birthday Archives - Page 38 of 50

Sophia Loren is 80

Sophia Loren was the first performer to win an Oscar for a foreign-language performance.

When I was growing up, there were women who were supposed to be most beautiful: Marilyn Monroe, Bridget Bardot, among them.

Somehow, though, I was most fascinated by Sophia Loren, the poor Italian girl who became a star. Long before I ever saw her in a full-length film, I’d catch her on some part of a Saturday afternoon movie on TV and was captivated. And I still am.

In Binghamton, there were “art films” at the Robinson Center when I was a teenager, and I’m sure there was a Loren film or two, though I don’t recall specifically which ones.

She was the first performer to win an Oscar for a foreign-language performance, Best Actress in 1962, playing Cesira in Vittorio De Sica’s Two Women.

Here are some links:

Ahead of her time?

A series of photos of Sophia Loren at the height of her fame — made by her great friend and LIFE photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt.

She sings Zou Bisou Bisou.

She dances flamenco.

The movie Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, directed by her husband, the late Carlo Ponti.

Her IMDB page.

Her life and career, from oscars.org.

A documentary – from biography.com.

Timeless beauty Sophia Loren, 79, stuns in chic pantsuit as she arrives hand-in-hand with son Edoardo Ponti to film screening.

#1 songs on my birthday, 1964-1973

I’m passing on a great Sly song, and a Beatles anthem, to pick one of the greatest pop performances ever, in my mind.

My friend Dan Van Riper sent me this list of all the #1 songs since August 4, 1958.

I have links only to the middle tune, the song of my birthday. You can go to the website and hear the other contenders. If I’ve heard it before, I won’t play it again. If I’ve never heard of it, I’ll play it once. But I won’t listen to the adjacent tunes. My goal: am I happy with THAT choice to celebrate my birthday? Or (as will be the case in the latter stages of the game), I have no idea?

1/4/64 Bobby Vinton – There! I’ve Said It Again
2/1/64 The Beatles – I Want To Hold Your Hand
3/21/64 The Beatles – She Loves You

Maybe it’s because She Loves You was on a minor label (Swan) that finally became a hit in the US only after the Capitol Records marketing machine took IWTHYH to the top, but I always had the greater affection for it.

2/20/65 Gary Lewis and the Playboys – This Diamond Ring
3/6/65 The Temptations – My Girl
3/13/65 The Beatles – Eight Days A Week

All songs I own. I’ll pick that middle song, written by Smokey Robinson.

2/26/66 Nancy Sinatra – These Boots Are Made For Walkin’
3/5/66 Barry Sadler – The Ballad Of The Green Berets
4/9/66 The Righteous Brothers – (You’re My) Soul And Inspiration

The staff sergeant’s song was #1 for FIVE weeks, two weeks longer than any song that year. It wasn’t my type of record, let’s say, yet I knew all the words. Still, for my week, I’d take either of the other songs. Boots is iconic, though I never actually owned it, so I’ll pick Bill and Bobby.

2/18/67 The Buckinghams – Kind Of A Drag
3/4/67 The Rolling Stones -Ruby Tuesday
3/11/67 The Supremes – Love Is Here And Now You’re Gone

Own all of these, too. A tossup. All decent songs, none my favorite by the artist. Supremes, I suppose.

2/3/68 The Lemon Pipers – Green Tambourine
2/10/68 Paul Mauriat and His Orchestra – Love Is Blue (L’Amour Est Bleu)
3/16/68 Otis Redding (Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay

Tough choice! I actually really liked Love Is Blue, the only performance by a French artist ever to top the Billboard Hot 100. “Its five-week run at the top was second-longest of any instrumental of the Hot 100 era next to 1960s Theme From A Summer Place,” which I was also fond of.
Then you have a song with GREEN in the title.
But I’ll opt for what I recall is the first posthumous #1 pop single, as Otis had died in a plane crash.

2/1/69 Tommy James and the Shondells – Crimson And Clover
2/15/69 Sly & the Family Stone – Everyday People
3/15/69 Tommy Roe – Dizzy

Did my sister own the Tommy Roe single? Heard it a lot. I’ll pick Sly, but I really also like how Crimson and Clover changes key near the end.

2/14/70 Sly & the Family Stone – Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)
2/28/70 Simon and Garfunkel – Bridge Over Troubled Water
4/11/70 The Beatles – Let It Be

I’m passing on a great Sly song, and a Beatles anthem, to pick one of the greatest pop performances ever, in my mind.

