Happy birthday Mandy Patinkin

 "Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

Mandy Patinkin has said that the role of Inigo Montoya in "The Princess Bride" (1987) is his personal favorite over the course of his entire career. Patinkin claims that the only injury he sustained during the entire filming of this movie was a bruised rib due to stifling his laughter in his scenes with Billy Crystal. His attempt at holding back his laughter is obvious from his facial expression during his line, "This is noble, sir."

Patinkin and co-star Cary Elwes performed all of their own sword-fighting after many hours of training. According to director Rob Reiner, the only stunt performed by Elwes' stunt double was one flip during the "Chatty Duelists" scene. The pair Cary trained for months with Peter Diamond and Bob Anderson, who between them had been in the Olympics; worked on films from the "Lord of the Rings' trilogy to the "Star Wars" films; and coached Errol Flynn and Burt Lancaster. Every spare moment on set was spent practicing. Eventually, when they showed Reiner the swordfight for the movie, he was underwhelmed and requested that it be at least three minutes long rather than the current one minute. They added steps to the set, watched more swashbuckling movies for inspiration, re-choreographed the scene, and ended up with a three minute and 10 second fight which took the better part of a week to film from all angles.

Patinkin says that the line that introduces this post gets quoted back to him by at least two or three strangers every day of his life. Patinkin told the interviewer that he loves hearing the line and he also loves the general fact that he got to be in the movie, stating, "I'm frankly thrilled about it. I can't believe that I got to be in 'The Wizard of Oz,' you know what I mean?" (IMDb)

Happy Birthday, Mandy Patinkin!

Wikipedia says this:

Mandel Bruce Patinkin (/pəˈtɪŋkɪn/; born November 30, 1952) is an American actor and singer, known for his work in musical theatre, television, and film.^[1][2] He is a critically acclaimed Broadway performer known for his collaborations with Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber. He is known for his leading roles on stage and screen and has received numerous accolades including a Tony Award, a Primetime Emmy Award as well as nominations for seven Drama Desk Awards, three Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

Patinkin made his theatre debut in 1975 starring opposite Meryl Streep in the revival of the comic play Trelawny of the 'Wells' at The Public Theatre's Shakespeare Festival. He originated the role of Che in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita (1979) earning a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical as well as the roles of Georges Seurat/George in Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George (1984) for which he was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical. He portrayed Lord Archibald Craven in Lucy Simon's The Secret Garden (1991).^[3]

Patinkin is also known for his leading roles in various shows on television, playing Dr. Jeffrey Geiger in Chicago Hope (1994–2000), SSA Jason Gideon in the crime-drama television series Criminal Minds (2005–2007), and Saul Berenson in the Showtime drama series Homeland (2011–2020). For his work in television he has earned seven Primetime Emmy Award nominations, winning Outstanding Leading Actor in a Drama Series for Chicago Hope in 1995. Patinkin has had recurring roles in Dead Like Me (2003–2004) and The Good Fight (2021).

He is also known for his film roles including Inigo Montoya in Rob Reiner's family adventure film The Princess Bride (1987) and Avigdor in Barbra Streisand's musical epic Yentl (1983) for which he earned a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy nomination. Other notable film credits include Ragtime (1981), Maxie (1985), Dick Tracy (1990), True Colors (1991), Impromptu (1991), Wonder (2017), and Life Itself (2018).^[4] Patinkin also voiced roles in Hayao Miyazaki's Castle in the Sky (2003), and The Wind Rises (2013).

Louisa May Alcott

 "Far away in the sunshine there are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead."

Happy Birthday Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women. She was born on November 29th in 1832.

Wikipedia says this:

Louisa May Alcott (/ˈɔːlkət, -kɒt/; November 29, 1832 – March 6, 1888) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet who wrote the novel Little Women (1868) and its sequels Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886). Raised in New England by her transcendentalist parents, Abigail May and Amos Bronson Alcott, she grew up among many well-known intellectuals of the day, including Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Alcott's family suffered from financial difficulties, and while she worked to help support the family from an early age, she also sought an outlet in writing. She began to receive critical success for her writing in the 1860s. Early in her career, she sometimes used pen names such as A. M. Barnard, under which she wrote lurid short stories and sensation novels for adults that focused on passion and revenge.

