Showbiz History: Stewart enlists, Blade returns, and Streisand's legend begins
Monday, March 22, 2021 at 10:40AM 7 random things that happened on this day, March 22nd, in showbiz history
1941 James Stewart joins the Air Corps, three weeks after winning the Oscar. He was the first American movie star to join the military for World War II
1957 The Elvis Presley single "All Shook Up" is released, soon hitting the top of the charts and becoming one of his signature songs...
1962 Barbra Streisand makes her Broadway debut in I Can Get It For Your Wholesale at the age of 19. The show is nominated for only one Tony, Best Featured Actress for Streisand as "Miss Marmelstein". By the following year she's on TV talk and variety shows and releases her first two albums. It's all a warm-up for her legend-making 1964 when Funny Girl arrives on Broadway.
1985 Porky's Revenge, the final film in the Porky's sex comedy franchise opens in theaters. The first two offensive comedies were all the rage in the early 80s but would never fly today. This one grossed a fifth of the original's take and the franchise disappeared.
2002 Blade II opens in theaters with Ron Perlman as the new baddie and rising Mexican director Guillermo del Toro stepping in behind the camera for his second English language picture (the first was the horror action film Mimic). This franchise will be rebooted for the Marvel Cinematic Universe soon with Mahershala Ali taking over the half-vampire hero role from Wesley Snipes.
2013 The Croods opens in theaters on its way to a Best Animated Feature Oscar nomination. Its sequel failed to repeat that honor this year, proving once again that the animated branch of the Academy isn't sequel crazy.
2018 Frozen the musical premieres on Broadway. It was bad but sells lots of tickets to tourists. It runs for only two years due to the COVID-19 lockdown.
Today's Birthday Suit
Happy 66th to the incredibly sexy and talented Oscar, Emmy, and BAFTA nominated actress Lena Olin of Enemies a Love Story, Romeo is Bleeding, Chocolat, Unbearable Lightness of Being (pictured below), Casanova, The Reader, and Alias fame. She was most recently seen in the paraplegic drama Adam (2020) and in the streaming series Hunter (2020) with Al Pacino and Logan Lerman. It's tough to call her "undervalued" given the mainstream awards recognition but, yeah, she's undervalued.
Other showbiz birthdays today: Oscar winner Reese Witherspoon (Big Little Lies, Walk the Line, Legally Blonde), Keegan Michael Key (Keanu, The Prom), Cole Hauser (White Oleander, 2 Fast 2 Furious), Anne Dudek (The Magicians, Mad Men), César winner Fanny Ardant (La Belle Epoque, 8 Women, Ridicule), Nick Robinson (Love Simon, A Teacher), Wililam Shatner (Star Trek, TJ Hooker), Will Yun Lee (Altered Carbon, The Wolverine), Oscar winner Haing S Ngor (The Killing Fields, Heaven & Earth), Denmark's Iben Hjejle (High Fidelity, Mifune), Matthew Modine (Married to the Mob, Stranger Things), Czech actor Babak Karimi (The Life Ahead, The Salesman), Heather Lind (Mistress America, Turn), James Wolk (Mad Men, For a Good Time Call) Kandyse McClaure (Seventh Son, Battlestar Galactica), composer Angelo Badalementi (Twin Peaks, A Very Long Engagement), Constance Wu (Hustlers, Crazy Rich Asians), character actor M Emmett Walsh (Blade Runner, Blood Simple), writer/director Nicole Holofcener (Please Give, Lovely & Amazing), Spain's trans star and Goya nominee Antonia San Juan (All About My Mother, The Platform), and Oscar darling screenwriter Eric Roth (Forrest Gump, The Insider, A Star is Born), and two Oscar and Tony winning composers Stephen Sondheim (Dick Tracy, Company, Sweeney Todd) and Andrew Lloyd Webber (Evita, Phantom of the Opera)
And late greats like... Switzerland's Bruno Ganz (Wings of Desire, Downfall), Oscar winner Karl Malden (On the Waterfront, A Streetcar Named Desire), Chico Marx (A Night at the Opera, Duck Soup), Oscar winner Joseph Schildkraut (Life of Emile Zola, Diary of Anne Frank), Emmy winner Werner Klemperer (Hogan's Heroes, Judgment at Nuremberg), and legendary mime Marcel Marceau.
Reader Comments (16)
Olin is the only 89 supporting actress nominee without an Oscar.
Lena Olin is so good. I love her on TV, and especially delight in the complexity she brought to Alias. But, I'd love to see her in more films. Her small role in the Reader is still memorable. She's so impactful.
The Streisand clip is great but in the interview segment you can already hear her impatience with the structured requirements of being a Broadway performer, one of the main reasons she's mentioned as to why she was eager to move away from the stage to movies.
Werner Klemperer belongs in late greats, he passed away in 2000.
Lena Olin is indeed undervalued. I always find quiet amazing that her father, Stig, was one of Bergman's earliest collaborators and Lena one of his latest (by the way, she's QUIET GOOD in "After the Rehearsal").
Lena is indeed undervalued. I always find quiet amazing that her father, Stig, was one of Bergman's earliest collaborators and Lena one of his latest (by the way, she's QUIET GOOD in "After the Rehearsal").
Question: when Broadway reopens, will the returning musicals/plays be considered revivals or just a continuation of the run? Frozen is no doubt coming back (not to mention Phantom, Lion King, and others) because as mentioned above, it made lots of money and will continue to do so. Frozen can probably run for at least 4 years after the pandemic ends so will it be cited as running six years or split into original/revival?
Blade 2 is such a GREAT movie. I specifically remember my mom saying "Ebert gave it some good stars" and we all went. She had no idea it was going to be as bloody and creature-feature as it was, lol. Looking forward to the reboot with Marvel but man Wesley Snipes is ICONIC.
Tom G, it was announced that Frozen would not be reopening when Broadway returns.
Nate, you mean QUITE good.
Almost There for Lena Olin in 88.
Tom G & Jimmy -- yeah, some are opting not to reopen but the fate of most shows is still up in the air. Though we've heard rumors that the longest running shows like Chicago and Phantom will be the first to reopen.
@ Nathaniel
Sorry to be so nitpicky about it, but you still have Marie-Christine Barrault captioned as BSA nominee in yesterday's post when it was Best Actress she was up for with Cousin Cousine. (I commented over there but it probably slipped through the cracks.)
But these things matter! ;-)
Blade 2... now that is a great film and certainly one of Guillermo del Toro's finest films as I like to think of it as the film that would be a taster of what he would for the Hellboy movies as I also think it's the best film of the Blade trilogy. I am eager to see what Mahershala Ali will do in the role.
Blade II is absolutely great. Trivia: I exchanged mail with del Toro while he was filmming it, as he thanked me for my review of The Devil's Backbone.
No kidding.
Sondheim and Webber and Badalamenti is quite a combo. And love Anne Dudek and James Wolk.
Yeah Three Artful, we know girl.