MERRY CHRISTMAS. Listen, we can't do an "on this day in showbiz history" post for Christmas because approximately a trillion movies have opened on Christmas day over the years. It's traditionally the biggest moviegoing day of any year... or at least it was before COVID made movie theaters unavailable or scary. But what we can do is celebrate movie and tv stars who were gifts to their parents on Christmas day because there aren't too many of them. We were only going to highlight 5 legends but we ended up including 20 showbiz people because we are insane. Please enjoy the pretty people after the jump...
RACHEL KELLER
Happy 28th birthday to the actress who you know from the first season of Fargo in 2014, or as "Sid Barrett" on Legion. Next up for Keller is the crime series Tokyo Vice
GAITE JANSEN
Happy 29th to this Dutch actress who recently co-starred on the Cinemax series Jett. You also might remember has as "Princess Tatian" on Peaky Blinders
PERDITA WEEKS
Happy 35th to this tv actor born in Cardiff Wales. You may recognize her from the Magnum P.I, reboot or the horror mystery As Above So Below (2014) or the third and final season of the supernatural series Penny Dreadful a few years back.
GRIFFIN MATTHEWS
Happy 39th to this out actor best known previously for Weeds, and the third season of Dear White People. He's currently on The Flight Attendant airing on HBO. He also writes stage musicals with his husband Matt Gould.
JEREMY STRONG
Today is the 42nd birthday of this Boston-born Emmy-winning star of Succession. Strong actually proved to be an agent of chaos for us this year, taste-wise, as a viewer since he's altogether brilliant/ magnificent in Succession but um, kinda bad (sorry!!!) in Trial of the Chicago 7 where he seems to be going for broad comedy in a courtroom drama? Curious.
EVA MELANDER
Happy 46th to this special actress born in Gävie Sweden. You probably won't recognize her face straightaway because in her most famous role, the unforgettably strange and horny and fantastical Oscar-submission Border, she was wearing some Oscar-nominated prosthetic makeup.
ANNIE LENNOX
The Oscar and Grammy winning singer originally from Aberdeenshire, Scotland turns 66 today. We can't tell you how much we loved her growing up as the lead singer of The Eurythmics and then a chart topping force on her solo own. LEGEND.
CCH POUNDER
This four time Emmy-nominated television star was born 68 years ago in British Guiana. Do you think she should have won the Emmy on any of her nominations: Guest Actress The X-Files (1995), Supporting Actress ER (1997), Supporting Actress The Shield (2005) or Guest Actress The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency (2009)?
SISSY SPACEK
Happy birthday to the Oscar winning star born 71 years ago in Quitman, Texas. Her most famous onscreen mama warned that 'they're all gonna laugh at you' but this wasn't remotely the case because Spacek mostly steered clear of comedies and absolutely slays in dramas. Sissy has lately shifted to grandmotherly roles in TV series like Homecoming, Castle Rock, and Bloodline but we keep hoping she'll get another great movie role; she's six months younger than Streep who still gets them, after all.
HANNA SCHYGULLA
Happy 77th to this legend of the silver screen who was born in Konighsuter, Germany (which is now Chorzow, Slaskie, Poland). Her most famous roles were in The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979) and Lili Marleen (1981) but she won the coveted Cannes Best Actress prize for the now little-discussed Storia di Piera (1983) an incestuously tinged drama with Isabelle Huppert as her daughter (yes, Huppert has been making psychosexual dramas her entire career. Not that we're complaining as she's stupendous at them)
James Ivory and Ismail Merchant in Manhattan in 1975. They'd been together since 59/60. Photographed by Mary Ellen Mark
ISHMAIL MERCHANT
Born back in 1936 in Bombay, British India (now Mumbai, India), you might say his much-celebrated four time Oscar-nominated film career began with his short film The Creation of Woman that was shown at Cannes in 1961. But it actually traces back further to 1959 when he was just 23 and met the director James Ivory (then 31) at a screening of Ivory's second short film. The two began a romantic and artistic partnership that lasted for the rest of Merchant's life from their debut feature The Household (1963) through their Oscar-beloved films of the late 80s and early 90s through to their last film together The White Countess (2005). Merchant died at 68 in 2005. His partner, James Ivory, is still with us and we had the enormous and humbling pleasure of meeting him a few years back when he was promoting his screenplay to Call Me By Your Name.
