NewMexiKen

… of author P.D. James. Phyllis Dorothy James is 87.

She had always wanted to be a writer, but she kept putting it off. It was only as she approached her 40th birthday that she began to feel that she had to write something or give up on it altogether. It took her three years to finish her first novel, Cover Her Face (1962), and it was accepted by the first publisher she sent it to. She’s one of the few professional writers in modern history never to have received a rejection slip.

The Writer’s Almanac

… of Tony Bennett. He’s 81.

… of Martin Sheen, 67. Sheen won one Golden Globe for West Wing, but no Emmys. He did win an Emmy once for a guest role on Murphy Brown.

… of Martha Stewart, 66.

… of hockey hall-of-famer Marcel Dionne and of Jay North (TV’s Dennis the Menace). They’re 56.

… of quarterback Tom Brady, 30.

… of Evangeline Lilly, 28 today. Maybe now she can be found.

Ernie Pyle was born on this date in 1900. Until he was killed by enemy fire in April 1945, Pyle “blogged” World War II for millions of Americans.

From The New York Times obituary.

Ernie Pyle was haunted all his life by an obsession. He said over and over again, “I suffer agony in anticipation of meeting people for fear they won’t like me.”

No man could have been less justified in such a fear. Word of Pyle’s death started tears in the eyes of millions, from the White House to the poorest dwellings in the country.

President Truman and Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt followed his writings as avidly as any farmer’s wife or city tenement mother with sons in service.

Mrs. Roosevelt once wrote in her column “I have read everything he has sent from overseas,” and recommended his writings to all Americans.

For three years these writings had entered some 14,000,000 homes almost as personal letters from the front. Soldiers’ kin prayed for Ernie Pyle as they prayed for their own sons.

NewMexiKen has before posted this quote from Pyle, but why not do so again on his birthday, and because there’s no place like home.

Yes, there are lots of nice places in the world. I could live with considerable pleasure in the Pacific Northwest, or in New England, on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, or in Key West or California or Honolulu. But there is only one of me, and I can’t live in all those places. So if we can have only one house — and that’s all we want — then it has to be in New Mexico, and preferably right at the edge of Albuquerque where it is now. Ernie Pyle, January 1942

Pyle’s home on Girard SE is now a branch of the Albuquerque/Bernalillo County Library System.

Eight-time Oscar nominee for best actor, Peter O’Toole is 75 today.

Director-writer-producer Wes Craven is 68.

Eddie Munster, aka actor Butch Patrick, is 54.

Emmy-winner, for Angels in America, and Weeds star Mary Louise Parker is 43 today. Parker played Amy Gardner on West Wing.

Actress Myrna Loy was born on this date in 1905. IMDB has her listed for an incredible 138 roles, beginning with silent films when she was the femme fatale, but more famously as the witty, urbane Nora Charles in The Thin Man movies. NewMexiKen liked her in The Best Years of Our Lives, a film everyone should see. It won seven Academy Awards in 1946.

Author James Baldwin was born on this date in 1924.

After writing a number of pieces that were published in various magazines, Baldwin went to Switzerland to finish his first novel. GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN, published in 1953, was an autobiographical work about growing up in Harlem. The passion and depth with which he described the struggles of black Americans was unlike anything that had been written. Though not instantly recognized as such, GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN has long been considered an American classic. Throughout the rest of the decade, Baldwin moved from Paris to New York to Istanbul, writing NOTES OF A NATIVE SON (1955) and GIOVANNI’S ROOM (1956). Dealing with taboo themes in both books (homosexuality and interracial relationships, respectively), Baldwin was creating socially relevant and psychologically penetrating literature. (American Masters | PBS)

James Butler Hickok was killed while playing poker in Deadwood 131 years ago today. American Heritage has An Interview with Jeff Morey, an expert on Wild Bill and the frontier.

William Clark, of Lewis and Clark, was born on this date in 1770. He died in 1838. Here is Clark’s journal entry on his 36th birthday from Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition Online. He was on the Yellowstone River in what is now eastern Montana.

We Set out early as usial the wind was high and ahead which caused the water to be a little rough and delayed us very much    aded to this we had Showers of rain repeetedly all day at the intermition of only a fiew minits between them. My Situation a very disagreeable one.    in an open Canoe wet and without a possibility of keeping my Self dry.    the Country through which we passed is in every respect like that through which I passed yesterday. The brooks have all Some water in them from the rains which has fallen.    this water is excessively muddy. Several of those brooks have Some trees on their borders as far as I can See up them. I observe Some low pine an cedar on the Sides of the rugid hills on the Stard. Side, and Some ash timber in the high bottoms.    the river has more Sand bars today than usial, and more Soft mud.    the current less rapid.    at 2 P. M. I was obliged to land to let the Buffalow Cross over.    not withstanding an island of half a mile in width over which this gangue of Buffalow had to pass and the Chanel of the river on each Side nearly ¼ of a mile in width, this gangue of Buffalow was entirely across and as thick as they could Swim.    the Chanel on the Side of the island the went into the river was crouded with those animals for ½ an hour.    [NB: I was obliged to lay to for an hour] the other Side of the island for more than 3/4 of an hour. I took 4 of the men and killed 4 fat Cows for their fat and what portion of their flesh the Small Canoes Could Carry    that which we had killed a few days ago being nearly Spoiled from the wet weather.    encamped on an Island Close to the Lard Shore.    two gangues of Buffalow Crossed a little below us, as noumerous as the first.

Francis Scott Key was born on August 1st in 1779.

Richard Henry Dana was born on August 1st in 1815.

Herman Melville was born on August 1st in 1819. The Writer’s Almanac has a brief little bio that includes this:

Melville started Moby-Dick in the winter of 1850 and finished in the summer of 1851, writing all day every day without eating until four or five o’clock in the evening. When it was finally printed, he handed one of the first copies of the book to his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne in a tavern, and later said that that was the best day of his life. But Moby-Dick was a total flop. Melville’s readers wanted adventure stories, and Moby-Dick was an adventure story, but the adventure was obscured by the language. It takes more than a hundred pages before the characters even get on the boat. The book got terrible reviews, and nobody read it.

But if Moby-Dick was a financial failure, Melville’s next book, Pierre (1852), fared even worse. Melville eventually gave up on writing fiction and turned to poetry, which he had to publish himself. He spent the last 20 years of his life working as a customs inspector. It wasn’t until the 1920s that his work was rediscovered.

Robert Todd Lincoln, the first child of Abraham Lincoln and the only one to survive to adulthood, was born on this date in 1843. He died in 1926. (Lincoln’s son Eddie was born in 1846 and died in 1850. Son Willie died at age 12 in 1862. Son Tad (Thomas) died at age 18 in 1871.)

Jerry Garcia was born on this date in 1942. He died in 1995.

Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes (American Beauty) is 42 today.