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News Gram™ December 2003

December 2003 ~ Vol. 10, No. 5

There must be something to the idea that being born on a special day confers a special quality to that person. Take Christmas Day. There were so many wise and wonderful people born on that day it makes you wonder. Here are just a few:

Isaac Newton - Born in 1642, the year that Galileo died, Newton revolutionized our understanding of the physical world. His family had modest resources but sent him to Cambridge where he might learn farming or perhaps the law. Isaac, though, read some books in mathematics and was sold on that subject. Not a narrow-minded thinker, though, he also pursued astronomy and physics. During part of his life, he had a high-level government appointment and became Master of the Royal Mint - a really great job! He kept that position until his death.

Newton, not the most excited student, eventually caught the bug and pursued mathematics with a vengeance. He invented the differential and integral calculus with which hordes of college freshmen suffer. Beyond these small subjects, he came up with the laws of motion of the stars and planets, thereby imprinting his name indelibly on the discipline of theoretical astronomy. And it was Newton who formulated the law of universal gravitation. Not yet pleased with himself, he made important discoveries in optics. Today, the most commonly used reflecting telescope is referred to as a "Newtonian". As Alexander Pope said of this British wunderkind:

Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.

When he died in 1727, Newton had changed the world forever - and for the good. It wasn't until Einstein published his theory of relativity in 1905 that Newton's vision of the world would be radically transformed.

Sissy Spacek - Believe it or not, Mary Elizabeth Spacek, who entered this world in 1949, has been gracing the silver screen since the early 1970s. She didn't start out to be an actress, preferring singing instead. Born in Texas, she migrated to New York City and began singing in cafes and coffee houses. At some point, she made the decision to study acting and eventually found herself in her first film, Prime Cuts. In 1976, she made Carrie, a pretty good, though creepy, Stephen King-based, film about a telekinetic teenager. After a few more flicks, she did Coal Miner's Daughter, in which she played Loretta Lynn, and for which she won the Academy Award. She also starred in Oliver Stone's JFK. Sissy's been happily married to Jack Fisk, a director and art director, since 1974. She's had quite a career and has been nominated for the Academy Award four other times as well.

Anwar al-Sadat - Like most people, Sadat, born in 1918, is a fascinating figure of mixed virtues. There were four people he admired most - Zahran, a man hanged for the death of a British officer, and who displayed admirable courage on his way to the gallows, Kemel Ataturk, the colorful Ottoman chief who brought Turkey into the 20th century by overthrowing colonial rule and implementing civil service reforms; Mohandis Ghandi, who toured India in 1932 and preached the power of nonviolence in fighting against injustice; and Adolf Hitler whose sole virtue in Sadat's eyes was that he was a competitor of the British who dominated Egypt.

Humphrey Bogart - Probably the most distinctive, imitated and plain old enjoyable actor ever to appear on the screen, Bogart is also the most quoted. Humphrey DeForest Bogart was born in 1899 in New York City, the son of Maud Humphrey, a well-known illustrator, and DeForest Bogart, a successful Manhattan surgeon. The young Humphrey was originally headed for medical school and prepped for an intense education at the posh Trinity School and Phillips Academy. But his destiny was not medicine. He received terrible grades and had to leave school. In 1918, as the United States was entering the war in Europe, Bogart joined the Navy. At one point, he was transporting a naval prisoner to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The handcuffed man asked Bogart for a cigarette, and while Bogart looked for a match, the man smashed him across the mouth. It left the not-yet-actor with what was to become a trademark scar.

After his discharge, Bogart landed a job with a family friend who was a theatrical producer. He started as an office boy and became a stage manager. After a while, he got a small role in "Drifting" (1922), a stage play. He went on to do a great deal of stage work in a variety of often outdated drawing room comedies and dramas. Things were looking up for him and he married Helen Menken, a renowned stage actress. The marriage was over in less than a year.

He married again, this time to Mary Philips, also an actress. The talkies were on their way, which presented an opportunity for him to break into the movies. Bogart made a long series of forgettable films.

Things went, well, not exactly swimmingly. His marriage came apart and he seemed to have developed a penchant for "B" movies. Finally, he starred in "High Sierra", which was a smash success. He went on to make "Casablanca", by any standard, an American classic, "The Treasure of Sierra Madre", "The African Queen", with Katherine Hepburn and "The Caine Mutiny".

When he died in 1957, he was eulogized by Walter Huston who remarked, "He is quite irreplaceable. There will never be anybody like him."

Does having been born on Christmas Day have anything to do with the prominence of any of these people? Probably not, though it makes one think. It's very hard to say what it is about a person that enables him or her to rise to greatness. Often theories about people, molecules or the universe turn on an unexpected variable to which no one had previously paid any attention. Any thoughts?

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