Showbiz History: A Child Star, A Funny Girl, a Winged Serpent, and Noni Ryder

5 random things that happened on this day (October 29th) in showbiz history...

Fanny Brice

1891 Fanny Brice born in New York City. The comic actress, radio star, and Ziegfeld Girl who was immortalized by the Oscar-winning biopic Funny Girl. Brice is name-checked a few times in the new wonderful film Can You Ever Forgive Me?

1918 Happy 100th birthday today to Baby Peggy (aka Diana Serra Carey), the silent film child star who is still alive today! (See our list: 200 Oldest Living Screen Stars of Note). According to a THR report from January she's doing well and recently published her first fiction novel (!!!) having previously written a memoir and a biography 

1943 Flesh and Fantasy, an anthology movie of occult-related stories opens in movie theaters starring Barbara Stanwyck among other stars. Y

ou have to click on this poster after the jump which asks "WHICH IS YOU?" So, dear reader, tell us... which is you?

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Funny Girl at 50

by Tim

This past week bore witness to one of the most very important anniversaries imaginable: Funny Girl turned fifty. And if you don't know what Funny Girl is and why it matters, I'm a little shocked you found this site, but I'm happy to explain that it's a Best Picture-nominated musical directed by Oscar favorite William Wyler, and the film debut of cabaret singer-turned-Broadway star-turned embodied deity Barbra Streisand. Who also got some Oscar love, winning Best Actress in a tie with Katharine Hepburn's turn in The Lion in Winter.

Not least among the achievements of Funny Girl is that, when thus compared head-to-head with one of the grandest dames of screen acting, Streisand looks like pretty worth recipient of that honor. Funny Girl, as scripted by Isobel Lennart (who also wrote the book for the 1963 stage version, also starring Streisand), is a gift to its lead, offering pretty much everything you could want to demand of a musical theater actor: broad comedy! tear-jerking heartbreak! steel-willed fortitude! songs where you have to be manic! songs where you have to be pensive!

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10 Days Until Oscar. Stage to Screen Roles

Paul Lukas and Bette Davis in "Watch on the Rhine"

It's ten days until Oscar and soon this post may be obsolete! To date, unless I've miscounted, ten actors have won the leading Oscar for reprising a role they won praise for first on the Broadway stage. Soon there could be 11 depending on how well Denzel Washington fares on Oscar night for Fences. 

ACTORS WHO WON LEAD OSCARS REPRISING THEIR BROADWAY ROLES
They are...

• George Arliss for Disraeli (1929/30)
Arliss had played this role in the Broadway production in 1911

• Paul Lukas for Watch on the Rhine (1943)
He previously played this role from 1941 through early 1942 on Broadway -- the transfer to the screen was mighty quick! 

• Jose Ferrer for Cyrano de Bergerac (1950)
He won the Tony for this iconic role in 1947. Later in 1990 Gerard Depardieu would also be nominated for playing the same role -- and Steve Martin arguably should have been for Roxanne -- but Depardieu didn't win...

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"I'm the greatest..."

Omar Sharif (1932-2015)

Sharif Photographed by Andrew Walker in 2011Hollywood's first and still only Egyptian movie star passed away at 83 today of a heart attack. It had recently been announced that he was suffering from Alzheimers and after such a full life this may feel like a mercy to some, though his loved one are surely grieving and our hearts go out to them.

Though moviegoers roughly 35 and up surely remember him, here's the gist of it for younger budding cinephiles: Sharif began and ended his career in Arabic language cinema but in the vast middle (1960s-1990s) he achieved global stardom via Hollywood and British cinema. His English language debut Lawrence of Arabia (1962) brought him a Supporting Actor Oscar nomination and he became a genuine superstar in short order, headlining one of the all time biggest box office smashes (Doctor Zhivago, 1965). In his third enduring classic from that decade he helped Barbra Streisand ascend into the pantheon in her film debut Funny Girl (1968). 

In fact, his performances in those three hits are rather fine illustrations of what was so special about his onscreen persona: his generosity and a certain intangible 'eye of the beholder' transference. He was one of the greatest romantic leading men precisely because he seemed so believably in thrall to the particular charismas of his co-stars. And he had great ones: Sophia Loren, Barbra Streisand, Julie Christie, Peter O'Toole, Julie Andrews and more. 

And while he drank in their inimitable beauty, he looked like this:

Dr Zhivago (1965)a portrait from the 1950s when he starred regularly in Egyptian cinema
The Tamarind Seed (1974) and More Than a Miracle (1967)

Double the pleasure, then, for moviegoers who were ready to swoon. And swoon they did, all over the world. 

What's your favorite Omar Sharif performance?