Published in 1868, Little Women is set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House, in Concord, Massachusetts, and is loosely based on Alcott's childhood experiences with her three sisters, Abigail May Alcott Nieriker, Elizabeth Sewall Alcott, and Anna Alcott Pratt. The novel was well-received at the time and is still popular today among both children and adults. It has been adapted for stage plays, films, and television many times.

Alcott was an abolitionist and a feminist and remained unmarried throughout her life. She also spent her life active in such reform movements as temperance and women's suffrage. She died from a stroke in Boston on March 6, 1888, just two days after her father had died.

Go Here to read more at Wikipedia.

C.S. Lewis

 Happy birth anniversary to

British novelist, scholar, and poet C.S. Lewis, best known for the Chronicles of Narnia series, seven volumes of stories about young children who find entry to another world through an old wardrobe. They meet a magisterial lion named Aslan who asks for their help in battling evil. Aslan says, “I never tell anyone any story except his own.”

Lewis was born Clive Staples Lewis in Belfast, Ireland (1898). His mother died when he was young and he spent much of his time at boarding school, where his headmaster wielded a cane and admonished students to “Think!” Lewis and his brother created a special world called “Boxen,” where animals talked and had exciting adventures. Lewis once said, “I am the product of long corridors, empty sunlit rooms, upstairs indoor silences, attics explored in solitude, distant noises of gurgling cisterns and pipes, and the noise of wind under the tiles.”

Before becoming a scholar of classics at Oxford University, Lewis served as an infantryman in World War I. He was wounded in the back, he said, “oddly enough by a British shell.” He became lifelong friends with writer J.R.R. Tolkien, and they met weekly at Oxford for tea and literary discussion with other writers for 16 years. They called themselves “The Inklings.”

Source: Writer's Almanac Newsletter

I really loved several novels written about his life (wish I could remember the author) from the point of view of a woman he befriended. After he was famous.

William Blake

 It's the birthday of poet and artist William Blake, born in London (1757). He was four years old when he had a vision that God was at his window. A few years later, he went for a walk and saw a tree filled with angels, their wings shining. He had other visions, too: he saw the prophet Ezekiel sitting under a tree, and angels walking with farmers making hay.

When Blake was 10 his parents sent him to drawing school, and at the age of 14 he was apprenticed to an engraver. After seven years, he went into business for himself, and a few years later he privately printed his first book, Poetical Sketches (1783). It was a total flop — it wasn't even mentioned in the index of London's Monthly Review, a list of every book published that month.

Not long after that, Blake's beloved brother, Robert, died at the age of 24. Blake spent two sleepless weeks at his deathbed, and when he died, Blake claimed that he saw his brother's spirit rise through the ceiling, clapping its hands with joy. From then on, Blake had regular conversations with his dead brother. A year later, Robert appeared to William in a vision and taught him a method called "illuminated printing," which combined text and painting into one. Instead of etching into a copper plate, Blake did the opposite: he designed an image in an acid-resistant liquid, then etched away everything else with acid, leaving a relief image, and he applied color to both the raised and etched parts of the copper plate. Illuminated printing — or as it's now known, relief etching — was a huge breakthrough in printing. Blake wrote: "First the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul is to be expunged: this I shall do by printing in the infernal method by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away and displaying the infinite which was hid."

Blake used this technique for many of his great works, including Songs of Innocence (1789), Songs of Experience (1794), The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790), and The Book of Los (1795). Throughout his career, he continued to see visions — in addition to communing with the spirits of relatives and friends, he claimed to be visited by the spirits of many great historical figures, including Alexander the Great, Voltaire, Socrates, Milton, and Mohammed. He talked with them and drew their portraits. He was also visited by angels and once by the ghost of a flea, whose portrait he drew. He wrote: "I assert for My Self that I do not behold the outward Creation [...] 'What,' it will be Question'd, 'When the Sun rises, do you not see a round disk of fire somewhat like a Guinea?' O no, no, I see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host."

