On this day in showbiz history...
Still undersung: the great Glynis Johns in "The Ref"
1902 Ray A Kroc, who popularized the McDonald's empire is born. The Founder which is about his business shenanigans/success opens this December (it was already supposed to have opened but we can't have movies for adults in the summer for some reason).
1908 Joshua Logan is born. He later makes famous movies like Bus Stop, Picnic, Camelot and South Pacific.
1923 Happy 93rd birthday to Glynis Johns, one of the greats! Her classics include: Mary Poppins, While You Were Sleeping, The Court Jester, The Ref, and Miranda. Why she doesn't have an Honorary Oscar is simply beyond our understanding. She was nominated only once for fine supporting work in The Sundowners
1945 A strike by set decorators turns into a riot "Blood Friday" at Warner Brothers studios. Are you still enjoying our series "The Furniture" on the work of production designers and set decorators? If so please comment and let Daniel know.
1946 The very first Cannes film festival wraps up...
There was not yet a Palme D'Or (that started in 1955) but René Clément's The Battle of the Rails and Oscar favorite The Lost Weekend both won prizes.
1951 Karen Allen is born. She's still the single most underappreciated reason that people fell so hard for Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Jeff Bridges in Starman (1984).
1952 Gay horror novelist Clive Barker is born. Many films have been made from his work including the Hellraiser series and Candyman
1955 Actress Ángela Molina is born in Madrid. She has been nominated for five Goyas (Spain's Oscar) in her career but has yet to win)
1956 Holiday perennial The Ten Commandments opens in theaters to gargantuan box office returns. When adjusted for inflation it's still in the top ten of all time between two other behemoths with oceanic setpieces: Titanic and Jaws.
1960 Alec Baldwin gets his first baby brother, Daniel, in Long Island. Daniel's the least celebrated of the quartet of acting Baldwin Bros but he's got 11 films coming up (!)
1962 Dr. No, the first official Bond film premieres in London. On the same day the Beatles release their first record "Love Me Do." Bond mania & Beatles fandom are still with us 54 years later.
1966 The critically lauded thriller Seconds (1966) with Rock Hudson opened in movie theaters
1967 Guy Pearce is born in England with the highest percentage of fat his body will ever again know.
1969 And now for something completely different... Monty Python's Flying Circus premieres on the BBC
1975 KATE WINSLET. Shouldn't this be an international holiday?
Newlyweds at the Grease 2 Premiere in 19821980 Horror directors Ti West (V/H/S/, The House of the Devil) is born
1981 Michelle Pfeiffer marries Peter Horton (neither are yet famous though both were about to be). On this same day Oscar winning noir actress Gloria Grahame dies at only 55 years of age. Annette Bening, who is exactly one month younger than Pfeiffer (they're both 58 now) and who Pfeiffer replaced on Batman Returns, will play Grahame in a movie about her last days.
1983 Jesse Eisenberg is born. Receives an Oscar nomination for inventing Facebook
1990 Henry & June opens in theaters. It's still underappreciated. If it opened today people I swear to you that people would never stop making gifs of Uma Thurman's June Miller. It was one of the first movies to bare the NC-17 rating and was Oscar nominated (quite deservedly) for Best Cinematography.
2001 Training Day opens in theaters. It will win Denzel Washington his second Oscar a few months later ("I love my life"), the same night Sidney Poiter gets his second, an Honorary. Denzel remarks that he's always chasing Sidney.
2006 Talented child star Jacob Tremblay, who surely justmissed an Oscar nomination for Room, is born in Vancouver, Canada.
2007 Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillipe divorce after seven years of marriage and two children. On the same day Michael Clayton premieres in theaters. Tilda Swinton goes on to win the Oscar in one of the tightest supporting actresses races Oscar has ever known. If only all years were that exciting with precursors going every which way.
2011 Steve Jobs dies of cancer. Almost immediately books about his life are published and two movies are in production.
2012 Pitch Perfect opens in theaters turning into a sleeper hit and making a musical star of Anna Kendrick (though some of us with eagle eyes for musicals had already spotted her in Camp). Thank you endlessly rewatchable movie, thank you!