Birthday profile

Doon Arbus

Doon Arbus, American author and journalist

Born
April 3, 1945
Age in 2026
81
Zodiac sign
Aries
Birth year
1945

About Doon Arbus

Doon Arbus (born April 3, 1945) is an American writer and journalist. Her debut novel is The Caretaker (New Directions, 2020). Her play, Third Floor, Second Door on the Right, was produced at the Cherry Lane Theatre by the 2003 New York International Fringe Festival. Doon Arbus is the elder daughter of actor Allan Arbus and photographer Diane Arbus, and the great-granddaughter of Russeks co-founder Frank Russek. She was 26 when her mother committed suicide, at which time she became responsible for the management of her mother's estate. She has authored or contributed to five books on Diane Arbus's work, including An Aperture Monograph (Aperture, 1972) and Revelations (Random House, 2003). She has also organized numerous photographic exhibitions in collaboration with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Jeu de Paume, among other institutions. As a freelance journalist in the mid-1960s, alongside other writers like Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin, and Robert Benton, she contributed to the New York Herald Tribune's Sunday supplement, New York, one of the earliest proponents of New Journalism. Her articles also appeared in Rolling Stone, The Nation, and Cheetah. Her 1966 New York Herald Tribune article "James Brown Is Out of Sight" was among the first profiles of the R&B legend and is included in The James Brown Reader (Plume, 2008). Arbus was a longtime collaborator of Richard Avedon, with whom she coauthored the books Alice in Wonderland: The Forming of a Company, the Making of a Play (E. P. Dutton, 1973) and Avedon: The Sixties (Random House, 1999).

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

Career and life highlights

The world when Doon Arbus was born

Doon Arbus was born in 1945. 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 1945

  • #1 song"Sentimental Journey" – Les Brown & Doris Day
  • Top movieThe Lost Weekend
  • Best-selling bookAnimal Farm – George Orwell

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentDetroit Tigers win the World Series
  • Top headlineWorld War II ends after atomic bombs dropped on Japan
  • Technology milestoneAtomic bomb developed and detonated (Manhattan Project)
  • Defining fadV-J Day celebrations
  • Notable inventionMicrowave oven (accidental discovery)
  • World population2.40 billion

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderFranklin D. Roosevelt / Harry S. Truman
  • Sports championDetroit Tigers (World Series)
  • U.S. population139.9M

1945 versus 2026

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

Measure19452026
Gas$0.21$3.45/gal
Average home$5,900$435,000
Average income$4,100$67,500
Minimum wage$0.40$7.25/hr (federal)
Movie ticket$0.30$11.95
Postage stamp$0.03$0.73
Population139.9M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Library of Congress. 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.