1/23/71 Dawn – Knock Three Times
2/13/71 The Osmonds – One Bad Apple
3/20/71 Janis Joplin – Me And Bobby McGee

This is an easy pick. Donny trying to sound like Michael Jackson; nope. Tony Orlando; nope. Yet another posthumous #1, a great song written by Kris Kristofferson; yup.

2/12/72 Al Green – Let’s Stay Together
2/19/72 Nilsson – Without You
3/18/72 Neil Young – Heart Of Gold

Another tough choice. I love Neil, and this is perhaps cousin Al’s greatest song. But Without You, I felt viscerally.

2/3/73 Elton John – Crocodile Rock
2/24/73 Roberta Flack – Killing Me Softly With His Song
3/24/73 The O’Jays – Love Train

Mediocre Elton (given his other output from that period), decent Roberta, but anthemic (and geographically-based) O’Jays win out.

Irwin Corey is 100

Professor Irwin Corey regularly panhandles on the streets of NYC, not for himself, but for a cause.

Professor Irwin Corey, as I noted five years ago, is an in-law of an in-law of mine, who I’ve met on a few occasions. My maternal grandmother Gert, whose brother Ernie had married Charlotte, whose sister Fran had married Irwin, was SO excited when Irwin would show up on the talk shows hosted by Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, and others. Not sure she understood what he was saying, and I’m fairly positive I didn’t always. But her attraction to this tenuous connection to celebrity was very strong. So we’d always watch when we read in the TV Guide, “Irwin’s going to be on!”

And I guess I’ve become my grandmother, keeping track of Irwin sightings:

Before I began blogging myself, I was reading the now frozen-in-time blog of my friend Fred Hembeck, who has a picture of him with some other creative folks. (2004)

Mark Evanier wishes him a happy 90th. (2004)

Evanier links to Irwin speaking at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York party in 2007 to commemorate the birth and life of Lord Buckley (1906-1960). Some content on the coarse side, and, unsurprisingly, unkind about George W. Bush. (Posted 2008)

An appreciation by Frozen Justice who makes an interesting connection to Sarah Palin (2009). Has a link to the Smothers Brothers show (c. 1966), which I almost certainly watched.

Professor Irwin Corey screwed up the Soupy Sales funeral! Which I can totally believe. And it wasn’t out of disrespect for Soupy. “[He] had to be removed from the podium after his eulogy turned into a diatribe about health-care reform…” (Althouse, 2009)

Evanier links to a 2010 interview on a cable access show.

Irwin regularly panhandles on the streets of NYC, not for himself, but for a cause. (New York Times, 2011)

Happy Birthday to the World’s Weirdest Comic: Professor Irwin Corey, the Gibberish Maven. (Huffington Post, 2012)

An Interview with the Professor Irwin Corey. (CLASSIC TELEVISION SHOWBIZ– Kliph Nesteroff, 2013)

A story about Gilbert Gottfried, featuring Irwin. (Lowbrow Reader, 2014)

Sorry, Leslie

It’s sister Leslie’s birthday.

I have mentioned my particularly lousy March 2014 HERE and especially HERE. About St. Patrick’s Day, give or take 24 hours, sister Leslie called and asked how I was, and I told her.

Unfortunately, I was more than a tad short of patience. When she started giving me advice, which I found to be well-meaning but frankly unhelpful, I petitioned to get off the phone. When she insisted I stay on the phone… well, I don’t really remember much after that, because I had departed the conversation emotionally at that point.

What WAS evident, even in my stressful state, was that she was feeling hurt, when all she wanted to do was help. I feel bad about that. And we haven’t talked since then, although we’ve had brief Facebook encounters.

It is, however, her birthday, and I always try to call her on that day. So I need to practice that apology speech…

#1 songs on my birthday, 1953-1963

There are TWO versions of Young Love, and it’s the Sonny James version that I’ve always known.

Since I had decided that I would repurpose some of my 2014 posts for Round 15 of ABC Wednesday, I needed another weekly exercise. My friend Dan Van Riper sent me this list of all the #1 songs since August 4, 1958, which was Ricky Nelson’s Poor Little Fool, signifying the debut of Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. Prior to that (and indeed for a few months after that), there were multiple charts, including what was playing on the jukeboxes and what the radio disc jockeys were spinning.

