Showbiz History: Star Wars' Oscar Ceremony & Matthew Goode's Birthday Suit
Wednesday, April 3, 2019 at 8:00AM 8 random things that happened on this day in history (as it relates to showbiz). Happy April 3rd!
1882 Jesse James is Assassinated by the Coward Robert Ford (Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck recreating that for you above circa 2007).
1930 The 2nd Oscars are held with Broadway Melody taking Best Picture. (No film won more than 1 Oscar at that ceremony but that's less crazy than it sounds since there were only 7 categories then.)
1942 Zoltan Korda's The Jungle Book opens in movie theaters. It certainly won't be the last film adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's wild boy and jungle animals adventure but it receives the most Oscar nominations of any of them by far in four categories (Cinematography, Production Design, Visual Effects, and Original Score)
After the jump the historic 50th Oscar ceremony. So much good trivia awaits you...
1953 The very first issue of TV Guide magazine appears with Luci & Desi's baby on the cover
1970 Patton enjoys its first weekend in movie theaters, a week before the 1969 Oscars are held. It'll win its own Oscar for Best Picture a whole year and two weeks later. It's so rare for that to happen now, debuting before the previous years Oscars and still winning your own. When was the last time... 1991/1992 with Silence of the Lambs?
←1978 Oscar 50th anniversary ceremony, the 1977 Oscars, proves to be an unusual and historic year in multiple respects. It's the very last time, for example, that 80% of the Best Picture list was made up of female-centric stories. Neither of the most nominated pictures (The Turning Point and Julia with 11 nods each) ended up leading the night while The Turning Point set a new record for most losses (it won none on its categories... and it still holds that record but shares the "honor" with The Color Purple now). The night was dominated by Star Wars which took home the most Oscars (6) and Annie Hall which walked away with Best Picture, Best Director, and Diane Keaton for Best Actress. Richard Dreyfus, winning for the romantic comedy The Goodbye Girl became the youngest actor to ever win in lead (he was 30). He'd hold the record for 25 years until Adrien Brody arrived with The Pianist (2002) and won just a month before his own 30th.
Other historic elements of this Oscar year: It would be one of the only three times in 90 years of Academy history where both lead acting Oscars were from romantic comedies. It's all but impossible to imagine that happening now since Oscar voters seems to dislike comedies even more than they once did and are much more obsessed with biopic performances than they once were (and they always loved them so that's saying a lot). The only other times that two romantic comedy performances won were duos from the same film: Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable for It Happened One Night (1934) and Helen Hunt & Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets (1997).
Richard Chew, Marcia Lucas, and Paul Hirsch shared the editing win for STAR WARS (1977)
Other historic elements of this Oscar year: Richard Chew, who had previously been the first Asian ever nominated in Film Editing (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) became the first Asian to win Film Editing (Star Wars), and Greg Jein became the first Asian nominee in Visual Effects (Close Encounters of the Third Kind). Meanwhile the legendary Richard Burton received his very last Oscar nomination for Equus and lost again, making him the second most losing actor in Oscar history (after Peter O'Toole and tied now with Glenn Close). Jason Robards became the only man to win two Best Supporting Actor Oscars consecutively with his bizarre win for Julia despite having almost nothing to do within the film.
1992 Beethoven (which launches a franchise) and Straight Talk (with Dolly Parton) as well as the mystery Thunder Heart (with Val Kilmer) all open in movie theaters.
2009 The comedy Adventureland (with Kristen Stewart and Jesse Eisenberg) is new in theaters
Today's Birthday Suit
Matthew Goode, pictured above in A Single Man (2009), was born on this day in 1978 over in the UK. He's one of TV & Film's most reliable supporting players but he never gets any credit and we think that might be because of that totally EXTRA beauty. Seriously, is he even human? Happy 41st, Matthew.
Other Famous Actors Born on this Day: Ben Mendelsohn, Rachel Bloom, Doris Day, Marlon Brando, Eddie Murphy, Leslie Howard, Marsha Mason, Sofia Boutella, Alec Baldwin, Adam Scott, Amanda Bynes, Jamie Bamber, Jan Sterling, Marisa Paredes, and Cobie Smulders.
