1634) Maggie Smith

Maggie Smith (born Margaret Natalie Smith, 1934 – 2024). British actress known for her wit in both comedic and dramatic roles.
She had an extensive career on stage and screen for over seven decades and was one of Britain's most recognisable and prolific actresses. She received numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, five BAFTA Awards, four Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards and a Tony Award, as well as nominations for six Olivier Awards. Smith is one of the few performers to earn the Triple Crown of Acting.
Smith began her stage career as a student, performing at the Oxford Playhouse in 1952, and made her professional debut on Broadway in New Faces of '56. Over the following decades she established herself alongside Judi Dench as one of the most significant British theatre performers, working for the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. On Broadway, she received Tony Award nominations for Noël Coward's Private Lives (1975) and Tom Stoppard's Night and Day (1979), and won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for Lettice and Lovage (1990).
Smith won Academy Awards for Best Actress for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) and Best Supporting Actress for California Suite (1978). She was Oscar-nominated for Othello (1965), Travels with My Aunt (1972), A Room with a View (1985) and Gosford Park (2001).
She married actor Robert Stephens in 1967. They had two sons, actors Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens and were divorced in 1975. Later that year Smith married playwright Alan Beverly Cross and they remained married until his death in 1998.
Smith was made a dame by Queen Elizabeth II in 1990.

- "She was very striking with that red hair, very thin, very tall." https://www.vogue.com/article/dame-maggie-smith-obituary

- "Smith was red-haired, wore braces as a kid and had a lot of freckles." https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/maggie-smith-oscar-favourite-is-a-glorious-antidote-to-the-selfabsorption-of-so-many-in-her-profession-a6734096.html

- "“Maggie Smith’s red-haired Desdemona is a beautifully vibrant, sensitive lass who accepts the realization of her doom with pathetic submissiveness.” https://www.thedailybeast.com/maggie-smith-has-died-at-89-after-iconic-career-in-harry-potter-movies-and-downton-abbey

- "A master at classical and contemporary roles who was as renowned for her subtlety as for her broad-stroke mannerisms, the red-haired Smith delighted several generations of theatergoers on both sides of the Atlantic..." https://variety.com/2024/legit/news/maggie-smith-dead-harry-potter-1236157839/

- "The girl who effects this contrast is a British actress with dark red hair, a smile that could win a war or at least make one worth losing, and “a light in her eye” https://time.com/archive/6833053/actresses-maggie-maggie/

 

1633) Françoise Gilot

 Françoise Gaime Gilot (1921 – 2023). French painter. Gilot was an accomplished artist, notably in watercolors and ceramics, and a bestselling memoirist of the book Life with Picasso.
Gilot's artwork is showcased in more than a dozen leading museums including the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. In 2021 her painting Paloma à la guitare, a 1965 portrait of her daughter, sold for $1.3 million at Sotheby's in London.
Gilot is also known for her romantic partnership with Pablo Picasso as well as her later marriage to Jonas Salk, the American researcher who developed the first safe polio vaccine.

- “I arrived on time wearing a black velvet dress with a high white lace collar, my dark red hair done up in a coiffure I had taken from a painting of the Infanta by Velázquez.” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/19/style/francoise-gilot-it-girl.html

- "Matisse declares that he wishes to make a portrait of Françoise in which her auburn hair would become green and her complexion light blue." http://www.francoisegilot.com/bio40s.php

 

 

1632) Ebenezer Denny

Ebenezer Denny (1761 – 1822). Soldier during the American Revolutionary War whose journal is one of the most frequently quoted accounts of the surrender of the British at the siege of Yorktown.
He rejoined the army as a lieutenant in the First American Regiment[5] in August 1784, and was active in the Northwest Indian War.
In 1816 he became the first mayor of the city of Pittsburgh.

- "He had red hair and blue eyes." https://www.pittsburghmagazine.com/drink-it-in-the-best-place-to-get-drunk-on-pittsburghs-history/

- "He is described at this time as “a slender, fair, blue-eyed, red-headed boy”. https://denneyhomeplace.wordpress.com/2018/10/26/remember-our-ancestors-ebenezer-denny/

- "He was a Revolutionary War hero with red hair and blue eyes..." https://positivelypittsburgh.com/mayors-of-pittsburgh/

 

1631) Hugh Richard Arthur Grosvenor, 2nd Duke of Westminster

Hugh Richard Arthur Grosvenor, 2nd Duke of Westminster (1879 – 1953). Biritish aristocrat and landowner. One of the wealthiest men in the world, he was the son of Victor Grosvenor, Earl Grosvenor, son of the 1st Duke of Westminster, and Lady Sibell Lumley, the daughter of the 9th Earl of Scarborough.
From his childhood and during his adult life he was known within family circles as "Bendor", which was also the name of the racehorse Bend Or owned by his grandfather the first Duke, which won The Derby in 1880, the year following his grandson's birth. The name is a jovial reference to the ancient lost armorials of the family: Azure, a bend or.
His ancestral country estate in Cheshire, the 54-bedroom Eaton Hall, consisted of 11,000 acres (45 km2) of parkland, gardens and stables. The main residence had its walls hung with master works, paintings by Goya, Rubens, Raphael, Rembrandt, Hals, and Velázquez. An avid participant in the hunting life, the Duke owned lodges reserved for the sport in Scotland and France (the Château Woolsack). For sea excursions, he had his choice of two yachts, Cutty Sark and Flying Cloud. For ground transportation he had 17 Rolls-Royce motor cars and a private train built to facilitate travel from Eaton Hall directly into London, where his townhouse Grosvenor House was located. Grosvenor House was later leased to the United States for use as the American Embassy.
In the First World War the Duke volunteered for front-line combat and served with distinction, showing both initiative in battle and technical skill with motor-cars. While attached to the Cheshire Yeomanry he developed a prototype Rolls-Royce Armoured Car for their use in France and Egypt.
The Duke received the DSO for his exploits in 1916. He was subsequently promoted colonel and on 26 May 1917, he was named honorary colonel of the regiment.
He was appointed Knight Grand Cross, Royal Victorian Order (G.C.V.O.) in 1907.
In Monte Carlo in 1923, Grosvenor was introduced to Coco Chanel by Vera Bate Lombardi. His affair with Chanel lasted ten years. The duke gave her extravagant jewels, costly art, and purchased a home for Chanel in London's prestigious Mayfair district, and in 1927 gave her a parcel of land on the French Riviera at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin where Chanel built her villa, La Pausa.
The Duke married four times and was divorced three times. He left two daughters from his first wife, Constance Edwina (Shelagh) Cornwallis-West. His titles and the entailed Westminster estate passed to his cousin, William Grosvenor, and thence to the two sons of his youngest half-uncle Lord Hugh Grosvenor (killed in action in 1914).

