NewMexiKen

Today is the birthday

… of basketball coach Bobby Knight. He’s 70.

… of singer Helen Reddy. “I am woman, hear me roar” is a roaring 69.

… of author Anne Tyler (not to be confused with Ann Taylor). The Pulitzer winner (for Breathing Lessons) is 69.

Early in her career, she decided she did not want to be a public person, so she stopped giving readings and only does occasional interviews in writing. She said, “Any time I talk in public about writing, I end up not able to do any writing. It’s as if some capricious Writing Elf goes into a little sulk whenever I expose him.” Ann Tyler also said, “I want to live other lives. I’ve never quite believed that one chance is all I get. Writing is my way of making other chances. It’s lucky I do it on paper. Probably I would be schizophrenic — and six times divorced — if I weren’t writing.”

The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media (2007)

… of basketball hall-of-famer Dave Cowens. The tenacious Celtic is 62.

… of Nancy Cartwright. The voice of Bart Simpson is 53.

… of Katy Perry, 26.

Pablo Picasso was born on this date in 1881. That’s his Accordionist (L’Accordéoniste), 1911, on the right.

Charles Edward Coughlin was born on this date in 1891.

One of the first public figures to make effective use of the airwaves, Charles E. Coughlin, was for a time one of the most influential personalities on American radio. At the height of his popularity in the early 1930s, some 30 million listeners tuned in to hear his emotional messages. Many of his speeches were rambling, disorganized, repetitious, and as time went by, they became increasingly full of bigoted rhetoric. But as a champion of the poor, a foe of big business, and a critic of federal indifference in the face of widespread economic distress, he spoke to the hopes and fears of lower-middle class Americans throughout the country. Years later, a supporter remembered the excitement of attending one of his rallies: “When he spoke it was a thrill like Hitler. And the magnetism was uncanny. It was so intoxicating, there’s no use saying what he talked about…”

The American Experience

NewMexiKen once attended a sermon by Fr. Coughlin. I remember it only that I knew who he’d been thirty years earlier and that it had political undertones. The link above has more details about Coughlin’s career. The Talking History Archive has a Coughlin broadcast. Scroll down the page about 40%.

Today is the birthday

… of football hall-of-fame quarterback Yelberton Abraham “Y.A.” Tittle, 84.

Career record: 2,427 completions, 33,070 yards, 242 TDs, 13 games over 300 yards passing…Paced 1961, 1962, 1963 Giants to division titles…Threw 33 TD passes in 1962, 36 in 1963…NFL’s Most Valuable Player, 1961, 1963.

… of Bill Wyman. The Rolling Stones’ bass player (1962-1992) is 74.

… of F. Murray Abraham. The Oscar-winning best actor (Amadeus) is 71 today.

… of Kevin Kline. The Oscar-winning best supporting actor (A Fish Called Wanda) is 63 today.

Bob Kane, the cartoonist who created “Batman” was born on October 24, 1915. From his Times obituary in 1998:

In 1938 he started drawing adventure strips, ”Rusty and His Pals” and ”Clip Carson,” for National Comics. That same year, a comic-book hero called Superman appeared. Vincent Sullivan, the editor of National Comics, who also owned Superman, asked Mr. Kane and Mr. Finger to come up with a Supercompetitor. They developed Batman on a single weekend. Mr. Kane was 18 [23].

The first Batman strip came out in May 1939 in Detective Comics, one year after the debut of Superman. Batman’s first adventure was called ”The Case of the Chemical Syndicate.” And he was another kind of superhero entirely. Batman wasn’t as strong as Superman, but he was much more agile, a better dresser and had better contraptions and a cooler place to live.

He lived in the Batcave, drove the Batmobile, which had a crime lab and a closed-circuit television in the back, and owned a Batplane. He also kept a lot of tools in his utility belt, including knockout gas, a smoke screen and a radio.

”Since he had no superpowers, he had to rely only on his physical and his mental skills,” said Allan Asherman, the librarian of DC Comics.

Playwright and director Moss Hart was born on October 24th in 1904.

