Getting perspective is always good. Looking back 100 years helps do that. So as 2018 begins, let's look at who was born 100 years ago. And remember the babies you see this year may be on a list like this in 2118. Treat them well.
Also, consider that if they lived in the same neighborhood, these folks would have been classmates at school. We don't always recognize famous folks who were cohorts. I'm grouping them by areas they gained fame and in order of their deaths. These are just a few of the 1918 birth group who did noteworthy (a non-judgmental term) things. I'll do one or two more posts with other categories.
Politics/Government
Two African leaders and Nobel Peace Prize winners, but overall a sketchy group. One assassinated and two others executed.
Political prisoner then President of South Africa, Nobel Peace Prize,
[UPDATE Jan 2, 2018: AKBright reminded me in a comment below that Anchorage's Ruth Sheridan was born in 1918. She's still visible around town and still fighting for justice. Somewhere I must have a picture of her, but not sure where.]
When I first did a post like this back in 2007, I had to work hard to pull names together. Now there are lots of sites that do this, so I don't think my efforts here need to be as extensive as the original ones.
It's a reflection of how the human brain and heart combine to decide who is important. How else can one explain why I've got people whose influence on the world is as varied as Buffalo Bob Smith and Ferdinand Marcos? There are three assassinated heads of state (Kennedy, Gandhi, and Park) and seven Nobel Prize winners (marked in the table below.)
Two are still alive - architect I.M. Pei and voice of Rocky Squirrel June Foray.
There's one Alaskan on the list - Judge Robert Boochever. He's probably not a household name, but he was a fine judge and he was also the father-in-law of my doctor (until he retired.)
I hope to do more with this list, but I wanted to get it up on this first day of 2017 - one hundred years after these people were born. While we know about people who gain public attention, we rarely (at least I rarely), think about people who are in the same cohort, or in this case the same birth year. It fascinates me to think about these people all going to the same schools from Kindergarten through high school. In that context, this chart below makes sense. The famous folks are listed in birth order - something that would have meaning to kids.
These are all folks who would have grown up at the same time and been impacted by the same historical events - though from different parts of the world in a number of cases. Ray Massey had a popular video tape many years ago that argued that people's world views are shaped by the times they lived and that explained differences between those who grew up during the depression and those who grew up after WW II. We see the same sort of thing today in discussions about Millennials and other generations. That certainly plays a factor in our world views. So seeing this group of people who were all born in the same year gives one lots to think about. In addition to the time they grew up, one has to consider their economic situation, race, geographic location, family influences, etc.
When I first made a list like this - 2008 - it was much harder to track people down. That year I was googling "born 1908" to find people until I found a website that listed historical events by day in a year. That's how I picked up many of the names. Nowadays there are lots of sites that list people by birth year. This year I used NNDB which has a long list of people born in 1917 and links to bios about each. I'll try to do some bios about a few people on the list - particularly those not so well known, but who made significant contributions to the world. You can see similar posts for other years by clicking on the "Famous People Born label".
If you find substantive errors or typos you can email me (see just above 'blog archive') or leave a comment. Thanks.
I'm going to do this one a little differently this year. Rather than wait until it is all 'done' I thought I'd build it slowly and let you see it grow to completion. I think I have everyone up. There are other sites that list people born in 1916. For instance this biography website. Some seem like they have everyone born that year. Other sites have fewer. I used several loose criteria:
Had I heard of them?
Were they significant in the world or their culture when they lived?
Did they make an important contribution to humanity?
What were my feelings about them and did I have any kind of connection to them?
Most I've heard of. Most had some significant role to play. Adriana Caselotti was the voice of Snow White in the Disney movie and Ruth Handler had a significant role in creating Barbie - for better or worse, a major influence in 20th Century United States. Iva Tigori was better known as Tokyo Rose. I figure the Nobel Prize winners, though unknown to most of us, made an important contribution. And I've read Herbert Simon and C. Wright Mills' work. I've stopped worrying about whether I cover everyone I should. It's my blog, so it's my choice.
My goal is to get people's information up at least by their birthdays. So I've put up Maxene Andrews - one of the Andrews Sisters - up today because her birthday is January 3, making her the oldest of this year's cohorts.
