Showbiz History: Lost in Translation, Eyes of the Mummy, and Clive Owen
Wednesday, October 3, 2018 at 7:00AM 10 random things that happened on this day, October 3rd, in showbiz history
1918 CENTENNIAL ALERT: Ernst Lubitsch's The Eyes of the Mummy, starring Pola Negri and future Oscar winner Emil Jannings, premieres in Germany. It will take four years to make it to the US. You can watch this early horror film in its entirety on YouTube. It's not very good but Lubitsch would go on to a brilliant career directing screwball comedies. Negri plays a girl rescued from captivity in an ancient Egyptian temple but her nightmare is only just beginning!
1929 Actress Jeanne Eagels, the star of The Letter that year, dies of a drug overdose at 39, after which she becomes the first (and still only) actress ever Oscar-nominated posthumously...
To date sixty-two people have been nominated posthumously in Oscar history but only eight of those are women.
1941 The Maltese Falcon, starring Mary Astor and Humphrey Bogart, has its world premiere in NYC
1955 The Mickey Mouse Club begins its television run with "Fun with Music Day"
1960 The Andy Griffith Show debuts and stays on TV forever thanks to syndication.
← 1964 Mia Farrow gets what we believe is her first national cover (though we might be wrong), on TV Guide to promote Peyton Place though the article focuses almost entirely on her private life. Same as it ever will be.
1992 Sinéad O'Connor rips up a picture of The Pope on Saturday Night Live and the world basically cancels her even though she was right about the Catholic Church covering up their child abuse crimes.
1993 Two Black Hawks are shot down in Somalia. The event is later dramatized by Ridley Scott in Black Hawk Down to the tune of Oscar nominations for Direction and Cinematography and wins for Editing and Sound in a hotly competitive year. It was bad news for Moulin Rouge! somehow, nominated in those same categories except, inexplicably, Best Director.
1997 Oliver Stone's bonkers U-Turn and the Ashley Judd thriller Kiss the Girls square off on opening night at movie theaters, Judd trouncing her competition.
2003 Lost in Translation arrives in movie theaters, becoming a lot of people's favorite thing that year or ever. It goes on to 4 Oscar nominations including Best Picture with a screenplay win for Sofia Coppola. Do you remember the first time you saw it? I do, vividly. Walking out of the theater it had been raining and the whole wet world looked like a totally different place.
On the same day Roy of Siegfried and Roy is famously attacked by one of their tigers leaving him partially paralyzed. (Remember that?)
Today's Birthdays
Oscar Winners: Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl), Screenwriter John Patrick Shanley (Moonstruck), Writer/Director Leo McCarey (The Awful Truth, Going My Way)
Oscar Nominees: Clive Owen, Cinematographer Greig Frasier, Producer Ray Stark, Director Denis Villeneuve
Actors: Hart Bochner, Neve Campbell, Peter Frechette, Lena Headey, Derek Klena, Noah Schnapp, Seann William Scott, Tessa Thompson, Jack Wagner
Other Showbiz Peeps: Rock star Lindsey Buckingham, Rock star Tommy Lee, Rock star Gwen Stefani, Artist/Director Laurie Simmons (mother o' Lena Dunham), the guy inside the new Chewbacca suit Joonas Suotamo, Writer/legend Gore Vidal, Cult icon Tommy Wiseau
Today's Birthday Suit:
Clive Owen
Still courtesy of incest drama Close My Eyes (1991) in which he's quite young (27), very nude, and wholly excellent. Alan Rickman is also in fine form in that film as Clive's sister's confused husband. Have you seen it?
Reader Comments (10)
Jeanne Eagels and her version of The Letter are an interesting contrast to the Bette Davis/William Wyler one since it is pre-code. Some of the material is handed more frankly but it's nearly a half hour shorter so it hurries through the story. Bette's is the definitive take on the story and more involving than the whitewashed late 40's version The Unfaithful with Ann Sheridan, though that one is entertaining and has the bonus of Eve Arden in support.
I really didn't like Close My Eyes though that wasn't the fault of either Alan Rickman nor Clive Owen (who is quite choice in it and very free with the nudity).
Blimey! I didn't expect to scroll down and see Clive Owen's naked bum!
(This is not a complaint)
William Wyler's The Letter is a big favorite of mine. And one of Bette's best performances. The last scene, when she walks into the garden knowing what will happen to her is masterful. Bette conveys so much wihtout uttering a single world!
Love your first time Lost In Translation recall Nathaniel. I saw an afternoon screening and remember walking out into bright sunshine and I could hardly see through my blurry eyes. I was wearing a brown shirt which was drenched as I cried so much in the last 10 minutes of the film. Still firmly in my all time top five films.
Early 90's Clive Owen Mmmmmmmm.
Lost in Translation has one of the most beautiful endings ever.
Well, if anyone wants to ask about the first time I saw the BEST FILM EVER MADE.... Read this post that I did five years ago to celebrate the film's 10th anniversary.
I consider The Letter one of Davis's top three performances.
@Marcos. Davis certainly was masterful in the final scene, letting her character's emotions play across her face. Equal in her art was the dinner scene when she was told she would be charged with murder, and her evocative response with her eyes. Or when she shot her lover on the plantation steps in the opening scene. Devastating. It is said that the mark of a true actor is not in the delivery of lines, but in the reaction.
Mr Owens looks very nice
Yess! The Letter is really one of Bette"s v best! This n All This n Heaven Too really established her as THE best dramatic actress in the early 40s! She shld've won for this instead o Dangerous, thereby freeing up the1935 win to K Hepburn, thereby freeing up the 1967 win to Bancroft, thereby freeing up the 1962 win to Geraldine Page, thereby freeing up the 1985 win to Whoopi (making her instead o Halle Berry the 1st African American to win best lead actress), thereby freeing the 1990 supp win to MacLaine (who shld've been nom n win!!)
Wat a chain reaction this cld've been!! 😂