NewMexiKen

Today is the birthday

… of William Christopher. M.A.S.H.‘s Father Francis Mulcahy is 78.

… of Hall-of-Fame pitcher Juan Marichal, 73.

The pride of both the Dominican Republic and the Giants, Juan Antonio Marichal Sánchez won 243 games and lost only 142 over 16 marvelous seasons. The high-kicking right-hander enjoyed six 20-win seasons, hurled a no-hitter in 1963 and was named to nine All-Star teams. The Dominican Dandy twice led the National League in complete games and shutouts, finishing 244 contests during his career, while fanning 2,303 and compiling a 2.89 ERA. After his playing days, Marichal became minister of sports in his homeland.

National Baseball Hall of Fame

… of Tom Petty; the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee is 60.

In a sense, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are America’s band. Durable, resourceful, hard-working, likeable and unpretentious, they rank among the most capable and classic rock bands of the last quarter century. They’ve mastered the idiom’s fundamentals and digested its history while stretching themselves creatively and contributing to rock’s legacy. Moreover they are, like such compatriots as Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, a people’s band, writing of everyday struggles and frustrations while offering redemption through tough-minded, big-hearted, tuneful songs.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

… of Calvin Cordozar Broadus. Snoop Dogg is 39.

… of John Krasinski. He’s 31.

Actor Jerry Orbach was born on this date in 1935.

Hall-of-famer Mickey Mantle was born on this date in 1931 and died in 1995.

Mickey Mantle was a star from the start, parlaying a talent for the game and boyish good looks into iconic status. In spite of a series of devastating injuries, Mantle accumulated a long list of impressive accomplishments, finishing his 18-year career with 536 home runs and a .298 batting average. The switch-hitting Commerce Comet won three MVP Awards (1956, ’57, ’62) and a Triple Crown (1956). He contributed to 12 pennants and seven World Series titles in his first 14 seasons while establishing numerous World Series records, including most home runs (18).

National Baseball Hall of Fame

Bela Lugosi was born on this date in 1882. The Romanian-born actor (part of Austria-Hungary then) was best known for playing Count Dracula in the 1931 film. Lugosi died in 1956.

Today is the birthday

… of Bob Strauss, the politico and diplomat. Ambassador Strauss is 92.

… of John LeCarre. The author is 79.

… of Peter Max. The artist is 73.

… of John Lithgow. He’s 65. He’s become somewhat a buffoon on TV in the sitcoms and commercials. Makes it hard to remember that he’s twice been nominated for the best supporting actor Oscar — Terms of Endearment and The World According to Garp.

… of Jeannie C. Riley, singer of the 1968 hit “Harper Valley P.T.A.” She, too, is 65.

… of Jennifer Holliday. The Tony Award winner is 50.

… of Evander Holyfield, 48.

… of one-time first daughter Amy Carter. Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter’s little girl is 43.

… of academy award nominee for directing Jason Reitman. He’s 33. The nomination was for Juno.

Robert Reed was born on this date in 1932. A fine actor but one who will always be remembered most as the dad on The Brady Bunch. Reed’s best TV role was as Kenneth Preston, son in the excellent early 1960s father-son lawyer drama The Defenders. His father was played by E. G. Marshall. Reed died in 1992.

Winston Hubert McIntosh was born on this date in 1944. A founding member of The Wailers, Peter Tosh also was an international solo star and songwriter. He was shot and killed along with five others by a friend during an argument on September 11, 1987.

It’s Chuck Berry’s birthday. He’s 84.

While no individual can be said to have invented rock and roll, Chuck Berry comes the closest of any single figure to being the one who put all the essential pieces together. It was his particular genius to graft country & western guitar licks onto a rhythm & blues chassis in his very first single, “Maybellene.” Combined with quick-witted, rapid-fire lyrics full of sly insinuations about cars and girls, Berry laid the groundwork for not only a rock and roll sound but a rock and roll stance. The song included a brief but scorching guitar solo built around his trademark double-string licks. Accompanied by long-time piano player Johnnie Johnson and members of the Chess Records house band, including Willie Dixon, Berry wrote and performed rock and roll for the ages. To this day, the cream of Berry’s repertoire—which includes “Johnny B. Goode,” “Sweet Little Sixteen,” “Rock and Roll Music” and “Roll Over Beethoven”—is required listening for any serious rock fan and required learning for any serious rock musician.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

And, if that weren’t enough, Keith Jackson is 82. Whoa, Nelly.

Mindy of Mork & Mindy, that is, Pam Dawber, is 60.

Joanie Cunningham of Happy Days, that is, Erin Moran, is 50.

Wynton Marsalis is 49. Zac Efron is 23.

Arthur Miller, the playwright (The Crucible, Death of a Salesman) and one-time husband of Marilyn Monroe, was born on this date in 1915.

