6 random things that happened on this day, March 31st, in showbiz history
1930 The Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America agree to accept the "Motion Picture Production Code" a self-censorship guide for Hollywood films. Still, the industry waited another four years to begin enforcing this code which is why early sound cinema is referred to as "Pre-Code" (even though the Code was actually in place already). It's agonizing to look back and wonder how progressive Hollywood might have become had they not begun to enforce the code in the mid 30s since it delayed mature conversations about sexuality and gender roles and marriage (separate beds!), psychology and reality (bad behavior must always be punished!), delayed reckoning with abusive or oppressive religious organizations (no critiques of the clergy!), and forbade sympathetic depictions of homosexuality and interracial romance...
Hilariously the Code also cautioned against the use of firearms onscreen but back then, just as decades later with the MPAA, the censors basically didn't care about excessive violence and were mostly focused on being utter puritans about sex.
1939 The Hound of the Baskervilles opens in US movie theaters with London following two weeks later. Though it was not the first Sherlock Holmes movie it was so successful that 13 more films followed with Basil Rathbone as the great detective and Nigel Bruce as his sidekick.
1981 The 53rd annual Academy Awards are held honoring the best of 1980. It was a very good Best Picture race with the following films all formidable: Coal Miner's Daughter, Elephant Man, Ordinary People, Raging Bull, and Tess. Who would you have voted for that year? In an expanded Best Picture slate you would surely have seen Melvin & Howard, Fame, and The Stunt Man joining them given their nominations. (The very first Golden Rasberries were also held on this day with the award going to the awesome camp spectacle of Can't Stop the Music.)
1993 Rising actor Brandon Lee (Showdown in Little Tokyo, Rapid Fire) tragically dies during an on-set gun accident while shooting The Crow (1994). He was just 28. His father, the legendary Bruce Lee, had died at just 32.
1999 Teen romantic comedy 10 Things I Hate About You, starring Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger, is released
2017 Ghost in the Shell, Boss Baby, and The Zookeeper's Wife, face off on opening day in movie theaters. Boss Baby proves especially formidable knocking Disney's Beauty and the Beast remake off of its #1 perch. It goes on to an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature. Ghost in the Shell is not so lucky, opening with a disappointing $17 million and failing to recoup its gargantuan budget. It's one of the first instances we can recall when social media killed a movie before it opened, with frequent complaints about the white-washing of the leading role with Scarlett Johansson taking over the formerly Japanese role. The bad buzz (or maybe it was just the bad box office?) even killed its Oscar chances in Best Visual Effects. The last part was a shame (it didn't even make it past the top 20 - they used to do two rounds of cuts) since the VFX team did very impressive work; that geisha robot was so scary/freaky.
Today's Birthday Suit
How long until Brian Tyree Henry is Oscar nominated do you think? Or, rather, how long until he triple-crowns? He's already been Tony-nominated for Lobby Hero (2018), Emmy-nominated for both Atlanta (2018) and This Is Us (2017) and showed us his Oscar potential in his incredible monologue scene in If Beale Street Could Talk (2018). He's currently on screens in Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) and has completed work on not one, not two, not three, not four, but FIVE more (mostly high profile) movies: Marvel's The Eternals, the Amy Adams vehicle Woman in the Window (2021), the PTSD drama Red White and Water (2021), Joe Wright's take on Cyrano (2022) with Peter Dinklage, and the Brad Pitt led all-star action thriller Bullet Train (2022) from David Leitch the director of Atomic Blonde and Hobbs & Shaw. You can follow him on Instagram.
Bonus Birthday Suit
Happy 29th to model/actor Daniel Malik. We thought we'd shout him out just because he's beautiful and this is interesting 'you know him but you don't know him' case. See, he was the human form and very memorable voice of "Black Philip" in The Witch (and you know how we love the Witch) asking us all if we'd like to live deliciously. He was credited in the film as "Wahab Choudry". He was one of the first South Asian models to make waves in the Toronto fashion scene right around that same time. As far as we can tell his full name is Daniel Wahab Choudry but at some point in the intervening years he's decided to take his mother's maiden name, Malik. Anyway we hope to see and hear him again at the movies. You can follow him on Twitter and Instagram.
Other Showbiz Birthdays today
Our beloved Ewan McGregor (but more on him later today), this year's quadruple-Oscar-nominee Chloé Zhao (Nomadland, The Rider), Oscar winning makeup artists Mark Coulier (The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Iron Lady and nominated again this year for Pinocchio) Oscar winner Shirley Jones (Elmer Gantry, The Music Man), Oscar winner Christopher Walken (The Deer Hunter, Catch Me If You Can), Caitlyn Carver (I Tonya, Paper Towns), Oscar winning songwriter Ryan Bingham (Crazy Heart), Tony Cox (Bad Santa, Me Myself and Irene), Richard Chamberlain (The Thorn Birds, Towering Inferno), Director Alejandro Amenábar (The Others, The Sea Inside), Emmy winner Rhea Perlman (Cheers, Matilda), Paul Mercurio (Strictly Ballroom, Neighbours), Oscar nominated cinematographer Edward Lachmann (Carol, Far From Heaven), Daniel Mays (Vera Drake, Atonement), Jacqueline Kim (Charlotte Sometimes, Xena Warrior Princess), Emmy winner William Daniels (St Elsewhere, 1776), Canada's actor/model Daniel Malik (the voice of the devil in The Witch where he was credited as "Wahab Chaudhry"), Finnish director Klaus Härö (Letters to Father Jacob, Mother of Mine), Swedish director Roy Andersson (A Pigeon Sat on a Branch..., About Endlessness), and Oscar nominated screenwriter Valerie Curtin (And Justice for All, Toys)
and late showbiz types like...
Oscar nominated director Robert Stevenson (Mary Poppins, King Solomon's Mines), Director Robert Hamer (Dead of Night, Kind Hearts and Coronets), Director Gary Winick (Tadpole, 13 Going on 30), Director Ted Post (Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Magnum Force), Tony winner and screen actor Richard Kiley (Patch Adams, Thorn Birds), Patrick McGee (Zulu, Barry Lyndon), Emmy winning composer Arthur B Rubinstein (Scarecrow and Mrs King, WarGames)