NewMexiKen

Willie Mays is 79 today, Bob Seger is 65, and five-time Oscar nominee (one win) George Clooney is 49.

Rudolph Valentino was born on May 6 in 1895.

The founder of the Bank of America and hero of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake recovery, Amadeo Peter Giannini was born on May 6 in 1870.

And Ken, official oldest child of NewMexiKen, celebrates his birthday today. Happy Birthday Ken!

Orson Welles was born on this date in 1915. To many who grew up with television, Welles was simply the larger-than-life spokesman for Paul Masson Wines — “We will sell no wine before its time.” But at age 23 Welles had scared thousands of Americans with his realistic radio production of War of the Worlds. At 25 he wrote, produced, directed and starred in what many consider the best film ever made, Citizen Kane. For that film alone, he was nominated for the Oscar for best actor, best director, best original screenplay and best picture (he won, with Herman Mankiewicz, for screenplay). Welles was nominated for the best picture Oscar again the following year — The Magnificent Ambersons.

The New York Times has this to say about Welles when he died in 1985:

Despite the feeling of many that his career – which evoked almost constant controversy over its 50 years – was one of largely unfulfilled promise, Welles eventually won the respect of his colleagues. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Film Institute in 1975, and last year the Directors Guild of America gave him its highest honor, the D. W. Griffith Award.

His unorthodox casting and staging for the theater gave new meaning to the classics and to contemporary works. As the ”Wonder Boy” of Broadway in the 1930’s, he set the stage on its ear with a ”Julius Caesar” set in Fascist Italy, an all-black ”Macbeth” and his presentation of Marc Blitzstein’s ”Cradle Will Rock.” His Mercury Theater of the Air set new standards for radio drama, and in one performance panicked thousands across the nation.

In film, his innovations in deep-focus technology and his use of theater esthetics – long takes without close-ups, making the viewer’s eye search the screen as if it were a stage – created a new vocabulary for the cinema.

And it is. He was born on May 6, 1856.

In the following pages, I shall demonstrate that there is a psychological technique which makes it possible to interpret dreams, and that on the application of this technique, every dream will reveal itself as a psychological structure, full of significance, and one which may be assigned to a specific place in the psychic activities of the waking state. Further, I shall endeavour to elucidate the processes which underlie the strangeness and obscurity of dreams, and to deduce from these processes the nature of the psychic forces whose conflict or co-operation is responsible for our dreams.

Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1899)

In dreams I walk with you. In dreams I talk to you.
In dreams you’re mine. All of the time we’re together
In dreams, In dreams.

Roy Orbison, “In Dreams” (1963)

Nellie Bly was born on this date in 1864.

Nellie Bly was born Elizabeth Jane Cochrane. In the 1880s and 1890s, as a reporter for Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World, she became a pioneer in journalism and investigative reporting. Before the muckrakers of the early 20th century publicized corruption and before the investigative reporters of today sought out the story behind the story, Bly paved the way to valuable journalism as one of the first to “go behind the scenes” to expose societyís ills. At some personal danger, she had herself committed to a mental institution for 10 days so she could study firsthand how the mentally ill were being treated. As a result of her expose, the care of the mentally ill was reformed. As the New York Journal recognized, Bly was considered the “best reporter in America.”

National Women’s Hall of Fame

She went down into the sea in a diving bell and up in the air in a balloon and lived in an insane asylum as a patient; but the feat that made her famous was her trip around the world in 1889. She was sent by The World to beat the mark of Phileas Fogg, Jules Verne’s hero of “Around the World in Eighty Days,” and she succeeded, making the tour in 72 days 6 hours 11 minutes. Every one who read newspapers followed her progress and she landed in New York a national character.

The New York Times

Karl Marx was born in Trier, Germany, on this date in 1818.

Soren Kierkegaard was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, on this date in 1813.

Pat Carroll, whose acting career, primarily in TV sitcoms, goes back nearly 60 years, is 83 today.

Michael Palin of Monty Python is 67. Tina Yothers of Family Ties is 37.

Brian Williams is 51.

Dick Dale, The King of the Surf Guitar, is 73 today. Let’s go trippin’.

George Will is 69 today.

Academy Award nominee Richard Jenkins is 63. The Visitor — if you haven’t seen it, do so.

Randy Travis is 51, forever and ever, amen.

Mary McDonough, Erin of the The Waltons, is 49.

Horace Mann was born on May 4th in 1795. He was instrumental in the establishment American public education.

Horace Mann, often called the Father of the Common School, began his career as a lawyer and legislator. When he was elected to act as Secretary of the newly-created Massachusetts Board of Education in 1837, he used his position to enact major educational reform. He spearheaded the Common School Movement, ensuring that every child could receive a basic education funded by local taxes. His influence soon spread beyond Massachusetts as more states took up the idea of universal schooling.

PBS Online: Only A Teacher

… would have been 81 today. (She died in 1993.)

Ms. Hepburn was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role five times, winning the first time — for Roman Holiday in 1954. (The other nominations were for Sabrina, The Nun’s Story, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Wait Until Dark.) She also received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, posthumously in 1993. Hersholt had presented the Oscar to Hepburn in 1954.

Audrey Kathleen Hepburn-Ruston was born in Brussels, Belgium, daughter of John Victor Hepburn-Ruston, an English banker, and Ella van Heemstra, a Dutch baroness.

In 1963, it was Audrey Hepburn who sang “Happy Birthday” to President Kennedy. Marilyn Monroe sang to him the year before.