Showbiz History: Cabaret, Mannequin, The Wedding Singer

7 random things that happened on this day, February 13th, in showbiz history...

1972 Bob Fosse's film version of Cabaret is released in theaters becoming an immmediate sensation. We hope you've read Team Experience's super deep dive of this movie -- we love it so. A year later at the Oscars it looks like a sweeper only to lose Best Picture to The Godfather. It retains the record of most Oscars ever won by a movie that didn't win Best Picture with 8 statues in total. The only movie that's come close to tying that record was Gravity (2013) which fell one short. Four films are tied for third in this particular "loser" trivia with 6 wins: Star Wars, A Place in the Sun, and two very recent ones: La La Land, and Mad Max Fury Road...  

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Beauty Break: Ten Sexiest Witches in Movies

HAPPY HALLOWEEN 👻🎃

Julian Sands in Warlock (1989) though, alas, we haven't seen it.

In the absence of writing time today, how about a visual list. Have you ever wondered why there are so few male witches (or warlocks if you will) in cinema? They're far more common on television. And when warlocks or sorcerers are portrayed in cinema they're usually asexual (sorry but Doctor Strange is the least sexy Avenger!) or old men and are just as likely to be good as evil.

Witches on the other hand are often sexual and usually beautiful... though the beauty is often an illusion. Many of those most glamorous witches are hiding a hideous side -- like they're secretly an old decrepit crone or something less than human (think of Anjelica Huston in The Witches... which we often do). Or maybe they are beautiful but their favourite disguise is something hideous (think Snow White's Queen). This frightening dichotomy and their dangerous sexuality surely has got heaps to do with cinema's male gaze. (This is a way of saying that we hoped for some gender parity in this holiday list of "Sexy Witches!" but it's almost all women.)

AFTER THE JUMP - TEN SEXIEST MOVIE WITCHES...

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William Holden in "Picnic"

Our mini William Holden Centennial celebration continues with Eric Blume...

Picnic, the 1955 film version of William Inge’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, came two years after William Holden won his Best Actor Oscar for Stalag 17 and one year after his dashing role in Sabrina.  Holden was at the height of his stardom when this film released, and he’s smartly front and center through most of the picture...

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Beauty Break: Stars on the Phone

A key "on this day" we forgot this morning. March 7th was the date, way back in 1876, when Alexander Graham Bell got his patent for the telephone. So let's gawk at sexy photos of movie stars with telephones. It's really the only appropriate way to celebrate because who talks on the telephone anymore? Movie stars don't employ them much in photoshoots anymore either. 

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Curio: Kim Novak, Painter

Alexa here.  Recently I was doing some searching for the perfect alternative poster for my second-favorite Hitchcock film Vertigo (wanted a companion piece for the print I have celebrating my favorite) and I stumbled upon a link to the painting below.  Turns out it was painted by the actress herself, Kim Novak.  

I then found myself in a Google deep-dive regarding 'Kim Novak, artist'. Here are some samples of her more intriguing pieces...

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