On this day in 1519, daughter of Pope Alexander VI, Lady of Pesaro and Gradara, Duchess of Bisceglie and Princess of Salerno, Duchess of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio, Lucrezia Borgia died in Ferrara, Italy at the age of 39 from complications after giving birth to her eighth child, having had a lifelong history of complicated pregnancies and miscarriages. Born in Subiaco, near Rome on 18 April 1480. Her mother was Vannozza dei Cattanei, one of the mistresses of Lucrezia’s father, Rodrigo Borgia (Pope Alexander VI). Her brothers included Cesare Borgia, Giovanni Borgia, and Gioffre Borgia. Lucrezia’s family later came to epitomize the ruthless Machiavellian politics and sexual corruption characteristic of the Renaissance Papacy. Lucrezia was cast as a femme fatale, a role she has been portrayed as in many artworks, novels, films and an opera. Very little is known of Lucrezia, and the extent of her complicity in the political machinations of her father and brothers is unclear. They certainly arranged several marriages for her to important or powerful men in order to advance their own political ambitions. Lucrezia was married to Giovanni Sforza (Lord of Pesaro), Alfonso of Aragon (Duke of Bisceglie), and Alfonso I d’Este (Duke of Ferrara). Tradition has it that Alfonso of Aragon was an illegitimate son of the King of Naples and that Lucrezia’s brother Cesare may have had him murdered after his political value waned.
The Final Footprint – Lucrezia was entombed in the convent of Corpus Domini. On 15 October 1816, the Romantic poet Lord Byron visited the Ambrosian Library of Milan. He was delighted by the letters between Borgia and her one-time lover, poet Pietro Bembo (“The prettiest love letters in the world”) and claimed to have managed to steal a lock of her hair (“the prettiest and fairest imaginable”) held on display. Victor Hugo’s 1833 stage play Lucrèce Borgia, loosely based on the stories of Lucrezia, was transformed into a libretto by Felice Romani for Donizetti’s opera, Lucrezia Borgia (1834), first performed at La Scala, Milan, 26 December 1834.
#RIP #OTD in 1909 novelist, short story writer (The Country of the Pointed Firs), poet, Sarah Orne Jewett died in her South Berwick, Maine from a stroke aged 59. Portland Street Cemetery, South Berwick, Maine
#RIP #OTD in 1933 soprano, called “The Black Patti” in reference to Italian opera singer Adelina Patti, Sissieretta
Jones died from cancer at the Rhode Island Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island aged 64-65. Grace Church Cemetery, Providence
#OTD #RIP in 1935 French-born Argentine singer, songwriter, composer and actor, the most prominent figure in the history of tango, «El Zorzal”, “The King of Tango” Carlos Gardel died in an airplane crash in Medellín, Columbia, aged 44. La Chacarita Cemetery in Buenos Aires
On this day in 1987 comedian, actor and musician Jackie Gleason died at his home in Lauderhill, Florida at the age of 71. Born Herbert Walton Gleason, Jr. on 26 February 1916 in either Bushwick or Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Perhaps best known for his role on television as Ralph Kramden in The Honeymooners and for The Jackie Gleason Show (1952-1970). His most noted film roles were as Minnesota Fats in the drama film The Hustler (1961) starring Paul Newman, and as Buford T. Justice in the Smokey and the Bandit movie series. Gleason married three times; Genevieve Halford (1936-1970 divorce), Beverly McKittrick (1970-1975 divorce) and Marilyn Taylor (1975-1987 his death). His trademark phrases were “And away we go!” and “How sweet it is!”. In my opinion, The Honymooners is, without question, the “Bang, Zoom” funniest show that ever aired on television. And I will stand on Jerry Seinfeld’s coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that. I remember watching The Jackie Gleason Show as a kid. Gleason was hilarious in Smokey and the Bandit.
The Final Footprint – Gleason is entombed in a private mausoleum in Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Cemetery in Miami, Florida. Engraved at the base of the mausoleum is his epitaph; “AND AWAY WE GO”. A life-size statue of Gleason, in full uniform as bus driver Ralph Kramden, stands outside the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City. Another statue stands at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame in North Hollywood, California, showing Gleason in his famous “And away we go!” pose. Local signs on the Brooklyn Bridge, which indicate to drivers that they are entering Brooklyn, have the Gleason phrase “How Sweet It Is!” as part of the sign.
On this day in 2014, actor, graduate of the University of Texas, Eli Wallach died of natural causes at the age of 98 in Manhattan. Born Eli Herschel Wallach on 7 December 1915 in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Wallach’s career spanned more than six decades, beginning in the late 1940s. On stage, he often co-starred with his wife, Anne Jackson, becoming one of the best-known acting couples in the American theater. Wallach initially studied method acting under Sanford Meisner, and later became a founding member of the Actors Studio, where he studied under Lee Strasberg. His versatility gave him the ability to play a wide variety of different roles throughout his career, primarily as a supporting actor.
