Showbiz History: Derek Jarman, The Misfits, and Jennifer Lawrence's breakout
Sunday, January 31, 2021 at 9:00AM 7 random things that happened on this day, January 31st, in showbiz history
1941 Alfred Hitchcock's comedy Mr & Mrs Smith, no not the Brangelina one, opened in theaters starring Carole Lombard and Robert Montgomery. Yes, Hitchcock once made a screwball comedy without thriller elements.
1961 The Misfits, the elegaic last film for both Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable and one of Montgomery Clift's last pictures, has its world premiere in Reno, Nevada. It will open in movie theaters the next day...
Mary Tyler Moore won Best Actress, Drama for "Ordinary People"
1981 The 38th annual Golden Globes are held with Ordinary People (drama) and Coal Miner's Daughter (musical or comedy) winning Best Picture. The Globes used to classify music-centric biopics as musicals though in the past decade they've stopped doing that. If their recent habits had been in place Fame would have surely won Best Comedy or Musical, though like Coal Miner's Daughter, it's also a drama. But can we stop to marvel and shake our heads in confusion that comedy classic 9 to 5 wasn't even nominated for Best Comedy?!? It received three nominations, ALL of which went to Dolly Parton (Best Actress, Best Song, Best New Star) but she didn't win any of them!
Meanwhile Shogun (drama) and Taxi (comedy) win for TV; the Globes used to group miniseries in with regular drama series in their awards.
1986 The comedy Down & Out in Beverly Hills opens in theaters becoming a huge hit and making Bette Midler a true movie star again after four years off from the big screen post her bomb Jinxed (1982). But then her movie career was always spot since she was often concentrating on her music career instead.
1987 The 44th annual Golden Globes are held. Platoon (drama) and Hannah and Her Sisters (comedy) win the Best Picture prizes. Only one of the acting winners, Marlee Martin (Children of a Lesser God) continued on to an Oscar win. The other acting winners were Bob Hoskins (Mona Lisa), Sissy Spacek (Crimes of the Heart), Paul Hogan (Crocodile Dundee), Maggie Smith (A Room with a View), Tom Berenger (Platoon). Wouldn't it be so exciting to have a year with some awards-speech variety again? It's been so long since this wasn't exceedingly rare.
2010 Winter's Bone wins the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, proving the breakthrough for young Jennifer Lawrence who will very quickly become a superstar and Oscar favourite.
2020 Kitty Green's The Assistant opens in limited release, generating more discussion about the #metoo movement and unintentionally heralding the fact that 2020 was going to be a great movie year for female directors. Though it hasnt fared particularly well in the awards race, two key Spirit nominations aside, for a good stretch people were calling it one of 2020's best. Have you seen it?
Today's Birthday Suit
Today would have been the 79th birthday of avant garde queer legend Derek Jarman who died too young at 52 of AIDS-related causes. He gave our current cinema two genius talents and Oscar winners: Tilda Swinton AND costume designer Sandy Powell. The world should be eternally grateful and Jarman's name should be honoured more frequently. His films are still thought provoking and bold today. They are also filled with lots of male nudity. If you've never seen any Edward II (1991) is perhaps the most accessible (though it's hardly less confrontational), Sebastiane (1976) is the most naked, and The Last of England (1988) is the most Tilda-specific (though she's in several of his pictures).
Bonus Birthday suit: Glynn TurmanOther showbiz birthdays today: Current Oscar hopeful Glynn Turman (pictured left with his Emmy win for In Treatment) of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom fame turns 74 today!
