6 random things that happened on this day, February 12th, in showbiz history...
1949 Annie Gets Your Gun starring Ethel Merman closes on Broadway after a nearly three year run. The troubled film adaptation directed by George Sidney (a replacement for Busby Berkeley who was fired) and starring Betty Hutton (a replacement for Judy Garland who was fired) arrives the following year.
1959 The Black Orchid starring Sophia Loren and Anthony Quinn opens in theaters. Sophia Loren had won the Volpi Cup at the Venice Film Festival the previous summer...
1968 The 25th annual Golden Globes are held with In the Heat of the Night (drama) and The Graduate (comedy) winning the Best Picture prizes. This is one of those years where the Globes had better outcomes than the Oscars when it came to actresses: Carol Channing won Supporting Actress for Thoroughly Modern Millie (did you read Claudio's great piece on that performance?), and Anne Bancroft and Dame Edith Evans won the Best Actress prizes for their brilliant performances in The Graduate and The Whisperers respectively.
2005 The 58th BAFTAs are held with The Aviator winning Best Film and My Summer of Love taking British Film. If you've never seen My Summer of Love you should. It was quite a debut for Emily Blunt. With Million Dollar Baby not eligible, BAFTAs are unable to predict the Oscars with their win and choose Imelda Staunton as Best Actress for Vera Drake and Clive Owens as Best Supporting Actor for Closer.
2015 A strange weekend at movie theaters. Fifty Shades of Grey, and Kingsman: Secret Service both open in wide release (and both are big hits) while Taika Waititi's mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows and the musical The Last 5 Years open in limited release. What We Do in the Shadows has since been adapted into a TV series and achieved that rare thing: being better than its source material.
The movie that spawned one of today's funniest tv series
2017 The 70th BAFTAs are held with La La Land winning Best Film and I Daniel Blake winning British Film. On the same night across the ocean, the 59th Grammys are held with Adele winning Best Album for "25" in the year most critics wanted Beyonce to win for "Lemonade". David Bowie won the Best Alternative Album Grammy posthumously for his final record "Blackstar," and album that had been released two days before his death.
Today's Birthday Suit
Happy 52nd birthday to the underrated Oscar nominee Josh Brolin (Milk, Inherent Vice, No Country For Old Men, Avengers: Infinity War) who posted this photo to Instagram last month with the following funny caption.
At the end of the day a life will judged by how often you were naked. Nobody told they meant metaphorically.
Other showbiz birthdays today: Christina Ricci (Addams Family Values, Black Snake Moan), Oscar nominated director Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan, Mother!), Oscar nominated Italian director Franco Zeffirelli (Romeo and Juliet, La Traviata), comic actor John Michael Higgins (Pitch Perfect, Best in Show), Lorne Greene (Battlestar Galactica, Bonanza), Oscar winning writer/director Costa-Gavras (Missing, Z) Enver Gjokaj (The Avengers, Dollhouse), Indonesia's Iko Uwais (Wu Assassins, Triple Threat), Joe Don Baker (Fletch, Walking Tall), Michael Ironside (Starship Troopers, Scanners), Anna Hopkins (The Expanse), Lochlyn Munro (Riverdale, White Chicks), Bond girl Maud Adams (Octopussy, The Man with the Golden Gun), Alex Menese (Jane the Virgin, Selena), Simon MacCorkindale (Manimal, Jaws 3-D), Joanna Kerns (Growing Pains, Girl Interrupted), Annette Crosbie (The Slipper and the Rose, Calendar Girls), South Korea's Park Bo-Young (A Werewolf Boy, The Silenced), singer Chyna Phillips, and former talk show host Arsenio Hall.
AND...
sorry i can't do any work today it's gromits birthday pic.twitter.com/xVuAkASB6b
— dieter wuppertal von übernatürlich | BLM (@edmundludd) February 12, 2021