- "There is much that Henry VIII and Bend’Or had in common.... physically they were big men with red hair... Your mother tells me that the baby’s hair is red but she does not think it will stay as his eyelashes are dark’. The reddish hair stayed, as did his family nickname, Bend’Or. Bend’Or told a Cheshire squire that the name came about because his hair matched the light-chestnut forelock and tail of his grandfather’s 1880 Derby winner Bend’Or... He was tall (six foot two) with a dignified bearing, he had fine hair tinged with red, pale-blue eyes in a well-set face, and a manly figure." http://bear.buckingham.ac.uk/550/1/1302467%20Hugh%20Richard%20Arthur%20Grosvenor.pdf

 

1630) Gracie Fields

Dame Gracie Fields (born Grace Stansfield; 1898 – 1979). British actress, singer and comedian.

A star of cinema and music hall, she was one of the top ten film stars in Britain during the 1930s and was considered the highest paid film star in the world in 1937. Fields was known affectionately as Our Gracie and the Lancashire Lass for never losing her strong, native Lancashire accent.

She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) and an Officer of the Venerable Order of St John (OStJ) in 1938, and a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1979.

 

- "She was 55 years old, and her famous golden red hair was touched with gray..." https://www.nytimes.com/.../gracie-fields-is-dead-at-81...

 

 

1629) Edna O'Brien

Josephine Edna O'Brien (1930 – 2024). Irish novelist, memoirist, playwright, poet, and short-story writer.

Her works often revolve around the inner feelings of women and their problems relating to men and society as a whole.

In 2015 she was elected to Aosdána by her fellow artists and honoured with the title Saoi. She was the recipient of many other awards and honours, winning the Irish PEN Award in 2001 and the biennial David Cohen Prize in 2019. France made her a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2021. Her short story collection Saints and Sinners won the 2011 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the world's richest prize for a short story collection.

 

- "... beautifully dressed in black jacket and skirt with an intricate silver necklace, her red hair perfectly styled." https://www.theguardian.com/.../edna-obrien-90-ireland...

 

- "With her auburn hair, green eyes and Irish country lilt..." https://www.nytimes.com/.../obitua.../edna-o-brien-dead.html

 

-"... the memory of a previous face-to-face conversation allows me easily to summon up images of her auburn hair, flashing green eyes..." https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/201/edited_volume/chapter/1045005

 

- "O’Brien is known for reddish-brown hair that is abundant but not curly." https://www.newyorker.com/.../edna-obrien-is-still...

 

- "Ms. O’Brien was an ageless Celtic beauty, a point not lost on a procession of feature writers who described her as auburn-haired and milky-skinned, with soulful gray-blue eyes.

Robert Gottlieb, Ms. O’Brien’s longtime editor at Alfred A. Knopf in New York, wrote that she “was a glory … with her pale white skin, spectacular red hair, and exotic outfits..." https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2024/07/28/edna-obrien-irish-novelist-country-girls-dead/

 

 

1628) James A. Reed

James Alexander Reed (1861 – 1944). American Democratic Party politician from Missouri.

Reed served as a city councilor of Kansas City from 1897 to 1898 and as prosecutor of Jackson County from 1898 to 1900. He unsuccessfully prosecuted Jesse E. James, son of the bandit Jesse James, for train robbery in 1899. He was elected Kansas City mayor from 1900 to 1904.

In 1910, he was elected to the US Senate from Missouri as a Democrat. He served in the Senate for three terms, from 1911 to 1929, when he decided to retire. Unlike many members of his party, he opposed the League of Nations. He sought and failed to receive the Democratic nomination for president. He served as chairman of the Committee on Weights and Measures from 1917 to 1921.

One of his biggest contributions to the State of Missouri came in 1913 when as a member of the Senate Banking Committee, he changed his vote to break a deadlock to pass the Federal Reserve Act, which resulted in Missouri getting 2 of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks (in St. Louis and Kansas City). Missouri is the only state with multiple headquarters of the Federal Reserve. Reed was very involved in the Senate Banking Committee's work to improve the Federal Reserve Act, including amendments to strengthen the power and independence of the Federal Reserve Board. President Wilson acknowledged the value of Reed's contributions in a letter sent to him while the bill was pending in committee.

 

- "In the spring of my senior year a little one-room law office sprang up among the sand burrs opposite the college to house a tall virile, red-headed young attorney we knew as “Jim” Reed... Soon he removed to Kansas City and eventually became for eighteen years United States senator from Missouri." http://digamoo.free.fr/ross1936.pdf