Other birthdays or anniversaries you can celebrate today include the iconic Carol Channing who would have turned 100 today (more on her a bit later), operatic Mario Lanza (also would've been 100 today, the legendary Tallulah Bankhead (Lifeboat) who is played by Natasha Lyonne in a very small role in next month's biopic United States vs Billie Holliday, Kerry Washington (Scandal, Django Unchained), Oscar nominated composer Philip Glass (The Hours, Kundun), Oscar nominee Jean Simmons (Hamlet, The Happy Ending), Kelly Lynch (Drugstore Cowboy), Oscar nominated producer Megan Ellison (American Hustle, Zero Dark Thirty), Oscar nominee Minnie Driver (Good Will Hunting, Beyond the Lights), Mrs Degeneres Portia de Rossi (Arrested Development), Jonathan Banks (Mudbound, Breaking Bad) Justin Timberlake (Palmer, The Social Network) director Dexter Fletcher (Rocketman, Eddie the Eagle), Suzanne Pleshette (The Birds, The Bob Newhart Show), Bobby Moynihan (SNL), Joel Courtney (Super 8, The Kissing Booth), Australia's Rahat Adams (Pacific Rim: Uprising, Liar Liar Vampire), Anthony LaPaglia (Lantana, Empire Records), 70s star James Franciscus (Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Hunter), Paul Scheer (Veep, Wet Hot American Summer), South Korea's Lee Yeong-ae (Joint Security Area, Bring Me Home) Joanne Dru (Red River, All the King's Men) and musician Marcus Mumford (aka Mr Carey Mulligan).
Reader Comments (16)
isn't it amazing, looking back in 2021, that Marilyn was NEVER nominated for an Oscar?
Marilyn coming off her wonderful performance in The Misfits and looking luminous in her footage for Something's Gotta Give (albeit difficult for her to get through takes) is so fucking tragic.
Today is also the centenary of immensely talented, famously temperamental opera singer/movie star Mario Lanza.
This seems like the perfect time of year-dark, gloomy and often frigid-for The Misfits to be released. Wonderful film but so grim.
Tallulah Bankhead, Jean Simmons, Suzanne Pleshette AND Carol Channing all on the same day. It's an actressexual dream!!!
I love Mary Tyler Moore and I'm still so glad that she got the role and the nomination for Ordinary People, but I think the Academy chose correctly giving the Oscar to Sissy Spacek for a role with a higher degree of difficulty in my opinion. Still, MTM must be one of the most worthy runners-up ever, sort of like Jessica Lange in Frances.
I don't think I've ever seen a Derek Jarman movie. They definitely don't have his DVDs at the library, nor do his films show up on TCM. ;-) I'll have to try and figure something out.
Jarman movies are mostly experimental, but I really like Caravaggio and Edward II
Love Bette 80's movie star,Is it not cool to say Mary Tyler Moore should have won the Oscar.
Jarman is also responsible for getting Jaye Davidson to Neil Jordan.
Jarman is also responsible for the amazing look of Ken Russell's THE DEVILS. He could have "gone Hollywood" then and wound up a superstar art director with a shelf of Oscars.
But seriously, being gay or queer and not knowing all about Derek Jarman is as bad as not knowing who Almodovar is, maybe worse in some ways. In the late 80s and early 90s he was kind of an analogous figure to, say, Spike Lee for African Americans. He fought the good fight: one amazing film after another, one of the first openly HIV positive individuals in the film world, he gave the establishment hell in interviews and books of his published diaries. When I hear a young queer say, "who's Jarman," I want to handcuff them to a chair and pull out my powerpoint slides and start the lecture.
Birthday Boy Dexter Fletcher (cited above for his directing work) played the title role in Birthday Boy Derek Jarman's Caravaggio (1986), a personal favorite also starring Tilda and Sean Bean.
IFC used to air some Jarman films. I remember seeing Edward II on tv years ago but being not quite old enough to appreciate everything. I remember Tilda being great though and that it was unapologetic about showing male/male relationships. Now the channel shows Matrix sequels so maybe they have forgotten what independent film actually means.
Tom G -- sounds like IndieWire too and the constant articles about superhero films.
One Centennial you missed. John Agar was born 31 January 2021.
Derek Jarman was a true visionary filmmaker- a term that is now over use with any director who thinks he is the next Kubrick
I love Down and Out in Beverly Hills. I never knew it was a remake of a film by Jean Renoir. My parents love that film as well.
I agree MTM should’ve won the Oscar. It’s an emotionally devastating performance.
Mario Lanza may be the greatest male singer of all time.
If you have access to Kanopy, a lot of the Derek Jarman films are there. I'm hoping one day the Criterion Channel will show a bunch, maybe one year during pride month. Ironically, one of the least interesting Jarman films, JUBILEE, is the one that's currently in the Criterion Collection. Sometimes they pop up on Mubi. All of them are or have been available on DVD/Blu-ray in the United states, mostly from Kino Lorber.