For his debut screen performance in Baby Doll, he won a BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer and a Golden Globe Award nomination. Among his other most famous roles are; Calvera in The Magnificent Seven (1960), Guido in The Misfits (1961), and Tuco in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), Don Altobello in The Godfather Part III, Cotton Weinberger in The Two Jakes (both 1990), and Arthur Abbott in The Holiday (2006). One of America’s most prolific screen actors, Wallach remained active well into his nineties, with roles as recently as 2010 in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and The Ghost Writer.
Wallach received BAFTA Awards, Tony Awards and Emmy Awards for his work, and received an Academy Honorary Award at the second annual Governors Awards, presented on November 13, 2010. Wallach and Jackson were married from 1948 until his death.
The Final Footprint – Wallach was cremated.
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On this day in 1836, following a 13-day seige, Mexican troops under President General Antonio López de Santa Anna launched a final assault on the Alamo Mission near San Antonio de Béxar (modern-day San Antonio, Texas) killing all but two of the Texian defenders. The Battle of the Alamo was a pivotal event in the Texas Revolution. The Texians under General Sam Houston later defeated Santa Anna and the Mexican Army at the Battle of San Jacinto on 21 April 1836. The Texians’ battle cry that day was “Remember the Alamo” and “Remember Goliad.” The story has been made into two major motion pictures; The Alamo (1960) directed by John Wayne and The Alamo (2004) directed by John Lee Hancock. Among those killed at the Alamo;
James “Jim” Bowie – pioneer, Texas Ranger and soldier. Born on 10 April 1796 in Logan County, Kentucky. He popularized the Bowie knife. Bowie was 39 at the time of his death. Bowie, Texas and Bowie County are named in his honor. Bowie was portrayed in the Alamo movies by Richard Widmark and Jason Patric.
William Barret Travis – lawyer and soldier. Born 9 August 1809 in Saluda County, South Carolina. Travis married once, Rosanno Cato (1828 – 1836 divorce). Travis was 26 years old when he died. Travis was portayed in the Alamo movies by Laurence Harvey and Patrick Wilson. On 24 February 1836, during the siege, Travis wrote the now famous letter addressed “To the People of Texas and All Americans in the World”:
The Final Footprint – the bodies of the Texians including Crockett, Bowie and Travis were stacked and burned. Juan Seguín returned to Béxar in February 1837 to examine the remains and found ashes from the funeral pyres. He had the ashes placed in a simple coffin inscribed with the names Crockett, Bowie and Travis. According to a 28 March 1837 article in the Telegraph and Texas Register, Seguín buried the coffin under a peach tree grove. The spot was not marked and cannot now be identified. However, Seguín later claimed that he had placed the coffin in front of the altar at the San Fernando Cathedral in San Antonio. Remember the Alamo!
On this day in 1963, country music singer, songwriter, one of the most influential, successful, and acclaimed female vocalists of the 20th century, Patsy Cline, died in a private plane crash near Camden, Tennessee at the age of 30. Born Virginia Patterson Hensley on 8 September 1932 in Winchester, Virginia. In my opinion, the best ever female country music singer and one of my all-time favorite singers. Her contralto voice had such a rich tone and was so emotionally expressive. Her life and career have been the subject of numerous books, movies, documentaries, articles and stage plays. Her hits included “Walkin’ After Midnight”, “I Fall to Pieces”, “She’s Got You”, “Crazy”, and “Sweet Dreams”. A biographical film Sweet Dreams was released in 1985 starring Jessica Lange and Ed Harris. Lange would be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. For all the musical scenes Lange lip-synched to Cline recordings. Cline was married twice; Gerald Cline (1953 – 1957 divorce) and Charlie Dick (1957 – 1963 her death).
The Final Footprint – Cline is interred in Shenandoah Memorial Park, Winchester, Virginia. Her grave is marked by a companion flat bronze on granite marker with the inscription; “Death Cannot Kill What Never Dies: Love.” A bell tower in her memory at the cemetery, erected with the help of Loretta Lynn and Dottie West, plays hymns daily at 6:00 p.m., the hour of her death. A memorial marks the place where the plane crashed in the still-remote forest outside of Camden, Tennessee.
On this day in 1982, comedian, actor, and singer John Belushi died from combined drug intoxication caused by an injection of a heroin and cocaine mixture, known as a speedball at the age of 33 in 
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On this day in 1868, Native American Indian trader, guide, and interpreter, Jesse Chisholm, died at Left Hand Spring, near the site of present Geary, Oklahoma from food poisoning. Born in the Hiwassee region of Tennessee, probably in 1805 or 1806. His father, Ignatius, was Scottish and his mother was Cherokee. Primarily known for being the namesake of the Chisholm Trail, which ranchers used to drive their cattle to eastern markets. Chisholm had built a number of trading posts in what is now western Oklahoma. The trail had several variations but
seemed to start at the Rio Grande in Texas and ran though San Antonio and ended in Abilene, Kansas.
