Showbiz History: Wild at Heart, Treasure Island, Superbad, Etc...
Friday, August 17, 2018 at 9:00AM A dozen random things that happened on this day (Aug 17th) in showbiz history...
1920 Maureen O'Hara born on this day in Dublin. We've written about her frequently. We ♥️.
1934 The first (of many) sound film adaptations of Treasure Island the novel opens in movie theaters starring Oscar winners Lionel Barrymore and Wallace Beery, along with child star Jackie Cooper, himself already an Oscar nominee...the youngest Best Actor nominee of all time in point of fact. Cooper and Berry had previously co-starred in the instant classic tearjerker The Champ (1931) so the advertising pushed the reunion hard...
1943 Happy 75th birthday today to two time Oscar winner Robert DeNiro (Raging Bull, The Godfather Part Two) born on this day in New York City. Next up for De Niro, the comedy War with Grandpa, and a reunion with Martin Scorsese for The Irishman.
Bruce Lee and Linda Emery in real life and in the movies (with Jason Scott Lee and Lauren Holly playing them)
1964 Bruce Lee marries Linda Emery who he met at the University of Washington. Their then-controversial college romance / interracial marriage was documented in the 1993 biopic Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story. They had two children and were married until Lee's tragic death in 1973.
1968 Happy 50th birthday to the undervalued Helen McRory who is most famous for the Harry Potter series but who was totally Emmy-WIN worthy on Showtime's Penny Dreadful.
1979 Monty Python's The Life of Brian opens in movie theaters with the hilarious sacrilegous musical number "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life"
1984 Two cheesy genre movies Dreamscape and Sheena open in movie theaters. Little Nathaniel was VERY excited about them.
1988 Actor turned director Brady Corbet born in Scottsdale Arizona. We've written about his directorial debut Childhood of a Leader and his next project is the trauma survivor turned rock star drama Vox Lux.
1989 Directors James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow are married. He'd JUST released his (first) waterlogged epic The Abyss the week before and she was presumably starting work on the cop drama Blue Steel.
1990 David Lynch's oddball journey Wild at Heart opens in US movie theaters after winning the Palme d'Or earlier in the summer at Cannes. Oscar ignores it but for that indelibly gonzo Diane Ladd performance.
2007 Superbad opens in theaters becoming a major hit and introducing the world to young Emma Stone, soon to be an A-list leading lady.
2012 Compliance opens in limited release finally setting in motion the now commonplace acknowledgement that Ann Dowd is genius at this acting thing. On the same day in wide release, Laika releases future Oscar nominee ParaNorman.
Other showbiz peeps born on this day:
Belinda Carlisle of The Go-Gos, Director Martha Coolidge, Rachel Hurd-Wood, Taissa Farmiga, Finland's Katie Outinen, Sean Penn, Donnie Wahlberg, legend Mae West, and Cabaret's Fritz Wepper
Reader Comments (8)
Diane Ladd mounted a campaign for herself. She definitely deserved the recognition.
Diane Ladd is so-o-o good in Wild at Heart. God love her for that performance.
It’s interesting that Christianity is really the only faith it’s not politically incorrect to lampoon (well, maybe Judaism, too). One of modern comedy’s major blindspots.
Your either lucky with awards or you're not. Diane Ladd totally deserved her three nominations and yet she never had the slightest chance. Her work in Enlightened was precious too and totally ignored by the Emmys.
P.S. Loved Sheena as a kid too.
Peggy you believe she deserved losing to Bergman in '74? She had an entire episode devoted to her character on Enlightened. HBO was wholly wrong for cutting its life short while keeping the shit Girls around.
That's exactly the episode that should have given her the Emmy.
A bit crass at the end, but agree with all /3rtful said.
Dreamscape was a frequent video store rental for me when I was a kid.
I saw Dreamscape in the theater and was very scared at the crazy staircase ending.