Blake died at the age of 69. He spent the day of his death working on a series of engravings of Dante's Divine Comedy. That evening, he drew a portrait of his wife, and then told her it was his time. A friend of Blake's who was there at his deathbed wrote: "He died on Sunday night at 6 o'clock in a most glorious manner. [...] Just before he died, His Countenance became fair. His eyes Brighten'd and He burst out into Singing of the things he saw in Heaven."

At the time of his death, Blake was an obscure figure, best remembered for his engravings of other peoples' work, or maybe his one famous poem, "The Tyger." Among those who knew more about his life's work, the consensus was that Blake was insane. Songs of Innocence and of Experience, which he had engraved and painted by hand, had sold fewer than 20 copies in 30 years. It wasn't until more than 30 years after his death that a husband-and-wife team, Alexander and Anne Gilchrist, published a two-volume biography of Blake that firmly established him as a brilliant and important artist.

He said, "Without minute neatness of execution, the sublime cannot exist! Grandeur of ideas is founded on precision of ideas."

Writer's Almanac 2017

Rita Mae Brown

Nov 28 is the Birth anniversary of

novelist Rita Mae Brown, born in Hanover, Pennsylvania (1944). When she was in her late 20s, she wrote a novel called Rubyfruit Jungle (1973), the coming-of-age story of Molly Bolt and her lesbian experiences in high school and beyond. Brown sent the book to agents to try to interest them, but that didn't work; one of them actually threw the manuscript at Brown, called her a pervert, and told her to get out of her office. So she sent it directly to every publisher she could think of, but no one was interested. Finally, she sent it to a tiny, newly formed feminist publisher, and they agreed to print a few thousand copies and pay Brown $1,000. Most big bookstores wouldn't even carry books by such a small publisher, so Rubyfruit Jungle was sold by mail or from the backs of cars. The publisher didn't put out a single ad, and the novel didn't get a single review. But the book became a word-of-mouth hit and sold 70,000 copies in four years, at which point it was picked up by a major publisher. Rubyfruit Jungle has now sold more than a million copies.

Brown has published over 40 books since then, including Sudden Death (1984), Venus Envy (1994), Alma Mater (2002), and The Sand Castle (2008).

As seen in Writer's Almanac Newsletter 2017...

More details from Wikipedia:

Brown was active in a number of civil rights campaigns and criticized the marginalization of lesbians within feminist groups. Brown received the Pioneer Award for lifetime achievement at the Lambda Literary Awards in 2015.

Biography

Early life

Brown was born in 1944 in Hanover, Pennsylvania to an unmarried teenage mother and her mother's married boyfriend. Brown's birth mother left her at an orphanage. Her mother's cousin, Julia Brown, and her husband, Ralph, retrieved the newborn Brown from the orphanage, and raised her as their own in York, Pennsylvania, and later in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Julia and Ralph Brown were active Republicans in their local party.

Education

Starting in late 1962, Brown attended the University of Florida on a scholarship. In the spring of 1964, the administrators of the racially segregated university expelled her for participating in the civil rights movement. She subsequently enrolled at Broward Community College with the hope of transferring eventually to a more tolerant four-year institution.^[6]

Early career

Brown hitchhiked to New York City and lived there between 1964 and 1969, sometimes homeless,^[while attending New York University where she received a degree in Classics and English. In 1968, she received a certificate in cinematography from the New York School of Visual Arts.

Brown received a Ph.D. in literature from Union Institute & University in 1976 and holds a doctorate in political science from the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.

Brown wrote for Rat, an alternative bi-weekly that eventually became New York City's first women's liberation newspaper. She also contributed to Come Out!, the gay liberation newspaper in NYC, published by the Gay Liberation Front.

