American star Doris Day has received a birthday surprise – she has discovered that she is 95, not 93.
Some number of years of insisting on holding back time and then, when the achievement is running the other way…..
And of course there is always that lovely old joke. She married very young, had a kid, then went on to play all those wholesome innocents. Leading to one ungallant claiming to be so old he knew Doris before she was a virgin.
The proper quote (from Oscar Levant) is “My last picture for Warners was Romance on the High Seas. It was Doris Day’s first picture; that was before she became a virgin”
Mind you, he was the man who also said of a politician “he’ll double-cross that bridge when he comes to it”
This isn’t restricted to the distaff side. There’s a mildly famous male TV actor who was born on the same day as Mrs Womby, but recent bios have him as several years younger.
Actuaries used to notice that female employees would lie about their age; things would catch up with them come retirement.
A Turkish friend of mine said her grandma is celebrating her 85th birthday, but she insists (with a smirk) that she’s only 82. The reason being her father never got around to registering her birth for over 2 years, so the official documents make her that much younger.
Actually, that’s kind of ironic: now, 80 years later, we have people arriving via Turkey claiming to be 14 when they are really 24.
My mother does a fair bit of genealogy. She often discovers “adjustments” to marriage dates. The forensic evidence will reveal such and such a year whereas the oral history provided by the family and the old duck in question will be such and such a year minus one.