Showbiz History: Meg & Dennis, Clarice & Hannibal, Wayne & Garth
Sunday, February 14, 2021 at 11:00AM 6 random things that happened on this day, February 14th, in showbiz history...
1931 Tod Browning's Dracula starring Bela Lugosi arrives in US theaters, two days after its NYC premiere. The studio wisely publicized that people had fainted at the premiere and the movie was a huge success. Sequels and spin-offs and endless remakes or, rather, adaptations of the Bram Stoker source material follow...
1971 Fifty years ago today, Ben-Hur (1959) makes its first appearance on television. Back then movies making it to TV was a big deal. Once it was out of theaters, there was no way to see it (no home video market, no cable, no streaming, etcetera) -- a different universe!
1991 Superstar couple Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid marry on Valentine's Day! There son Jack Quaid, who followed them into the acting profession and currently co-stars on The Boys, is born 14 months later -- he's always looked like an exact mix of the two of them. The Ryan-Quaid marriage lasted for 10 very high profile years (The photoshoot above is sadly nowhere to be found on the internet except for these low res images -it's from an A+ 1993 Herb Ritts photoshoot)
On that same day Silence of the Lambs (read our deep dive!) opened in movie theaters. It would go on to become a blockbuster and become only the third film to ever win the 'big five' Oscars: Picture, Director, Actress, Actor, Screenplay. (The other two are It Happened One Night and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)
1992 Party Time. Excellent. Wayne's World opens in theaters, the biggest theatrical hit ever in the subgenre of "derived from a Saturday Night Live skit" with a global gross of $183 million dollars. Of course if you adjust for inflation Blues Brothers (1980) might well top it.
2005 YouTube launches which, like Facebook, shifts the world.
Today's Birthday Suit
Happy 43rd to Danai Gurira (Black Panther, The Walking Dead, The Visitor) who has screen presence to spare.
Other showbiz birthdays today: Oscar perennial Thelma Ritter (Pillow Talk, Pickup on South Street), One of Bergman's muses Harriet Andersson (Cries & Whispers, Smiles of a Summer Night), Florence Henderson (The Brady Bunch, Song of Norway), Freddie Highmore (Finding Neverland, The Good Doctor), Shane Harper (A Teacher, God's Not Dead), Madison Iseman (Jumanji, Annabelle Comes Home), Oscar nominee Meg Tilly (Agnes of God, The Big Chill), Director/actor Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead, Star Trek), Patrick Heusinger (Frances Ha, Jack Reacher), Director Angela Robinson (Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, D.E.B.S.) Oscar nominated director Alan Parker (Evita, the Commitments) who we recently lost, Brett Dier (Jane the Virgin), Zach Galligan (Gremlins, Waxwork), Gregory Hines (White Nights, The Preacher's Wife), Harry Holland who is Tom's litle brother (The Impossible, Diana), South Korea's Sung Hoon (Are We in Love, Brothers in Heaven), Edward Platt (North by Northwest, Get Smart), Teller of Penn & Teller fame, Uggie the dog (The Artist, Water for Elephants), and soprano Renée Fleming.
Reader Comments (5)
That's a nice pic of Dennis and Meg,both still underappreciated,what Meg did with Romantic Comedies might never be equaled in future.
Since you asked, in 2019, when the average ticket price was $9.16, Blues Brothers would have made the equivalent of $194,879,477 at the box office and Wayne's World would have made $268,613,850. So it's fair to say Wayne's World was the most successful of the SNL-based movies, even adjusted for inflation.
talking about Ritter... should we discuss how underrated "Boeing, Boeing" is, with Jerry Lewis playing against type, and Ritter's sharp presence? A pity that Oscar didn't do as the Globes, who nominated them both...
Too bad neither Meg nor Dennis never received their respective star status Oscar nod. ;(
Dracula has dated elements today naturally but still possesses a creepy sense of unease that was a signature of Tod Browning's work.
I don't remember Ben-Hur's premiere specifically but I do remember when those big ticket movies would premiere on TV and it's true they were a big deal. All our neighbors gathered together to watch West Side Story the first time it was on, which was fun and very clubby with people commenting on different parts and so forth.
The biggest deal was probably when GWTW finally made its bow, it was a HUGE event. It was shown over two nights and Olivia de Havilland refused to participate (they had asked her to film a special segment) because they planned to break the film in a different place than after Scarlett's "As God is My Witness!" speech and as scrappy as ever she said that violated the spirit of the film. I believe the network changed its mind at the last minute but by then it was too late for them to have Olivia film do any commentary.