5 random things that happened on this day, March 21st, in Oscar history only:
1941The Sea Wolf starring Edward G Robinson and Ida Lupino is released. Director Michael Curtiz is warming up for his rather incredible peak decade (Yankee Doodle Dandy, Casablanca, Mildred Pierce are next) but this one only snags one Oscar nomination for Best Visual Effects
1956 The 28th annual Academy Awards are held honoring the films of 1955...
Ten random things that happened on this day (July 8th) in film history for your edification or amusement
1905 The mutinous soldiers of the Russian battleship Potemkin surrender to Romanian authorities. The event later becomes the subject of one of the most influential films ever made, Sergei Eisentein's Battleship Potemkin (1925).
1907 Zeigfeld stages the very first "Ziegfeld Follies" on a New York theater roof. The elaborate theatrical revue becomes a showbiz institution and the subject or setting of major movies, most famously the Best Picture winner The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and the Best Actress winning Funny Girl (1968)
After the jump Cary Grant, Kevin Bacon, Fantastic Four and more...
It's your useless morning trivia! Guess what the 120th Oscar handed out was? If my calculations are correct -- I carefully counted through "Inside Oscar"'s brilliant year-by-year history to determine the order -- it was Best Dance Direction 1936 which went to Seymour Felix for "A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody" from The Great Ziegfeld. The famous number led up to the film's intermission. The film also won Best Picture.
"Best Dance Direction" only lasted three years at the Oscars from 1935 through 1937.
Rather hilariously, the genius Busby Berkeley never won it though he was nominated all three years running and is the only man among the 11 nominated for that award that has any name recognition in the 21st century. Remember when Ryan Gosling was going to star as him in a biopic ? Too bad that never materialized!
Anne Marie is tracking Judy Garland's career through musical numbers...
Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. revolutionized entertainment. Though he was best known for the Vaudeville showgirls in the musical review that bore his name, but his reach extended beyond the Follies. He legitimized Vaudeville and funded the show that would spawn the modern American musical. Though Ziegfeld died in 1932, MGM continued glorifying - and profiting from - Ziegfeld's legacy. In 1936, MGM released a biopic, The Great Ziegfeld based on the life of Ziegfeld and his wife, Billy Burke. The success of that film led the studio to announce a spiritual successor in 1938: Ziegfeld Girl, set to star Joan Crawford, Eleanor Powell, and Virginia Bruce. But when the movie was finally made 3 years later, the cast had changed a bit.
The Movie: Ziegfeld Girl (1941) The Songwriters: Joseph McCarthy & Harry Carroll, from a tune by Chopin The Players: Judy Garland, Lana Turner, Hedy Lamarr, Jimmy Stewart, directed by Robert Z Leonard & Busby Berkeley.
The Story: After the success of Little Nellie Kelly, MGM had another collaboration planned for young Judy Garland. This time, instead of Mickey Rooney, her costars were two other young starlets: Lana Turner, and Hedy Lamarr. Ziegfeld Girl was Judy Garland's first adult melodrama, though Garland still played a child. The plot might have inspired Valley of the Dolls.* As one of three showgirls trying to make it in the Follies, Judy is mostly relegated to musical comic relief while Hedy cries and Lana nearly dies. Still, the movie allowed young Judy to stretch her talents dramatically and vocally. Ultimately, that stretch mattered. The movie wasn't the success MGM had hoped for, but Judy got stellar reviews.
Luise Rainer is now on Spotify with numbers from The Great Ziegfeld. And she's still alive to see it! Vox this is why (well, one of the reasons) Emmy nominations are always so disappointing/strange: behold the labyrinthine nomination process Overland Glenn looks back at Twin Peaks' influence on television's corpse littered playground
Mash-Ups To Go Have you binge-watched "Frozen is the New Black" yet? By which I mean watched it three times in a row like I just did.
Oh i know you're not reading one of my books, bitch.
And in other mashup news, this trailer for "Richard Linklater's Apehood" is making the rounds, a cute fusion of two great movies that happened to share this very same opening weekend so I hope you're seeing both this year. Oh, and Land Ho!, too. It's a really really good movie weekend y'all.
Sunday, March 21, 2021 at 8:24AM 
