NewMexiKen

Frank Sinatra was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, 96 years ago today (1915).

This from Sinatra’s New York Times obituary in 1998:

Widely held to be the greatest singer in American pop history and one of the most successful entertainers of the 20th century, Sinatra was also the first modern pop superstar. He defined that role in the early 1940’s when his first solo appearances provoked the kind of mass pandemonium that later greeted Elvis Presley and the Beatles.

During a show business career that spanned more than 50 years and comprised recordings, film and television as well as countless performances in nightclubs, concert halls and sports arenas, Sinatra stood as a singular mirror of the American psyche.

His evolution from the idealistic crooner of the early 1940’s to the sophisticated swinger of the 50’s and 60’s seemed to personify the country’s loss of innocence.

Melvil Dewey was born on December 10th in 1851. You know — Dewey, as in Dewey decimal system.

Dr. Dewey had a passion for efficiency, for time and labor saving methods. He was born at Adams Centre, Jefferson County, N.Y. on Dec. 10, 1851. He was graduated from Amherst College in 1874 and received a Master’s degree there in 1877. While in college he was honorary assistant in the library, desiring to learn its technique. He decided that much could be done in education by building up the library systems and set about to apply his ideas. The college library drifted into his management, and at the end of his junior year he was asked by the trustees to become acting librarian.

It was here that he developed the system of classifying and cataloguing books by decimal numbers, a system now known by his name and used in practically all libraries in this country.

New York Times obituary, 1931

Emily Dickinson was born on this date in 1830.

Emily Dickinson selected her own society, and it was rarely that of other people. She preferred the solitude of her white-washed poet’s room, or the birds, bees, and flowers of her garden to the visitations of family and friends. But for three occasions in her life she never left her native Amherst, MA; for the last twenty of her fifty-six years, she rarely left her house. And yet her reclusive existence in no way restricted her abundant life of the imagination. Her letters and poems, all except seven published posthumously, revealed her to be an inspired visionary and true original of American literature.

PBS: I Hear America Singing

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading – treading – till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through –

And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum –
Kept beating – beating – till I thought
My Mind was going numb –

And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space – began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race
Wrecked, solitary, here –

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down –
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing – then –

Emily Dickinson Museum

Dick Bavetta is 72 today. He is a referee in the NBA. Still.

Tommy Kirk is 70 today. Kirk was in Disney films Old Yeller, The Shaggy Dog, Swiss Family Robinson and The Absent-Minded Professor. Kirk was fired by Walt Disney personally in 1963 when it was learned he was gay (and having sex with a minor).

Susan Dey of “The Partridge Family” is 59.

Rod Blagojevich is 55 today.

Four-time Oscar nominee Kenneth Branagh is 51. Branagh has been nominated for adapted screenplay (Hamlet), best short film, best actor and best director.

Summer Phoenix (born Summer Joy Bottom) is 33 today. Her siblings are River (died 1993), Rain, Joaquin and Liberty. Her husband is Casey Affleck.

“Hoss” Cartwright was born 83 years ago today. That’s the actor Dan Blocker. Blocker was a west Texas boy, a teacher and coach at Carlsbad, New Mexico’s Eddy School among other places, before getting into acting. Hoss’s given name on Bonanza was Eric. Blocker, who weighed around 300 pounds, died in 1972 at age 43.

Philip Hart was born 99 years ago today. Hart was United States Senator from Michigan 1959-1976. The third of the three Senate office buildings is named for him — the vote to do so was 99-0. He died shortly after.

Chet Huntley was born 100 years ago today. After proving a popular success at the 1956 political conventions, the team of Huntley (from New York) and David Brinkley (from Washington) anchored the NBC evening news program. Huntley left the show in 1970. He died in 1974. “Good night, Chet” — “Good night, David — “and good night for NBC News.”

And happy birthday to my brother-in-law Ken (KenB on these pages). That’s a book he wrote below. Best wishes, Bro.

