Curated playlist
1899 births
- Alfred HitchcockAlfred Hitchcock was born on the 13th of August 1899 above a greengrocer's shop at 517 High Road in Leytonstone, Essex. By the time he died in 1980, his films had collected 46 Academy Award nominations and his name had become an adjective…
- Humphrey BogartHumphrey Bogart kept a small gold whistle, part of a charm bracelet he had given Lauren Bacall before they married. Engraved on it were the words, "If you want anything, just whistle." When he was cremated in 1957, that whistle was…
- Ernest HemingwayErnest Hemingway was born on the 21st of July 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois, into a family where his mother kept his hair long and dressed him in frilly clothes to match his older sister, aiming for the two to look like twins. That same…
- Duke EllingtonDuke Ellington wrote his first composition in the summer of 1914, working as a soda jerk at the Poodle Dog Cafe in Washington, D.C. He had not yet learned to read or write music. The piece, "Soda Fountain Rag", he played as a one-step,…
- Jorge Luis BorgesJorge Luis Borges once described his blindness as a gift wrapped in cruel irony. In a poem he wrote that God, with splendid irony, granted him books and night at a single touch. By the late 1950s he was the director of the Argentine…
- Irving ThalbergIrving Thalberg was twenty years old when Carl Laemmle, the founder of Universal Pictures, told him to take charge of the entire Los Angeles studio. In shock, Thalberg replied, "I'm what?" The young man already carried a death sentence. As…
- Friedrich HayekFriedrich Hayek wrote on the 26th of October 1929, three days before the Wall Street crash, that there was no reason to expect a sudden collapse of the New York stock exchange. Decades later, the Nobel committee would praise him as one of…
- Lavrentiy BeriaLavrentiy Beria stood over Stalin's paralysed body on the 2nd of March 1953, dismissed the frantic aide who pleaded for a doctor, and walked out of the dacha at Kuntsevo ordering everyone not to panic. Twelve hours would pass before anyone…
- Vladimir NabokovVladimir Nabokov arrived in the United States in May 1940 aboard the SS Champlain, a Russian exile who spoke three languages and had already written nine novels that almost nobody in America had read. He was forty years old, nearly broke,…
- Lev KuleshovLev Kuleshov placed the same footage of an actor named Ivan Mozzhukhin next to a bowl of soup, then a coffin, then a woman reclining on a couch. The actor's face never changed. Yet audiences watching each version were convinced they saw…
- Wilfrid IsraelWilfrid Berthold Israel was born on the 11th of July 1899 into a wealthy Anglo-German Jewish family. He attended the Mommsen-Gymnasium in Berlin-Charlottenburg before spending a few months in 1911 at the Hochalpines Lyceum in Zuoz,…
- Bruce CattonBruce Catton grew up in Benzonia, Michigan, listening to old men describe what it felt like to march into battle. He was born on the 9th of October, 1899, and the Civil War was still within living memory. Veterans gathered in that small…
- D. P. Roy ChoudhuryDevi Prasad Roy Choudhury filled his spare hours with wrestling, flute playing, hunting and short stories, squeezed around a career in bronze and paint. Born on the 15th of June 1899, he came to be rated by many as one of the major figures…