The Film Experience

On this day in history (4/25) as it relates to showbiz. Consider this suggestions as to things to celebrate or ponder to liven up your day. Have a great one!

1917 Today is the centennial of the great singer Ella Fitzgerald, born in Virginia one hundred years ago on this very day. She was often referred to as "the First Lady of Song" but her film career amounted to cameos like the one in St Louis Blues (1958) where she sings a song beautifully and that's it.

She only appeared onscreen in four movies, the first of which was Ride 'Em Cowboy (1942) but as one of the 20th Century's most celebrated voices, you can hear her music in 100s of films /TV shows...

1923 Stage star and sometime film actress Anita Björk (best known for the 1951 Miss Julie) born in Sweden

1926 Puccini's classic opera Turandot, based on the 1762 play of the same name, premieres in Milan. Curiously, though there's many theatrical versions of Turandot, there's only one movie we're aware of: Princess Turandot (1934), a German comedy (also released in a French-language version the following year)

⇱ Only one that is unless you count the Turandot section of the omnibus film Aria (1987) which was directed by the infamous Ken Russell

1940 Al Pacino born in NYC. Gives some of the all time greatest film performances in (The Godfather Trilogy, but especially Dog Day Afternoon) and some of the hammiest, too (Scarface, Scent of a Woman). Still working.

P.S. I just re-watched Scarface again last night for its delayed Pfandom article so that's coming real soon.

1941 The musical Ziegfeld Girl opens in movie theaters in the US with an all star cast: Jimmy Stewart, Judy Garland, Hedy Lamarr (more on her soon), and Lana Turner. The film was a marginal success in its day (though not the one MGM was hoping for given the blockbuster status of The Great Ziegfeld five years earlier). It's lasting legacy appears to only be twofold. First, it was a stepping stone for Judy Garland into more adult dramas and second, it gave the cinema the enduring image of Hedy Lamarr in a headdress so exquisitely fame-centric that it positions her as the very center of the universe.

1946 "Adriannnnn!!!!" Talia Shire (Rocky) born in New York

1953 One of the best future animation directors, Ron Clements, born in Iowa. What's your favorite of his movies (co-directed by John Musker)? I mean, I guess we should ask "What's your favorite of his 7 movies aside from The Little Mermaid which would obviously win any poll?"

If we lived in LA we would have eaten up this program last fall counting down to the release of Moana

The Great Mouse Detective (1986)
Little Mermaid (1989)
Aladdin (1992)
Hercules (1997)
Treasure Planet (2002)
The Princess and the Frog (2009)
Moana (2016)

1964 Comic actor Hank Azaria (The Birdcage, The Simpsons) born in NYC

1969 Film star Renée Zellweger born in Texas and TV star Gina Torres born in New York

1978 The Aaron Spelling drama Vega$, the first TV show produced entirely in Las Vegas, starring Robert Urich premieres

1980 British actor Samuel Barnett (The History Boys, Penny Dreadful, Mrs Henderson Presents) born

1984 Melonie Diaz, one of the best and still weirdly underutilized actors in indie cinema, born in NYC.

⇱ 1986 Hal Ashby's largely forgotten final film 8 Million Ways to Die opens in theaters, starring Jeff Bridges and Rosanna Arquette and Andy Garcia in his first big role.

1992 Popular sitcom Who's the Boss?, starring Judith Light and Tony Danza, airs its final episode after 8 seasons on the air

1997 Volcano, with Anne Heche and Tommy Lee Jones in disaster epic mode, hits movie theaters. Not to be confused with 1997's other volcano disaster epic Dante's Peak (why does Hollywood produce competing versions of essentially the same thing so often?)

2003 It Runs in the Family starring 3 generations of Douglases (Kirk, Michael, and Cameron) opens in movie theaters

2015 "See You Again," Wiz Khalifa's theme song from the blockbuster Furious 7, becomes the #1 song, the first of its 12 weeks at the top of the charts.

2017 Today marks the Blu-Ray release of two of last season's biggest Oscar contenders: La La Land (14 nominations / 6 wins) and Arrival (8 nominations /1 win). We wrote about them a lot but I just want to make sure you didn't miss our take on La La Land's primary colored costumes or its Oscar winning production design, or our interview with Arrival's director Denis Villeneuve if you're just getting to either of these movies now or planning to revisit them this week.

Also new on dvd is the recent politically charged oddity Catfight starring a game Sandra Oh and Anne Heche (reviewed here)