6 random things that happend on this day, February 1st, in showbiz history
1929 One of the earliest movie musicals Broadway Melody premieres in Los Angeles. The following year it would win Best Picture at the 2nd annual Oscars, the first sound film to do so...
1976 Rich Man, Poor Man, a 12 chapter family saga miniseries that begin in Post World War II and stretched through the 1960s premieres on ABC. It was a big big deal at the time winning 4 Golden Globes, 4 Emmys, and even landing a Grammy nomination for Best Score.
1982 Late Night with David Letterman begins on NBC (and will run through 1993). Bill Murray was the first guest.
2002 Birthday Girl hits movie theaters after the festival circuit the previous fall. Though released between The Others and The Hours (a very Kidman-Mania time period), the Russian mail order bride drama failed to find much of an audience.
2004 SuperBowl XXXVII was on but what people mostly remember today is that a "costume malfunction" in the half-time show revealed Janet Jackson's nipple-pierced breast. It weirdly ended her A list career, if not the career itself, because Americas were and still are hopelessly Puritan when it comes to sexuality.
2013 At the movie theaters, the zombie romcom Warm Bodies opened (remember how cute Nicholas Hoult's undead flesh eater was?). Meanwhile at home House of Cards began streaming on Netflix. Bingewatching was still kind of a new concept but everybody seemed to be doing it on this very day (except me. I was allergic to Kevin Spacey long before his career ended via predatory sexuality accusations)
Today's Birthday Suit
Happy 57th to British thespian Linus Roache who we always thought should have been a MUCH bigger star. He was so amazing in leading roles in the 1990s like Priest and The Wings of the Dove (both with amazing sex scenes) and the HBO film Shot Through the Heart. But then suddenly it was only supporting roles and then only television. Weird. Though perhaps it was devotion to the stage that prevented a big movie career?
Linus Roach in Priest
Other showbiz birthdays today: "King of Hollywood" Clark Gable (Gone With the Wind, It Happened One Night), Oscar's all-time favourite director John Ford (The Quiet Man, How Green Was My Valley, The Grapes of Wrath), 7 times Oscar nominated producer George Pal (War of the Worlds, The Time Machine) but all nominations were in Animated Short, Emmy winner Julia Garner (The Assistant, Grandma), Sherilyn Fenn (Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks), Michael C Hall (Dexter, Six Feet Under), Abbi Jacobsen (Broad City), Rachelle Lefevre (Twilight), Lee Thompson Young (Friday Night Lights), action star Ronda Rousey (Expendables 3, Furious 7), Germany's Barbara Auer (The Book Thief, Transit), comic actor Pauly Shore (Bio-Dome, Encino Man), Heather Morris (Glee, Spring Breakers), writer/actor Terry Jones (Monty Python and the Holy Grail, The Meaning of Life), Garret Morris (Saturday Night Live), Matt Lattanzi aka Olivia Newton-John's ex husband (My Tutor, Grease 2), Oscar nominee Stuart Whitman (The Mark, The Longest Day), Sherman Hemsley (The Jeffersons), Hong Kong's Tony Ka Fai Leung (The Lover, Cold War), musicians Harry Styles, Rick James, and Exene Cervenka, Helen Chandler the original "Mina Harker" (Dracula), Japan's Masahiro Higashide (Asako I & II, Death Note: Light up the New World) and the late promising star Brandon Lee (The Crow) son of Bruce.