On this day: Lady Jane, Devil Dolls, Bergman Wedding, Phase Three
Sunday, July 10, 2016 at 11:00AM 
Helena Bonham Carter & Cary Elwes star in Lady Jane (1986)On this day in history as it relates to the movies
1553 Lady Jane Grey takes the throne in England. Her reign is just nine days long and Helena Bonham Carter plays her in her feature film debut (filmed just before A Room With a View though it was released second)
1856 Nikola Tesla, famed inventor and futurist is born in the Austrian empire. He's later played by David Bowie in Christopher Nolan's The Prestige (2006) but isn't it strange that he has never received his own major biopic given his fame and eccentricity and pop culture relevances (bands named after him, characters based on him, etcetera)?
1871 Marcel Proust, French novelist is born.
1925 The "Monkey Trial" in which a man is accused of teaching evolution in science class, begins in Tennessee. It's later adapted into a famous play and the Stanley Kramer film Inherit the Wind (1960) nominated for four Oscars
1936 The Devil-Doll, a horror flick directed by Dracula's Tod Browning opens in US movie theaters starring Lionel Barrymore, who masquerades as an old womenfor nefarious purposes (!), and Maureen O'Sullivan.
1937 Ingrid Bergman gets married for the first time at the age of 21 in Sweden to Petter Aron Lindström. They are married until 1950 when she divorces him to marry Italian director Roberto Rossellini (Stromboli, Journey to Italy) temporarily making Bergman persona non grata in Hollywood for her scandalous adultery
1946 Sue Lyon, Kubrick's Lolita (1962) is born. She won the now defunct award "Most Promising Performer" from the Golden Globes that year but her career was rather shortlived
1958 Fiona Shaw, British great of stage and screen, is born
1959 Ellen Kuras, great cinematographer (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Summer of Sam) is born
1966 AO Scott, Film Critic for the New York Times is born. He recently released the book "Better Living Through Criticism". Happy 50th, A.O.
1977 Chiwetel Ejiofor, Oscar nominated star of 12 Years a Slave, is born
1983 Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani (star of About Elly and The Patience Stone) is born. Charlie McDowell is born to actors Malcolm McDowell and Mary Steenburgen on this day as well. He has recently become a director with the Twilight Zone like romantic dramedy The One I Love and next year's scifi romance The Discovery starring his girlfriend Rooney Mara as well as Riley Keough and Jason Segel
1992 Roland Emmerich's Universal Soldier battles it out with the live action animated hybrid Cool World and the romantic dramedy Prelude to a Kiss on their opening day in US movie theaters (none of them are unable to unseat A League of Their Own, which stays at #1 in its second week.)
2020 Marvel Studios has already blocked out the date - supposedly for the penultimate film in their "Phase 3" plan though we don't yet know what that is.
Reader Comments (8)
You might want to throw in that on this day in 1921, Jake LaMotta was born, and July 10th 1935 saw the birth of Tura Satana.
Side note: I really want to watch 'The Devil-Doll' now...
You sure ended this on a depressing note.
Today is also Karina Longworth's 36th birthday.
And I'll echo AR.
I didn't know the director of The One I Love us tge son of Malcolm and Mary! Love that movie and love Elisabeth Moss in it!
Not sure which image I like more: Helena Bonham Carter as alternate universe Princess Buttercup, or Lionel Barrymore as alternate universe Mrs. Doubtfire.
Wow. I saw Universal Soldier, Cool World, Prelude to a Kiss AND A League of Their Own. Apparently I was quite the cinephile when I was 12. I guess that makes sense considering I started to get into pop culture around 1989/1990 but still, that is a random group of 4 films to have seen when they came out or soon thereafter. I guess it helped that the first 3 had the Van Damme/Lundgren/Pitt/Baldwin factor to get this little gay boy interested, as well.
For that unknown Marvel film for 2020, the guess is they're trying to get either Silver Surfer, or the whole Fantastic Four under their wing, so they can really get the main pack of the Infinity Gauntlet story, which really need Silver Surfer included. They can write out Wolverine and the X-Men out of the equation, and Fantastic Four didn't play a part in the saga, but Silver Surfer's rights, and Galactus' are associated and included in the Fantastic Four pack, that's why they need to reach an understanding with Fox, a.s.a.p.. To remove both Silver Surfer and Galactus from Infinity War would be like removing the windmill chapter, out of the Quixote.
There is a Tesla biopic (The Secret Life of Nikola Tesla (1980)) starring Orson Welles for one. Also next year, another.