If they were still alive today...

...it'd be the birthday of these notables:

The brilliant Dutch post-Impressionist Vincent van Gogh was born 158 years ago.  He painted atleast 30 self-portraits during his life (that are known to survive), including these four.  The others are collected on this Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-portraits_by_Vincent_van_Gogh, and are interesting to study in order, side-by-side. His most famous work, of course, is The Starry Night, which the troubled artist painted at the window of his room in a sanitarium in Arles, France, of the town of St. Remy.  It is in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York.


 
Brooke Astor would be 109.  It is unfortunate that the final legacy of Mrs. Astor is the swirl of scandal that surrounded her final years--and beyond.  Her only child, Anthony, is still awaiting his re-trial for his role in trying to divert his mother's millions into the accounts of himself and his loathesome wife, Charlene.  It all played out on the front pages of the New York scandal rags, where the term "elder abuse" was widely used in describing his treatment of his enfeebled mother.  But during her prime, Brooke Astor was New York's most luminous and generous "lady bountiful," distributing tens of millions of her enormous fortune to many worthy charitable causes (most notably, The New York Public Library).  Sonny boy was convicted in the first trial of grand larceny and it could be years before his appeals are used up.  If he lives that long, as he is 87 years old.  If you like filth, scandal and gossip, there is a very interesting book about Astor, and more specifically, her final years, called, Mrs. Astor Regrets, by Meryl Gordon.  A very juicy read...you can get a used hardback copy on Amazon for ONE PENNY (plus postage).  Just do it!





Frankie "Mule Train" Laine would be 98.  I dunno.  I want to like him, but his singing just makes me really nervous for some reason.  He's a little too...er..."vivid" for my taste.  But what do I know?  He was sure popular in the early 1950's...


Swedish silent film star Anna Q. Nilsson would be 123.  The "Q" stood for "Quirentia", just in case you were wondering.  She was a very popular star in the 1920's, famed for her beauty, though her career quickly failed in the advent of talking pictures, probably hastened by her thick Swedish accent (though that certainly didn't hurt her compatriot, Greta Garbo).  She's remembered today as one of Norma Desmond's "waxworks" at the card party scene in Sunset Boulevard, where she drawls her one line with a cigarette hanging from her lip.