Born on this day – Winston Groom:

Winston Groom

Writer

March 23, 1943 – September 17, 2020

Credits:

1942 (2005); A Storm in Flanders (2002); Alabama Noir (2020); As Summer Dies (1980); Better Times Than These (1978); Conversations With the Enemy (1983); Don't Quit Your Day Job: Acclaimed Authors and the Day Jobs They Quit (2010); El Paso (2016); Forrest Gump (1986); Gone the Sun (1996); Gump & Co. (1995); Gumpisms (1994); Kearny's March (2011); Only (1984); Patriotic Fire (2006); Ronald Reagan Our 40th President (2012); Shiloh, 1862 (2012); Shrouds of Glory (1995); Stories from the Blue Moon Café (2002); Such a Pretty, Pretty Girl (1997); The Allies (2018); The Aviators (2013); The Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Cookbook (1994); The Crimson Tide (2000); The Generals (2015); The Patriots (2020); Vicksburg, 1863 (2009).

Born on this day – Tony Burton:

Tony Burton

Actor

March 23, 1937 – February 25, 2016

Credits:

Rocky IV: Rocky vs. Drago - The Ultimate Director's Cut (2021); Biography (2011); The Rocky Saga: Going the Distance (2011); Hack! (2007); Rocky Balboa (2007); Rocky Balboa (2006); Assault on Precinct 13 (2005); Exorcism (2003); Shade (2003); The Lot (2001); Knockout (2000); The Magnificent Seven (1998); Farticus (1997); Chicago Hope (1996); Poltergeist: The Legacy (1996); Black Rose of Harlem (1996); NYPD Blue (1996); Flipping (1996); Fatal Choice (1995); Cyber-Tracker 2 (1995); Private Obsession (1995); Renegade (1993); The Bulkin Trail (1992); Mission of Justice (1992); Hook (1991); Life Goes On (1991); House Party 2 (1991); The New Adam-12 (1990); Twin Peaks (1991); Rocky V (1990); Over My Dead Body (1990); Equal Justice (1990); Side Out (1990); A Different World (1990); In the Heat of the Night (1990); Amen (1989); Police Story: Cop Killer (1988); Frank's Place (1987–1988); The Law and Harry McGraw (1987); The Magical World of Disney (1987); On Fire (1987); Oceans of Fire (1986); Armed and Dangerous (1986); The Paper Chase (1986); The Fall Guy (1982–1986); Airwolf (1986); James Brown: Living in America (1985); Rocky IV (1985); Beyond Reason (1985); Heart of a Champion: The Ray Mancini Story (1985); Moonlighting (1985); Hardcastle and McCormick (1984); The A-Team (1984); Happy (1983); The Toy (1982); T.J. Hooker (1982); Rocky III (1982); Bret Maverick (1982); Quincy M.E. (1981); CHiPs (1981); The Greatest American Hero (1981); Fitz and Bones (1981); Inside Moves (1980); Stir Crazy (1980); Scared Straight! Another Story (1980); The Hunter (1980); The Shining (1980); White Mama (1980); Tenspeed and Brown Shoe (1980); Skag (1980); Rocky II (1979); The Incredible Hulk (1979); Blackjack (1978); CPO Sharkey (1978); The Hardy Boys / Nancy Drew Mysteries (1978); Heroes (1977); The Rockford Files (1977); Kill Me If You Can (1977); Ransom for Alice! (1977); Sanford and Son (1977); The Six Million Dollar Man (1977); Switch (1977); Gibbsville (1976); Arthur Hailey's the Moneychangers (1976); Gemini Man (1976); Rocky (1976); Good Times (1976); Johnny Staccato (1976); Assault on Precinct 13 (1976); The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings (1976); Trackdown (1976); Future Cop (1976); The River Niger (1976); Harry O (1976); Baretta (1975); The Invisible Man (1975); Kojak (1974); The Black Godfather (1974); The Red Skelton Hour (1969).

