What Do I Know?: Famous People Born In 1915

[1916 list is now up]

Billie Holiday was born 8 months before Frank Sinatra who was born a week before Edith Piaf.

It's always interesting to consider at all the folks who were born in the same year. We don't normally think about famous people in terms of their birth year cohorts. As kids, had they been in the same school, the months they were born in would have mattered quite a bit. And it would be interesting to know which ones would have been friends. How many actually got to meet each other? How many were good friends?

Three of these folks born 100 years ago in 2015 appear to still be alive - Herman Wouk the novelist who wrote the WW II novel The Caine Mutiny, Nobel Prize winning Physicist Charles Townes who was part of the team that created laser beams, and banker David Rockefeller and could have their 100th birthdays in 2015.

[UPDATE Jan. 30, 2015: Charles Townes died January 27, 2015]

Some of the best known are singers Frank Sinatra, Edith Piaf, and Billy Holiday. Also best known are actors Orson Welles, Ingrid Bergman, and Anthony Quinn. There's Moshe Dayan and guitarist Les Paul.

Sargent Shriver, as the first director of the Peace Corps, has special meaning for me. And I actually got to meet Nobel Prize winning playwright Arthur Miller in the Anchorage museum when we were both waiting for our wives. [UPDATE See Oct 17, 2015 post, Miller's 100th Birthday, with Alaska connections in Death of a Salesman.]

We've got some heavy thinkers like philosophers Roland Barthes and Thomas Merton.

*Picture sources at bottom of post

The women, not many, are all entertainers.

I cherry picked the names from NNDB which has a much longer list. And most of the links go to NNDB. I've sorted this table by the age they lived to. It's always interesting (and a little creepy) to think about why some people live short lives and others long ones. I know Thomas Merton was electrocuted in a hotel shower in Bangkok in 1968. I was in Thailand at that time too, but didn't know anything about him then.

And there are some who are there simply because they were big names and their roles have had some influence on American culture like Barbara Billingsley - June Cleaver, the mother on Leave It To Beaver - and Lorne Greene, the patriarch of Bonanza.

There are several Nobel Prize winners, no US presidents (but a Supreme Court Justice, Potter Stewart), and at least one villain - Augusto Pinochet.

Edith Piaf	Dec 19 1915	Oct 11 1963	38	Fantastic French Singer
Thomas Merton	Jan 31 1915	Dec 10 1968	43	Catholic Thinker
Billie Holiday	Apr 7 1915	Jul 17 1959	44	Jazz Singer
Philip L. Graham	Jul 30 1915	Aug 3 1963	48	Washington Post publisher, 1947 - - 63
Billy Strayhorn	Nov 29 1915	May 31 1967	51	Composer Take The A Train
Alan Watts	Jan 6 1915	Nov 16 1973	58	Philosopher Zen
Bobby Hackett	Jan 30 1915	Jun 7 1976	61	Jazz Musician
Zero Mostel	Feb 28 1915	Sep 8 1977	62	Actor - Fiddler on the Roof
Roland Barthes	Nov 12, 1915	Mar 23 1980	64	Philosopher
Moshe Dayan	May 20 1915	Oct 16 1981	66	Israeli military leader, politician
Muddy Waters	Apr 4 1915	Apr 30 1983	68	Amazing Blues Musician
Ingrid Bergman	Aug 29 1915	Aug 29 1982	68	Actor
Potter Stewart	Jan 23 1915	Dec 7 1985	70	US Supreme Court
Orson Welles	May 6 1915	Oct 10 1985	70	Actor Citizen Kane
Theodore H. White	May 6 1915	May 15 1986	71	Historian
Robert Hofstadter	Feb 5 1915	Nov 17 1990	75	Nobel Prize Physics
Robert Motherwell	Jan 24 1915	Jul 16 1991	76	Abstract Expressionist Painter
Lorne Greene	Feb 12 1915	Sep 11 1987	77	Ben Cartwright on Bonanza
Fred Friendly	Oct 30 1915	Mar 3 1998	82	President of CBS News, Journalist
Frank Sinatra	Dec 12 1915	May 14 1998	82	The Boss
Ring Lardner, Jr.	Aug 19 1915	Oct 31 2000	85	Playwright
Anthony Quinn	Apr 21 1915	Jun 3 2001	86	Actor Zorba the Greek
John C. Lilly	Jan 6 1915	Sep 30 2001	86	Human/dolphin communication
Abba Eban	Feb 2 1915	Nov 17 2002	87	Foreign Minister of Israel
Alan Lomax	Jan 30 1915	Jul 19 2002	87	Musicologist - Saved folksongs
Saul Bellow	Jun 10 1915	Apr 5 2005	89	Nobel Prize Literature
Arthur Miller	Oct 17 1915	Feb 2005	89	Playwright - Death of a Salesman
William Proxmire	Nov 11 1915	Dec 15 2005	90	US Senator Wisconsin
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf	Sep 1915	Aug 2006	90	Opera Soprano
Augusto Pinochet	Nov 25 1915	Dec 2006	91	Chilean Dictator
Barbara Billingsley	Dec 22 1915	Oct 16 2010	94	Leave It To Beaver’s Mother
Les Paul	Jun 9 1915	Aug 13 2009	94	Electric guitar/multitrack recording pioneer
Paul Samuelson	May 15 1915	Dec 13 2009	94	Nobel Prize Economics
Sargent Shriver	Nov 9 1915	Jan 18 2011	95	1st Peace Corps Director
Charles H. Townes	Jul 28 1915		99	Nobel Prize Phyics Laser
David Rockefeller	Jun 15 1915		99	Trilateral Commission Founder
Herman Wouk	May 27 1915		99	Novelist The Caine Mutiny