May 9 Dateline

Birthdays

1265 - Dante Alighieri, Italian poet during the Late Middle Ages. (actual date of his birth is debatable, as some biographers say it's sometime in June. Here's a brief history of Dante Alighieri. Uploaded by Nick Tvrdy. Accessed May 9, 2018.)  Dante's Divine Comedy, originally called Comedìa and later christened Divina by Giovanni Boccaccio, is widely considered the most important poem of the Middle Ages and the greatest literary work in the Italian language.  Dante was instrumental in establishing the literature of Italy, and his depictions of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven provided inspiration for the larger body of Western art. He is cited as an influence on John Milton, Geoffrey Chaucer and Alfred Tennyson, among many others.

1936 - Albert Finney,  English actor who worked in film, television and theatre. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and worked in the theatre before attaining prominence on screen in the early 1960s, debuting with The Entertainer, directed by Tony Richardson, who had previously directed him in the theatre. A recipient of BAFTA , Golden Globe, Emmy and Screen Actors Guild awards, Finney was nominated for an Academy Award five times, as Best Actor four times, for Tom Jones, Murder on the Orient Express, The Dresser, and Under the Volcano, and as Best Supporting Actor for Erin Brockovich. He received several awards for his performance as Winston Churchill in the 2002 BBC–HBO television biographical film The Gathering Storm.

1936 - Glenda May Jackson, CBE, English actress and politician. A professional actress from the late 1950s onwards, Jackson spent four years as a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1964. She has won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice, receiving the first for her role as Gudrun Brangwen in the romantic drama film Women in Love and the second for her role as Vickie Allessio in the romantic comedy film A Touch of Class. She also received praise for her performances as Alex Greville in the drama film Sunday Bloody Sunday and Elizabeth I in the BBC television serial Elizabeth R, winning two Primetime Emmy Awards for the latter. In 2018, she won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her role in a revival of Edward Albee's Three Tall Women, thus becoming one of the few performers to have achieved the "Triple Crown of Acting" in the US. 

1946 - Candice Patricia Bergen, American actress and former fashion model. She won five Primetime Emmy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards for her portrayal of the title character on the CBS sitcom Murphy Brown. She is also known for her role as Shirley Schmidt on the ABC drama Boston Legal. In films, Bergen was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Starting Over, and for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Gandhi. starred in The Sand Pebbles, Soldier Blue, Carnal Knowledge, and The Wind and the Lion. She made her Broadway debut in the 1984 play Hurlyburly and starred in the revivals of The Best Man and Love Letters. From 2002 to 2004, she appeared in three episodes of the HBO series Sex and the City.  

 

1949 - Billy Joel (born William Martin Joel), American singer-songwriter, composer, and pianist. Commonly nicknamed the "Piano Man", he has led a commercially successful career as a solo artist since the 1970s, having released twelve studio albums from 1971 to 1993 as well as one studio album in 2001. He is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, as well as the sixth best-selling recording artist and the third best-selling solo artist in the United States, with over 150 million records sold worldwide.

Leftie:
None known

 

More birthdays and historical events today, May 9 - On This Day.

 

Historical Events

1754 - In Benjamin Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette, the first American newspaper cartoon is published.

1812 - Gioachino Rossini's opera La Scala di seta (The Silken Ladder) is first staged, in Venice.

May 8 Dateline

Birthdays

1745 - Carl (Karl) Philipp Stamitz, German Composer, is baptized in Mannheim,  partial Czech ancestry. He was the most prominent representative of the second generation of the Mannheim School. He was the eldest son of Johann Stamitz, a violinist and composer of the early classical period. 

 
1846 - Oscar Hammerstein I, German-born businessman, playwright and theatre impressario, and composer in New York City. He's grandfather of the famous American librettist Oscar Hammerstein II, of the Rodgers and Hammerstein duo in the musical world. His passion for opera led him to open several opera houses, and he rekindled opera's popularity in America. He was the father of theater manager William Hammerstein and American producer Arthur Hammerstein.

