On a Clear Day You Can See Anniversaries Forever
Monday, October 17, 2016 at 2:34AM On this day in showbiz history...
1886 Spring Byington is born in Colorado Springs. Goes on to supporting actress glory in Hollywood including Marmee in Little Women (1933, her feature debut) and an Oscar nomination as the eccentric hobbyist mom in You Can't Take It With You (1938). Curiously her screen daughter in that best picture winner Jean Arthur, an even bigger star, shares her same birthday (for the year of 1900)
1888 Thomas Edison files a patent for the Optical Phonograph (an early step in creating the cinema)
1903 Author and screenwriter Nathanael West is born in NYC. Movies adapted from his work include Lonelyhearts (1958) and The Day of the Locust (1975)
1915 One of the world's most celebrated playwrights, Arthur Miller, is born. His classics include Death of a Salesman, The Crucible and A View From the Bridge. After marrying movie star Marilyn Monroe, he wrote The Misfits (1961) for her which would eerily (considering its elegiac tone) be the last film for both her and co-star Clark Gable and one of the very last for Montgomery Clift who was born on this same day in 1920...
1918 the love goddess Rita Hayworth is born
1926 Julie Adams, the bathing beauty of The Creature from the Black Lagoon is born. She's still alive so happy 90th birthday Julie!
1931 Gangster Al Capone is sentenced to 11 years in prison. The movies have never stopped obsessing over him and/or others of his ilk since
1933 Albert Einstein flees Germany for the US. Isn't it strange that though a household name and though he's appeared as a character in countless films, he's never really had a proper biopic?
1939 Mr Smith Goes to Washington hits movie theaters. Can you imagine something this politically righteous but essentially optimistic today?
1945 Ava Gardner, who is not yet a major star, marries bandleader Artie Shaw in Hollywood. She's only 22 but it's already her second marriage (the first was to Mickey Rooney) and lasts just one year. Actresses married so young in Old Hollywood!
1948 Margot Kidder, who will always be Lois Lane (sorry Amy Adams) is born in Canada
Howard Rollins in Ragtime (1981)
1950 Howard Rollins is born in Baltimore. He'd become, briefly, a star of stage, tv (Roots, In the Heat of the Night), and screen (Ragtime, A Soldier's Story) in the late 70s and early 80s but his career was cut short. He died at only 46 years of age due to AIDS related complications
1960 Oscar & Tony nominated and Emmy winning Rob Marshall (Into the Woods, Chicago, Nine) is born in Wisconsin. His next project is Mary Poppins Returns starring Emily Blunt and Lin-Manuel Miranda
1965 The hit musical On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, starring Barbara Harris and John Cullum, opens on Broadway. Barbra Streisand gets the movie role a handful of years later but Barbara Harris makes it to the big screen anyway in classics like Nashville and Freaky Friday afterwards.
1966 Georgy Girl is released in the US and goes on to 4 Oscar nominations as well as a Golden Globe win for Lynn Redgrave in Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy. I've never actually seen that one, have you?
two Oscar winning songs
1972 Eminem is born in Missouri. Goes on to global music superstardom by 27 and an Oscar win by 30 for the terrific movie song "Lose Yourself" from 8 Mile (2002).
1981 "Arthur's Theme (The Best That You Can Do)" hits #1 on the Billboard charts. Goes on to win the Oscar for Best Original Song the following spring.
1983 Oscar nominee Felicity Jones (Theory of Everything) is born. She'll be back in movie theaters twice over this December with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and A Monster Calls
1985 Max Irons, son of Jeremy, is born. Follows his dad into acting. Also models.
1986 The Color of Money, a sequel to The Hustler, opens in movie theaters. 164 days later Paul Newman finally wins his Best Actor Oscar, only 23 years after the first time he deserved it.
1997 Trashy hits I Know What You Did Last Summer with showering Ryan Phillipe and The Devil's Advocate with Satanic Al Pacino open in theaters
2015 Last year on this date, Tracy Morgan (30 Rock) returned to TV to host Saturday Night Live his first comic performance since his terrible accident that had left him in a coma for weeks
Happy Birthday to any readers born on this day!
Reader Comments (9)
georgy girl: lynn redgrave, alan bates, james mason, charlotte rampling. what the hell are you waiting for??
Yesterday was Fernanda Montenegro's birthday. She's 87 now.
Charlotte Rampling at her looking down her nose best in GGirl,see it RIGHT NOW,you owe it to Redgrave's memory,she's a marvel in it too,I really do like this feature Nat and hope you keep it,must take you ages to fill our lives with such info,thanks.
I always think that it's amazing Daniel Day Lewis is Marilyn Monroe's step son in law.
Felicity Jones IS in the theater right now for Inferno LOL
On my mind this weekend Chris Pine is a more serious threat than people think & De Niro in The Comedian is the late breaking Best Actor contender,he sure could win that GG over Gosling.
What a day for actressexuals and Monty Clift lovers everywhere!
Wonderful list but you forgot the marvelous but unfortunately blacklisted Marsha Hunt who turns 99 today!
I recently read Julie Adams autobiography "The Lucky Southern Star" it was loaded with many great recollections about making Black Lagoon as well as tons of details about life as a contract star in old Hollywood. How ironic that two of the more renown ladies in 50's sci-fi, Julie and Beverly Garland, share the same birthday.
Nathanael West was a great writer but his work is SO dark. Sad but intriguing fact-he and his wife, who was the inspiration for the play and movies My Sister Eileen and Wonderful Town, were killed in a car crash the day after F. Scott Fitzgerald died.
That's a great picture of Marilyn and Arthur Miller.
I'll join in with the rest saying see Georgy Girl ASAP! Not only are Lynn Redgrave and Alan Bates fantastic in it but it shows that Charlotte Rampling was killing it right from the start and should have had an Oscar nomination 50 years ago.
Oh, Monty, Monty, Monty...
So many wonderful people were born on this day, I especially love Jean Arthur, Monty, and Rita. <3
And the underrated Marsha Hunt celebrates her 99th birthday today!
Shout-out to Howard Rollins Jr in RAGTIME - he was Oscar-nominated for Supporting Actor in 1981.
I knew nothing about RAGTIME when I saw it on DVD a few years back. It had 8 Oscar nominations (!) and was obviously supposed to be a big, prestige-y end-of-year literary adaptation but it just didn't work. It's handsome as hell but inert on screen and the screenplay couldn't unlock the complex EL Doctorow novel it's based on. A lovely score by Randy Newman though.