I'm also trying out grouping them by their professions. I may or may not have a lot about any individual. With Maxene Andrews, I've just got a link to her obituary and a video that probably tells essentials for people who don't know her.
The only other people I've got done are Ruth Handler and John Burnside. I didn't know who they were and so when I looked them up, I took some notes, and it seemed the best place to keep the notes was in the post.
Still Alive
There are three on the list who are still alive: Actors Olivia de Havilland and Kirk Douglas, and author Beverly Cleary. Beverly turns 100 on April 12, Olivia on July 1, 2016, and Kirk has almost a year left until December 9, 2016
Two people on the list - Betty Grable and Harry James - were married to each other for a time.
So, enjoy, learn some history, and watch this post evolve in the next few months.
Music
Harry James March 15, 1916 -July 5, 1983 67
Dinah Shore Feb 29, 1916 - Feb 24, 1994 78
A popular singer of the mid 20th century, a bit
too sweet for me. Pearl Bailey helps with this rendition
of Mack the Knife.
Francis Crick June 8 - July 28, 2004 88 Nobel Prize
Herbert Simon June 15 - Feb 9, 2001
84 Nobel Prize
Alexander Prokhorov July 11, - Jan 8 2002 85 Nobel Prize
Edward C. Banfield Nov 19 - Sept. 30, 1999 82
C. Wright Mills August 28, 1916 – March 20, 1962
Shelby Foote Nov 17 - June 27 2005 88 Historian
Politicians
Aldo Moro Sept. 23 - May 9, 1978 61
Edward Heath July 9 - July 17 2005 89
François Mitterrand Oct 26-Jan 8 1996 79
Gough Whitlam July 11 - Oct. 21, 2014 98
Harold Wilson March 11- May 23, 1995 79
Eugene McCarthy March 29 - Dec 10, 2006
Actors
Gregory Peck April 5, 1916 - June 12, 2003 87 Jackie Gleason Feb 28, 1916 - June 24, 1987 71
"His penchant for fine food, generously poured scotch and beautiful women; his ability to dominate a room, a stage or the screen; his taste for custom-made suits, monogrammed shirts and the ubiquitous red carnation; his appetite for the biggest, the best and just a dollar more than the other guy made, all became a part of the Gleason legend which began on Brooklyn’s Herkimer Street in 1916."(from his website.)
Glenn Ford May 1- Aug 30, 2006 90
Dorothy McGuire June 14 - Sept 14, 2001 85
Betty Grable - Dec, 18, 1916 - July 2, 1973 56
Olivia deHaviland July 1, 1916 (born in Tokyo) Still Alive at 99
Sterling Hayden March 26 - May 23 1996 80 Kirk Douglas Dec. 9, 1916 - Still Alive at99
Adriana Caselotti May 6 - Jan 19, 1997 80
Business/Creators
Ferruccio Lamborghini April 28, 1916- Feb 20, 1993 76
"Ruth and Elliot Handler founded Mattel Creations in 1945, and 14 years later, Ruth Handler gave the world the Barbie doll. When asked her relationship to Barbie, Ruth simply replied, "I'm Barbie's mom."
The inspiration for Barbie came as Ruth watched her daughter Barbara playing with paper dolls. Barbara and her friends used them to play adult or teenage make-believe, imagining roles as college students, cheerleaders and adults with careers. Ruth immediately recognized that experimenting with the future from a safe distance through pretend play was an important part of growing up. She also noticed a product void and was determined to fill that niche with a three-dimensional fashion doll.
Several years and many designs later, Mattel introduced Barbie, the Teen-Age Fashion Model, to skeptical toy buyers at the annual Toy Fair in New York on March 9, 1959. Never before had they seen a doll so completely unlike the baby and toddler dolls popular at the time."
