If they were still alive today....

...the following notables would be celebrating their birthday:




Ansel Andams, renowned California "naturalist" photographer, would be 109 today.











Truly great American director Robert Altman (Nashville, The Player, Gosford Park, Short Cuts) would be 86.  Altman never won a Best Director Academy Award, but was given a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006.  In accepting his award, he shocked viewers by announcing that he'd undergone a heart transplant 10 years earlier.









Lead singer/guitarist of grunge band, Nirvana, Kurt Cobain would be 44, if his wife, Courtney Love, hadn't killed him (just kidding...but some do insist that that is the truth...there is no evidence whatsoever that this was really the case).





Legendary Scottish operatic soprano Mary Garden would be 137.  She has a sound that (to this listener) still sounds remarkably contemporary--considering that most of her recordings were made in the very early 20th century.  This one is from 1927:







Popular dance band leader of the 1930's, Richard Himber would be  112.  His was known as one of the "sweet bands," owing to the pleasant tone and melodies they put forth. 














The lovely "Miss Kitty" of TV's Gunsmoke, the long-running television western, Amanda Blake would be 82. Shockingly, she died of AIDS in 1989.

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The evil Roy Cohn with the equally satanic Senator Joseph McCarthy during the "witchhunt" hearings.




If anyone of the last century could be called "evil," certainly Roy Cohn would be on the short list, along with Adolph Hitler. This horrible, reptilian henchman of Senator Joseph McCarthy would be 84.  He ruined countless lives without regret or apology.  Mercifully, he died of AIDS in 1986. 
We do not wish him a happy birthday today in Hades.