HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO. . . . . . . . SALLY STRUTHERS

Born in Portland, Oregon, on July 28, 1948, actress Sally Struthers celebrates her 63rd birthday roday.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO. . . . . . . . GEORGIA ENGEL

Born in Washington, D.C., on July 28, 1948, actress Georgia Engel turns 63 today.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO. . . . . . . . LORI LOUGHLIN

Born in Queens, New York, on July 28, 1964, actress Lori Loughlin turns 47 years old today.

The Rare Breed (1966)

Starring James Stewart, Maureen O'Hara, Brian Keith, Jack Elam, Juliet Mills, Don Galloway, Ben Johnson, and Harry Carey, Jr. Directed by Andrew V. McLaglen. A widowed Englishwoman convinces a rancher to use her new cattle breed. His ranch hand agrees to take the rare bull to Texas to breed it with longhorns, but the determined woman and her daughter demand to go along on the trip.

Vengeance Valley (1951)

Starring Burt Lancaster, Robert Walker, Joanne Dru, John Ireland, Hugh O'Brian, Ray Collins, Ted de Corsica, and Will Wright. Directed by Richard Thorpe. A cattle baron takes in an orphaned boy and raises him, causing his own son to resent the boy. As they get older the resentment festers into hatred and eventually the real son frames his stepbrother for fathering an illegitimate child that is actually his, seeing it as an opportunity to get his half-brother out of the way so he can have his father's empire all to himself.

Parrish (1961)

Starring Troy Donahue, Connie Francis, Karl Malden, Claudette Colbert, Dean Jagger, Diane McBain, Dub Taylor, and Madeleine Sherwood. Directed by Delmar Daves. A young man lives with his mother and stepfather on a Connecticut River valley tobacco plantation. The stepfather is a ruthless planter who insists the boy learn the tobacco business from the ground up.

The Man From Colorado (1949)

Starring William Holden, Glenn Ford, Edgar Buchanan, Denver Pyle, Ellen Drew, and Ray Collins. Directed by Henry Levin. Two friends return home after the Civil War. However, one of them has deep-rooted psychological damage due to his experiences during the war and as his behavior becomes more erratic and violent his friend desperately tries to find a way to help him.

Notorious (1946)

Starring Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Louis Calhern, Bea Benaderet, Frank Wilcox, and Virginia Gregg. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. An American secret agent is ordered to enlist the aid of the libidinous daughter of a suspected World War II traitor in trapping the head of a neo-Nazi group.

The Harvey Girls (1946)

Starring Judy Garland, John Hodiak, Angela Lansbury, Marjorie Main, Ray Bolger, Preston Foster, Cyd Charisse, and Chill Wills. Directed by George Sidney. On a train trip out West to become a mail order bride, a young woman meets a group of other young women traveling to open a Harvey House Restaurant. After meeting her bashful suitor, the young bride-to-be decides to join the Harvey Girls instead.

Blaze of Noon (1947)

Starring William Holden, Anne Baxter, William Bendix, Sterling Hayden, Sonny Tufts, Lloyd Corrigan, Will Wright, Frank Ferguson, and Howard Da Silva. Directed by John Farrow. Four brothers working as stunt pilots for a flying circus leave their jobs to become mail pilots.

Mirage (1965)

Starring Gregory Peck, Diane Baker, Walter Matthau, Kevin McCarthy, Leif Erickson, Jack Weston, George Kennedy, Bill Quinn, and Anne Seymour. Directed by Edward Dmytryk. A dazed man wanders down the stairs of a New York skyscraper during a power blackout only vaguely aware of who he is, where he has been, and why he has this nagging feeling that danger lurks all around him.

The Unforgiven (1960)

Starring Burt Lancaster, Audrey Hepburn, Lillian Gish, Doug McClure, Audie Murphy, John Saxon, Charles Bickford, and Albert Salmi. Directed by John Huston. The neighbors of a frontier family turn on them when it is suspected that their adopted daughter was stolen from the local Kiowa tribe.

The Lady Gambles (1949)

Starring Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Preston, Tony Curtis, Stephen McNally, and Jerome Cowan. Directed by Michael Gordon.
A woman accompanies her husband to Las Vegas where she begins to gamble to pass the time. Encouraged by the casino manager, she gets hooked on gambling to the point where she steals her husband's expense money to pursue her addiction.

Block-Heads (1938)

Starring Oliver Hardy, Stan Laurel, George Chandler, James Findlayson, and Billy Gilbert. Directed by John G. Blystone. A soldier patrolling the trenches in France 20 years after the end of World War I shoots down a French aviator. His Army buddy sees his old friend's picture in the paper and goes to visit him at the soldier's home. Thinking the man is disabled, his friend takes pity on him and takes him home for a nice home-cooked meal, but his wife has other ideas and leaves them both to fend for themselves.

Yellow Sky (1948)

Starring Gregory Peck, Richard Widmark, Anne Baxter, Harry Morgan, John Russell, and Victor Kilian. Directed by William A. Wellman. An outlaw leader and his gang take refuge in a frontier ghost town whose only inhabitants are an elderly man and his pretty grand-daughter. The old man reveals that there's gold buried in the area, prompting a few of the gang to plot the old man's demise.

