Today in Film History. Meow
Sunday, June 19, 2016 at 8:00AM It's Father's Day. Happy Father's Day. It's also Juneteenth. The day in which the nation commemorates the end of slavery in the mid 1860s (though like most holidays the actual timeline involves several days and months and years and lots of political manuevering -- see Lincoln and be reminded what a mess governing and policy making and constitutional debates always are). June 19th has another history civil rights event in 1964 with the passing of the Civil Rights Act (see Selma) so exercize your right to vote in November. People are always trying to deny people that right, and if everyone voted, we'd be in such better shape. Now on to cinema...
On this day in history as it relates to the movies...
Good god, woman. Let it go.1865 Dame May Whitty, two time Oscar nominee is born in Liverpool. Remember her all caps obsession with winning that damn flower contest in Mrs Miniver?
1905 The first Nickelodeon (an early form of the movie theater) opens in Pittsburgh. By 1910 there are thousands of them and an estimated 26 million Americans visit them weekly. Can you imagine how popular film blogs would be - sniffle. The movies shown in them get longer and longer...
1919 Pauline Kael is born. She becomes one of the most influential, divisive, and celebrated film critics of all time.
1930 Gena Rowlands is born. Becomes acting heroine of considerable influence
1932 Twin sisters Marisa Pavan & Pier Angeli are born in Italy. (Pierangeli was their last name before stage names were chosen). Both become famous actresses: Marisa received an Oscar nomination for The Rose Tattoo; Pier, who was romantically linked to numerous stars (James Dean, Vic Damone, and Kirk Douglas), co-starred with Paul Newman twice (The Chalice, Somebody Up There Likes Me) and received a Best Actress BAFTA nomination for The Angry Silence (1960)
1945 Author Tobias Woolf is born. His memoir This Boy's Life becomes an acclaimed movie in 1993 offering up our first taste of Leonardo DiCaprio's big screen magnetism. If you haven't seen it yet, you should.
1947 Great Korean actress Yeo-jeong Yoon (The Housemaid, Sense8) is born.
1951 Stellan Skarsgård, ubiquitous actor of Hollywood and Scandinavian cinema, muse to both Lars von Trier and Hans Petter Moland, and prolific dad of gorgeous actor sons (Alexander, Bill, Gustaf, Valter) is born in Sweden. Recently Stellan remarried and has begun replicating again (he's up to 8 kids now). Trivia note: Paul Bettany & Jennifer Connelly named their son after him!
1953 Julius & Ethel Rosenberg are executed. Ethel's ghost becomes a key character in the classic Angels in America and Meryl Streep gives one of her all time best performances playing her.
1954 Kathleen Turner is born, rises to short-lived superstardom in the 1980s. But oh what a rise (Body Heat, Romancing the Stone, Peggy Sue Got Married, War of the Roses). Currently killing it on stages whenever she sees fit.
1962 Ally Sheedy, future Breakfast Club "basketcase," is born. Robbed of a Best Actress Oscar nomination 36 years later for High Art
1978 Zoe Saldana is born. The same day Garfield, the worlds most widely syndicated comic strip, debuts. We're not trying to make a connection but an unfortunate movie franchise emerges with Bill Murray as the voice of the sarcastic feline.
Speaking of pussy...
Meow
1992 Batman Returns, still the best Batman movie (you heard me!), opens in theaters.
1996 Kodi Smith-McPhee is born. Impresses as a kid actor in The Road (2009) and currently stars at Nightcrawler in X-Men Apocalypse. Happy 20th, Kodi.
2012 Fiona Apple's drops her 4th album The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw, and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do. It features "Hot Knife". The video is directed by her former boyfriend, genius auteur Paul Thomas Anderson.
Reader Comments (12)
I knew Zoe Saldana and Kathleen Turner were born today but Stellan Skarsgard and Kodi Smit-McPhee?! Holy Toledo, I share my birthday with some solid actors. Also, Batman Returns came out the day I was born in '92. So now I know why I'm a Batman fan, I guess.
Happy Birthday Matt!
Damn! Gena Rowlands, Pauline Kael, Batman Returns AND movie theaters! I declare today a holiday!
G E N A, love of my live
Dame May obsesses over that flower they way actressexuals do over Acting Godesses.
mark -- so true.
What's your theory on why Kathleen Turner didn't last in the mainstream?
/3rtful -- oh, that's easy. She got sick and started to put on weight. Which you can't really do if you're a sex symbol leading lady.
but she's still a brilliant actor.
^^^Behind-the-scenes issues. (And no, I won't elaborate, but read her memoir for one side of the story.)
Paul -- yes, and that too.
Nathaniel- Thank you very much!
I just watched Night Must Fall, Dame Whitty's first Oscar nomination. She is one of the few actors to believably be afraid on screen.