Centeraries

1915: in Europe war was raging. The United States was not yet involved, but feelings ran high when the Lusitania was sunk by a German U-Boat with many American passengers. Babe Ruth hit his first home run. Birth of a Nation was released, and though today is viewed as highly racist, was the number one box office attraction until Gone With the Wind.

The world was becoming more mechanized, as more and more people owned automobiles. The one millionth car rolled off the Ford assembly line. Flight was becoming more common, although used mostly for purposes of war. King George V was the King of England; Woodrow Wilson was the U.S president.

And around the world, from Philadelphia to Brooklyn to Montreal to Stockholm to Paris, seven extraordinary people came into the world. This year marks their centenaries.

We love round numbers, the rounder the better. Ten twenty, thirty, fifty, one hundred, five hundred. These are the anniversaries we look to. On December 7, we know that's it's Pearl Harbor day, but it's on the round numbers that we get all sentimental. So it is with the anniversaries of births, especially those of the departed.

1915 seems to be a gold mine of famous people in the arts being born. I was aware of Orson Welles, who was born in May, having just had his. Billie Holiday's was in April. In June, it will be Saul Bellow's turn. Come August, Ingrid Bergman. In October, Arthur Miller. Then, in December, two of the greatest voices of all time, Frank Sinatra and Edith Piaf. Now perhaps every year has a treasure chest of birth, and these seven are not the only prominent people born that year. If I checked, I might mind find a great assembly for 1914 or 1916. But this group seems extra special, each a giant in his or her field, each an icon.

This has captured my imagination for some reason. I imagine them all sitting in a room together. What would they discuss? Some of them knew each other. I found a clip on YouTube of Frank Sinatra introducing Ingrid Bergman to give a tribute to Orson Welles at an AFI event. Bergman admits she didn't know Orson well--had never worked with him, never married him. It's clear Sinatra and Welles knew each other well, as from the photo above, which must have been taken in the early '40s or so, when both her well known from the radio. I would imagine Saul Bellow and Arthur Miller may have crossed literary paths at some time. As for Holiday and Piaf, who knows?

The entertainers all burst upon the scene at roughly the same time. Welles, the boy genius, was known on Broadway for daring Shakespearean adaptations, and then was known everywhere after his notorious 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast. Sinatra was a smash among teeny-boppers in the '40s, and his fame would never diminish. By the early '40s, Bergman had won an Oscar (the first of three) and appeared in Casablanca, one of the greatest films ever made. Later in the decade she would be denounced on the floor of the U.S. congress. Holiday was big among jazz aficionados, not really a household name until the '50s, when her star had considerably dimmed. Piaf was famous in France during the war and later years. Miller's first big hit was All My Sons in 1947, and then Death of a Salesman in 1949 made him world famous and indelible part of American letters. Bellow, who was never a household name, but certainly a giant in literature,hit it big in 1964 with the novel Herzog.

Interestingly, and defying actuarial tables, the women all went first. Holiday and Piaf died very young, victims of excess. Bergman died in 1982 of cancer, only 67. The first man to go was Welles, another creature of excess, in 1985. Sinatra lived to a ripe old age of 82, and the two writers died nearly 90, both in 2005.

Over the next year, I'll be digging deeper into this septet of names, reading biographies and taking a look or listen at their work. I'll start with Billie Holiday, who is the oldest of the bunch by a month. Keep looking here for more.