and the Los Angeles Reader eventually began to run the strip. Within a few years “Life in Hell” was syndicated in weekly newspapers across the country. Groening said, “I had no idea I was going to make cartooning a career. I was doing it merely to assuage my profound sense of self-pity at being stuck in this scummy little apartment in Hollywood.”

When a TV producer asked Groening to created a TV show, Groening decided to invent a cartoon family that would be the exact opposite of all the fictional families that had ever been on American television. He named the parents after his own parents, Homer and Marge, and he named the two sisters after his own sisters, Lisa and Maggie. He chose the name Bart for the only son because it was an anagram of the word “brat.”

The Simpsons has gone on to become the most popular and longest running sitcom in America. Groening no longer writes for the show, but he gave it its basic premise, which is that authority figures are generally mean and stupid. He said, “Teachers, principals, clergymen, politicians—for the Simpsons, they’re all goofballs, and I think that’s a great message for kids.”

was born as Benjamin Kubelsky on this date in 1894. In The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, the entry for The Jack Benny Program runs from page 355 to 363. Then he was on television.

NewMexiKen knows how corny the jokes and skits would sound now — how corny they undoubtedly were then — but tucked among my fond memories is being at my Great Grandmother’s house in Rensselaer, New York, more than 50 years ago. I was sick, so stayed home with Gram that Sunday evening while the rest of the family socialized. She had to be in her seventies; I no more than five or six. We listened to The Jack Benny Program on radio. And all I can remember is how hard we laughed.

I feel pretty certain the radio audience that Sunday consisted of people my parents and grandparents’ age and they were laughing too. If you know, please tell me a television program today that could as easily amuse four generations.

aka Florence Henderson, was born on this date in 1934. That makes her 70.

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.”

Kim Novak (1934)
Carol Lynley (1943)
Peter Tork (of the Monkees) (1943)
Stockard Channing (1945)
Peter Gabriel (1950)

the G.I General, was born on this date in 1893.

was born on this date in 1809.

February 12, 1809, was a particularly promising day in the evolution of the human race.

is 70 today. Back-to-back NCAA championships at the University of San Francisco, 1955-1956 — 55 consecutive wins. Eleven NBA championships with the Celtics in 13 years, 1957-1969 — Russell was the only player there for all 11.

Simply the greatest winner in basketball history.

was born on this date in 1837. The National Gallery of Art has an outstanding online exhibit on Moran.

Click to see a replica of his classic painting Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.

was born in Milan, Ohio, on this date in 1847.

Edison’s stature has diminished since his death; technology has evolved so much since then. But he was still a hero when he died in 1931. These are the sub-headlines from his obituary in The New York Times:

World Made Over By Edison’s Magic

He Did More Than Any One Man to Put Luxuries Into the Lives of the Masses

Created Millions Of Jobs

Electric Light, the Phonograph, Motion Pictures and Radio Improvements Among Gifts

Lamp Ended “Dark Ages”

He Held the Miracle of Menlo Park, Produced on a Gusty Night 50 Years Ago, His Greatest Work

The Undiscovered World of Thomas Edison is an informative and interesting essay from the December 1995 Atlantic Monthly.