September 15, 1945

1945Carmen Maura, Spanish actress^[†]

María del Carmen García Maura is a Spanish actress. In a career that has spanned six decades, she has starred in films such as Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, ¡Ay Carmela!, Common Wealth, and Volver. With three wins, she holds the record for most Goya Awards for Best Actress. She also won a Cesar Award in 2012 and a Cannes Film Festival Award in 2006.

1945Jessye Norman, American soprano (died 2019)^[†]

Jessye Mae Norman was an American opera singer and recitalist. She was able to perform dramatic soprano roles, but did not limit herself to that voice type. A commanding presence on operatic, concert and recital stages, Norman was associated with roles including Beethoven's Leonore, Wagner's Sieglinde and Kundry, Berlioz's Cassandre and Didon, and Bartók's Judith. The New York Times music critic Edward Rothstein described her voice as a "grand mansion of sound", and wrote that "it has enormous dimensions, reaching backward and upward. It opens onto unexpected vistas. It contains sunlit rooms, narrow passageways, cavernous halls."

1945Hans-Gert Pöttering, German lawyer and politician, 23rd President of the European Parliament^[†]

Hans-Gert Pöttering is a German lawyer, historian and conservative politician, who served as President of the European Parliament from January 2007 to July 2009 and as Chairman of the CDU-affiliated Konrad Adenauer Foundation from 2010 to 2017.

1945Ron Shelton, American director, producer, and screenwriter^[†]

Ronald Wayne Shelton is an American film director and screenwriter and former minor league baseball infielder. Shelton is known for the many films he has made about sports. His 1988 film Bull Durham, based in part on his own baseball experiences, earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

1945André Tardieu, French journalist and politician, 97th Prime Minister of France (born 1876)^[†]

André Pierre Gabriel Amédée Tardieu was three times Prime Minister of France and a dominant figure of French political life in 1929–1932. He was a moderate conservative with a strong intellectual reputation, but became a weak prime minister at the start of the worldwide Great Depression.

1945Anton Webern, Austrian composer and conductor (born 1883)^[†]

Anton Webern was an Austrian composer, conductor, and musicologist. His music was among the most radical of its milieu in its lyrical, poetic concision and use of then novel atonal and twelve-tone techniques. His approach was typically rigorous, inspired by his studies of the Franco-Flemish School under Guido Adler and by Arnold Schoenberg's emphasis on structure in teaching composition from the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, the First Viennese School, and Johannes Brahms. Webern, Schoenberg, and their colleague Alban Berg were at the core of what became known as the Second Viennese School.