8/29/14
What a day. Not only was the great jazz and blues singer Dinah Washington born on this day, but so was my favorite old Hollywood star Ingrid Bergman. The three-time Academy Award winner (not to mention a couple of Emmys and a Tony--she was a Triple Crown winner before we had the EGOT) was born in Stockholm, Sweden on August 29, 1915.
Her remarkable beauty made her a natural choice for Hollywood, but it was her talent and intelligence that kept her working for more than forty years, despite falling out of favor with a puritanical American public and being condemned on the floor of the House of Representatives after following her heart out of an unhappy marriage and into the arms of Italian filmmaker Roberto Rossellini.
When her eight year battle with cancer came to a close August 29, 1982, her sixty-seventh birthday, she was surrounded by family and held on long enough to lift a glass of champagne to her lips. I love the symmetry of checking out on the same date on which you arrived. It seems strangely classy to me, and so today I raise a glass to this classy woman who convincingly played everything from a nun to an Israeli prime minister on the occasion of her ninety-ninth birthday.
1 comment:
she was the best
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