5 random things that happened on this day, January 22nd, in showbiz history
1954 The 11th Golden Globes are held. The Robe wins Best Drama but there wasn't a Best Comedy or Musical category for 1953 films. How strange... I mean Kiss Me Kate AND Roman Holiday AND Calamity Jane AND How to Marry a Millionaire AND The Band Wagon were all right there! But really it's true of almost every awards institution that the first decade plus is rife with inconsistencies. The Globe only really settled into the traditional field of nominees and categories we have now later in the 1950s.
1959 Room at the Top premieres in the UK...
It will open in the US a couple of months later and go on to six Oscar nominations including Best Picture and win Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Actress for Simone Signoret.
1982 Shoot the Moon opens in limited release. While it has devout fans -- including some right here at TFE -- enthusiasm didn't last for a full year until the Oscars and the movie received no nominations despite mild success at the Globes and BAFTA.
1994 51st Golden Globes are held with Schindler's List and Mrs Doubtfire winning the movie prizes and NYPD Blue and Seinfeld taking the TV awards. NO acting category transferred fully intact to the Oscars thereafter. The film which took the biggest dive from the Globes to the Oscars that year were Mrs Doubtfire which was up for Picture and Actor here and only Makeup at the Oscars and The Age of Innocence which was up for Picture, Director, Actress, Supporting Actress, and Screenplay at the Globes but took a big hit come Oscar nomination morning missing in all but the latter two.
Bizarrely, Michelle Pfeiffer now claims she's not proud of her Countess Olenska performance!
MICHELLE STOP YOU ARE PERFECT IN THAT https://t.co/ddaOWsRSCm pic.twitter.com/SvL4WBwRJf
— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) January 21, 2021
2016 Comedy Dirty Grandpa, horror film The Boy, and scifi action film The 5th Wave were the new releases that Friday but audiences were still way more interested in two December releases, Oscar hopeful The Revenant in its 5th weekend and The Force Awakens in its sixth money-guzzling weekend.
Today's Birthday Suit
Happy 56th to Oscar nominee Diane Lane. Everyone remembers how spectacularly she navigated confused desire in Unfaithful (2002) but she was also terrific in similar less erotic-thriller more period drama terrain with Viggo Mortensen in A Walk on the Moon (1999). Such an underrated talent! She currently stars in the crime drama Let Him Go (2020) with Kevin Costner.
Other showbiz birthdays today: Oscar nominee Ann Sothern (Whales of August, Lady in a Cage), Conrad Veidt (Casablanca, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari), John Hurt (1984, The Elephant Man), Director Jim Jarmusch (Paterson, Only Lovers Left Alive), O-T Fagbenie (Handmaid's Tail, Looking), Oscar nominee Linda Blair (The Exorcist), Oscar nominee Piper Laurie (The Hustler, Carrie), Olivia d'Abo (Conan the Destroyer, Point of No Return), Germany's August Wittgenstein (The Crown, Das Boot), Jennifer Spence (You Me Her, Continuum), Christopher Masterson (Malcolm in the Middle), Balthazar Getty (Lord of the Flies, Brothers & Sisters), John Wesley Shipp (Dawson's Creek, The Flash), Gabriel Macht (The Good Shepherd), Bill Bixby (The Incredible Hulk), Choi Min-sik (Old Boy), Oscar nominee Seymour Cassell (Faces, Dick Tracy), two-time Tony winner Katie Finneran (Bloodline, Wonderfalls), Oscar winning composer Justin Hurwitz (La La Land, First Man, Whiplash), rockstars Michael Hutchence of INXS fame and Steve Perry of Journey fame, and early film pioneers Sergei M Eisenstein (Battleship Potemkin) and D.W. Griffith (Intolerance), and singer Sam Cooke (who would have turned 90 today if not for his early tragic death at just 33) who is surely finding new fans thanks to Leslie Odom Jr's portrayal in One Night in Miami.