Huntington Hartford would be turning 100 today. His was an epic life of excess and squandering, ending up virtually broke, after having been born into one of the wealthiest families in America. He was the heir to the A&P grocery chain family and was born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth. He was handsome and apparently charming and was a fixture of the gossip rags of the 1930's-60's, squiring some of Hollywood's most glamourous actresses (such as Lana Turner, as seen above). He married four times and sank tens of millions into several grand, failed schemes--in the end, leaving him near destitution and drug-addicted, living as a recluse in a squalid Manhattan townhouse, from which he was finally evicted. He declared bankruptcy and moved to the Bahamas, where he died in 2008. He may not have had a happy ending, but he certainly had an interesting life. There's a good biography of him called Squandered Fortune: The Life and Times of Huntington Hartford, available on Amazon for a penny (used, hardcover--link below). It's quite a tale.
Wendy Barrie would be 99. She was a prim and proper "English rose" type of lady who had a rather successful career in Hollywood in the 1930's-40's. Incongruously, some might say, she was engaged to wed legendary mobster, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, though they never actually wed.
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| Virginia O'Brien: Hey! She's smiling! |
Virginia O'Brien would be 92. She had a very strange shtick for a movie musical performer: She performed all her numbers absolutely dead-panned, very rarely smiling or showing any emotion at all. Kind of strange, watching her today. She was rather pretty and might have had some appeal...but the whole dead-pan thing is rather off-putting to some modern viewers (me! me!).
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