A distinguished librettist, director, and playwright who was particularly renowned for his work with George S. Kaufman. Hart is reported to have written the book for the short-lived “Jonica” in 1930, but his first real Broadway musical credit came three years later when he contributed the sketches to the Irving Berlin revue “As Thousands Cheer.” Subsequent revues for which he co-wrote sketches included “The Show Is On,” “Seven Lively Arts,” and “Inside USA.” During the remainder of the ’30s Hart wrote the librettos for “The Great Waltz” (adapted from the operetta “Waltzes of Vienna”), “Jubilee,” “I’d Rather Be Right” (with Kaufman), and “Sing Out the News” (which he also co-produced with Kaufman and Max Gordon). In 1941 he wrote one of his wittiest and most inventive books for “Lady in Dark,” which starred Gertrude Lawrence, and gave Danny Kaye his first chance on Broadway.

Thereafter, as far as the musical theater was concerned, apart from the occasional revue, Hart concentrated mostly on directing, and sometimes producing, shows such as Irving Berlin’s “Miss Liberty,” and Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s smash hits “My Fair Lady” and “Camelot.” He won a Tony Award for his work on “My Fair Lady.” His considerable output for the straight theater included “Light up the Sky,” “The Climate of Eden,” “Winged Victory,” and (with Kaufman) “Once in a Lifetime,” “You Can’t Take It With You” (for which they both won the Pulitzer Prize), and “The Man Who Came to Dinner.” Hart also wrote the screenplays for two film musicals, HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN (1952) and the 1954 remake of A STAR IS BORN, starring Judy Garland. His absorbing autobiography, ACT ONE, was filmed in 1963 with George Hamilton as Hart and Jason Robards as Kaufman.

Broadway: The American Musical . Stars Over Broadway | PBS

James Schoolcraft Sherman was born on October 24th in 1855. Sherman was Vice President of the United States from March 4, 1909 until he died in office October 30, 1912 (President Taft).

Thursday, October 24th, 1929 — Black Thursday — was the first of the three most significant days of the stock market crash (the others were Monday the 28th and Tuesday the 29th).

The iPod is 9-years-old today. It was introduced by Steve Jobs on October 23, 2001.

Jim Bunning is 79 today.

Displaying a remarkable consistency during his 17-year career, Jim Bunning became the first pitcher to record 100 wins and 1,000 strikeouts in both the American and National Leagues. He also threw no-hitters in both leagues, including a perfect game on Father’s Day 1964. Accumulated 224 career wins as a seven-time All-Star selection, Bunning was also a leading figure in the founding of the player’s union and later served Kentucky as a United States Senator.

Baseball Hall of Fame

Too bad about the political career. I always liked Bunning as a pitcher. As a senator he has been a raving lunatic on his lucid days.

Pele is 70 today.

Oscar-winning director Ang Lee is 56.

Dwight Yoakam is 54. Yoakam has been in a number of films — he was the nasty boyfriend in Sling Blade — but it’s country music that earned his fame.

With his stripped-down approach to traditional honky tonk and Bakersfield country, Dwight Yoakam helped return country music to its roots in the late ’80s. Like his idols Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, and Hank Williams, Yoakam never played by Nashville’s rules; consequently, he never dominated the charts like his contemporary Randy Travis. Then again, Travis never played around with the sound and style of country music like Yoakam. On each of his records, he twists around the form enough to make it seem like he doesn’t respect all of country’s traditions. Appropriately, his core audience was composed mainly of roots rock and rock & roll fans, not the mainstream country audience. Nevertheless, he was frequently able to chart in the country Top Ten, and he remained one of the most respected and adventurous recording country artists well into the ’90s.

allmusic

Weird Al Yankovic is 51.

Johnny Carson was born 85 years ago today. A little luck and many fewer cigarettes and he might be alive today. While he was alive, Carson would have been my choice for the person I’d most like to have dinner with.

He grew up an extremely shy boy, but when he was 12 years old he happened to read a how-to book about magic tricks and he later said that it was the discovery of magic that helped him relate to people. He started writing jokes in college and went on to host a TV game show called “Who Do You Trust?” But his big break came when he took over hosting The Tonight Show from Jack Parr in 1962.

By the mid-1970s, more than 15 million people were watching The Tonight Show every night before they went to bed. When he retired in 1992, he had been on the air for 30 years. He almost never appeared in public again, and died in 2005.

