Showbiz History: Black Panther, Sweet Charity, and Paul & Joanne Marry
Friday, January 29, 2021 at 8:00AM 10 random things that happened on this day, January 29th, in showbiz history
1937 The Good Earth has its world premiere in Los Angeles though it won't really be playing for the general public until the summer. It later receives five Oscar nominations including Best Picture. Luise Rainer in "yellow face" (sigh) becomes the first actor, male or female, to win consecutive Oscars.
1951 Elizabeth Taylor divorces her first husband, hotel heir Conrad Hilton Jr, after 8 months of marriage. She would marry 7 more times in her much gawked-at life but the first was her shortest marriage...
1958 Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward marry. She was just a few months away from her Oscar win but Hollywood would make him wait three more decades for his. They would prove one of Hollywood's most golden and enduring couples. Newman passed away in 2008 but Woodward is still with us; she turns 91 next month.
1959 Sleeping Beauty, to our eyes, the masterpiece of old school Disney animation, premieres. It was initially not a success, failing to recoup its budget (it was the most expensive Disney feature made up till that point.) But time has made it an enormous winner.
1964 Stanley Kubrick's satire Dr Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb premieres. It will receive 4 Oscar nominations including Best Picture but lose all of them.
1966 Sweet Charity starring Gwen Verdon opens on Broadway. It will run for a year and a half and be nominated for 9 Tonys though it wins only one of them (Best Choreography, Bob Fosse). Fosse will immediately parlay its success into launching his film directing career but replace his lover Gwen Verdon with their friend Shirley Maclaine who was already a movie star. Uff remember how great Michelle Williams as Verdon in Fosse/Verdon?
1977 The 34th annual Golden Globes crown Rocky and Babs' much maligned remake of A Star is Born as the Best Pictures of the year. It's an interesting Globes year because the acting lists are quite different than Oscars in each acting category.
1983 The 40th annual Golden Globes are held. Despite Gandhi winning the most Globes, it loses Best Picture. The best picture winners were E.T. (drama) and Tootsie (comedy). All four (drama) acting winners transferred over to Oscar night, though.
2016 Kung Fu Panda 3 opens in theaters, temporarily ending a successful animated franchise. Unlike its predecessors it fails to secure an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature.
2018 Black Panther has its world premiere in Los Angeles -- "Wakanda Forever!". It will open two weeks later in movie theaters everywhere becoming a truly colossal hit. Black Panther 2, which has the tragic fate of having to soldier on without its star Chadwick Boseman (RIP), is supposedly still due in theaters on July 8th, 2022.
Today's Birthday Suit
Happy 51st birthday to "Rollergirl" herself, SAG nominee Heather Graham. (Can you believe Boogie Nights lots the Outstanding Cast SAG to The Full Monty? That was some bulls*** right there)
as a child I was really into Beastmaster and thought it was because of the animals. Teehee.Other showbiz birthdays today: 80s hunk Marc Singer, pictured left (Beastmaster, V, Arrow, Dallas, If You Could See What I Hear), Oscar winning genius writer Paddy Chayefsky (Network, Marty, The Hospital), Oscar winner Dorothy Malone (Written on the Wind, Basic Instinct), the legendary comedy director Ernst Lubitsch (Trouble in Paradise, The Shop Around the Corner), W.C. Fields (My Little Chickadee, Bank Dick), Victor Mature (Samson & Delilah, Kiss of Death), John Forsythe (Charlie's Angels, Dynasty), Oscar nominee Katharine Ross (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Graduate), Tom Selleck (Magnum PI, Three Men and a Baby), sitcom star Ann Jillian (Mr Mom, It's a Living), iconic Oprah Winfrey (The Color Purple, The Butler), Heather Graham (Boogie Nights, Drugstore Cowboy), Andrew Keegan (Party of Five), Justin Hartley (This Is Us, Revenge), actor/director Edward Burns (The Brothers McMullen, Saving Private Ryan), Sam Trammell (True Blood, The Fault in Our Stars), Sara Gilbert (Roseanne, The Conners), Terry Kinney (Billions, The Firm), producer Polly Platt (Say Anything..., Broadcast News), Norway's Anders Baasmo Christiansen (Kon-Tiki, The King's Choice), Italy's writer/director Elio Petri (Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion), Germany's Vinzenz Kiefer (The Baader Meinhof Complex, Jason Bourne), oft-adapted playwright Anton Chekhov (Uncle Vanya, The Seagull, The Cherry Orchard), and American Idol's Adam Lambert
Reader Comments (13)
Gandhi actually won Best Foreign Film at the Globes. I don't really know the history, but know A Passage to India won the same prize two years later. Maybe only American films were eligible for the main Best Picture prizes, until they expanded the Foreign category to become Best Foreign Language Film?
