Remember Gandhi? Baby Jake? Harlow?
Tuesday, June 7, 2016 at 8:00AM On this day in movie related history...
1893 Mahatma Gandhi committed his first act of civil disobedience refusing to move from a whites only first class section of a train. He had a valid ticket, after all. He was forcibly ejected in South Africa's Pietermaritzburg Railway Station. This event and many others from his nonviolent revolution were reenacted by Ben Kingsley in Gandhi, Oscar's Best Picture of 1982. (You can cover a lot with a running time of 191 minutes.)
1909 Jessica Tandy is born. Steals Michelle Pfeiffer's Oscar 80 years, 9 months, and 19 days later.
1917 Rat Pack royalty Dean Martin is born. Centennial next year.
1928 Perpetually underappreciated and totally awesome director James Ivory is born. Later makes masterpieces like A Room With a View and Howards End. Where's his Honorary Oscar, AMPAS? He's 87 people get on that immediately.
1937 The original Bombshell, Jean Harlow dies suddenly at the peak of her fame at the age of 26. Where's her biopic?
1952 Liam Neeson is born.
1958 Prince is born. *sniffle*
1966 Tom McCarthy, the director of last year's Best Picture Spotlight (2015) is born
1972 One of the world's most handsome actors, Karl Urban, is born in New Zealand. Later goes to both Middle Earth and Space, the final frontier. Next up: Pete's Dragon and Thor: Ragnarok. Meanwhile in New York Grease opens on Broadway. It becomes a movie phenomenon six years later. It is never leaving us.
1985 Goonies and Perfect both open. "What's so wrong with wanting to be perfect?"
1974 Bear Grylls is born so we might one day see pampered A list actors try to look tough in survival mode in the wild... albeit with a film crew around them so how Wild are they really Running?
1976 ”The Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night,” by journalist Nik Cohn is published in New York magazine. It becomes a movie very quickly, a classic too, Saturday Night Fever (1977)
1990 Universal Studios Florida opens. Original rides based on Jaws, Earthquake, and King Kong all experience technical problems.
Baby Gyllenhaal
1991 City Slickers opens, turning into a surprise hit. Jack Palance wins the Oscar and little boy Jake Gyllenhaal makes his film debut
1998 The Lion King, the Broadway sensation based on Disney's mega-hit movie, wins six Tony Awards
2015 Helen Mirren wins her Tony for playing Queen Elizabeth on Broadway, a role that also won her an Oscar (The Queen). She also won an Emmy for playing a different Queen Elizabeth. She's just an audiobook about royalty away from her EGOT.
Reader Comments (24)
Well I love Jessica Tandy in Driving Miss Daisy. Plus, Vivien Leigh stole her Blanche DuBois in the movie, so she had her revenge.
Happy birthday Liam Neeson! I hope you get your Oscar soon mister by stop appearing in these tough old guy movies.
The Lion King robbed Ragtime at the Tonys.
Jake looks so much like Maggie in that picture!
Tandy4EVA!
Poor Jean Harlow! Doomed by kidney disease at a time when dialysis wasn't an option and then the subject of two terrible screen biographies in the 60's that completely falsified the facts of her life and insulted her memory.
Those movies, both called Harlow and each starring an actress named Carol (Carroll Baker & Carol Lynley) were released simultaneously in 1965 and are the subject of a book named Dueling Harlows which is more interesting than either of the terrible films it examines.
Best thing about both pictures is the actress who played Harlow's mother, the grasping Mama Jean...Ginger Rogers in the Lynley version (a last minute replacement for Judy Garland who walked) and Angela Lansbury in the Baker version.
The real Jean Harlow, by all accounts a kind, generous straight shooter who had as bad luck with men as she did with her health, definitely deserves a better bio-pic. Her second marriage to Paul Bern whose death the studio tampered with to look like a suicide but was apparently a homicide by his common law wife, whose existence Jean was apparently unaware of, could make a fascinating film all by itself.
Let's get James Ivory an Oscar.
Joel6 -- Well, I'm sold! Write that Jean Harlow screenplay! (She looks like a baby in that gif -- so young. Good luck finding a young actress who could believably play her.)
Thank you for the shout-out to Karl Urban! I still remember vividely when I first saw him in LOTR and was mighty impressed - one of the world's most handsome actor indeed.
Jake's child face is just as punchable as his adult face.
I am desperate to track down both Harlow movies, as they are legend in the Bad Movie Firmament. The Carroll Baker version has a higher pedigree, but I trust the camp value is still pretty awesome.
Yes to Karl Urban--those guns!
The Lion King on Broadway will always be remembered for giving us the gorgeous Adam Jacobson. Sigh.
Tandy4EVA!
Tandy all the way!
He never writes my name right so TEAM TANDY!!!
Tandy putain!
All the Jessica Tandy love in the comments gave me a chuckle! :)
I love Michelle Pfeiffer too, I wanted her to have an Oscar (especially for being perfection as Catwoman in Batman Returns), but I could never begrudge an octogenarian acting legend winning a competitive Oscar, especially for a movie that was such a hit.
Totally agree on Miss Tandy stealing Pfeiffer's oscar. DMD does not age well.
I've never seen a Jean Harlow film which I plan to soon but from the images and small clips I've seen of her she totally deserves to be respected more even with the terrible end to her life.
Ragtime was so robbed at the tonys by Lion King. Then a decade later it's robbed again when it's equally great revival goes home losing the revival category to La Cage aux Folles.
I wasn't even nominated!
Shut the fuck up, Sally! You got my 1984 Oscar!
At first glance, I was certain that Jean Harlow gif was Mindy Kaling in a wig.
Always loved that Pauline Kael quote about GANDHI:
'Leaving the theatre where I saw GANDHI, I felt the way the British must have felt when they left India: exhausted and relieved.'
so many crazed actresses in this comments section. ILOVEIT
I saw The Lion King in Minneapolis previews before its Broadway run, so it has a special place in my heart.
It was Prince Day in Minnesota today. It rained for six days straight after he died.
I'm also on Team Tandy.
Such a sweet and also tough lady.
How can anyone accuse her of stealing?
She stole my heart though... Especially in *Batteries not included.
Such a guilty pleasure.
Team Tandy!
That gif of Harlow is giving me a Megan Hilty vibe.