If they were still alive today....

...the following notables would be celebrating their birthday.  We've got a small, but interesting party today:

A young J.C. Leyendecker

J.C. Leyendecker was born in Germany 137 years ago.  He was, along with Norman Rockwell, one of the greatest graphic artists of the 20th century.  Rockwell, in fact, credited Leyendecker as his greatest influence as an artist.  He invented "The Arrow Shirt Man" and his idealized visions of beautiful youth graced hundreds of magazine covers, mostly The Saturday Evening Post, from the 19-teens to the 1950's.  His works are highly coveted and have skyrocketed in value in recent years.  I went to a retrospective of his work in New York about 4 years ago and became an instant devotee.



11-time Oscar winner, Cedric Gibbons, would be 118.  Almost unarguably the most important scenic designer in Hollywood history, he designed the settings for nearly every great MGM film of the 1930's and beyond.  He was married to almost unarguably Hollywood's most beautiful woman, Dolores del Rio.  He not only won all those Oscars...he actually designed the statue itself!


"Tootsie" Bess would be 95 today.  I know we have some Nashville readers of this blog, so this one's for you!  Tootsie (born Hattie Louise Bess) was the colorful proprietress of Nashville's jumping-est honky tonk, Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, which still thrives today.  Their back door is directly across the alley from the stage door of the Ryman Auditorium, which housed the Grand Ole Opry for many years (until they disgracefully moved to the suburbs, into a failed amusement park! MOVE IT BACK, NASHVILLE!!).  Because of Tootsie's proximity to the Opry, it became the watering hole of many of country music's more lubricated celebrities, both before, during and after their performances.  If you want a great taste of Nashville and haven't much time, this place should be on your short list of "must sees" (along with "The Jugg Sisters' NashTrash Tours, which is the #1 tourist attraction in town, according to Tripadvisor.com....and full disclosure here:  The Juggs are two of my best pals, so I'm a little biased!  But they are a riot!  And so is Tootsie's!

And finally, the great Joan Crawford would be 105 years old today.  Joan has had it pretty rough since she died in 1977.  The only time her name is spoken now is usually as part of a child-abuse "punch line," so influential was her adopted daughter Christina's post-mortem dissection, Mommie Dearest.  But let's pretend for a moment that that book had never happened.  Perhaps her name would be burnished, along with those of Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis and the like, and remembered simply as the great actress that she was.  And what's forgotten, too, is that she was absolutely gorgeous when she was young.  She became a little bit parodic in the latter years, but in her prime, she was The Ultimate Movie Star.  There's certainly never been anyone else like her since.  Was Mommie Dearest true?  Well, since the daughter took the cowardly route by trashing her after she couldn't fight back, we'll never really know.