German-American architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was born on March 27, 1886, in Aachen, Germany. Known simply as “Mies,” he started his own architectural firm in Berlin in 1912. His admiration for the Dutch De Stijl and Russian Constructivism movements, which demanded simplicity in architecture that benefits society, led to his minimalist concepts, expressed in his famous motto, "less is more." He fled Nazi Germany in 1937 and joined what is now the Illinois Institute of Technology, whose campus he overhauled. Mies’ mature buildings, which he called "skin and bones" architecture, include New York’s Seagram Building, the Farnsworth House (Plano, IL), and Chicago’s Federal Center and residential towers at 860-880 Lake Shore Drive (all pictured). These monuments of industrial steel and plate glass, balancing structural order with the freedom of open space, deeply influenced 20th-century architecture and helped define the modern age.
Poet Robert Frost was born in San Francisco on March 26, 1874, but grew up in the mill town of Lawrence, Massachusetts, north of Boston. He briefly attended Dartmouth College and later dropped out of Harvard. He unsuccessfully ran a farm in New Hampshire while writing poetry in the early mornings. His first two books of poetry were published while he lived in London before World War I. He returned to America as a writer, teacher and lecturer associated with Amherst College and Middlebury College, emphasizing to students the importance of colloquial, spoken English in their writing. Often viewed as a rural poet of simple things, Frost in fact addressed many of the darkest, most complex and troublesome issues in human life, in poems such as "Provide, Provide," "Acquainted with the Night," "Mending Wall," "To Earthward," "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," "Design" and "Desert Places." He won four Pulitzer Prizes in poetry.
Author and playwright Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams was born on March 26, 1911, in Columbus, Mississippi, but grew up in St. Louis from age 8 through his college years. He referred to the city as “St. Pollution.” His overbearing mother searched continually for a St. Louis address she considered appropriate, a task made difficult by his father's drinking and violent conduct. Williams’ first address was 4633 Westminster Place, which he described as a "perpetually dim little apartment in a wilderness of brick and concrete." This was, in part, the setting of his first hit play, “The Glass Menagerie” (1944). His dysfunctional family life and tortured emotions are reflected in the play’s tender but disturbing story of a young man, Tom, his disabled sister, Laura, and their controlling mother. Contrary to his expressed wishes, Williams was buried in St. Louis’ Calvary Cemetery (pictured) when he died of apparent substance abuse in 1983.
Film director Sir David Lean, CBE, was born near London on March 25, 1908, into a Quaker family. After an aunt told him to find a job he enjoyed, he began working at a London film studio without pay. By 1930 he was editing newsreels and later movies, an occupation that served him well as the director of some of the landmarks of motion-picture history. These included the romantic drama “Brief Encounter” (1945), and the Charles Dickens classics “Great Expectations” (1946) and “Oliver Twist” (1948). “Summertime” (1955) was shot entirely on location in Venice. Then came huge blockbusters that made Lean’s reputation as the master of big-screen epics: “The Bridge on the River Kwai” (1957), “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962), “Doctor Zhivago” (1965), and later, “A Passage to India” (1984). “Zhivago” remains one of the highest-grossing films in the United States, adjusted for inflation. Lean was married six times.
Actor Terence Stephen "Steve" McQueen was born on March 24, 1930, near Indianapolis. Dyslexic and partially deaf from a childhood ear infection, he spent part of his youth in Slater, Missouri, with grandparents. His mother’s third marriage took him to L.A., where gang life, street crime and fights with his stepfather landed him in reformatory school. After a stint in the Marines and acting studies in New York, he gained fame in the TV series “Wanted: Dead or Alive” (1958-61) as a gunfighter who used a shortened Winchester rifle. He crossed over to movies with “The Magnificent Seven” (1960), followed by “The Great Escape” (1963), which made him a superstar; “The Sand Pebbles” (1966); “Bullitt” (1968); “The Thomas Crown Affair” (1968); and others. He was the world’s highest-paid actor when he starred in “The Getaway” (1972). McQueen died in 1980 of pleural mesothelioma apparently caused by asbestos exposure while in the Marines.
