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.