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Actor William Windom is 87. Windom continues his career; IMDb lists nearly 250 credits for him. He was the congressman in The Farmer’s Daughter and Dr. Seth Hazlitt on Murder She Wrote. IMDb says Windom’s kindergarten teacher was Margaret Hamilton.

Brigitte Bardot is 76.

Ben K. King — “Stand by Me,” “Spanish Harlem” — is 72.

Jeffrey Jones is 64. Ed Rooney, Ferris’s nemesis. And great as A.W. Merrick, the gasbag newspaperman, on Deadwood. That’s Jones with Alan Ruck (Ferris’s buddy Cameron) and Edie McClurg (Rooney’s secretary Grace).

Two-time Oscar nominee for writing, John Sayles is 60. He was nominated for Passion Fish and Lone Star.

Sylvia Kristel, Emmanuelle, is 58. Kristel and Ian MacShane (Deadwood’s Al Swearengen) were a couple once upon a time.

Steve Largent, one of the great receivers in NFL history, is 56 today. The hall-of-famer, who had been an All-American at the University of Tulsa, also served four terms as U.S. representative from Oklahoma’s first district.

Oscar winner Mira Sorvino is 43. She won the best supporting actress award for Mighty Aphrodite.

The Valley Girl, Moon Unit Zappa is 43.

Oscar nominee Naomi Watts is 42. She was nominated for best actress in a leading role for 21 Grams.

Oscar winner for best actor, Peter Finch was born on this date in 1916. Finch won for Network, the first posthumous winner. Finch was also nominated for the best acting Oscar for Sunday Bloody Sunday.

Three time Oscar nominee for best actor, Marcello Mastroianni was born on this date in 1924. Mastroianni died in 1996.

Ed Sullivan was born on this date in 1901. This from his Times obituary in 1974.

Ed Sullivan, a rock-faced Irishman with a hot temper, painful shyness and a disdain for phonies, had been a successful and well-known part of the Broadway scene since the Twenties.

But writing a gossip column, shuttling about the fringes of the entertainment world and being master of ceremonies for a succession of variety shows never gave him what he wanted most out of life–national recognition.

He didn’t achieve that until he moved into the whirlwind world of television in 1948, and his weekly show became an essential part of Sunday evening for millions of Americans.

Between 45,000,000 and 50,000,000 persons tuned in every week to watch the show–a vaudeville-like parade of top talent that cost $8,000,000 a year to produce and for which Mr. Sullivan received $164,000 a year.

The show was worth every penny of that to its sponsors, Lincoln-Mercury automobile dealers, who made Mr. Sullivan their salesman in chief through numerous trips around the country. And he was the proudest possession of the Columbia Broadcasting System, which found he could outdraw almost any competition from the other networks.

The basis of his appeal was an ephemeral thing that baffled those who tried to analyze it. He was not witty, he had no formal talents, he could not consciously entertain anyone. He was bashful, clumsy, self-conscious, forgetful and tongue-tied. And there were times he was painfully, excruciatingly sentimental.

William S. Paley was born on that same day in 1901. This from The Museum of Broadcast Communications:

Paley’s insights helped to define commercial network operations. At the start of his CBS stewardship, he transformed the network’s financial relationship with its affiliates so that the latter agreed to carry sustaining programs free, receiving network payments only for commercially-supported programs. Paley enjoyed socializing and negotiating with broadcast stars. In the late 1940s, his “talent raids” hired top radio stars (chiefly away from NBC) by offering huge prices for rights to their programs and giving them, in return, lucrative capital gains tax options. The talent pool thus developed helped to boost CBS radio ratings just as network television was beginning. At the same time, he encouraged development of CBS News before and during the war as it developed a stable of stars soon headed by Edward R. Murrow.
. . .

Paley is important for having assembled the brilliant team that built and expanded the CBS “Tiffany Network” image over several decades. For many years he had an innate programming touch which helped keep the network on top in annual ratings wars. He blew hot and cold on network news, helping to found and develop it, but willing to cast much of that work aside to avoid controversy or to increase profits. Like many founders, however, he stayed too long and unwittingly helped weaken his company.

