ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
MARCH 19, 1954
TWENTY members of a local authority committee crowded round Henry Moore’s bronze Draped Torso in Manchester Art Gallery yesterday. The city council has asked them to reconsider their decision to buy it for £760. Alderman E. J. Hart, 90, said: ‘It’s morbid and ghastly.’ Another art galleries committee member said: ‘The model for it must have been an Amazon, with the shoulders of an ox and a 56in bust.’
MARCH 19, 1960
HANDSOME, Jeremy Fry, 35, will be best man at the May 6 wedding of Princess Margaret and Mr Antony Armstrong-Jones. He wed Camilla Grinling in 1954 and they have two sons. The birth of a third child may keep his wife from the wedding. [Fry quit as best man after publicity about his arrest for ‘a minor homosexual offence’. It emerged in 2004 that Fry’s wife had in fact been pregnant with Armstrong-Jones’s lovechild.]
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
URSULA ANDRESS, 82. The Swiss actress played the original Bond Girl, Honey Ryder, in 007’s first film outing, Dr. No in 1962 (right), and was voted the best of them all in an Empire magazine poll. Andress, who dated James Dean, didn’t audition for the role — she was hired after the producers saw a photo of her in a wet T-shirt. PHILIP ROTH, 85. The U.S. author of 31 books, including Portnoy’s Complaint, is a Pulitzer prizewinner. But when he won the International Man Booker prize, one judge quit in protest, saying his prose was too repetitive. Roth, married to English actress Claire Bloom for five years, once said: ‘I got literary fame. I got sexual fame . . . I got hundreds of letters, 100 a week, some of them letters with pictures of girls in bikinis. I had lots of opportunity to ruin my life.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
DAVID LIVINGSTONE (1813-1873). The Scottish missionary and explorer named Victoria Falls on the Zambezi River after Queen Victoria, and was the first European to cross the width of southern Africa. He vanished on an expedition to find the source of the Nile, but was found by journalist Henry Stanley, who uttered the immortal line: ‘Dr Livingstone I presume?’ TOMMY COOPER (19211984). The Welsh- born comedian and magician (right) had a fatal heart attack on TV variety show Live From Her Majesty’s. The audience thought it was part of the act. He first wore a fez after grabbing it from a waiter during a performance in Cairo in World War II — it got such a laugh, he wore one for the rest of his career.
ON MARCH 19. . .
IN 1953, the Oscars were first televised. IN 2003, U.S. President George W. Bush announced that the Iraq War had begun.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Wheep A) Noise made by drawing a sword. B) To turn a wheel. C) To withdraw. Answer below.
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Donkey’s years: A very long time. Comes from a play on ‘donkey’s ears’ — which are quite long.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
I AM not defined by my scars, but by the incredible ability to heal. Lemn Sissay, British poet
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHY did the man stay on a merry-go-round for three days? To set a whirled record. Guess The Definition answer: A.