Portrait of Ketty Lester

Birthday profile

Ketty Lester

Ketty Lester, American singer and actress

Born
August 16, 1934
Age in 2026
92
Zodiac sign
Leo
Birth year
1934

About Ketty Lester

Ketty Lester is an American singer and actress known for her 1961 hit single "Love Letters", which reached the top 5 of the charts in the US and the UK. She is also known for her role as Hester-Sue Terhune on the American television series Little House on the Prairie. In 2022, she was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame. She won a scholarship to study music at San Francisco State College, and in the early 1950s, she began performing under the name "Ketty Lester" in the city's Purple Onion club. The chosen category was "Mother Goose", a subject she admitted knowing nothing about; George Fenneman fed the correct answers to her, and she and her partner won $1,000.

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

The world when Ketty Lester was born

Ketty Lester was born in 1934. 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 1934

  • #1 song"Stars Fell on Alabama"
  • Top movieIt Happened One Night
  • Best-selling bookTender Is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentFirst Masters Tournament held at Augusta National
  • Top headlineFBI kills John Dillinger outside a Chicago theater
  • Technology milestoneFirst streamlined passenger train (Burlington Zephyr)
  • Defining fadShirley Temple mania
  • Notable inventionLaundromat
  • World population2.20 billion

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderFranklin D. Roosevelt
  • Sports championSt. Louis Cardinals (World Series)
  • U.S. population126.4M

1934 versus 2026

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

Measure19342026
Gas$0.19$3.45/gal
Average home$4,900$435,000
Average income$2,500$67,500
Minimum wage$0.25$7.25/hr (federal)
Movie ticket$0.20$11.95
Postage stamp$0.03$0.73
Population126.4M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

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