News
Walter Cronkite Nov. 4, 1916 - July 17, 2009 92
Daniel Schorr Aug 31 - July 23, 2010 93
Writers
Irving Wallace March 19 0 June 20 1980 74
Harold Robbins May 21 - October 14, 1997 81
Roald Dahl Sept 13, 1916- Nov 23, 1990 74
Beverly Cleary April 12, 1916 - Still Alive at 99
Other
Iva Toguri July 4, 1916 - Sept 26, 2006 90
Inventor/Activist
From LA Times: John Burnside November 2, 1916 – September 14, 2008
From LA Times: "A onetime staff scientist at Lockheed, Burnside had an interest in optical engineering that led to his inventing the teleidoscope, a variation on the kaleidoscope that works without the use of colored glass chips and instead uses a lens to transform whatever is in front of it into a colorful design. In 1958, he launched California Kalidoscopes, which became a successful Los Angeles design and manufacturing plant. In the 1970s, Burnside created the Symetricon, a large mechanical kaleidoscopic device that projects colorful patterns; it was used in a number of movies, including the 1976 science fiction film 'Logan's Run.'"
From The Wild Hunt: "After meeting in the mid-sixties, Burnside and Hay blazed a trail for the still nascent Gay rights movement. They were protesting the exclusion of Gays from the military back in 1966, and appeared on television together two years before the Stonewall riots. Unlike some Gay rights advocates, Burnside was not an assimilationist, preferring that Gays develop their own unique culture and spirituality. This impulse lead to the creation of the Radical Faerie movement in 1979."
It was a summer weekend afternoon when I went into the Anchorage museum to meet my wife. I saw Connie Jones, who was head of the Municipal Cultural and Recreational Affairs Department, which included the museum. She was talking to a someone. She looked at me and said, "Steve, have you met Arthur Miller? He's waiting for his wife to meet him." And that was how I ended up spending 20 minutes talking to one of America's greatest playwrights. What did we talk about? I can't really remember, but I didn't learn any great insights about his life or work. Mostly I think we talked about Alaska. If I'd have been blogging back then, I'd be able to tell you what we talked about, maybe even had some video.
Alaska played a small but important role in Miller's most famous play, Death of a Salesman.
Willy Loman is getting older and he's estranged from his favorite son, his business contacts have all died off, and he's been demoted at work. As he thinks about his life and lost opportunities, Alaska seems to have played a role in his life it has for many - the chance for adventure and fortune as well as the natural world compared to New York.
I've excerpted some parts of Act II that mention Alaska from the script.
The play moves back and forth between the present and Willy Loman's memories. Here Willy is playing poker with his neighbor Charley. Ben, Willy's dead brother is talking in Willy's head:
BEN: I must make a tram, William. There are several properties I’m looking at in Alaska.
WILLY: Sure, sure! If I’d gone with him to Alaska that time, everything would’ve been totally different.
CHARLEY: Go on, you’d froze to death up there.
WILLY: What’re you talking about?
BEN: Opportunity is tremendous in Alaska, William. Surprised you’re not up there.
WILLY: Sure, tremendous. . .
BEN (laughing): I was going to find Father in Alaska.
WILLY: Where is he?
BEN: At that age I had a very faulty view of geography, William. I discovered after a few days that I was heading due south, so instead of Alaska, I ended up in Africa. LINDA: Africa!
WILLY: The Gold Coast!
BEN: Principally diamond mines.
LINDA: Diamond mines!
BEN: Yes, my dear. But I’ve only a few minutes...
WILLY: No! Boys! Boys! (Young Biff and Happy appear.) Listen to this. This is your Uncle Ben, a great man! Tell my boys, Ben!
BEN: Why, boys, when I was seventeen I walked into the jungle, and when I was twenty-one I walked out. (He laughs.) And by God I was rich.
WILLY (to the boys): You see what I been talking about? The greatest things can happen!
BEN (glancing at his watch):I have an appointment in Ketchikan Tuesday week.
Here, with his boss, Howard:
WILLY (angrily): Business is definitely business, but just listen for a minute. You don’t understand this. When I was a boy — eighteen, nineteen — I was already on the road. And there was a question in my mind as to whether selling had a future for me. Because in those days I had a yearning to go to Alaska. See, there were three gold strikes in one month in Alaska, and I felt like going out. Just for the ride, you might say.
HOWARD (barely interested): Don’t say.
WILLY: Oh, yeah, my father lived many years in Alaska. He was an adventurous man. We’ve got quite a little streak of self-reliance in our family. I thought I’d go out with my older brother and try to locate him, and maybe settle in the North with the old man.
But he met a salesman, who changed his life . .