That fact explains why, as I decided to post the number #1 song for my birthday, and the song before and after, you’ll occasionally find multiple tunes. Obviously, since I was born before 1958, I had to augment the website with something called… let me check the spelling there… “books,” specifically Joel Whitburn’s Top Pop Singles, and Pop Hits 1940-1954.

I have links only to the middle tune, the song of my birthday (with a couple of exceptions this week). If I’ve heard it, I won’t play it again. If I’ve never heard of it, I’ll play it once. But I won’t listen to the adjacent tunes. My goal: am I happy with THAT choice to celebrate my birthday? Or (as will be the case in the latter stages of the game), I have no idea? You can go to the website, starting with 1959, and hear the other contenders.

1/10/53 Perry Como with The Ramblers – Don’t Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes
2/14/53 Teresa Brewer – Till I Waltz with You Again
3/21/53 Patti Page – The Doggie in the Window

Don’t know the Como. The Brewer song is quite pleasant. You probably know the Page song, it’s become almost ubiquitous, in an irritating way. I’d pick the Brewer song.

1/2/54 Eddie Fisher – Oh! My Pa-Pa (O Mein Papa)
2/27/54 Doris Day – Secret Love.
3/13/54 Jo Stafford – Make Love To Me!

The Fisher song got played a LOT when I was growing up, and I own it on a compilation, but the Stafford song I know not at all. I guess I stay with Doris Day, though I prefer the movie version from her Oscar-winning song from Calamity Jane.

2/5/55 The Fontaine Sisters – Hearts of Stone
2/12/55 The McGuire Sisters – Sincerely
3/26/55 Bill Hayes – The Ballad of Davy Crockett

Davy Crockett, I heard A LOT growing up. I’ll stick with the lush harmonies of the McGuires, which I have on that same compilation.

2/18/56 Rock and Roll Waltz – Kay Starr OR The Platters – The Great Pretender
2/25/56 Nelson Riddle – Lisbon Antigua
3/17/56 Les Baxter – The Poor People of Paris

I own both 2/18 songs. I’m picking the Platters. If I have heard Lisbon Antigua, I don’t remember it, and it might take a few listens to appreciate it more fully.

2/9/57 Pat Boone -Don’t Forbid Me OR Young Love – Sonny James
2/16/57 Tab Hunter – Young Love
3/30/57 Butterfly – Andy Williams

My friend Fred Hembeck is a big Andy Williams fan, so I do own Butterfly. Don’t know the Boone song. But there are TWO versions of Young Love, and it’s the Sonny James version, which I linked to, that I’ve always known. I listened to the Tab Hunter version, the longer reign at the top of the charts for the guy primarily know as an actor, and there’s no contest to my ears. Sonny James!

2/17/58 The McGuire Sisters – Sugartime
2/24/58 The Silhouettes – Get A Job
3/17/58 The Champs – Tequila

Either of the latter two songs I know well, and enjoy.

1/19/59 The Platters – Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
2/9/59 Lloyd Price – Stagger Lee
3/9/59 Frankie Avalon – Venus

Finally, a week I know all the songs. Stagger Lee is a murder ballad, and even as a kid found disturbing. (But not as disturbing as the Nick Cave song of the same name.) I’d opt for the Platters, again.

2/8/60 Mark Dinning – Teen Angel
2/22/60 Percy Faith and His Orchestra The Theme From A Summer Place
4/25/60 Elvis Presley With The Jordanaires – Stuck On You

Those death songs like Teen Angel I never much liked. I suppose I could pick Elvis, but when I was seven, I always enjoyed Theme from a Summer Place. Radio, in the day, would segue to the news, with an instrumental in the background, and it was often this one.

2/13/61 Lawrence Welk and His Orchestra – Calcutta
2/27/61 Chubby Checker – Pony Time
3/20/61 Elvis Presley With The Jordanaires – Surrender

When I played Pony Time, I thought, “Oh, I HAVE heard this.” Terribly derivative of his other songs, so I’ll pick Elvis this time.

1/22/62 Joey Dee & the Starliters – Peppermint Twist (Part 1)
2/17/62 Gene Chandler – Duke Of Earl
3/10/62 Bruce Channel – Hey! Baby

Another one where I know them all. I’ll stick with the Duke.

2/9/63 Paul and Paula – Hey Paula
3/2/63 The 4 Seasons – Walk Like A Man
3/23/63 Ruby and the Romantics – Our Day Will Come

I know these too, though I always thought Hey Paula was dorky. I think seeing Jersey Boys on stage a couple of years ago has helped me appreciate Frankie Valli and his colleagues a bit more.