In the period immediately following the end of World War II, American theater was transformed by the work of playwright Arthur Miller. Profoundly influenced by the Depression and the war that immediately followed it, Miller tapped into a sense of dissatisfaction and unrest within the greater American psyche. His probing dramas proved to be both the conscience and redemption of the times, allowing people an honest view of the direction the country had taken.

American Masters

Miller used the money he made from All My Sons to buy 400 acres of farmland in Connecticut. In 1948, he moved to Connecticut by himself and spent several months building a 10-by-12-foot cabin by hand. As he sawed the wood and pounded the nails, he thought about the main characters of his next play: a salesman, his wife, and his two sons. He knew how the play would begin, but he wouldn’t let himself start writing until he had finished the cabin. When it was finally completed, he woke up one morning and started writing. He wrote all day, had dinner, and then wrote until he had finished the first act in the middle of the night. When he finally got in bed to go to sleep, he found that his cheeks were wet with tears, and his throat was sore from speaking and shouting the lines of dialogue as he wrote.

The play was Death of a Salesman (1949), about a man named Willy Loman who loses his job and realizes that he doesn’t have much to show for his life’s work. Miller wrote, “For a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life. He don’t put a bolt to a nut, he don’t tell you the law or give you medicine. He’s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine.”

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor (2009)

Margarita Carmen Cansino was born on this date in 1918. That’s her in the photo known by then as Rita Hayworth. She was married five times including Orson Welles and Prince Aly Khan (she had a daughter with each of them).

Montgomery Clift was born on October 17 in 1920. Clift was nominated for the best actor Oscar three times and supporting actor once. He played Prewitt, the bugler who won’t box, in From Here to Eternity.

It’s also the birthday

… of Jimmy Breslin. The columnist is 80.

… of Margot Kidder. Lois Lane is 62.

… of George Wendt. Norm is 62.

Sam: What’ll you have Normie?
Norm: Well, I’m in a gambling mood Sammy. I’ll take a glass of whatever comes out of that tap.
Sam: Looks like beer, Norm.
Norm: Call me Mister Lucky.

… of country singer Alan Jackson; he’s 52.

… of golfer Ernie Els, 41.

And of Marshall Mathers, better known as Eminem. He’s 38, as is Wyclef Jean.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe during World War II and the 34th president of the United States, was born in Denison, Texas, on this date in 1890. His family moved to Abilene, Kansas, in 1892 and he graduated from Abilene High School in 1909.

Eisenhower attended the U.S. Military Academy, class of 1915, the class the stars fell on — of 164 graduates, 59 attained the rank of general, led by Eisenhower and Omar Bradley. Eisenhower never saw combat first hand during his 37 year army career.

Military leadership of the victorious Allied forces in Western Europe during World War II invested Dwight David Eisenhower with an immense popularity, almost amounting to devotion, that twice elected him President of the United States. His enormous political success was largely personal, for he was not basically a politician dealing in partisan issues and party maneuvers. What he possessed was a superb talent for gaining the respect and affection of the voters as the man suited to guide the nation through cold war confrontations with Soviet power around the world and to lead the country to domestic prosperity.

Eisenhower’s gift for inspiring confidence in himself perplexed some analysts because he was not a dashing battlefield general nor a masterly military tactician; apparently what counted most in his generalship also impressed the voters most: an ability to harmonize diverse groups and disparate personalities into a smoothly functioning coalition.

Obituary, The New York Times, 1969

John Wooden, the Wizard of Westwood, would have been 100 today. Ten national championships in 12 years.

Today is the birthday

… of former surgeon general C. Everett Koop. Guess he knew what he was talking about because he’s 94 today.

… of Roger Moore. The oldest of the James Bonds is 83.

… of former Nixon White House Counsel and convicted multiple felon John Dean, 72 today.

… of Ralph Lauren. The founder of Polo is 71.

… of the judge of Night Court, Harry Anderson, who is 58 today.

… of Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks. She’s 36.

… of Usher. He’s 32.

Edward Estlin Cummings was born October 14, 1894 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We know him as e.e. cummings.

In his verse, Cummings tended to substitute verbs for nouns, he used patently eccentric punctuation, and he disregarded norms of capitalization. But despite unconventional style, he wrote about traditional themes, stuff like love and nature.

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

my girl’s tall with hard long eyes
as she stands, with her long hard hands keeping
silence on her dress, good for sleeping
is her long hard body filled with surprise
like a white shocking wire, when she smiles
a hard long smile it sometimes makes
gaily go clean through me tickling aches,
and the weak noise of her eyes easily files
my impatience to an edge–my girl’s tall
and taut, with thin legs just like a vine
that’s spent all of its life on a garden-wall,
and is going to die. When we grimly go to bed
with these legs she begins to heave and twine
about me, and to kiss my face and head.