Actress Joan Crawford was born Lucille Fay LeSueur on March 23, ca. 1904, in San Antonio. Nicknamed Billy as a child in Oklahoma and Kansas City, she had little schooling. In the 1920s she danced in traveling revues and had a screen test; her questionable earliest films are disputed. After landing roles in MGM silent movies, she acquired her screen name (which she hated) in 1925 through a naming contest in a fan magazine. She was cast as a quintessential ‘20s “flapper,” a brash young woman in makeup who drank, smoked and flouted social and sexual norms – which made her the highest-paid actress in the United States. When her career stumbled later in the 1930s, she returned in 1945 as the star of “Mildred Pierce,” for which she won a Best Actress Oscar. She adopted five children, two of whom she disowned, including Christina, whose memoir Mommie Dearest (1978) detailed a pattern of abuse that stemmed from Crawford’s own childhood.
Flemish Baroque painter Sir Anthony van Dyck was born on March 22, 1599, in Antwerp (now Belgium). The precociously talented son of a wealthy textile merchant, he entered the studio of Peter Paul Rubens, one of Europe's most prominent artists, while a teenager. He gained fame as a successful portraitist in Italy, and then in the 1630s became the court painter to King Charles I of England, a notorious cheapskate who nonetheless knighted him. A genius at portraiture, Van Dyck’s court paintings are all about dazzling surfaces, at once formal and relaxed, his elegant subjects symbolically accessorized, posed in rich settings, exhibiting aristocratic hauteur. But other works are strikingly down-to-earth, often exposing more truth than the subjects may have realized. His deep influence on portraiture is still evident in contemporary art. Pictured: Lord John Stuart and Lord Bernard Stuart, c. 1638.
Composer, violinist and organist Johann Sebastian Bach was born on March 21, 1685, in Eisenach, Germany, into a musical family. His father and all his uncles were musicians. He learned violin and harpsichord, and his brother, Johann Christoph, took him in at age 10 when both parents died. In 1703, he became a court musician of Duke Johann Ernst of Weimar, and later organist at the New Church in Arnstadt. In this period he wrote great works for the organ, including the "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor," and many church cantatas, including one containing "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring." On his death in Leipzig in 1750, Bach left behind seven clavecins and harpsichords, six violins and violas, two cellos, a viola da gamba, a lute, a spinet, and 52 "sacred books." His grave went unmarked for nearly 150 years. His coffin was found in 1894 and moved to a church that was destroyed by Allied bombing in World War II. In 1950 his remains were interred in Leipzig's Church of St. Thomas.
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly, was published in book form on March 20, 1852. It had first appeared as a 40-week serial in an abolitionist periodical. Stowe wrote the book in response to the enactment of the second Fugitive Slave Act (the "Bloodhound Law," 1850), which declared that runaway slaves were to be returned to their masters. She was also partly inspired by an 1849 slave narrative by Josiah Henson. The sentimental, melodramatic novel focuses on Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave, around whom other stories are told. Simon Legree is a cruel slave owner who seeks to demoralize Tom but fails to break his religious faith. He then orders Tom’s death. The book was the 19th century’s best-selling novel in the United States, and although it popularized negative stereotypes of black people, it fueled the abolitionist cause that led to the Civil War.
French Baroque painter Georges de La Tour was born on March 19, 1593, in the Duchy of Lorraine, France, where he spent his life. He became a master painter and, although the chronology of his works is uncertain, he initially painted in a realistic manner and was influenced by the naturalism and tenebrist style – i.e., dramatic light-and-dark, or chiaroscuro – of Italian painter Caravaggio and his Dutch followers. His greatest works, which increasingly addressed religious subjects, are careful and simplified geometrical compositions, usually interior tableaux lit only by the intense glow of candles or torches, imparting a contemplative stillness and an astonished sense of wonder. La Tour was forgotten until his works were rediscovered in 1915. He has since been favored by forgers. Pictured: “Joseph the Carpenter” (1645), showing Jesus with his father, in which the geometry of the augur and wood foreshadow the crucifixion.
