December 17, 1937

1937Brian Hayes, Australian-English radio host^[†]

Brian Hayes is a radio presenter who is known in the United Kingdom for his phone-in shows.

1937Art Neville, American singer and keyboard player (died 2019)^[†]

Arthur Lanon Neville Jr. was an American singer, songwriter and keyboardist from New Orleans.

1937Kerry Packer, Australian businessman, founded World Series Cricket (died 2005)^[†]

Kerry Francis Bullmore Packer was an Australian media tycoon, and was considered one of Australia's most powerful media proprietors of the twentieth century. The Packer family company owned a controlling interest in both the Nine Network and the publishing company Australian Consolidated Press, which were later merged to form Publishing and Broadcasting Limited (PBL). Outside Australia, Packer was best known for founding World Series Cricket. At the time of his death, he was the richest and one of the most influential men in Australia. In 2004, Business Review Weekly magazine estimated Packer's net worth at A$6.5 billion.

1937John Kennedy Toole, American novelist (died 1969)^[†]

John Kennedy Toole was an American novelist from New Orleans, Louisiana, whose posthumously published novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981. At 16 in 1954, he wrote his first novel, The Neon Bible, which he shelved in the same year, not finding a willing publisher; he later dismissed it as "adolescent". Toole was a successful and popular professor, first at University of Southwestern Louisiana, at Hunter College and finally in New Orleans. Having persuaded Simon & Schuster, however, to accept A Confederacy of Dunces, he was unable to resolve editorial disputes. Due in part to the novel's failure, he suffered from paranoia and depression, dying by suicide at the age of 31.