Showbiz History: Snow White premieres, The Graduate opens.
Monday, December 21, 2020 at 9:00AM 7 random things that happened on this day, December 21st, in showbiz history
the program for Snow White's premiere printed in the Los Angeles Times on December 20th, 1937
1937 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premieres at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles. You can read about the premiere here. It would play Christmas week in LA but not open for the nation until February when it was a smash, briefly becoming the highest grossing film of all time.
After the jump Samson & Delilah, The Graduate, Jane Fonda and Steven Yeun...
1949 Samson and Delilah has its world premiere at the Paramount and Rivoli Theaters in NYC. The Victor Mature / Hedy Lamarr biblical epic becomes a huge success. Biblical epics were a hot genre for another decade.
1960 Walt Disney's adventure drama Swiss Family Robinson hits theaters.
1967 The Graduate opens in theaters the day after its premiere. It proves a sensation with the public and with The Academy scoring 7 nominations including Best Picture and a single win (Best Director) though In the Heat of the Night beats it in Best Picture. It does even better at the Golden Globes where it scores the most wins (5) including Best Picture Musical or Comedy.
1984 A very crowded pre-Christmas Friday for new releases: Goldie Hawn's comedy Protocol, Michael Keaton's comedy Johnny Dangerously, the sequel Breaking 2: Electric Boogaloo, the polygamy comedy Micki + Maude, the farm drama The River, and the eccentric indie Birdy starring Nicolas Cage and Matthew Modine as Vietnam war vets struggling to cope with life after the war. None make much of a box office or cultural impact (though The River snags a Best Actress nomination in "the year of the farm wives" and Birdy has devout fans). The top six films that weekend are all holdovers from previous weeks.
2007 It's opening day for National Treasure: Book of Secrets, P.S. I Love You, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, and two Oscar hopefuls whose Best Picture dreams soon flatlined Charlie Wilson's War and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
2018 Two years ago today Aquaman and Mary Poppins Returns begin their first big weekends at the box office while Mary Queen of Scots and The Favourite, gearing up for Oscar season, moved into wide release after successful limited runs. Three lucky screens get Pawel Pawlowski's black and white romantic drama Cold War which later surprises with 3 Oscar nominations (and it probably wasn't far from more an even heftier tally and would have surely won Best Foreign-Language Film in a non-Roma year). Which movie were you at that weekend?
Today's Birthday Suit(s)
Happy 83rd birthday to the iconic two-time Best Actress winner Jane Fonda, pictured in one of the all time most famous opening credit sequences, a zero gravity striptease for Barbarella (1968).
And happy 37th birthday to current Oscar hopeful Steven Yeun (Minari). Remember that time he went to the naked spa with Conan O'Brien?
Other showbiz types celebrating birthdays today: Stage and screen talent Tom Sturridge (Far From the Madding Crowd, Sea Wall/A Life), the best actress of her generation (?) Kaitlyn Dever (Unbelievable, Short Term 12), Julie Delpy (Before trilogy), Samuel L Jackson (Pulp Fiction, Avengers), Tom Payne, Rutina Wesley (True Blood), Oscar winning director John G Avildsen (Rocky), Producer Jeffrey Katzenberg (Shrek), Keifer Sutherland (24, The Lost Boys), Swedish director Magnus von Horn (The Here After), Emmy nominee Jane Kaczmarek (Malcolm in the Middle), Emmy winner Ray Romano (Everybody Loves Raymond), Michelle Hurd (Blindspot), Tennis legend Chris Evert, Tony nominee Taylor Louderman (Mean Girls), and rocker Frank Zappa.
Reader Comments (12)
As much as I love Susan Hayward and wish she was in everything it was beautiful brainiac Hedy Lamarr who played Delilah to Victor Mature's Samson.
I can't even count how many times my sister and I watched Swiss Family Robinson when we were kids. It seemed like the Wonderful World of Disney played it once a month!
Tom Sturridge is one of my favourite young-ish actors working today. He was shockingly intense and easily my favorite character in Thomas Vinterberg's Far From the Madding Crowd, which is saying a lot considering Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts and Michael Sheen delivered laser-precise performances in the 2015 iteration of Thomas Hardy's novel. Although that was the first time he registered well on my mind, he previously appeared in three other films I saw: On the Road, Being Julia and Vanity Fair.
Saw him onstage in "Sea Wall / A Life" at the Public Theater and on Broadway. I know so many TFE folks worship Jake Gyllenhaal (and he was startlingly good in the play's second half), but Sturridge stayed longer in memory. His Alex was not walking wounded, he was an open wound; enjoyably insouciant then later, heartbreakingly devastating. I hope he gets to do more challenging roles equal to his deep talents and continue to engage audiences in immersive experiences from stage and screen personas he inhabit.
Steven Yeun. Mmmmm.
joel 6 -- thanks. i have no idea what i was thinking this morning. whoops. fixed. obviously i know the difference between Hayward and Lamarr. *self-flagellating now*
I Love Goldie Hawn's Protocol!
Nathaniel don't feel too bad those Biblical epics were pretty thick on the ground in the late 40's/early 50's and Susie and Mature did costar in one of them-Demetrius and the Gladiators-so the confusion is understandable.
"Samson and Delilah" and "The Graduate" are enduring classics. Hedy Lamarr's breakdown scene after a morbid discovery is unforgettable. The 3 stars of the "The Graduate" - outstanding. I never saw "Sweeney Todd" because it sounds gruesome.
"Johnny Dangerously" is a very funny example of the lost art of movie spoofs
Tom Sturridge... he's bland.
Jane Fonda... I would like to be her bitch.
thevoid -- perhaps you've seen the wrong performances. That is an adjective i would never come up with for him. It's too bad though that he hasn't got a film to work for him as well as the stage productions (in which he usually drives the critics wild). I've only seen him on stage once and it was in his least acclaimed stage performance but i still thought he was very very good.
Yass Showbiz History!!!!!!!
Whatever you might say about Velvet Buzzsaw (don't get me started), you can't say Tom Sturridge gave a bland performance in the film.