Happy Birthday Mickey! And Other Things to Celebrate.
Friday, November 18, 2016 at 8:34AM 
On this day in showbiz history...
1872 Suffragette Susan B Anthony is arrested for illegally voting. She was recently forced to turn over in her grave. Where's her biopic?
1917 Pedro Infante, Mexico's biggest movie star has his centennial next year! He died young at only 39 but not before his legend was cemented with nearly 60 movies and over 300 songs
1928 Steamboat Willie, the first Mickey Mouse sound cartoon is released. It was his third appearance but Disney considers this Mickey Mouse's official birthday. So happy birthday!
1932 The 5th annual Oscar ceremony before the ceremonies started following exact calendar years...
Director Frank Borzage and the winning actors Helen Hayes and Fredric March, both of whom would win a second time later on
Before they moved the Oscars to the first quarter of the year and made it more of a single calendar year affair. At this ceremony they had the first and only tie for Best Actor (Wallace Beery for The Champ and Fredric March for Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde). Grand Hotel won Best Picture (its only nomination!) and Helen Hayes won Best Actress for The Sin of Madelon Claudet. There were only 12 categories back then!
1939 Supporting Actress nominee Brenda Vaccaro is born as well as sci-fi novelist Margaret Atwood. Atwood's work hasn't been all that successfully translated to the screen in the past but two new miniseries are supposedly on the way in 2017 on Alias Grace and The Handmaid's Tale
1941 David Hemmings star of Blow-Up, Camelot, Barbarella and more is born
1942 Linda Evans "Krystle" herself from Dynasty though earlier generations knew her as Audra Barkley on The Big Valley
1955 Carter Burwell, composer, who finally received his very late Oscar nomination for Carol last season, was born on this day.
1959 Ben-Hur premieres in New York City. Check out that old timey newsreel above!
1960 Elizabeth Perkins of About Last Night and Weeds fame is born
1968 Sad/funny Owen Wilson is born.
1974 It has recently come to my attention that Chloë Sevigny was born on this day
1976 Steven Pasquale, Broadway star, frequently wasted on TV, is born. Why doesn't TV let him sing? His pipes are shockingly great
1979 The Birth of a Nate Parker
1980 Michael Cimino's notorious flop Heavens Gate premieres
1983 The stripper drama A Night in Heaven and the family classic A Christmas Story both open in theaters
1985 Christian Siriano winner of Project Runway is born. He now dresses famous actresses constantly for the red carpet
1988 Woody Allen's Another Woman starring Gena Rowlands opens. Also two animated films The Land Before Time and Oliver & Company
1992 Spike Lee's grand biopic Malcolm X premieres starring Denzel Washington who shamefully loses Best Actor to Al Pacino hamming it up in Scent of a Woman
1994 Leon aka The Professional opens in theaters introducing the US to Natalie Portman
2000 Catherine Zeta Jones marries Michael Douglas in lavish ceremony in New York City
2005 Walk the Line opens in movie theaters eventually nabbing his & hers Oscar nominations for Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Phoenix, though only hers Oscar statue.
2006 Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes marry in Italy six months after jumping on Oprah's couch.
Reader Comments (16)
1) notorious flop and masterpiece Heaven's gate, please.
2) I love Another Woman, which should give Rowlands her Oscar number 5 (no, really)
The old newsreels are so cool. A real chance to look into the past. Very cool that they had Heston & Novarro pose together.
The Champ and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde hold up as decent films, though The Champ goes heavy on the pathos but Sin of Madelon Claudet is the ripest kind of melodrama and except for a few moments Helen Hayes plays her whole performance to the back row.
By the way that is not Wallace Beery with Hayes and March. I'm not positive but I think it's Helen's husband Charles MacArthur.
It's Frank Borzage
I'm terribly embarrassed to admit this, but I never even heard of Pedro Infante until I ready our post. And I'm a guy who's condescending to people who call themselves cinephiles but have never even heard of Zbigniew Cybulski.
So I guess this is a much-needed reminder that my own cinephilicism is a tad bit euro-centric...
That is indeed Frank Borzage in the photo with Hayes and March. He won his second directing Oscar that year for Bad Girl, a film I've never heard of but clearly need to see, since it's pre-Code.
thanks. i have fixed.
Rowlands should have won for Another Woman. Love that movie and her in it. Top 3 Woody Allen films and performances.
Paul Outlaw: Don't get your hopes up. Bad Girl is totally bland and innocuous. There's no way Frank Borzage should have won Best Director over Josef von Sternberg for the delirious Shanghai Express.
I just saw Design For Living this week and while the movie isn't particularly good, the double whammy of handsomeness between Fredric March and Gary Cooper was almost too much to bear. Thanks for the photographic reminder.
And in case anyone cares, Fredric March got one more vote than Wallace Beery so it wasn't an exact tie like Barbra/Katharine years later.
Dave in Hollywood: Yes, the rule then was that if 2nd place was within three votes, it was declared a tie. I've read an interview where Olivia deHavilland claims to have seen the actual results of the 1941 Best Actress race and saw that she lost to her sister by one vote. Imagine the tussle on the podium if THAT race had been declared a tie!
What's are your thoughts on 'Another Woman', Nathaniel?
That news reel is so great!
I so, so loved the Burwell's soundtrack for 'Carol'. Shame he had to go up against Morricone. Also, Carter Burwell's name is second in my list of dream names if I could rechristened. Only after Haskell Wexler!
Love the newsreel
Heaven's Gate.... flawed but a very misunderstood achievement from Michael Cimino that finally got some love in recent years. Hope the rest of his 80s output gets some equal love as well.
Heaven's Gate's greatest sin is that it's boring. Long movies never ever have a right to be boring under any circumstance.
Yay for all the ANOTHER WOMAN love. One of my favourite Woody Allen movies.
If they released WALK THE LINE this year, Reese Witherspoon would probably be campaigned for Supporting Actress. Sigh
Thanks you very much for publishing your movie post.