8 random things that happened on this day, February 11th, in showbiz history...
1975 Sarah T Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic starring fresh Oscar nominee Linda Blair airs on NBC. It was the second of a handful of TV movies she made after The Exorcist that all traded on the dichotomy of her being young and innocent in scary adult situations...
1977 In Search of Noah's Ark goes into wide release after a Christmas time limited release. It's one of those rare documentaries that successfully crossed over to become an enormous mainstream theatrical hit.
1979 Elvis, A TV biopic airs on ABC starring Kurt Russell as Elvis and Shelley Winters as his mother. Kurt Russell was nominated for Best Actor at the Emmys, one of only two mainstream nominations the actor ever received in a strangely underappreciated career. The other was a well earned Globe nomination for Silkwood (1983).
1983 Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" the quintessential 80s hit, is released.
1998 The 48th annual Berlinale commences. At festival's end Brazil's fantastic drama Central Station wins the Golden Bear. We're still sad it didn't nab the Oscar that year.
2005 Hitch, starring Will Smith, Eva Mendes, and Kevin James opens. It's a huge hit.
2007 The 49th annual Grammy Awards are held. The Dixie Chicks own the evening winning Record of the Year for "Not Ready to Make Nice" and Album of the Year for their comeback post downfall by daring to criticize the sitting Republican president. They knew what was up. We still worship that song and watch the video once in a while. Hey, let's do so right now.
2012 Superstar Whitney Houston dies accidentally drowning in the bathtub. She was 48.
Today's Birthday Suit
Burt Reynolds would have been 83 today (he passed away in 2018). Here he is in his infamous Cosmopolitan photoshoot that supposedly cost him the Oscar nomination for Deliverance (1972). Of course no one really knows why people aren't nominated when they aren't... but it makes good mythology.
Other showbiz birthdays today: Tina Louise (the last surviving cast member of Gilligan's Island), Oscar winning writer/director Joseph L Mankiewicz (played in Mank by Tom Pelphrey) of All About Eve fame, Eva Gabor (Gigi, Green Acres, The Rescuers), Oscar nominee Kim Stanley (Seance on a Wet Afternoon, Frances), Jennifer Aniston (Friends, Cake), Leslie Nielsen (The Naked Gun, Forbidden Planet), Oscar winning screenwriter Sidney Sheldon (The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer, I Dream of Jeannie), Carey Lowell (Sleepless in Seattle, Licence to Kill), Damian Lewis (Homeland), Q'orianka Kilcher (The New World, The Alienist), Taylor Lautner (Twilight Saga, Abduction), Japan's Takashi Shimura (Rashomon, Seven Samurai), Natalie Dormer (Game of Thrones), Germany's Lisa Vicari (Dark, Luna), Diane Franklin (Better Off Dead, The Last American Virgin), Dylan Arnold (Mudbound, Halloween Kills), Poland's Maciej Musial (The Witcher, 1983), Isaiah Mustafa (Shadowhunters, It Chapter Two), surfer Kelly Slater, rock star Sheryl Crow, Kelly Rowland of Destiny's Child fame, and one of South Korea's greatest actresses Jeon Do-Yeon (The Housemaid, Secret Sunshine)