On this Day...
September 5
• In 1940, bionic beauty Racquel Welch was born in Chicago. The ex-wife of a tuna fisherman, she’s said to have had various surgical alterations made to her eyes, nose, and mouth as well as her famous 37-inch bust. Burt Reynolds has joked that his dog bit her and got an overdose of silicone. A famous makeup man went further, and said she was “silicone from the knees up.” Racquel’s second husband, Patrick Curtis, told a group of girls that it would be nice to feel something real for a change, and Jim Brown, her co-star in “A Hundred Rifles,” told her, “Lady, my tomcat’s got more appeal than you.”
• In 1912, avant-garde composer John Cage was born. His works astound critics, confuse the public, and generally defy explanation. During one piano concerto, for instance, he asked for turkeys to be released from a coffin, while in “The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs,” the pianist had to keep the keyboard closed and stroke only the outside of the instrument. His “Water Music,” more logically, called for a musician to pour water from one container to another at intervals regulated by a stopwatch, and accompanied by the shuffling of playing cards and static from a radio. Perhaps some sort of answer lies in another work, “Four Minutes and Twenty-Three Seconds” – described as “a piece in three movements, during which no sounds are intentionally produced.”