Paley was very active in New York art and social circles throughout his life. He was a key figure in the Museum of Modern Art from its founding in 1929.

It is said Paley kept a pair of shoes in his office desk drawer so he could put his feet up on his desk and the soles had never touched anything but carpet. He was that fastidious.

The cartoonist Al Capp, creator of Li’l Abner, was born 100 years ago today.

Seymour Cray, the developer of the super-computer was born in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, on this date in 1925.

The first Cray-1™ system was installed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1976 for $8.8 million. It boasted a world-record speed of 160 million floating-point operations per second (160 megaflops) and an 8 megabyte (1 million word) main memory.

Cray Inc.

Eight whole megabytes of main memory.

Cray died 1996, the result of injuries from a collision on I-25 at North Academy Boulevard near Colorado Springs.

It was on September 28th, 82 years ago today, that penicillin was discovered by British bacteriologist Alexander Fleming. Yay Fleming.

It’s the birthday of

… Jayne Meadows, Steve Allen’s widow. She’s 90. It was her sister Audrey Meadows that played Ralph Kramden’s wife Alice on The Jackie Gleason Show. Their real surname was Cotter and the sisters were born in Wu-ch’ang, Heilongjiang, China, to missionary parents. Jayne was in a few films and television programs, perhaps best remembered as a panelist on I’ve Got a Secret and To Tell the Truth. That’s her on the left in the photo.

… Arthur Penn, 88. The director was nominated for three best direction Oscars, but never won. The three were The Miracle Worker, Bonnie and Clyde, and Alice’s Restaurant.

… Wilford Brimley. He’s 76 today. Brimley was 53-54 when he played the old guy in Cocoon.

… Baseball Hall-of-Famer Mike Schmidt. He’s 61.

An unprecedented combination of power and defense molded Mike Schmidt into one of the game’s greatest third basemen. The powerful right-handed hitter slugged 548 career home runs, belted 40 or more long balls in three separate seasons and hit 30 or more home runs 10 other times. He established a Major League record for third basemen by clouting 48 homers in 1980 and once hit four consecutive round-trippers in a single game in 1976. A three-time National League MVP, he was a 12-time All-Star, won 10 Gold Gloves and was named The Sporting News Player of the Decade for the 1980s.

Baseball Hall of Fame

… Gwyneth Paltrow. She’s 38.

… Avril Lavigne, 26.

William Conrad, one of the great voices of radio, was born on this date in 1920.

Conrad estimated that he appeared in over 7,500 roles on radio. He was regularly heard inviting listeners to “get away from it all” on CBS’ Escape. Conrad’s other radio credits include appearances on The Damon Runyon Theater, The Lux Radio Theater, Nightbeat, Fibber McGee and Molly and Suspense. For “The Wax Works,” a 1956 episode of Suspense, Conrad demonstrated his versatility by performing all the roles.

Conrad’s longest-running role was that of U.S. marshal Matt Dillon on the groundbreaking radio western Gunsmoke, which aired on CBS radio from 1952 to 1961.

When the golden age of radio was over, Conrad could be heard delivering the urgent narration for Jay Ward’s classic Bullwinkle Show. He later starred on the television series Cannon and Jake and the Fatman.

Radio Hall of Fame

Samuel Adams Beers are named for Sam Adams the brewer of beer and revolution, who was born on this date in 1722.

[Adams] was a failed businessman and a not-very-effective tax collector when the British passed the Sugar Act of 1764, and Adams finally found his purpose in life. He was one of the first members of the colonies to speak out against taxation without representation and one of the first people to argue for the colonies’ independence from Great Britain. He had a genius for agitating people. He organized riots and wrote propaganda, describing the British as murderers and slave drivers. He went on to become one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and participated in the Continental Congress. It was Samuel Adams, who said, “It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.”

The Writer’s Almanac (2007)