Personal life

Starting in 1973, Brown lived in the Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles. In 1978, she moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, where she lived briefly with American actress, author, and screenwriter Fannie Flagg, whom she had met at a Los Angeles party hosted by Marlo Thomas. They later broke up due to, according to Brown, "generational differences", although Flagg and Brown are the same age.

In 1979, Brown met and fell in love with tennis champion Martina Navratilova. In 1980, they bought a horse farm in Charlottesville where they lived together until their breakup, over Navratilova's then concern that coming out would hurt her application for U.S. citizenship. Brown still lives on the estate in Charlottesville.

Novels

• Rubyfruit Jungle (1973) ISBN 0-553-27886-X
• In Her Day (1976) ISBN 0-553-27573-9
• A Plain Brown Rapper (June 1976) ISBN 0884470113
• Southern Discomfort (1983) ISBN 0-553-27446-5
• Sudden Death (1984) ISBN 0-553-26930-5
• High Hearts (1987) ISBN 0-553-27888-6
• Venus Envy (1994) ISBN 0-553-56497-8
• Dolley: A Novel of Dolley Madison in Love and War (1995) ISBN 0-553-56949-X
• Riding Shotgun (1996) ISBN 0-553-76353-9
• Alma Mater (2002) ISBN 0-345-45532-0

Runnymede books

• Six of One (1978) ISBN 0-553-38037-0
• Bingo (1988) ISBN 0-553-38040-0
• Loose Lips (1999) ISBN 0-553-38067-2
• The Sand Castle (2008) ISBN 0-8021-1870-4
• Cakewalk (2016) ISBN 0-5533-9265-4

Mysteries

Mrs. Murphy Mysteries

The Mrs. Murphy Mysteries include "Sneaky Pie Brown" as a co-author.

1. Wish You Were Here (1990) ISBN 978-0-553-28753-0
2. Rest in Pieces (1992) ISBN 978-0-553-56239-2
3. Murder at Monticello (1994) ISBN 978-0-553-57235-3
4. Pay Dirt (1995) ISBN 978-0-553-57236-0
5. Murder, She Meowed (1996) ISBN 978-0-553-57237-7
6. Murder on the Prowl (1998) ISBN 978-0-553-57540-8
7. Cat on the Scent (1999) ISBN 978-0-553-57541-5
8. Pawing Through the Past (2000) ISBN 978-0-553-58025-9
9. Claws and Effect (2001) ISBN 978-0-553-58090-7
10. Catch as Cat Can (2002) ISBN 978-0-553-58028-0
11. The Tail of the Tip-Off (2003) ISBN 978-0-553-58285-7
12. Whisker of Evil (2004) ISBN 978-0-553-58286-4
13. Cat's Eyewitness (2005) ISBN 978-0-553-58287-1
14. Sour Puss (2006) ISBN 978-0-553-58681-7
15. Puss n' Cahoots (2007) ISBN 978-0-553-58682-4
16. The Purrfect Murder (2008) ISBN 978-0-553-58683-1
17. Santa Clawed (2008) ISBN 978-0-553-80706-6
18. Cat of the Century (2010) ISBN 978-0-553-80707-3
19. Hiss of Death (2011) ISBN 978-0-553-80708-0
20. The Big Cat Nap (2012) ISBN 978-0-345-53044-8
21. Sneaky Pie for President (2012) ISBN 1410450244/ISBN 0345530470 — Not a Mrs. Murphy mystery
22. The Litter of the Law (2013) ISBN 978-0-345-53048-6
23. Nine Lives to Die (2014) ISBN 978-0-345-53050-9
24. Tail Gait (2015) ISBN 978-0-553-39236-4
25. Tall Tail (2016) ISBN 978-0-553-39246-3
26. A Hiss Before Dying (2017)^[39]
27. Probable Claws (2018)^[40]
28. Whiskers in the Dark (2019)^[41]
29. Furmidable Foes (2020)^[42]
30. Claws for Alarm (2021)^[43]
31. Hiss and Tell (2023)^[44]