1884 - Harry S. Truman, 33rd U.S. President, serving from 1945 to 1953, succeeding upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt after serving as the 34th vice president. He implemented the Marshall Plan to rebuild the economy of Western Europe, and established the Truman Doctrine and NATO to contain communist expansion. He proposed numerous liberal domestic reforms, but few were enacted by the Conservative Coalition that dominated Congress.

1895 - Fulton John Sheen (born Peter John Sheen), American Bishop (later Archbishop) of the Catholic Church known for his preaching and his work on television and radio. As a renowned theologian, he earned the Cardinal Mercier Prize for International Philosophy in 1923. He taught theology and philosophy at the Catholic University of America and as acting as a parish priest before being appointed Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of New York in 1951 until 1966, when he was made the Bishop of Rochester. He resigned in 1969 as his 75th birthday approached, and was made the Archbishop of the Titular see of Newport, Wales.

1906 - Roberto Gastone Zeffiro Rossellini, Italian film director, producer, and screenwriter. He was one of the most prominent directors of the Italian neorealist cinema. Truffaut noted in his 1963 essay, Roberto Rossellini Prefers Real Life that Rossellini's influence in France particularly among the directors who became part of the nouvelle vague was so great that he was in every sense "the father of the French New Wave." His posthumous ex-son-in-law Martin Scorsese has acknowledged his seminal influence in his documentary My Voyage to Italy (the title itself a take on Rossellini's Voyage to Italy). Also, Scorsese's selection of Italian films from a select group of directors, Rossellini's films form at least half of the films discussed and analyzed, highlighting Rossellini's monumental role in Italian and world cinema.
 

1940 - Peter Bradford Benchley, American author, screenwriter, and ocean activist. He is known as the author of the bestselling novel Jaws and co-wrote its film adaptation with Carl Gottlieb. Several more of his works were also adapted for both cinema and television, including The Deep, The Island, Beast, and White Shark.  Later in life, Benchley regretted writing such sensationalist literature about sharks, which he felt encouraged excessive fear of such an important predator in ocean ecosystems, and he became an advocate for marine conservation.

1964 - Melissa Ellen Gilbert, American actress, television director, producer, politician and former president of the Screen Actors Guild. Gilbert began her career as a child actress. She's famous as Laura Ingalls Wilder, the second oldest daughter of Charles Ingalls (played by Michael Landon) on the NBC series Little House on the Prairie. During the run of Little House, Gilbert appeared in several popular TV films. As an adult, she continued her career mainly in TV films. In 2009, her autobiography Prairie Tale: A Memoir, was released. She also wrote a short story for children, called Daisy and Josephine as well as My Prairie Cookbook: Memories and Frontier Food from My Little House to Yours. In 2016, Gilbert ran for U.S. Congress as a Democrat in Michigan's 8th congressional district and she won the Democratic primary but later dropped because of health issues.

Lefties:
Author Peter Benchley
Former President Harry S. Truman

More birthdays and historical events today, May 8 - On This Day.

 

Featuring: Composer Carl Philipp Stamitz.   

Carl Philipp Stamitz, born in Mannheim, was a German composer of partial Czech ancestry, a prominent representative of the second generation of the Mannheim School. He was the eldest son of Johann Stamitz, a violinist and composer of the early classical period. He received lessons from his father and Christian Cannabich, his father's successor as leader of the Mannheim orchestra.

Stamitz was employed as a violinist in the court orchestra at Mannheim in his youth. In 1770, he began travelling as a virtuoso, accepting short-term engagements, but never managing to gain a permanent position. He visited a number of European cities, living for a time in Strasbourg and London. In 1794, he moved with his family to Jena in central Germany, but his circumstances deteriorated and he descended into debt and poverty, dying in 1801. Papers on alchemy were found after his death. Stylistically, his music resembles that of Mozart and is characterized by appealing melodies. The opening movements of his orchestral works, in sonata form, are generally followed by expressive and lyrical middle movements, and final movements, in rondo form.

Historical Events

1660 - The late Charles I's son is proclaimed King of England, ending 11 years of civil war.

1924 - Arthur Honegger's symphonic movement Pacific 231 is first performed in Paris, Koussevitzky conducting.