10 random things that happened on this day in showbiz history...
we just called to say we loved you, Myrna1905 Charismatic Myrna Loy is born in Montana. She'll come to epitomize urbane style and wit at the movies as one half of The Thin Man's glorious marrieds with William Powell. Though she was never Oscar nominated she was given an Honorary Oscar in '91.
1914 Beatrice Straight is born in New York. In her sixties she'll make history by becoming the actor with the least amount of screentime to win an Oscar. She rages through Network (1976) for all of five to six minutes as a betrayed wife, but that was enough...
1924 Famous writer James Baldwin is born in New York. He's recently had a resurgence in public interest with the Oscar nominated documentary I Am Not Your Negro (2016) a big success in theaters and director Barry Jenkins opting to adapt his novel If Beale Street Could Talk to film as the follow up to the Oscar-winning Moonlight.
1932 Peter O'Toole born in England. He'll become one of the great movie stars and hold the still-hard-to-believe Oscar record of most acting nominations without a win (8). He was given an Honorary Oscar about ten years before his death.
1967 In the Heat of the Night premieres in NYC, on its way to winning Best Picture, in one of Hollywood's most significant years as immortalized by Mark Harris in "Pictures at a Revolution," only the most fascinating book on the Oscars ever written.
1979 Gilda Radner - Live From New York opens on Broadway, with the comedienne reprising many of her famous Saturday Night Live characters. The show is filmed and released in movie theaters the following year as Gilda Live.
Steppenwolf in the early 80s. From left: Joan Allen, Robert Biggs, Glenne Headley, Francis Guinan and John Malkovich
1982 John Malkovich and Glenne Headly, rising stage stars in Chicago's famed Steppenwolf Theatre, marry in their late twenties, a few years before movie fame reaches them. They're divorced in 1988, a huge year for both, while Headley stars in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Malkovich has an affair with Michelle Pfeiffer on Dangerous Liaisons.
1999 The Sixth Sense holds its premiere in Philadelphia, four days later it will open in movie theaters and become a word of mouth sensation, the year's biggest non-Star Wars hit. It receives exactly six Oscar nominations, a perfect number for its promotional ads.
2002 M Night Shyamalan's cleverly shot sci-fi film Signs, starring Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix, opens to huge box office, though it's mocked for its strained "twist" as future Shyamalan films will also be... because what could live up to The Sixth Sense?
2019 The long-delayed possibly troubled superhero flick The New Mutants is due in theaters on this day starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Maisie Williams, and Alice Braga. They're pitching it like it's the next Saw or something. Strange.