It’s the birthday of playwright and actor Sam Shepard (1943-2017), whose plays explored the concept of the American West in new and “hallucinatory” ways in which “the only undeniable truth is that of the mirage” (Ben Brantley, “Sam Shepard, Actor and Pulitzer-Winning Playwright, Is Dead at 73,” NY Times, July 31, 2017). He wrote over 50 plays and won the Pulitzer for Buried Child (1978). As an actor, Shepard was hunky and laconic in a way that also echoed the American West, and was best known for his role as Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff (1983), which got him an Oscar nomination.

(And what have you and I accomplished today? I got my son’s Scholastic book order in. That’s something.)

Samuel Shepard Rogers III was born in Fort Sheridan, Illinois, formerly an army post and now a neighborhood near Highland Park, Illinois. He grew up first on military bases in the U.S. and Guam before the family moved to an avocado farm in Duarte, California. Shepard studied agriculture at Mount San Antonio College, then dropped out and moved to New York City to act and write plays. A number of Off-Off-Broadway theatres were just starting up (this was the 1960s), and Shepard fairly easily found a venue for his early one-act plays, winning Obie Awards for several.

In the early 1970s, Shepard lived in London, and several of his plays premiered there. He returned to the States in 1974 as playwright-in-residence at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco. By the late 70s, he was writing family tragedies, such as Buried Child and True West (1980), which is the play that made John Malkovich and Gary Sinise famous. (Okay, who is Gary Sinise? But Malkovich I know.) His latest play was A Particle of Dread (2014). As an actor, he appeared in more than 50 films, including Fool for Love (1985) based on his own play; The Pelican Brief (1993); Snow Falling on Cedars (1999); The Notebook (2004); and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007). (Love that title. I like a title that tips its hand.)

Shepard was married to and had a child with actress O-Lan Jones from 1969-1984, had an affair with musician Patti Smith, and had a long-term relationship with actress Jessica Lange for 30 years, ending in 2009; they had two children. Shepard pretty much did interesting and important work as an actor and playwright until nearly the end of his life. During his struggle with Lou Gehrig’s disease, Shepard wrote the novel Spy of the First Person, which was published five months after his death.

Have an incredibly wonderful sort of Monday and stay scrupulously honest to the data.