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

Michael Crichton died two years ago; he would have been 68 today. The Writer’s Almanac (link above) has a interesting entry about Crichton.

John William Heisman was born on this date in 1869. He’s the guy the trophy is named after. The following milestones in Heisman’s career are excerpted from his 1936 obituary in The New York Times and put here in chronological order.

In 1888 he was a member of the Brown football team, and in 1889 of the Pennsylvania varsity football eleven.

He began his coaching career in 1892 at Oberlin College. In 1893 he coached all sports at the University of Akron. From 1895 to 1900 he coached football and baseball at Alabama Polytechnic Institute, and from 1900 to 1904 was coach at Clemson College.

From 1904 to 1920 he coached football, baseball and basketball at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he developed the famous “Golden Tornado” teams.

In 1908 he was director of athletics at the Atlanta Athletic Club. From 1910 to 1914 he was president of the Atlanta Baseball Association. In 1920 he coached football at the University of Pennsylvania and in 1923 filled the same position at Washington and Jefferson College. From 1924 to 1927 he was head football coach and director of athletics at Rice Institute, Houston, Texas.

In 1923 and 1924 he was president of the American Football Coaches Association.

For the last six years [before 1936] he had been physical director of the Downtown Athletic Club.

Curly Howard (Jerome Lester Horwitz) was born on this date in 1903. The most popular of the Three Stooges, Curly had no formal training and was often improvising. According to older brother Moe Howard, “If we were going through a scene and he’d forget his words for a moment, you know. Rather than stand, get pale and stop, you never knew what he was going to do. On one occasion he’d get down to the floor and spin around like a top until he remembered what he had to say.” It’s said Curly squandered all his money on wine, food, women, homes, cars, and especially dogs. Sounds like good choices, but they took their toll. Curly Howard died at age 48 in 1952 after a series of strokes.

“N’yuk, n’yuk, n’yuk.”

Three time best actress Oscar nominee Joan Fontaine is 93 today. Miss Fontaine won the Oscar in 1942 for Suspicion. Good genes in that family. Her sister Olivia de Havilland turned 94 in July.

Nobel Prize-winner Doris Lessing is 91 today.

In 2007 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. She was out grocery shopping when the announcement came, and she came home to find her house swamped with reporters. She was nonplussed about the prize, saying, “Oh Christ! I couldn’t care less. This has been going on for 30 years. I’ve won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one, so I’m delighted to win them all. It’s a royal flush.” And she said, “I can’t say I’m overwhelmed with surprise. I’m 88 years old and they can’t give the Nobel to someone who’s dead, so I think they were probably thinking they’d probably better give it to me now before I’ve popped off.”

By the time she accepted the prize, she was considerably more gracious, saying, “Thank you does not seem enough when you’ve won the best of them all. It is astonishing and amazing.”

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

Christopher Lloyd is 72.

Annette Funicello is 68. At the Disney Archives, once upon a time, I actually saw first-hand something I had often dreamed about in junior high — Annette’s Mouseketeer sweater.

Catherine Deneuve is 67.

Jeff Goldblum is 58.

Ichiro Suzuki is 37.

Slugger Jimmie Foxx was born on October 22, 1907.

A fearsome power hitter whose strength earned him the moniker The Beast, Jimmie Foxx was the anchor of an intimidating Philadelphia Athletics lineup that produced pennant winners from 1929-31. The second batter in history to top 500 home runs, Foxx belted 30 or more homers in 12 consecutive seasons and drove in more than 100 runs 13 consecutive years, including a career-best 175 with Boston in 1938. He won back-to-back MVP Awards in 1932 and ’33, capturing the Triple Crown in the latter year.

Baseball Hall of Fame

It was on this date in 1962, that President Kennedy told the nation about the Soviet missiles in Cuba. From The New York Times report on the speech:

President Kennedy imposed a naval and air “quarantine” tonight on the shipment of offensive military equipment to Cuba.

In a speech of extraordinary gravity, he told the American people that the Soviet Union, contrary to promises, was building offensive missiles and bomber bases in Cuba. He said the bases could handle missiles carrying nuclear warheads up to 2,000 miles.