Today is the birthday

… of Kirk Douglas. The three-time Oscar nominee is 95. He was born Issur Danielovitch Demsky. NewMexiKen’s favorite Douglas performance is in Lonely Are the Brave. “Filmed on location in New Mexico, Lonely are the Brave was adapted by Dalton Trumbo from Edward Abbey’s novel Brave Cowboy.”

… of Dina Merrill. Nedenia Marjorie Hutton is 86 today. Her father was E.F. Hutton. Her mother was Marjorie Merriweather Post (of Post cereal). She has 107 acting credits at IMDb and was Mrs. Cliff Robertson for 20 years.

… of Buck Henry, 81 today. Henry was nominated for Oscars for directing, with Warren Beatty, Heaven Can Wait and co-writing The Graduate.

… of Dame Judi Dench. The six-time Oscar nominee, one-time winner for Shakespeare in Love, is 77.

… of Beau Bridges. Jeff’s big brother is 70. No Oscars for Beau, but he has three wins from 10 Emmy nominations.

… of Dick Butkus, 69. The Butkus Award is given each year to the best college linebacker, so I guess that tells you what kind of a linebacker Butkus was.

… of Tom Kite. He’s 62. Kite won the U.S. Open in 1992.

… of John Malkovich. The two-time Oscar nominee is 58.

… of Donny Osmond, 54. Fifty. Four.

… of Felicity Huffman. The Oscar nominee and Desperate Housewife is 49.

… of Jakob Dylan, son of Bob. Jakob is 42 today. He’s the youngest of his dad’s four children with first wife Sara Lownds, the Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.

… of Imogen Heap, 34.

The actor Broderick Crawford was born 100 years ago today. Crawford won the best actor Oscar in 1950 for his portrayal of politician Willie Stark in All the King’s Men. He has 141 acting credits at IMDb.

The actor Lee J. Cobb was born 100 years ago today. Cobb was twice nominated for the best supporting actor Oscar: On the Waterfront and The Brothers Karamazov. I thing he was superb as Juror #3 in 12 Angry Men. He has 104 acting credits listed on IMDb.

The screenwriter and novelist Dalton Trumbo was born in Montrose, Colorado, 105 years ago today. Trumbo was nominated for three writing Oscars, winning twice, for Roman Holiday and The Brave One. Because he was blacklisted for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, both Oscars were awarded to fronts. The records were changed only years later after Otto Preminger and Kirk Douglas fought the blacklisting and credited Trumbo’s screenwriting for Exodus and Spartacus respectively. Trumbo’s novel Johnny Got His Gun is a classic that everyone should read.

The famed circus clown Emmett Kelly was born on December 9, 1898. Kelly was known for his character Weary Willie, in makeup as a bum sweeping up. His was a revolutionary character; clowns always appeared in white face before Kelly. He was a star performer with Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus when I was a kid.

Grace Hopper was born in New York City 105 years ago today.

She began tinkering around with machines when she was seven years old, dismantling several alarm clocks around the house to see how they worked. She studied math and physics in college, and eventually got a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale.

Then World War II broke out, and Hopper wanted to serve her country. Her father had been an admiral in the Navy, so she applied to a division of the Navy called WAVES, which stood for Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service. They turned her down at first[;] they said she was too old at 35, and that she didn’t weigh enough, at 105 pounds. But she wouldn’t give up, and they eventually accepted her. With her math skills, she was assigned to work on a machine that might help calculate the trajectory of bombs and rockets.

Hopper learned how to program that early computing machine, and wrote the first instruction manual for its use. And she went on to help write an early computer language known as COBOL — “Common Business-Oriented Language.” She remained in the Navy, and eventually she became the first woman ever promoted to rear admiral.

The Writers Almanac from American Public Media (2006)

Clarence Birdseye was born on this date in 1886. Birdseye, fishing with Inuit in the Arctic, observed that fish flash frozen at Arctic temperatures, when thawed, tasted much better and fresher than fish frozen at higher temperatures, as was being done commercially. That is, Birdseye came up with the approach that made frozen food acceptable. The company he founded eventually became General Foods.