Born May 18: Don Bachardy

Eighty today, Don Bachardy has one more thing to celebrate: He helped bring out last week's collection of love letters The Animals: Love Letters Between Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy [and Kindle]. Overshadowed and overlooked, he is a lovely artist of these nuanced, revealing sketches of their famous friends, and a daring painter, whose official gubernatorial portrait of Jerry Brown hangs in the California State Capitol. In the documentary Chris & Don. A Love Story he thoughtfully discusses his life in art and the complex power imbalances of a 30+ year relationship that began when he was southern California teenager and his new English bf in his late forties was already an international literary star.