Reader Comments (19)
Ben Mendelsohn is one of my favorites and I saw an interview with him that was really interesting.
They were going over his career and they got to Animal Kingdom. Right before they moved on to something else, he said something along the lines of "This is the most important film in my career, because without this, you don't give a fuck about me..."
I appreciate the brutal honesty. It also sent me down a rabbit hole of other stuff like that.
That also led me to Paul Bettany talking about how much he enjoyed playing J.A.R.V.I.S. because it was only a few hours of work and they gave him "a bagfull of money."
I appreciate any sort of candor with actors.
Wouldn’t Helen Hunt and Jack Nicholson also count as an Oscar-winning duo from romantic comedies with ‘As Good As It Gets’? :)
Beau -- you're right. I guess its thrice in 90 years.
That's a pretty crowded celebrity birthday list!
Why do I read everywhere Robards does nothing in Julia,he is meant to be the inspiration for Lillian and the voice of concern and reason,I have more problems with him winning the year before for really doing nothing,the 77 BSA list was weak though Guinness should have won.
I can never get behind Keaton's Best Actress win with Fonda,Mason and Bancroft right there plus Shelley Duvall,Simone Signoret and Liza Minnelli went unnominated.
Best Actor is a mess Burton's not gr8 in Equus,Travolta or Mastrioanni would have got my vote.
S Actress is a bit of a blah too i'd have given it to Redgrave or Weld.
Did two more disparate types of performers ever share a birthday than Doris Day and Marlon Brando?
I looooove Matthew Goode. What a great day for celebrity birthdays!
Why do you think Jason Robards won the Oscar for Julia? I guess there weren't many plausible alternative choices, though Alec Guinness would have been a cool win in retrospect.
To go all nerdy on you: Patton had in fact opened even earlier in NY/LA -- early February (you can see this on IMDB if you click on the full release link). I assume April 3 was when it spread to other major cities (Chicago, Detroit etc.). It didn't hit wide release (what we used to call "the neighborhoods") till sometime in summer.
All of which is to say, film distribution was a ton different then, and films weren't considered old news after a year because they were almost certainly still playing somewhere. (Two years later, Cabaret and The Godfather had both opened prior to the 1971 Oscars, but were still the entire ball-game a year later.)
George -- Jason Robards winning for Julia must be one of the lamest selections of all time. A supporting actor field of Alec Guinness, Harrison Ford, Tony Roberts, Paul Simon, and François Truffaut would be worth debating for hours.
Marsha -- year after year the acting branch just doesn't know what they're doing in supporting actor. They routinely ignore interesting work and just go with handful of famous names in relatively good sized roles in best picture contenders.
Nathaniel and Marsha: Hear hear! Supporting Actor frequently has the potential to be one of the best categories and frequently falls short. For 1977, I'd have liked to see Truffaut join Guinness but I think of Ford as a lead in Star Wars (ducks) and so I'd have nominated Jackie Gleason in Smokey and the Bandit, Pat Hingle in The Gauntlet and Richard Kiel in The Spy Who Loved Me.
Goode is all yummy goodie!!! 😋 I kno a good bush when I see one! 😂
@joel6, Doris Day later clarified she is actually in fact born in 1922, n not 1924 as it was previously widely known. So she's 97 young now!! Happy Bday, Calamity Jane!! Seriously, whr's her honorary?!
Markgordonuk, your astute views on the Oscar race, particularly not ignoring the more egregious of Robards wins, were worthy of gold. Condragulations, you are the winner of this week’s challenge.
Matthew Goode should have picked up a Supporting nomination for his beautiful work in A Single Man
@Kirk Thanks.
If a movie’s release date is perfectly found on the internet as 2007, how is it “circa 2008”? Is it laziness?
Julia -- it's called typo. Lighten up.
That Best Actress lineup from 1977 is perfection--the only time other than '39 that the Academy got all five nominees exactly right. Keaton, Mason and Bancroft are brilliant; Fonda and MacLaine are terrific. I would put Liza at No. 6--so good in NYNY.
I really want to rewatch Equus for Burton's performance--and Peter Firth's nakedness LOL.
And Happy Belated Birthday to our Goodbye Girl--Marsha Mason!
brookesboy -- ty!