Curated playlist
American recipients of the Legion of Honour
- Bob DylanBob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman on the 24th of May, 1941, at St. Mary's Hospital in Duluth, Minnesota. His Hebrew name was Shabtai Zisl ben Avraham. He grew up in a small, close-knit Jewish community, and by the time he reached…
- Martin ScorseseMartin Scorsese had asthma as a boy and could not play sports or join in games with the other children. So his parents and his older brother took him to the movies instead. That is where his passion for cinema began, in a child who could…
- Orson WellesOrson Welles was born on the 6th of May 1915, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and died on the 10th of October 1985. In between those dates, he directed what is consistently ranked as one of the greatest films ever made, terrified radio listeners…
- Steven SpielbergSteven Spielberg was born on the 18th of December 1946, in Cincinnati, Ohio, and by the time he was twelve years old, he had already staged and filmed a train wreck with his Lionel set. That eight-millimeter camera, borrowed from his…
- T. S. EliotT. S. Eliot wrote the opening of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" when he was twenty-two years old. The lines compared an evening sky to "a patient etherised upon a table". Critics called the image shocking and offensive. Georgian…
- Quentin TarantinoQuentin Tarantino was born on the 27th of March 1963, in Knoxville, Tennessee, to a mother who let him watch R-rated films as a child and a father he never met. By his late twenties, he would be handing a barely formatted screenplay to a…
- David LynchDavid Lynch was born on the 20th of January 1946 at St. Patrick's Hospital in Missoula, Montana, the son of a USDA research scientist and an English-language tutor. He died on the 16th of January 2025, four days before what would have been…
- Jim LovellJim Lovell flew to the Moon twice and never set foot on it. That distinction alone would make him one of the most unusual figures in the history of human spaceflight. But what truly separates Lovell from the dozen men who did walk on the…
- Kirk DouglasKirk Douglas was born Issur Danielovitch on the 9th of December 1916, the only son among seven children in a Russian-Jewish immigrant family in Amsterdam, New York. His father had been a horse trader in Russia and became a ragman in…
- Elizabeth TaylorElizabeth Taylor was born on the 27th of February 1932 in Hampstead Garden Suburb, northwest London, in a family home called Heathwood. She died on the 23rd of March 2011 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Between those two…
- J. Robert OppenheimerJ. Robert Oppenheimer stood in a control bunker near Alamogordo, New Mexico, in the early morning hours of the 16th of July, 1945, holding a post to steady himself. Brigadier General Thomas Farrell watched him grow tenser as the final…
- 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,…
- Clint EastwoodClinton Eastwood Jr. entered the world at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco on the 31st of May, 1930, weighing 11 pounds 6 ounces. The nurses at the hospital nicknamed him "Samson." Nobody in that delivery room could have…
- Dwight D. EisenhowerDwight David Eisenhower drafted a message he hoped no one would ever read. On the eve of the D-Day landings on the 6th of June 1944, he wrote a short statement taking full personal responsibility if the assault on Normandy failed. 'If any…
- Miles DavisMiles Dewey Davis III was born on the 26th of May 1926 in Alton, Illinois, to a family that owned a 200-acre estate in Arkansas with a profitable pig farm. He died on the 28th of September 1991 in Santa Monica, California, after a stroke,…
- Tom HanksTom Hanks lost 35 pounds for a single role. He thinned his hair, learned to walk differently, and prepared to play a dying man on screen. The film was Philadelphia, released in 1993, and when it was over, Hanks stood at the Academy Award…
- Francis Ford CoppolaFrancis Ford Coppola illegally hired a grave robber to supply real human corpses as props, and oversaw the ritualistic killing of a water buffalo. This was the production of Apocalypse Now, a film so plagued by delays it earned the mocking…
- Thomas EdisonThomas Edison kept his own deafness a mystery, inventing elaborate false stories about how he lost his hearing. He was completely deaf in one ear and barely heard from the other. To enjoy a piano or a music player, he clamped his teeth…
- Joseph StiglitzJoseph Stiglitz grew up in Gary, Indiana, a steel town whose economic fortunes would later give shape to many of the questions he spent a career trying to answer. His mother Charlotte was a schoolteacher. His father Nathaniel sold…
- Walt DisneyWalt Disney holds the record for most Academy Awards won by an individual, with 22 wins from 59 nominations. Yet the man behind that record was, in private, shy, self-deprecating, and insecure. He once told a friend, "I'm not Walt Disney.…
- Bill GatesBill Gates was born on the 28th of October, 1955, in Seattle, Washington, and by age 31 he had become the world's youngest-ever billionaire. That milestone came in 1987, one year after Microsoft's first public offering sent the stock price…
- Arnold SchwarzeneggerArnold Alois Schwarzenegger arrived in the United States in October 1968 at age 21, speaking little English and carrying little money. He had already won the Mr. Universe title once, and he would go on to win it three more times. What…
- Jamie DimonJamie Dimon was born on the 13th of March, 1956, in New York City, the grandson of a Greek immigrant banker who once worked in Smyrna and Athens and renamed the family from Papademetriou to Dimon. That chain of inheritance, from Smyrna to…
- Walter Bedell SmithWalter Bedell Smith was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, on the 5th of October 1895. He grew up as the elder of two sons to William Long Smith and Ida Francis Bedell. His father worked as a silk buyer for the Pettis Dry Goods Company while…
- George SteinerFrancis George Steiner was born on the 23rd of April 1929 in Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris. His right arm withered from birth yet his mother insisted he use it as an able-bodied person would. She believed self-pity was nauseating and…
- Billie Jean KingBillie Jean King stood on the court at the Houston Astrodome on the 20th of September 1973, facing 55-year-old Bobby Riggs. She was 29 years old. Riggs had already beaten Margaret Court, the world's top female player, and claimed women's…