On this day in 1994, comedian and actor John Candy died of a heart attack in Durango, Mexico, aged 43. Born John Franklin Candy on October 31, 1950 in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada. Candy rose to fame as a member of the Toronto branch of the Second City and its related Second City Television series, and through his appearances in such comedy films as Stripes, Splash, Cool Runnings, Summer Rental, Home Alone, The Great Outdoors, Spaceballs, and Uncle Buck, as well as more dramatic roles in Only the Lonely and JFK. One of his most renowned onscreen performances was as Del Griffith, the talkative shower-curtain ring salesman in the John Hughes comedy Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
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On this day in 2009 playwright and screenwriter Horton Foote died in Hartford, Connecticut at the age of 92. Born Albert Horton Foote Jr. on March 14, 1916 in Wharton, Texas. Perhaps best known for his screenplays for the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird and the 1983 film Tender Mercies, and his notable live television dramas during the Golden Age of Television. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1995 for his play The Young Man From Atlanta and two Academy Awards, one for an original screenplay, Tender Mercies, and one for adapted screenplay, To Kill a Mockingbird. In 1995, Foote was the inaugural recipient of the Austin Film Festival’s Distinguished Screenwriter Award. In 2000, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.
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On this day in 2016, author Pat Conroy died in Beaufort, South Carolina from pancreatic cancer at the age of 70. Born Donald Patrick Conroy in Atlanta, Georgia on October 26, 1945. He wrote several acclaimed novels and memoirs. Two of his novels, The Prince of Tides (one of my personal favorites) and The Great Santini, were made into Oscar-nominated films. In my opinion, he is a leading figure of late-20th century Southern literature.
Also on this day in 2003 actor Horst Buchholz died unexpectedly at the age of sixty-nine in the Berlin Charité from pneumonia that developed after an operation for a hip fracture. Born Horst Werner Buchholz on 4 December 1933 . He appeared in more than sixty feature films from 1951 to 2002. During his youth he was sometimes called “the German James Dean.” He is perhaps best known in English-speaking countries for his role as Chico in The Magnificent Seven (1960), as a communist in Billy Wilder’s One, Two, Three (1961) and as Dr. Lessing in Life Is Beautiful (1997).
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On this day in 1895, painter Berthe Morisot died in Paris, of pneumonia at the age of 54. Born 
The Final Footprint – Morisot is interred in the Cimetière de Passy. Other notable final footprints as Passy include; Claude Debussy, Gabriel Faure, Hubert de Givenchy, Édouard Manet, and Octave Mirbeau.
On this day in 1930, novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter D. H. Lawrence died at the Villa Robermond in Vence, France, from complications of tuberculosis at the age of 44. Born David Herbert Richards Lawrence 11 September 1885 in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, England. Perhaps best known for his novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, first published in 1928. The first edition was printed privately in Florence, Italy; an unexpurgated edition could not be published openly in the United Kingdom until 1960. (A private edition was issued by Mandrake Press in 1929.) The book soon became notorious for its story of the physical (and emotional) relationship between a working class man and an upper class woman, its explicit descriptions of sex, and its use of then-unprintable words.
The Final Footprint – Frieda commissioned an elaborate headstone for his grave bearing a mosaic of his adopted emblem of the phoenix. After Lawrence’s death, Frieda lived with Angelo Ravagli on a ranch in Taos, New Mexico and eventually married him in 1950. In 1935 Ravagli arranged, on Frieda’s behalf, to have Lawrence’s body exhumed and cremated. However, upon boarding the ship he learned he would have to pay taxes on the cremated remains, so he instead spread them in the Mediterranean, a more preferable resting place, in his opinion, than a concrete block in a chapel. Some dust and dirt was interred on the Taos ranch in a small chapelhis ashes brought back to the D. H. Lawrence Ranch, east of Taos, New Mexico, to be interred there in a small chapel.
On this day in 1999, British pop singer, “The White Queen of Soul”, Dusty Springfield, died in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, England from cancer at the age of 59. Born Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O’Brien on 16 April 1939 in West Hampstead, North London to an Irish Catholic family. Her voice was distinctively sensual and soulful. My favorite Springfield album is Dusty in Memphis and of course my favorite song from that album is “Son of a Preacher Man.”
