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