If they were still alive today...

...the following would be celebrating their birthday.  My, what a large party we have today!:

Comic genius Tex Avery would be 103 today.  He directed, produced and created hundreds of cartoons during the "golden age" of animation.  He invented Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and many other characters during his long career.  If only for the subversive humor of his Bugs Bunny cartoons, he should be remembered as one of the all-time greats.








French writer Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Les Miserables) would be 209.






Speaking of "comic geniuses," 'The Great One,' Jackie Gleason would have turned 95 today.  His Ralph Kramden on The Honeymooners remains one of the most popular characters in television history.  If you're a Gleason fan, or want to learn about him in a great overview of his career, here's a two-part segment from ABC's 20/20:




Prickly, persnickety Tony Randall would have turned 91.












British beauty Madeleine Carroll would be 105.  I once asked legendary Hollywood publicist, Gary Stevens (who met and/or knew all the great stars of the 1930's and beyond) who was the single-most beautiful woman he ever saw.  Without pausing, he replied, "Two...Dolores del Rio and Madeleine Carroll".  She certainly was.




"The Man in Black":  Johnny Cash would have been 79 today.




Betty Hutton was born in Battle Creek, Michigan 90 years ago today.  Betty:  I take back everything I ever said about you.  You see, she used to seriously make me very nervous whenever she appeared on the screen and I avoided her like the proverbial plague.  But in recent years, I've re-evaluated her work and have made the wonderful discovery that she was a rather spectacular performer.  Comic, dancer, actress, mimic...and a hell of a singer, too.  Very, very underrated, as evidenced by the following recording she made in 1947.  I'm sorry, Betty...this heathen has seen the light:



Legendary "Wild West" showman "Buffalo Bill" Cody would be 165.  His story with Annie Oakley was fictionalized and chronicled in the Irving Berlin musical Annie Get Your Gun.  When MGM made the film version in 1949, Judy Garland was originally cast as Annie, but was famously fired and replaced by...Betty Hutton (above).



Look up "lovable curmudgeon" in your dictionary and you'll see a picture of William Frawley, "Fred Mertz" of I Love Lucy.  Today, he would have turned 124.


Also turning 124 today, baseball legend Grover Cleveland "Pete" Alexander.  He is ranked #12 in the Sporting News list of "All-time Great Baseball Players".  His life was immortalized in the 1952 film, The Winning Team, in which he was played by Ronald Reagan.




















Almost totally forgotten today, but a huge star in silent films, Fred Thomson would have turned 121.  In fact, he was the #2 box office star of 1926 and 1927.  He was considered to be the top rival of Tom Mix as far as cowboy heroes of 1920's cinema went.  But his life was cut tragically short when he died of tetanus at age 38 (I didn't know people actually died of tetanus!).
 
( Handsome cowboy hero, Fred Thomson)






Robert Alda would be 97.  He is most remembered for having played George Gershwin in the (greatly fictionalized) bio-film, Rhapsody in Blue.  He was the father of M*A*S*H star, Alan Alda.


Handsome, often shirtless Jon Hall would be 96.  He often appeared in "South Sea epics" and was a frequent co-star of Maria Montez, most famously in the camp classic, The Cobra Woman--in which she uttered the immortal line, "Geef me da copra choo-well!" (Translation:  Give me the cobra jewel!).


And to my late friend, Joan Castle, a happy 95th.  Joan was a film and Broadway actress in the late 1920's-early 1930's.  I knew her during the last few years of her life, as she lived in New York, and I was introduced to her by my friend, Peter Mintun, who knew her very well. With the possible exception of Kitty Carlisle, whom I also knew, I've never seen a nonagenarian who was so utterly beautiful and well "put together".  And she was a warm, witty person with a razor-sharp memory.  She had a good friend in the 1920's named Archie Leach, though he decided to change his name for the stage (for obvious reasons!).  She would recount stories about him, still referring to him as "Archie"...though the rest of the world knew him as Cary Grant.  She passed on in December of 2009, and New York seemed just a bit dimmer when that happened.

And a happy "one-month anniversary" to Did You Just See What I Saw?.  In one month's time, we've had over 1,000 visitors and our readership continues to grow, with readers in 12 countries (Hi Singapore! Hey Poland! Howyadoin, Israel?).