Thus a critical moment in the cold war was at hand tonight. The President had decided on a direct confrontation with–and challenge to–the power of the Soviet Union.

*****

All this the President recited in an 18-minute radio and television address of a grimness unparalleled in recent times. He read the words rapidly, with little emotion, until he came to the peroration–a warning to Americans of the dangers ahead.

“Let no one doubt that this is a difficult and dangerous effort on which we have set out,” the President said. “No one can foresee precisely what course it will take or what costs or casualties will be incurred.”

“The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are–but it is the one most consistent with our character and courage as a nation and our commitments around the world,” he added.

It was as close as we’ve ever come to nuclear war.

Joyce Randolph, who played Trixie Norton on “The Honeymooners” with Jackie Gleason, Art Carney and Audrey Meadows, is 86.

Whitey Ford is 82.

Edward Whitey Ford was the big-game pitcher on the great Yankees teams of the 1950s and early ’60s, earning him the moniker Chairman of the Board. The wily southpaw’s lifetime record of 236-106 gives him the best winning percentage (.690) of any 20th century pitcher. He paced the American League in victories three times, and in ERA and shutouts twice. The 1961 Cy Young Award winner still holds many World Series records, including 10 wins and 94 strikeouts, once pitching 33 consecutive scoreless innings in the Fall Classic.

National Baseball Hall of Fame

Steve Cropper is 69. According to the All Music Guide:

Probably the best-known soul guitarist in the world, Cropper came to prominence in the early ’60s, first with the Mar-Keys (“Last Night”), then as a founding member of Booker T. & the MG’s. A major figure in the Southern soul movement of the ’60s, Cropper made his mark not only as a player and arranger (most notably on classic sides by Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, and Wilson Pickett) but as a songwriter as well, co-writing the classic “In the Midnight Hour.”

And Green Onions is the single greatest rock instrumental ever, period (Booker T. Jones, organ; Steve Cropper, guitar; Lewis Steinberg, bass; Al Jackson, drums).

M.G.’s stands for the British motor car and not for Memphis Group. Chips Moman of Stax founded the band and named it for his car. Moman had played with Jones in an earlier band, the Triumphs. Stax changed the origin of the M.G.’s story when Moman left the label. Steve Cropper confirmed Moman’s version on Fresh Air in 2007.

Judy Sheindlin (“Judge Judy”) is 68.

The daughter of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher is 54. That’s Carrie Fisher, Princess Leia, and once Mrs. Paul Simon.

Ken Watanabe is 51.

One of the Kardashian sisters — and does it really matter which one — is 30 today.

Dizzy Gillespie was born on October 21, 1917.

Dizzy Gillespie was one of the principal developers of bop in the early 1940s, and his styles of improvising and trumpet playing were imitated widely in the 1940s and 1950s. Indeed, he is one of the most influential players in the history of jazz.
. . .

Early in 1953, someone accidentally fell on Gillespie’s trumpet, which was sitting upright on a trumpet stand, and bent the bell back. Gillespie played it, discovered that he liked the sound, and from that point on had trumpets built for him with the bell pointing upwards at a 45 degree angle. The design is his visual trademark — for more than three decades he was virtually the only major trumpeter in jazz playing such an instrument.

PBS – JAZZ A Film by Ken Burns

Alfred Nobel was born on this date in 1833. He was the owner of a weapons manufacturer and inventor of dynamite.

Nobel’s enormous legacy — the impetus to leave the prize money now awarded to Nobel laureates — actually stemmed from an event that left him with feelings of great indignation. After his older brother Ludvig died, a French newspaper printed a scathing obituary of Alfred Nobel, who was in fact alive and well. The writer was allegedly confused about who had died, and he used the obituary to write a condemnation of Alfred’s life and work. “Le marchand de la mort est mort (‘The merchant of death is dead’),” the newspaper proclaimed — and also, “Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday.”

Alfred Nobel read the obituary about himself and was so upset that this was to be his legacy that he rewrote his will to establish a set of prizes celebrating humankind’s greatest achievements.

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor (2009)

That great sixth game of the World Series where Carlton Fisk hit the winning home run in the 12th to give the Red Sox a 7-6 victory over the Reds was 35 years ago tonight.