Dangerous (1935)

Starring Bette Davis, Franchot Tone, Dick Foran, and Mary Treen. Directed by Alfred E. Green. A man finds a former stage star a penniless and drunk and takes her to his Connecticut home for rehabilitation. Unaware that she is married, he asks his fiancee to free him and offers to sponsor the former actress in a play.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO. . . . . . . . BOBBIE GENTRY

Born Roberta Lee Streeter in Chickasaw County, Mississippi, on July 27, 1944, singer Bobbie Gentry turns 67 years old today.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO. . . . . . . . JERRY VAN DYKE

Born in Danville, Illinois, on July 27, 1931, actor Jerry Van Dyke celebrates his 80th birthday today.

R.B. Greaves

R.B. Greaves has an interesting family background and history, one that's actually more significant than his R&B track record. Greaves was born on November 28, 1944, at the US Air Force base in Georgetown, British Guyana. Half American Indian, he grew up on a Seminole reservation in California. The nephew of Sam Cooke, Greaves moved to England in 1963 and was lead singer of Sonny Childe & The TNT's. He had his moment of glory in 1969 with "Take a Letter Maria", which peaked at #2 on the pop charts and #10 R&B in December 1969. His remake of "Always Something There to Remind Me" peaked at #27 in February 1970, and he was soon off Atlantic's subsidiary label Atco. In 1977, Greaves tried recording for the Bareback label; it didn't revive his career.

Major Lance (April 4, 1942 - Sptember 3, 1994)

Major Lance was one of the leading figures of Chicago soul during the 60s and the top-selling artist for OKeh Records during the decade. During the height of his success the majority of his songs were written by Curtis Mayfield and produced by Carl Davis and the pair developed a smooth, Latin-flavored sound that was punctuated by brass and layered with vocal harmonies, usually from the Impressions. It was urban, uptown soul and while it was considerably less gritty than its Southern counterpart, its breezy rhythms and joyous melodies made songs like "The Monkey Time" and "Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um" some of the most popular good-time R&B of its era. Major Lance's career declined significantly after he parted ways with Mayfield and Davis in the late 60s, but his classic OKeh recordings remain some of the best-loved soul music of the decade. Born in Winterville, Mississippi, in 1942, Major Lance moved to Chicago as a child. While studying at Wells High School -- where Curtis Mayfield and Jerry Butler also attended -- Lance began boxing but his attention soon turned to music and he formed the Floats with Otis Leavill. Although the Floats never released any records, his dancing earned him a spot on a local American Bandstand-styled program hosted by disc jockey Jim Lounsbury. The DJ helped Lance secure a one-shot single for Mercury Records in 1959, and the singer recorded "I Got a Girl", which was written and produced by Mayfield. The single disappeared and Lance spent the next three years working odd jobs. In 1962, Lance was signed to OKeh Records, based on his connections with Otis Leavill and, especially, Curtis Mayfield, who signed with the Impressions to ABC Records and had hits with his own group. Later that year, Lance recorded his first single, "Delilah", for the label. Like most of the Major's material, the song was written by Mayfield who, along with OKeh president Carl Davis and arranger Johnny Pate, developed a distinctive, Latin-tinged sound for the record, filled with sliding trombones and a light-stepping rhythms in order to distinguish Chicago soul from its counterparts in the South, New York, Detroit, and California. Though "Delilah" wasn't a hit, Lance's second single, "The Monkey Time," was a monster. Released in the summer of 1963, "The Monkey Time" reached #2 on the R&B charts and #8 on the pop charts, establishing not only Lance as a singer but the revitalized OKeh Records as a pop music force. "Hey Little Girl" was a Top 15 pop and R&B hit later that year, followed by the #5 "Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um", early in 1964. This proved to be the height of Lance's popularity. Over the next year-and-a-half, he continued to turn out a series of singles but only a handful were minor pop hits. In 1978, Lance hit rock bottom when he was convicted of selling cocaine. He spent the next four years in prison. Upon his release, he began playing the beach music circuit on the Carolina coast but a 1987 heart attack prevented him from launching a full-scale comeback. In 1994, Lance gave a final, triumphant performance at the Chicago Blues Festival, which turned out to be his last. He died of heart failure on September 3, 1994 at the age of 52.

The Yellow Balloon

The Yellow Balloon was an American pop band produced by Gary Zekley. The group is notable for featuring Don Grady (sometimes billed as "Luke R. Yoo") who played Robbie Douglas on "My Three Sons". Other band members were Alex Valdez (lead singer), Frosty Green (keyboards), Don Braught (bass guitar), and Paul Canella (lead guitar). The band at one time also included Daryl Dragon, later the male half of The Captain & Tennille. The Yellow Balloon released multiple singles, but only charted once with "Yellow Balloon", which peaked at #25 in June 1967. The 1967 album self-titled LP, released on Canterbury Records, included the hit single "Yellow Balloon" along with two songs co-written by former The Mamas & the Papas singer Jill Gibson.

Tim Tam & The Turn-Ons

Tim Tam and the Turn-Ons were six vocalists who met at Allen Park High School in Allen Park, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The band members were Rick Wiesend (Tim Tam) as lead vocalist, along with Danny Wiesend, Don Grundman, Nick Butsicaris, John Ogen, and Earl Rennie. Danny and the others used to rehearse in Danny's basement, where brother Rick (Tim Tam) heard them, joined in and wrote their big hit for them, "Wait A Minute". They sold 30,000 copies of the single the first month after its release. "Wait A Minute" was released in February 1966 on the Parker label and peaked at #3 on the charts of local Detroit station WKNR-AM in late January 1966. Nationally, it reached #76 on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1966. Tim Tam and the Turn-Ons would release three more 45s on Palmer. Rick Wiesend passed away on October 22, 2003.