DANI CRAYNE
Happy 86th birthday to this still living blonde 1950s beauty who was born in Minneapolis. She was part of the musical comedy Ain't Misbehavin' (1955) and nabbed the role of the legendary beauty "Helen of Troy" in the all-star flop The Story of Mankind (1957) but her film career was scant. She was a showbiz fixture of the time, though, married to three different famous men over the next decades: the musician Buddy Greco, the legendary stuntman Hal Needham, and the Golden-Globe winning star of "The Fugitive" David Janssen.
MABEL KING
Born on this day in 1932 in Charleston, South Carolina. This singer/actress gifted us with a trio of well-remembered supporting roles from the 1970s: Mama on the tv sitcom "What's Happening?", the mother in The Jerk, and, of course "Evillene" in The Wiz (which she reprised in the 1975 Broadway adaptation of the movie receiving a Drama Desk nomination for Featured Actress). She unfortunately died in 1999.
ROD SERLING
Born in 1924 in Syracuse New York he would later become iconic as the creator, writer, and host of TV's supernatural anthology series The Twilight Zone (1959-1964). He would have been 96 today but he died far too young at just 50 after two heart attacks (he was a heavy smoker) in 1975.
KARUNA BANNERJEE
This actress was born in Calcutta, British India in 1919. She co-starred in Satyajit Ray's classic Pather Panchali (1955) and was BAFTA nominated for "Foreign Actress" for her role in Ray's next feature Aparajito (1956). She died in 2001 at the age of 81.
QUENTIN CRISP
The inimitable writer/critic/actor/personality and famous-queer-before-there-were-famous-queers, was born 112 years ago today in the London suburbs to unsuspecting lawyer and housewife parents. I've recommended his book "How to Go to the Movies" so many times but of course he's best known for his autobiography "The Naked Civil Servant". We're eternally grateful to Sally Potter for giving him the role of the Queen Elizabeth I in Orlando (1992) which was a perfect cap to his unique showbiz career (even if he made about 10 film appearances thereafter). He died in 1999 at the age of 90.
CAB CALLOWAY
This trailblazing composer, singer, and actor was born 113 years ago today to a teacher mother and lawyer father in Rochester New York and then grew up in Baltimore. He first came to fame as a big-selling recording artist and bandleader of Harlem's famous "Cotton Club" in the 1930s and hit Hollywood soon thereafter through short films and eventually features including famous titles like Stormy Weather (1943) and Porgy & Bess (1953) but opportunities were of course limited due to Hollywood's then segregated nature and his heyday being well-before the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. He died in 1994 at the age of 86 but was thankfully very appreciated while he was still among the living with Hall of Fame style awardage.
HUMPHREY BOGART
Today is the 121st anniversary of this iconic movie star's birth in New York City, New York. What's your favourite Bogie performance: Casablanca? In a Lonely Place? The African Queen? The Caine Mutiny? The Maltese Falcon? To Have and Have Not? Something else? Do tell.
CHARLES PATHÉ
137 years ago in Seine-et-Mrane France this hugely influential figure was born to a butcher shop family. His life was unremarkable until, as an adult, he saw the phonograph and then the kinetoscope invented by Thomas Edison. He and his brothers launched Pathé Brothers and sold phonographs and cinematic equipment and later made films and newsreels. He famously stated about his career:
I did not invent cinema, I made it an industry.
Pathé -- you've seen their logo on many films -- is of course a still running French business. It's not the exact same business but a descendant of if you will. Pathé is the second oldest operating film company in the world. The oldest, Gaumont, is also a French company.