"Sister" Jane Mysteries

1. Outfoxed (2000) ISBN 0345484258
2. Hotspur (2002) ISBN 0345428234
3. Full Cry (2003) ISBN 0345465202
4. The Hunt Ball (2005) ISBN 0345465504
5. The Hounds and the Fury (2006) ISBN 0345465482
6. The Tell-Tale Horse (2007) ISBN 034550626X
7. Hounded to Death (2008) ISBN 0345512375
8. Fox Tracks (2012) ISBN 0345532996
9. Let Sleeping Dogs Lie (2014) ISBN 055339262X
10. Crazy Like a Fox (2017)
11. Homeward Hound (2018)
12. Scarlet Fever (2019)
13. Out of Hounds (2021)
14. Thrill of the Hunt (2022)
15. Lost and Hound (2023)

Mags Rogers Mysteries

1. A Nose for Justice (2010) ISBN 978-0-345-51182-9
2. Murder Unleashed (2010) ISBN 978-0-345-51183-6

Nonfiction

• Starting from Scratch: A Different Kind of Writer's Manual (1988). ISBN 055334630X
• Rita Will: Memoir of a Literary Rabble-Rouser (1997). ISBN 978-0553099737
• Sneaky Pie's Cookbook For Mystery Lovers (1999). ISBN 978-0553106350
• Animal Magnetism: My Life with Creatures Great and Small (2009). ISBN 978-0-345-51179-9

Screenplays

• I Love Liberty (1982; TV special)
• The Slumber Party Massacre (1982; feature film)
• The Long Hot Summer (1985; TV movie)
• My Two Loves (1986; TV movie)
• Me and Rubyfruit (1989; short film interpretation of Rubyfruit Jungle)
• Rich Men, Single Women (1990; TV movie)
• The Woman Who Loved Elvis (1993; TV movie)
• Mary Pickford: A Life on Film (1997; documentary)
• Murder She Purred: A Mrs. Murphy Mystery (1998; TV movie)

Charles Schulz

 

Happy birth anniversary to

" ... cartoonist Charles Schulz, born in Minneapolis, Minnesota (1922). His parents left school after third grade, and his father was a barber who supported the family on 35 cent haircuts. Every Sunday, Schulz and his father read the "funny pages" together, and the boy hoped to become a cartoonist someday. But he had a tough time in school — he felt picked on by teachers and other students. He was smart enough to skip ahead a couple of grades, but that only made it worse. He wished someone would recognize his artistic talent, but his cartoons weren't even accepted by the high school yearbook.

After high school, he was drafted into the Army; his mother died of cancer a couple of days before he left. When he came home, he moved in with his father in the apartment above the barbershop. He got a job teaching at Art Instruction, a correspondence course for cartooning that he had taken as a high schooler. There he fell in love with a red-haired woman named Donna Mae Johnson, who worked in the accounting department. They dated for a while, but when he asked her to marry him, she turned him down and soon after married someone else. Schulz was devastated, and remained bitter about it for the rest of his life. He said: "I can think of no more emotionally damaging loss than to be turned down by someone whom you love very much. A person who not only turns you down, but almost immediately will marry the victor. What a bitter blow that is."

Schulz started publishing a cartoon strip called L'il Folks in the local paper, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, but they dropped it after a couple of years. Schulz sent some of his favorite L'il Folks cartoons to the United Features Syndicate, and in 1950, the first Peanuts strip appeared in national newspapers. The first strip introduced Charlie Brown, and Snoopy made an appearance two days later. The rest of the Peanuts characters were added slowly over the years: Linus, Lucy, Schroeder, Pig Pen, Peppermint Patty, and many more. Throughout the years, the object of Charlie Brown's unrequited love is known simply as The Little Red-Haired Girl.

Peanuts was eventually syndicated in more than 2,500 newspapers worldwide, and there were more than 300 million Peanuts books sold, as well as 40 TV specials, four movies, and a Broadway play.

Charles Schulz said: "My whole life has been one of rejection. Women. Dogs. Comic strips."

And he wrote: "Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love."

SOURCE: Writer's Almanac Newsletter