Catherine the Great, Billie Holiday, Wong Kar-Wai
Sunday, July 17, 2016 at 9:50AM On this day in history as it relates to the movies...
1762 Catherine the Great becomes tsar of Russia, rules until her death 34 years later. Many actresses have played her since including icons as great as Jeanne Moreau, Catherine Deneuve, and Marlene Dietrich. (Kiera Knightley and Annette Bening both have been rumored for various new Catherine the Great projects but we'll believe those when we see them.)
1898 Berenice Abbott, a major figure in photography, an early LGBT feminist, whose life spanned nearly the entire 20th century and would make a great biopic, is born. We keep mentioning important women as potential biopic subjects to debunk the theory, perpetuated by Hollywood, that there are only Great Men worthy of movie treatment in history.
1899 Speaking of Great Man biopics...
Tough guy movie star James Cagney is born. Wins the Oscar 43 years, 7 months, and 15 days later for an atypical role as song and dance man George M Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
1910 Barbara O'Neil is born. Goes on to become a supporting actress in the studio era, most famously as Scarlett O'Hara's mother in Gone With the Wind (she was only three years older than Vivien Leigh) and for her supporting actress Oscar nomination for All This, and Heaven Too (1940). Her last Hollywood picture was the Oscar favorite The Nun's Story (1959)
1917 Phyllis Diller is born
1928 Jazz musician Vince Guaraldi is born. The Brazilian masterpiece Black Orpheus (1959) inspired his breakthrough album which led to him composing the memorable themes for Peanuts.
1935 Donald Sutherland & Diahann Carroll are both born. They become famous actors but only Carroll becomes an Oscar nominee. Sutherland remains one of the most underrecognized film stars for great work across several otherwise Oscar nominated classics.
1952 David Hasselhoff is born. The movie version of his 90s kitsch hit Baywatch (2017) will soon be upon us. Various attempts to revive his 80s kitsch hit Knight Rider have failed.
1955 Disneyland opens in Anaheim, California
1956 Wong Kar-Wai is born in Shanghai. Makes sensationally beautiful classics thereafter. Oscar has never nominated him for Foreign Language film despite the submission of his forever-masterpiece In the Mood for Love (2001) and the popular arthouse bio The Grandmaster (2013)
1959 Hitchcock classic North by Northwest premieres in Los Angeles. On the same day "Lady Day" Billie Holiday dies at only 44. She goes on to be played by two later showbiz icons Diana Ross (Oscar nomination) and Audra McDonald (Tony win, Emmy nomination)
1968 The Beatles picture Yellow Submarine premieres in London
1969 The actor Jason Clarke (Zero Dark Thirty) and the director F Gary Gray (Set it Off, Straight Outta Compton) are both born.
1972 Molly Parker is born in Canada, becomes a consistently interesting actor in film and on television
1975 Elena Anaya is born in Spain. Thirty-six years later she stars in one of Pedro Almodóvar's most underrated pictures The Skin I Live In (2011)
1980 Former B list film star Ronald Reagan officially accepts the Republican nomination for the US Presidency
1983 Television actress Sarah Jones (Big Love, Vegas, The Path) is born
1998 The Mask of Zorro starring Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones opens in theaters
←1999 TV stars Hank Azaria and Helen Hunt are married in Los Angeles (though they don't even make it to their 2nd anniversary). Did you know that he actually has one more Emmy than her? They've won 5 and 4 respectively. But Helen also has an Oscar.
2009 Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince opens in movie theaters
2014 Entertainment icon Elaine Stritch dies. She was unforgettable on stage and thankfully some of those performances are preserved.
If it's your birthday today, have a happy one!
Reader Comments (4)
I'm surprised that Donald Sutherland has never been nominated for an Oscar.
Marlene looks magnificent in that outfit, as for a new version of Catherine the Great, the script that attracted Keira is apparently very good and sold for a couple of million last summer.
These days they would have more luck with financing if it were an HBO project.
Molly Parker & Donald Sutherland, under-appreciated and always so good.
That picture of Marlene is just amazing.
Sutherland shld've been nom for Ordinary People, he score a Golden Globe nom for that
I alws thot In the Mood for Love was nom for Best Foreign Pic! Am so surprise it wasn't, not even one for its gorgeous cinematography!