HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THREE

My birthday is three days from today….but I won’t be hosting a toasting of HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME. Instead, today I’m posting HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THREE: a trio of once well known actors and music makers who share my birth date. I do this, knowing that unless you’re an old film or jazz buff, you may not recognize their names….but in their day, their faces and voices were as familiar as your favorites are today:

MIRIAM HOPKINS, Academy Award-nominated actress, born October 18, 1902
BOBBY TROUP, songwriter, actor, and jazz musician, born October 18, 1918
ANITA O’DAY, jazz vocalist, born October 18, 1919

MIRIAM HOPKINS first gained acclaim for her roles in such pre-code films as DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (1931) in which she played a prostitute, and TROUBLE IN PARADISE (1932), directed by famed filmmaker Ernst Lubitsch. My favorite Hopkins film is the lamentably forgotten love story THE STRANGER’S RETURN (1933). She also sang well, as in the last 2 1/2 minutes of this clip from DANCERS IN THE DARK (1932):

BOBBY TROUP is no doubt best known for his hit song ROUTE 66 (1946), among his many compositions. He later was an actor in films and TV, including roles with his wife, singer Julie London, in the 1970s series EMERGENCY! Here, Rosemary Clooney, Dorothy Malone and he form a trio to perform ROUTE 66 in 1956:

Of ANITA O’DAY, what can I say? She was a free spirit and did her own thing, but how she could sing! She first achieved prominence in the early 1940s as the ‘girl singer’ with the big band of Gene Krupa, whose trumpeter was jazz great Roy Eldridge (see video below). She left Krupa in 1943 and went on to become the ‘hip’ song stylist of her legacy.

Do you share a birth date with someone you believe would be of interest to the rest of us? If so, you are cordially invited to join in the celebration (comment-wise) and help make it The more, the merrier. If not, like the man says at the end of the last film clip: “That’s all there is. There isn’t any more.“