19 People Who Share the Siren's Birthday

Greetings! It’s the Siren's birthday, and she thought she'd pop in to have a little fun. The fact that one shares a birthday with someone famous is probably not significant, but then again, maybe it is. Or we can pretend it is. Jan. 17 is, for some reason, a pretty big day for birthdays. So here is a short and by no means complete list of people with whom the Siren shares her birthday, with small notes. Have a great Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend, and go see Selma. The Siren, an Alabama native, thinks it's terrific.

Who's this?: Moira Shearer, ballerina and star of The Red Shoes, Tales of Hoffman, Peeping Tom and The Story of Three Loves.
What she has that the Siren wants: Absolute grace of movement.
What we share: Red hair.

Who's this?: The great James Earl Jones.
What he has that the Siren wants: A beautiful voice.
What we share: Love of the American theater, and of August Wilson.

Who's this?: Mack Sennett.
What he has that the Siren wants: A pioneering spirit and directing genius.
What we share: Love of a good anecdote.

Who's this?: Françoise Hardy.
What she has that the Siren wants: You mean, besides being a terrific chanteuse, tall, lights-out gorgeous and once made a movie with Yves Montand, Toshiro Mifune and James Garner?
What we share: Love of fashion.

Who's this?: Benjamin Franklin.
What he has that the Siren wants: Political courage.
What we share: Patriotism.

Who's this?: Michelle Obama.
What she has that the Siren wants: Strength, grace and the ability to ignore the haters. And her arms. I want her arms.
What we share: An irrational love of belts.

Who's this?: Muhammad Ali.
What he has that the Siren wants: Fierce commitment and, on certain occasions, his jab.
What we share: We like kids.

Who's this?: Betty White.
What she has that the Siren wants: She smiles at her enemies.
What we share: A determination to get old any damn way we see fit.

Who's this?: Anton Chekhov
Excuse me, Siren, but Anton Chekhov was born on Jan. 29.: That's the New Calendar. In this one instance, the Siren goes by the Old Style Calendar and claims him anyway. Because Chekhov is her favorite playwright, OK?
What he has that the Siren wants: Genius.
What we share: Give the Siren a minute ... she once yearned to go to Moscow?

Who's this?: Anne Bronte.
What she has that the Siren wants: The will to write even when met with indifference.
What we share: A tendency to get sick a lot.

Who's this?: Eartha Kitt.
What she has that the Siren wants: Aside from the obvious, a wonderful, funny cynicism about sex.
What we share: We both tend to look pissed-off in photos.

Who's this?: Susanna Hoffs of The Bangles.
What she has that the Siren wants: Great hair and a friendship with Prince.
What we share: We both had a fabulous time in the 1980s.

Who's this?: Nils Asther
What he has that the Siren wants: Well, the Siren didn't choose this photo for the way Garbo looks. And she loves Garbo.
What we share: We both disappear from screens from time to time.

Who's this?: Al Capone.
What he has that the Siren wants: Um, well ... There have been times in life when it would have been nice to scare the bejesus out of everybody.
What we share: The Siren has a scar, but as longtime readers may remember, it's on her nose.

Who's this?: Dalida.
What she has that the Siren wants: A beautiful singing voice, and REALLY great hair.
What we share: Arabophilia.

Who's this?: Andy Kaufman.
What he has that the Siren wants: Good comic timing.
What we share: Sometimes people don't know what the hell the Siren is talking about.

Who's this?: Kid Rock.
What he has that the Siren wants: The hat's not bad.
What we share: Sometimes a common birthday is just a common birthday.

Who's this?: In the foreground, Mick Taylor, the greatest guitar player the Rolling Stones ever had.
What he has that the Siren wants: Musical genius.
What we share: We love rock 'n roll.

Who's this?: Patsy Ruth Miller, in costume as Esmeralda in the silent version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
What she has that the Siren wants: Movie-making memories, friendships with great writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the Siren would like Patsy Ruth to throw in that tambourine.
What we share: We don't always need words.

Tay Garnett: Light Your Torches and Pull Up Your Tights

The Siren has written before about director Tay Garnett: his marriage to actress Patsy Ruth Miller, and his script for and direction of One Way Passage, which the Siren would unhesitatingly cite as one of the best films of the 1930s. And since the 1930s was a great film decade, period, well, you do the math. The Siren has enormous regard for The Postman Always Rings Twice (Garnett on the set above, with the poor unphotogenic creatures who were his stars), thinks Trade Winds, where Joan Bennett went brunette, is a pip, and so is China Seas, thinks a large number of Garnett's many, many other films are subject for further research, as a great critic used to put it.

All this, and Garnett wrote a corking autobiography, called Light Your Torches and Pull Up Your Tights, after the on-set directions he got as an extra in a historical epic. The Siren has, as we all know, read way too many Hollywood memoirs so believe her when she says that this is one of the liveliest, most enjoyable and original you will ever pick up. If you can pick it up, that is. It's out of print.

Now his daughter Tiela has embarked on a project to get the book back into circulation, and at the same time resurrect her father's memory with the public. The Siren hasn't pointed out Kickstarter campaigns before, and has no plans to make a habit of it, but she can't resist this one, because the book really is wonderful. (David Cairns thinks so too; he calls it "magnificent," not an adjective he slings around with abandon.) If Tiela gets sufficient funding, she plans to write a coda to her father's book. The Siren hopes it will fill out the story of his lifelong love for the mysterious Joan Marshfield, which forms such a romantic throughline that would have fit perfectly in one of Garnett's own movies.

The description of the project is here.

Venturing Into the Old Dark Sidebar

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For a good after-birthday, start-of-a-new-year project the Siren decided to venture into the sidebar, something she procrastinates about, because Bad Things Happen when the Siren goes into the sidebar. She has many sterling qualities, but coding talent is not among them. Nonetheless, the Blogroll had gotten pretty dusty, what with defunct links and needing new links added, so she cleaned up a bit.

Additions include the intelligent and fascinating Michael Guillen and Andy Horbal. I have also added Gloria, whose comments are one of this blog's best aspects. She has a great site herself, focusing on all things Charles Laughton. Tonio Kruger's eclectic Confessions of a Half-Breed Prince is up too, as is Phil Nugent's No More Mr. Nice Blog, Tuwa's Shanty and Emma's All About My Movies.

In December I had the great pleasure of meeting Tom Watson, Maud Newton and Kathleen Maher of Diary of a Heretic, and I am adding them as well. Maud is primarily a literary critic, but she ventures into all sorts of artistic waters and covers film on occasion, too. This is a great piece on the documentary Jesus Camp. (When you read it, you will see why I would like to meet Maud's sister, too.) Tom Watson is also starting a cultural blog, called newcritics, and the Siren hopes to put in an appearance over there on occasion as well.

Also added is a great blog I discovered by accident, Operator 99's Allure. I had been reading the memoirs of film director Tay Garnett (who was married to none other than Patsy Ruth Miller, and directed One-Way Passage and The Postman Always Rings Twice, among more than 100 films). Garnett wrote of a starlet named Jeanette Loff, who married a producer named Bert Friedlob and died young. I tried to look up more on Loff but found almost nothing worthwhile until I stumbled across this blog. (Here she is, if you want to see her.) It consists of rare picture-postcards of stars both famous and obscure, together with enough trivia to make a film buff's heart go pitter-patter. Check it out, but be warned you will spend at least an hour poring through the archives.

I am sure I am forgetting someone. If I have, please email me and I will add your URL, while I am still feeling brave about venturing into the sidebar thickets.