Showbiz History: Aretha, Mame, and Florence Pugh

5 random things that happened on this day, January 3rd, in showbiz history

1897 Marion Davies born in Brooklyn. The 1930s film star is best remembered in history as the mistress of tycoon William Randolph Hearst. Multiple films have featured their relationship including current Oscar hopeful Mank (2020).

1952 Dragnet begins airing in its regular time slot Thursdays at 9:00 PM on NBC (a couple of weeks after the pilot airs). The influential series -- which basically created the #1 tv genre, the procedural, will run for eight seasons, be relaunched in the late 1960s for another four seasons and spawn three movies. The last of those was a comedy in 1987  starring Tom Hanks just before Big served as the bridge between popular comic actor and serious actor, netting Hanks his first Oscar nod. Two short-lived one season attempts to revive Dragnet were attempted in 1989 and 2003 respectively...

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Joan Micklin Silver (1935-2020)

by Nathaniel R

A appreciative goodbye to the writer/director Joan Micklin Silver who died on New Years Eve at 85 years of age of vascular dementia. Long before elevating female directors was a thing for the media or the industry, she was out there doing her thing. Imagine the lift for female directors in the 20th century to get not one but several films made with little media attention or social justice support. The NY Times has a fine overview of the type of obstacles she faced.

Silver's directorial debut came in the 1970s with the Jewish drama Hester Street which earned a well deserved Best Actress nomination for Carol Kane and a WGA nomination for Micklin herself for Comedy writing -- though what an odd classification that was for the immigrant drama...

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Streaming Roulette, Jan: Gremlins, Fairy Tales, and Brothers from Another Planet

After the jump you'll find a listing of everything that's new to streaming this month (January 2021). But first we pick two handfuls of titles and randomly freeze them with the scroll bar. Whatever comes up is what we share. Do these images make you want to see (or rewatch) the movie?

[Voice offscreen]: All right, let's go.

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MISS JANE PITTMAN (1974) on HBOMax
People don't really talk about this in the days of the common false proclamation "everything is available online" but TV from previous decades is much harder to get a hold of than feature films (which have it bad enough). So it's always cool when a streaming service plays one. This telefilm was a big deal in the 1970s winning 9 Emmy awards including Best Actress for Cicely Tyson. In the UK it was released as a feature film and Tyson received a BAFTA nomination for Best Actress (losing to Joanne Woodward in Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams)

These are the keys to perfect posture.

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Showbiz History: Pal Joey, Taye Diggs, Maria Callas

5 random things that happened on this day, January 2nd, in history...

1788 Georgia becomes the fourth state in the modern US. We're counting on Georgians to save our democracy by giving the Democrats control of the Senate in 2021. Volunteer or donate to Reverend Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossof to make this happen. We just did again despite a frighteningly empty bank account.

1952 A revival of the Rodgers & Hart musical Pal Joey opens on Broadway...

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Year in Review: Greatest Thirst Traps

by Team Experience

Beauty is the eye of the beholder and so is sex appeal and cinematic eye candy. So take these rankings as seriously as they were assigned which is to say, barely seriously at all. T'was but a glancing approximation of how many lists each hottie showed up on from our teammates and whether they were high up on said lists. At any rate these faces (and bodies) and born-to-perform stars deserve your wide open appreciative eyes when they're working it onscreen. 

We meant to post this last night when the mood was more drunken and festive but it's okay to start a new year off lustily, too! Please to enjoy our choices for the greatest thirst traps of 2020. Which of these stars made you quiver under your bodice or weak at the knees these past twelve months? 

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