Silent screen star, Theda Bara. Born Theodosia Burr Goodman in Cincinnati, Ohio, on July 29, 1885. She grew up in that city and attended the University of Cincinnati for two years before traveling west. She was one of Hollywood’s first sex symbols. Here is a lovely tribute to this star that shows some of her exotic costumes, which contributed to her reputation as a femme fatale. I wish I has the chutzpah to wear snakes like that.
video credit: Basil Nelson
Julius Caesar, born July 13, 100 C, in Rome.
Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. (Wiki)
Here is Marlon Brando in the Caesar role – now there’s a Roman emperor for you.
The obvious culinary reference for me to make would be a recipe for a Caesar Salad – nope – here’s a recipe for a Bloody Caesar cocktail.
Robert Anson Henlein – born July 7, 1907.
A highly quotable and prolific author. This is one of my favorite Heinlein quotes:
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
Movie sidekick, George “Gabby” Hayes, was born May 7, 1885. His biography from the Internet Movie Database reads:
American character actor, the most famous of Western-movie sidekicks of the 1930s and 1940s. He was born May 7, 1885, the third of seven children, in the Hayes Hotel (owned by his father) in the tiny hamlet of Stannards, New York, on the outskirts of Wellsville, New York. Hayes was the son of hotelier and oil-production manager Clark Hayes, and grew up in Stannards. As a young man, George Hayes worked in a circus and played semi-pro baseball while a teenager. He ran away from home at 17, in 1902, and joined a touring stock company. He married Olive Ireland in 1914 and the pair became quite successful on the vaudeville circuit. Retired in his 40s, he lost much of his money in the 1929 stock market crash and was forced to return to work. Although he had made his film debut in a single appearance prior to the crash, it was not until his wife convinced him to move to California and he met producer Trem Carr that he began working steadily in the medium. He played scores of roles in Westerns and non-Westerns alike, finally in the mid-1930s settling in to an almost exclusively Western career. He gained fame as Hopalong Cassidy’s sidekick Windy Halliday in many films between 1936-39. Leaving the Cassidy films in a salary dispute, he was legally precluded from using the “Windy” nickname, and so took on the sobriquet “Gabby”, and was so billed from about 1940. One of the few sidekicks to land on the annual list of Top Ten Western Boxoffice Stars, he did so repeatedly. In his early films, he alternated between whiskered comic-relief sidekicks and clean-shaven bad guys, but by the later 1930s, he worked almost exclusively as a Western sidekick to stars such as John Wayne, Roy Rogers, and Randolph Scott. After his last film, in 1950, he starred as the host of a network television show devoted to stories of the Old West for children, “The Gabby Hayes Show” (1950). Offstage an elegant and well-appointed connoisseur and man-about-town, Hayes devoted the final years of his life to his investments. He died of cardiovascular disease in Burbank, California, on February 9, 1969.
You get extra points if you know the name of Roy Rogers’ Jeep.
There are:
Brothers in Arms
Band of Brothers
The Blues Brothers (we’re on a mission from God)
The Clancy Brothers
Parker Brothers (gamey)
The Everly Brothers
The Brothers Four
The Brothers Grimm
Brothers and Sisters
Dr. Joyce Brothers
Brother Cadfael
Big Brother
Lever Brothers
Primanti Brothers (yum)
The Smith Brothers
Pine Brothers
Lehman Brothers
Brother Sewing Machines
The Wright Brothers (flighty)
Ringling Brothers
Warner Brothers
Brother Thelonius Belgian Style Abbey Ale
Brothers of the Holy Cross (holy)
Einstein Brothers Bagels (holey)
Franciscan Brothers
The Marx Brothers
Rooster Brothers Coffee Roasters (Ellsworth, ME)
Other Brothers
TODAY we celebrate my brother, born on March 30.
Happy Birthday, Robert!
Happy Birthday to Robert Frost, born March 26, 1874.
Spring Pools
These pools that, though in forests, still reflect
The total sky almost without defect,
And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver,
Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone,
And yet not out by any brook or river,
But up by roots to bring dark foliage on.
The trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods —
Let them think twice before they use their powers
To blot out and drink up and sweep away
These flowery waters and these watery flowers
From snow that melted only yesterday.
Happy Birthday to Chico Marx.
Born in 1887 in New York City, Chico (Leonard) was the eldest of the Marx brothers. He affected an Italian accent (among others) and was the piano player of the group.
More here and here:
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Pebbles Flintstone – born February 23, 10,000 BC
After a normal childhood in Bedrock, Pebbles went on to become an advertising executive in Hollyrock. She married long-time sweetheart, Bam-Bam, and they had two children.
“Yabba-Dabba-Doozie!”
Firearms, fibers, any news or behaviors that make me say, "hmm, let me take another look at this."
I still miss my man, but my aim is getting better.
Gunsmoke and Knitting 