Portrait of Ken Howard

Birthday profile

Ken Howard

Ken Howard, American actor (died 2016)

Born
March 28, 1944
Died
March 23, 2016
Zodiac sign
Aries
Birth year
1944

About Ken Howard

Kenneth Joseph Howard Jr. (March 28, 1944 – March 23, 2016) was an American actor. He was known for his roles as Thomas Jefferson in 1776 (1972) and as high school basketball coach and former Chicago Bulls player Ken Reeves in the television show The White Shadow (1978–1981). Howard won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play in 1970 for his performance in Child's Play, and won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for his work in Grey Gardens (2009). Howard had co-starring roles in the films Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970), Such Good Friends (1971), and The Strange Vengeance of Rosalie (1972). In the 1980s, he worked mostly in television, winning a Daytime Emmy Award for the CBS afternoon special The Body Human: Facts for Boys (1980). He later appeared in numerous character parts in films such as Clear and Present Danger (1994), The Net (1995), Michael Clayton (2007), and The Judge (2014). In September 2009, Howard was elected president of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), the actors' union. He was reelected to a second term in September 2011. He was the last president of the Screen Actors Guild and the first president of the newly combined SAG-AFTRA union, after the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) voted to merge in 2012. He was reelected to head the new organization in 2015.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when Ken Howard was born

Ken Howard was born in 1944. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1944

  • #1 song"Swinging on a Star" – Bing Crosby
  • Top movieGoing My Way
  • Best-selling bookStrange Fruit – Lillian Smith

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentGreen Bay Packers win NFL Championship
  • Top headlineD-Day invasion of Normandy on June 6
  • Technology milestoneHarvard Mark I computer begins operations
  • Defining fadBobby socks
  • Notable inventionKidney dialysis machine
  • World population2.39 billion

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderFranklin D. Roosevelt
  • Sports championSt. Louis Cardinals (World Series)
  • U.S. population138.4M

1944 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Ken Howard's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19442026
Gas$0.21$3.45/gal
Average home$5,800$435,000
Average income$4,200$67,500
Minimum wage$0.30$7.25/hr (federal)
Movie ticket$0.27$11.95
Postage stamp$0.03$0.73
Population138.4M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, IMDb, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.