Today in Showbiz History: Oklahoma!, Martha & Missy, JLaw's Ascendance
Wednesday, November 16, 2016 at 7:39AM On this day in history as it relates to showbiz...
1873 WC Handy famous musician is born in Alabama. The first credited use of his music in a movie was in the original Scarface (1932). That same song "St Louis Blues" is his most popular with Hollywood and has been used in dozens of movies since including The Aviator and The Great Gatbsy recently. But Blue Jasmine got all feisty and went with "Aunt Hagar's Blues" instead.
1889 Playwright George S Kaufman is born. He wins two Pulitzers and his work has been adapted to films many times including classics like You Can't Take It With You, Dinner at Eight, The Man Who Came to Dinner and Stage Door.
1907 Oklahoma becomes the 46th State...
Happy 109th birthday Oklahoma. Given how deep red that state is politically, though, do they really desrerve the joyful musical Oklahoma!? They probably don't even appreciate it! On this day Burgess Meredith is born. He works consistently for several decades and classic roles include The Penguin on "Batman," and Mickey Goldmill in the Rocky film series (Oscar nomination) and Harry Green in The Day of the Locust (Oscar nomination).
White Parade1922 The great novelist José Saramago is born. Film adaptations of his work include Enemy and Blindness.
1928 Clu Gulager is born. He specialized in westerns and then horror films. He's still with us so happy 88th birthday, Clu!
1934 The White Parade starring Loretta Young which is about a nursing school, opens in theaters. Later it's nominated for Best Picture and Sound
1942 Donna McKechnie the original "Cassie" in A Chorus Line is born
1945 The Lost Weekend opens in theaters. On this same day a new theatrical short opens called "The Friendly Ghost" introducing Casper to the world.
1954 Allison Anders is born. One of the early women to challenge Hollywood's "all male" take on who should sit in the director's chair. Her breakthrough was Gas, Food, Lodging (1992) and her next film is the TV remake of Beaches with Idina Menzel in the Bette role
1957 Serial killer Ed Gein kills for the last time and is captured soon thereafter. Gein's case will inspire Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) three years later and other serial killer movies thereafter.
1958 Marg Helgenberger of China Beach and CSI fame is born. Also had a key supporting role in Erin Brockovich (2000)
1959 The Sound of Music opens on Broadway and will be nominated for 9 Tonys, winning 5 of them including Best Musical. Six years later the beloved film version will be nominated for 10 Oscars winning 5 of them including Best Picture.
1960 Clark Gable, 'The King of Hollywood,' dies of cardiac arrest at age 59. The Misfits (1961) would be his last film. After his death the public would learn that he fathered a child with Loretta Young (the child she'd always claimed she adopted). His only other child, a son, would be born to his widow Kay Williams four months after his death.
1964 Harry Lennix is born in Chicago. His career though he works a lot is not what we thought it would be after that intense breakout in Titus (1999).
1965 Valeria Bruni Tedeschi is born in Turin Italy. Key films include 5x2 (2004), Human Capital (2014), A Castle in Italy (2013 with then boyfriend Louis Garrell) and her César winning role in Normal People are Nothing Exceptional (1993)
1967 Lisa Bonet, eldest "Cosby Kid" is born. Later briefly attempts movie stardom with Angel Heart and then eloped with Lenny Kravitz. Currently she mostly does TV guest work and has babies with her husband, Aquaman star Jason Momoa
1970 Martha Plimpton, who the nation first fell in love with as a feisty smart teenage actress (The Goonies, Mosquito Coast, Running on Empty) and girlfriend of River Phoenix, later became a respected stage star with multiple Tony nominations, and now a very funny sitcom star (Raising Hope, The Real O'Neals) - so many acts in that career!
1972 Funny girl Missi Pyle (Spring Breakers, Gone Girl, The Artist, Captain Fantastic) is born. If you've never read her awesome guest posts here, please do.
1977 Insanely talented Maggie Gyllenhaal is born in New York City. Key works include: The Honorable Woman, Secretary, Happy Endings and Sherrybaby
1981 Merrily We Roll Along opens on Broadway for an unexpectedly short run abruptly ending the string of hits that made Sondheim a household name. There's a fine documentary about this production called Best Worst Things That Ever Could Have Happened... opening Friday. More on that soon
1984 Just the Way You Are starring Kristy MacNichol opens - anyone remember that one?
1990 Milli Vanilli are stripped of their Grammy Award when news surfaces that they didnt sing at all on their Grammy winning hit "Girl You Know It's True". Home Alone opens in theaters
2007 Beowulf opens giving us demonic nude Angelina Jole in animated form
2012 Future Best Picture nominee Silver Linings Playbook opens in limited release part of the 1-2 punch alongside The Hunger Games that made Jennifer Lawrence the #1 female star of this particular era. In all the excitement she'd win the Oscar (quite prematurely if you ask us!)
