Thursday, January 01, 2015

Famous People Born In 1915 - It Was A Very Good Year

[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



*Sources for photos in the image
Charles Townsend  (with James Gordon) http://aip.org/history/exhibits/laser/sections/themaser.html  (image enhanced)


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