Born on this day – Erich Fromm:

Erich Fromm

Psychologist

Writer

March 23, 1900 – March 18, 1980

Born on this day – Madison Cawein:

Madison Cawein

Writer

March 23, 1865 – December 8, 1914

Credits:

A Voice on the Wind and Other Poems (1902); Accolon of Gaul (1889); Blooms of the Berry (1887); Christmas Rose and Leaf (1913); Days and Dreams (1891); Idyllic Monologues (1898); Intimations of the Beautiful (1894); Kentucky Poems (1902); Let Us Do the Best We Can (1909); Library of Southern Literature (1907); Lyrics and Idyls (1890); Minions of the Moon (1913); Modern American Poetry: A Critical Anthology, 4th revised edition (1930); Moods and Memories (1892); Myth and Romance (1899); Nature-Notes and Impressions (1906); New Poems (1909); One Day & Another (1901); Poems by Madison Cawein (1911); Poems of Nature and Love (1893); Red Leaves and Roses (1893); Shapes and Shadows (1898); So Many Ways (1911); The Cup of Comus (1915); The Days of Used to Be (1913); The Garden of Dreams (1896); The Giant and the Star (1909); The Message of the Lilies (1913); The Poems of Madison Cawein. Volumes 1–5 (1907); The Poet and Nature and the Morning Road (1914); The Poet, the Fool and the Faeries (1912); The Republic, A Little Book of Homespun Verse (1913); The Shadow Garden (A Phantasy);  and Other Plays (1910); The Triumph of Music and Other Lyrics (1888); The Vale of Tempe (1905); The White Snake and Other Poems (1895); Undertones (1896); Weeds by the Wall (1901); Whatever the Path (1913).

Recommended reading - The Underground Man, by Ross Macdonald (1971):

The Underground Man

By Ross Macdonald.

# 16 in the Lew Archer series.

Published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

First published 1971.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 0679768084

ISBN-13: 978-0679768081

Description:

"There are certain books that bide their time, like plants, waiting decades to flower.... If a copy of The Underground Man, a novel from 1971, by Ross Macdonald, has been sitting on your shelf for ages, unread and barely noticed, try opening it now. Suddenly it's a book in full bloom." – Anthony Lane, The New Yorker.

"A more serious and complex writer than Chandler and Hammett ever were." – Eudora Welty.

"Ross Macdonald is an important American novelist!" – San Francisco Chronicle.

"I should like to venture that Ross Macdonald is a better novelist than either...Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler." – Anthony Boucher, The New York Times Book Review.

As a mysterious fire rages through the hills above a privileged town in Southern California, Archer tracks a missing child who may be the pawn in a marital struggle or the victim of a bizarre kidnapping. What he uncovers amid the ashes is murder – and a trail of motives as combustible as gasoline. The Underground Man is a detective novel of merciless suspense and tragic depth, with an unfaltering insight into the moral ambiguities at the heart of California's version of the American dream.

If any writer can be said to have inherited the mantle of Dashiell Hammet and Raymond Chandler, it was Ross Macdonald.  Between the late 1940s and his death in 1983, he gave the American crime novel a psychological depth and moral complexity that his predecessors had only hinted at.  And in the character of Lew Archer, Macdonald redefined the private eye as a roving conscience who walks the treacherous frontier between criminal guilt and human sin.

Voltaire, on writing:

Writing is the painting of the voice.

- Voltaire.

On this day in movie history - Diabolique (1996):

Diabolique

directed by Jeremiah Chechik,

written by Don Roos,

based on the original screenplay by Henri-Georges Clouzot, Jérôme Géronimi, René Masson and Frédéric Grendel,

in turn based on the novel She Who Was No More by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac,

was released in the United States on March 22, 1996.
Music by Randy Edelman.

Cast:

Sharon Stone, Isabelle Adjani, Chazz Palminteri, Kathy Bates, Spalding Gray, Shirley Knight, Allen Garfield, Adam Hann-Byrd, Donal Logue, Diana Bellamy, Clea Lewis, J.J. Abrams, O'Neal Compton, Bingo O'Malley, Stephen Liska, James Kisicki, Kevin Vinay, Cory Pattak, Kate Young, Sophia Salguero, Hank Stohl, Zachary Mott, Jesse Sky Ross, Tony Amen, Daniel Conley, Aaron D. Frankel, Daniel Kremer, Phil Nardozzi, Steve Patterson.