What were you feeling at this particular moment?
Reader Comments (19)
When she won I knew instantly Chastain was the Glenn Close of the 2010s.
Merde! I should have stayed home.
Martha Plimpton is also the daughter of Keith Carradine, one of those actors who won an Oscar but not for acting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carradine_family
Michael Bowen is also in the Carradine family, and Barbara Hershey was Carradine-adjacent.
martha maggie missi marge opened on this day
Blindness has Julianne Moore's most underrated performance. Can't believe she hasn't garnered any prizes for that arresting work.
lol. If Jessica Chastain were the "Glenn Close of the 2010s" she'd be getting her fifth Oscar nomination by now. And have one or two culturally iconic performances under her belt.
par - i love you.
I watched The White Parade and sat there thinking "They nominated this for Best Picture"? It was very standard stuff so it must have either had a big push from its studio or caught some emotional zeitgeist of the moment. What I noticed most was what terrible condition the print was in for something with a Best Picture Oscar nomination.
I love the stage show and particularly the movie of Oklahoma, Shirley Jones & Gordon MacRae are just so perfect together, but the actual state you can have. When I traveled through the people were very unfriendly.
I do remember seeing Just the Way You Are but not much about it outside of Michael Ontkean.
When Jennifer Lawrence tripped I thought "Poor thing, get yourself together, make a joke about it and get up there and pick up that Oscar!"
Happy Birthday Missi Pyle!!
I'm pretty sure Lisa Bonet (Denise) wasn't the oldest Cosby kid. The oldest was a different daughter named Sondra.
Helgenberger was actually pretty great in Erin Brokovich. I wondered why she didn't do more movies - she's stunningly beautiful but also just slightly generic-looking enough to fit a lot of roles. After playing Dennis Quaid's wife in In Good Company she's pretty much just focused on TV. But hey, I bet the money is great!
You children are so damn literal. Glenn Close represents acting excellence while being ignored for tarts and novelties. Hence Chastain rightfully fits into that narrative of denying greatness for something else there.
Who is the tart and whom is the novelty
She lost to Lange,Hunt,Cher,Foster,Ashcroft & Streep
I wouldn't describe any of those as that.
Sometimes it's better not just to say stuff for controversy without doing your homework.
amy adams is the glenn close of this genaration
Linda Hunt and Cher are novelties. Lange and Foster aren't actually tarts but their sex appeal helped with the majority male voter bloc. Ashcroft was old. And Streep's 3rd was never going to be pretty.
Amy Adams has an inflated nomination count. She's closer to Streep than Close.
Hunt is no novelty she still acts today,Cher is simply Cher whose persona often disguises the fact she is a fine actress,Lange's sex appeal had almost nothing to do with her win,she was double nominated and had to win somewhere but she was no tart in either of her 82 movies,Foster's never been a sex symbol and it was Streep's time for a 3rd not that I agree with her win,regarding Ashcroft are we adding old age as things to hold against women now.
I always confuse Clu Gulager with Hal Holbrook. And I always will.
It has never struck me how young Clark Gable was when he died. The lifestyle of that era really took it's toll on men.
Had no idea Keith Carradine was an Oscar winner! ...And after consulting IMDB I see why.
Martha is fantastic.
A short run of Merrily We Roll Along is being presented in LA soon at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills.
"Michael Arden, who brilliantly re-imagined The Wallis’ production of Spring Awakening that received rave reviews on Broadway, directs this rarely staged Stephen Sondheim musical...Featuring: Whitney Bashor, Wayne Brady, Aaron Lazar, Saycon Sengbloh, Amir Talai, Donna Vivino"
And I'm going on my birthday.
Merrily opened in 1981 on the 92nd birthday of George S. Kaufman (see above), who wrote, with his partner Moss Hart, the original play the musical is based on.
That trip she did was so staged. She is so full of it. If she steals Scarlett Johansson's Oscar, Scar-Jo 3:16 will lay a can of whoop-ass on her with a Scar-Jo Stunna!!!