Wednesday, May 4, 2011

If they were alive today....

...it would be the birthday of these notables:

Audrey Hepburn would be 82.  Some proclaimed her an "off-beat" or "unconventional" beauty---a rather puzzling assessment, in that one look at her brings to mind the great beauties of classical art.  The Belgian-born Hepburn was unerringly graceful and possessed a natural poise and elegance that translated to the screen beautfully.  In 1999, she was voted the #3 Greatest American Film Legend (behind Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn...no relation) of all time.  Her roster of luminous performances is not particularly long, but contains some very prominent films:  Breakfast at Tiffany's, Wait Until Dark, Funny Face, Roman Holiday, Sabrina.  It seems that the "Hepburn touch" was nearly all that a film needed to raise it from mediocrity to something quite special.  The world mourned her passing (of cancer of the appendix) in 1993--she was only 63.  Here's a lovely photo tribute to her:



Keith Haring would be 53.  He was one of the first (and only) artists of his generation to truly "break out" with a recognizable style all his own.  In the 1980's, his modernistic, graffiti-art wall mural style seemed to suddenly be everywhere, from clothing to advertising to galleries.  His simple "Radiating Baby" (above) became his logo/symbol.  His was one of the most prominent celebrity deaths during the height of the AIDS epidemic, when he died at the age of 31 in 1990. 

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