I'm glad these Showbiz History posts are still happening, btw. Especially the flashbacks to Golden Globes and Oscars from years past. Thanks for all the hard work!
Ditto on Beastmaster. E.T. is such a wonderful and wondrous movie.
I know it is kind of taboo but... can we talk about how much overrated, "Black Panther" is? I mean, it's good, but it is middle of the road MCU in quality. The very same year, the MCU did shock everyone with Infinity War, which juggled with so much and delivered one of the very best endings in Movie History, leaving millions shaking in disbelief. It is extremely superior on every single level, and BP is unfairly championed as a vindication of Africa, when it is actually merely adapting the white men (Kirby and Lee) vision of a technified Africa, with shitload of budget that couldn't escape the mediocre CGI final battle and the "fight among equals" trope that pretty much dominates the MCU... Infinity War actually broke that tendency and gave us something completely different and an ending that never warranted (beyond the marketing that some of the characters would come back for solo films) that they would be coming back (and how). Infinity War was one of 2018's very best films, Black Panther was just OK (and had strong problems within).
Newman and Woodward were a true golden movie star couple..."Sleeping Beauty" is the pinnacle of Disney classic hand drawn animation....and yes Mark Singer is the stuff which gay teen fantasies are made of
Bob Fosse was not just a great choreographer, he knew how to film a dance sequence to create a cinematographical experience.
'Rich Man's Frug' and 'The Rhytm of Life' are two of the best musical moments in films.
Come on! that Full Monty cast had such great chemistry where violence wasn't there prevailing bond as in so many male centric films.
I remember watching a shirtless Marc Singer in The Taming Of The Shrew (on PBS!) as a teen and thought I was into Shakespeare. ;-)
I often forget Joanne Woodward is still alive. She must have been pretty young when she nabbed Oscar AND Paul Newman.
mark -- they did but BOOGIE is one of the all time great ensembles
jesus -- i think the problem with viewing iNFINITY WAR as 'greater' is that it does not tell a complete story. the avengers films always have that problem. It's more like a giant tv series and an episode... whereas BLACK PANTHER can be a satisfying watch all by its lonesome... and that is major for superhero films.
Stephen M -- that must have been it because it wasn't nominated in Best Film.
@Nathaniel...
... but Infinity War does have a complete story... the rise of Thanos and the fulfillment of his desire. He triumphs, the universe is doomed, fade to black. As the Russo brothers say, Endgame is a different story, the aftermath of Thanos' triumph. The only Infinity Stone that we don't see Thanos collect, is Xandar's. Every other stone is collected in front of our very own eyes... and I felt that you don't really need to know the characters in advance beforehand because the starring character is Thanos, not the heroes trying to stop him.
You didn't mention two of Marc Singer's best moments: For Ladies Only(1981) about strippers, with another eye candy Gregory Harrison and the cult supernatural romance The Two Worlds of Jenny Logan(1979) with the gorgeous Bionic Woman star Lindsay Wagner. Directors and producers never missed an opportunity to get him shirtless. Beastmaster is wonderful and there's Beastmaster 2 and 3 and a surprising - at least for me, i didn't know - a three-season tv series.
Marc Singer is like the '80s version of '60s Robert Conrad.
(I think you mean WC Fields, Nathaniel.)
Following up Black Panther was already an unenviable task, but now with Chadwick's passing I can't imagine how daunting it must be for everyone involved. Finger's crossed for them.
I haven't seen any of Luise Rainer's work, but every time I look her up I'm always shocked by how long she lived (she died in 2014 at the age of 104!) and her striking resemblance to Jennifer Ehle (and Meryl too).