And I was almost decided to go, when I met a salesman in the Parker House. His name was Dave Singleman. And he was eighty-four years old, and he’d drummed merchandise in thirty-one states. And old Dave, he’d go up to his room, y’understand, put on his green velvet slippers — I’ll never forget — and pick up his phone and call the buyers, and without ever leaving his room, at the age of eighty-four, he made his living. And when I saw that, I realized that selling was the greatest career a man could want. ‘Cause what could be more satisfying than to be able to go, at the age of eighty-
four, into twenty or thirty different cities, and pick up a phone, and be remembered and loved and helped by so many different people? Do you know? When he died — and by the way he died the death of a salesman, in his green velvet slippers in the smoker of the New York, New Haven and Hartford, going into Boston — when he died, hundreds of salesmen and buyers were at his funeral.
Linda is Willy's wife:
WILLY: Oh, Ben, how did you do it? What is the answer? Did you wind up the Alaska deal already?
BEN: Doesn’t take much time if you know what you’re doing. Just a short business trip. Boarding ship in an hour. Wanted to say good-by.
WILLY: Ben, I’ve got to talk to you.
BEN (glancing at his watch): Haven’t the time, William.
WILLY (crossing the apron to Ben): Ben, nothing’s working out. I don’t know what to do.
BEN: Now, look here, William. I’ve bought timberland in Alaska and I need a man to look after things for me.
WILLY: God, timberland! Me and my boys in those grand out-doors?
BEN: You’ve a new continent at your doorstep, William. Get out of these cities, they’re full of talk and time payments and courts of law. Screw on your fists and you can fight for a fortune up there.
WILLY: Yes, yes! Linda, Linda! (Linda enters as of old, with the wash.)
LINDA: Oh, you’re back?
BEN: I haven’t much time.
WILLY: No, wait! Linda, he’s got a proposition for me in Alaska.
LINDA: But you’ve got... (To Ben.) He’s got a beautiful job here.
WILLY: But in Alaska, kid, I could...
LINDA: You’re doing well enough, Willy!
BEN (to Linda): Enough for what, my dear?
LINDA (frightened of Ben and angry at him): Don’t say those things to him! Enough to be happy right here, right now.
(To Willy, while Ben laughs.) Why must everybody conquer the world? You’re well liked, and the boys love you, and someday —
(To Ben) — why, old man Wagner told him just the other day that if he keeps it up he’ll be a member of the firm, didn’t he, Willy?
WILLY: Sure, sure. I am building something with this firm, Ben, and if a man is building something he must be on the right track, mustn’t he?
BEN: What are you building? Lay your hand on it. Where is it?
WILLY (hesitantly): That’s true, Linda, there’s nothing.
LINDA: Why?
(To Ben.) There’s a man eighty-four years old –
WILLY: That’s right, Ben, that’s right. When I look at that man I say, what is there to worry about?
BEN: Bah!
WILLY: It’s true, Ben. All he has to do is go into any city, pick up the phone, and he’s making his living and you know why?
BEN (picking up his valise): I’ve got to go.
WILLY (holding Ben back): Look at this boy! (Biff, in his high school sweater, enters carrying suitcase. Happy carries Biffs shoulder guards, gold helmet, and football pants.)
WILLY: Without a penny to his name, three great universities are begging for him, and from there the sky’s the limit, because it’s not what you do, Ben. It’s who you know and the smile on your face! It’s contacts, Ben, contacts! The whole wealth of Alaska passes over the lunch table at the Commodore Hotel, and that’s the wonder, the wonder of this country, that a man can end with diamonds here on the basis of being liked! (He turns to Biff.) And that’s why when you get out on that field today it’s important. Because thousands of people will be rooting for you and loving you. (To Ben, who has again begun to leave.) And Ben! When he walks into a business office his name will sound out like a bell and all the doors will open to him! I’ve seen it, Ben, I’ve seen it a thousand times! You can’t feel it with your hand like timber, but it’s there!
.
Here's a radio version of the whole play on Youtube:
I'm going to send you to theoriginal post here that has video and pictures and a list of 37 folks who were born in 1915 and made names for themselves.
I'm afraid the coding for the table was too big for Feedburner to send it to other blogrolls. I tried to make it simpler but after redoing the chart, I did something that screwed up all the formatting.
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.
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.