On this day in 1932, the 20 month old son of Charles Lindbergh, Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr., was kidnapped and murdered in Hopewell, New Jersey. Born on 22 June 1930 in Englewood Bergen, New Jersey. In what came to be referred to as “The Crime of the Century”, the boy was abducted from his family home in East Amwell, New Jersey, near the town of Hopewell, New Jersey, on the evening of 1 March 1932. His body was discovered a short distance from the Lindberghs’ home on 12 May 1932. A medical examination determined that the cause of death was a massive skull fracture. After an investigation that lasted more than two years and was ostensibly run by New Jersey State Police superintendent Colonel Herbert Norman Swarzkopf, the father of the future General H. Norman Swarzkopf, Jr., Bruno Richard Hauptmann was arrested and charged with the crime. Hauptmann was found guilty of murder in the first degree and sentenced to death. He was executed by electric chair at the New Jersey State Prison on 3 April 1936, at 8:44 in the evening. Hauptmann proclaimed his innocence to the end. Newspaper writer H. L. Mencken called the kidnapping and subsequent trial “the biggest story since the Resurrection”. The crime spurred Congress to pass the Federal Kidnapping Act, commonly called the “Lindbergh Law”, which made transporting a kidnapping victim across state lines a federal crime.
On this day in 2009, radio broadcaster, Paul Harvey, died in Phoenix, Arizona at the age of 90. Born Paul Harvey Aurandt on 4 September 1918 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He broadcast News and Comment on weekday mornings and mid-days, and at noon on Saturdays, as well as his famous The Rest of the Story segments. His listening audience was estimated, at its peak, at 24 million people a week. Paul Harvey News was carried on 1,200 radio stations, 400 Armed Forces Network stations and 300 newspapers. Harvey was noted for his folksy delivery and his dramatic pauses and quirky intonations. He explained his relationship with his sponsors, saying “I am fiercely loyal to those willing to put their money where my mouth is.” Harvey was married to Lynne “Angel” Cooper (1940 – 2008 her death). 
On this day in 2011 actress Jane Russell died at her home in Santa Maria of a respiratory-related illness at the age of 89. Born Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell on June 21, 1921 in Bemidji, Minnesota. She was one of Hollywood’s leading sex symbols in the 1940s and 1950s.
On this day in 2016, United States Army veteran, actor George Kennedy died of a heart ailment at an assisted living facility in Middleton, Idaho, ten days after his 91st birthday. Born George Harris Kennedy Jr. on February 18, 1925 in New York City. Kennedy appeared in more than 200 film and television productions. He played “Dragline” opposite Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke (1967), winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the role and being nominated for the corresponding Golden Globe. He received a second Golden Globe nomination for portraying Joe Patroni in Airport (1970).
On this day in 2015, actor, film director, photographer, author, singer, and songwriter, Mr. Spock, Leonard Nimoy died of complications from COPD at the age of 83, in his Bel Air home. Born Leonard Simon Nimoy on March 26, 1931 in the West End
On this day in 1852, poet, singer, songwriter, and entertainer Thomas Moore died being cared for by his wife at Sloperton Cottage, Bromham, Wiltshire, England at the age of 72. Born at 12 Aungier Street in Dublin, over his father’s grocery shop, his father being from the Kerry Gaeltacht and his mother, Anastasia Codd, from Wexford. Perhaps best remembered for the lyrics of “The Minstrel Boy” and “The Last Rose of Summer”. He was responsible, with John Murray, for burning Lord Byron‘s memoirs after his death, at the urging of Byron’s family. In his lifetime he was often referred to as Anacreon Moore. Moore married an actress, Elizabeth “Bessy” Dyke. Moore is often considered Ireland’s National Bard.
On this day in 1983, playwright, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Tony winner, Tennessee Williams, died from an overdose of barbiturates in his suite at the Hotel Elysée in New York City at the age of 71. Born Thomas Lanier Williams on 26 March 1911 in Columbus, Mississippi. Oh my, where to begin. Clearly one of my favorite writers. If I were suddenly limited to having one book, I would probably choose a book of his collected plays. In my opinion, no one ever wrote better dialogue. Every year on his birthday I read one of his plays. Williams moved from St. Louis to New Orleans in 1939 and changed his first name to “Tennessee”, his father’s birthplace. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948 and for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1955. His 1952 play The Rose Tattoo received the Tony Award for best play. His play The Glass Menagerie was adapted into a film in 1950 starring Jane Wyman and Kirk Douglas. A Streetcar Named Desire was adapted into a film in 1951 starring Vivien Leigh, Kim Hunter, Marlon Brando and Karl Malden. The film was nominated for 12 awards and won four at the 24th Academy Awards; Actress in a Leading Role (Leigh), Actor in a Supporting Role (Malden), Actress in a Supporting Role (Hunter) and Art Direction. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was adapted into a film in 1958 starring Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman. Williams said: “A high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.” And: “Make voyages. Attempt them. There’s nothing else.” 
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