June will soon be bustin' out all over! If you're a June birthday we're Gemini kindred spirits. If you're not you can still find some event or personality to inspire you today. Here's a look at key showbiz happenings on June 1st in history...
1926 Norma Jean Mortenson born in Los Angeles. Twenty years later she'll select the name "Marilyn Monroe," for her career and eventually become the most famous sex symbol of all time. And a fine actress, too, though she'll get less attention for that. She would have been 92 years old today had she lived. To put that in contemporary terms she'd be the same age as Mel Brooks and Cloris Leachman are now... both of whom are still active in showbiz! And the same age of Queen Elizabeth II who is apparently never going to shuffle off this mortal coil. Though to be fair to Monroe, those three appear to have mutant genes. Most of the '26 vintage has left us... some quite recently (Harry Dean Stanton, Jerry Lewis, Don Rickles)
1934 Little Miss Marker starring Shirley Temple in her first (of many) leading roles opens in movie theaters
1937 Oscar winner Morgan Freeman born in Tennessee.
1955 Billy Wilder's The Seven Year Itch has its world premiere in New York City on Marilyn Monroe's 29th birthday.
1973 Supermodel and ageless Project Runway host Heidi Klum born in Germany.
1974 Alanis Morrissette born in Ontario. She's so much more than just "Jagged Little People" people (says the guy who bought every record since)
1981 Amy Schumer born in New York. Recently unfairly maligned in I Feel Pretty which is really quite amusing but at least she's Tony-nominated this year!
If you're old enough to remember looking up movie times in the newspaper, I see you!
1984 Once Upon a Time in America, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, and Streets of Fire all open in movie theaters. In the 80s I used to scour newspaper ads for movies (pre-internet. Yes, such a time existed) to see what I could convince my parents to take us to. The only thing that never needed any cajoling from me was Star Trek movies. (Naturally I was the only one in my family who didn't care about Star Trek, so the ease to see them was a mixed blessing)
1990 Paul Verhoeven's Total Recall starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and pre-fame Sharon Stone opens in theaters.
1996 Tom Holland born in England and by the time he's 16 he'll have already proven himself a giant talent on stage (Billy Elliott) and screen (The Impossible). Meanwhile across the pond on that same day Woody Harrelson is arrested in Kentucky for playing hemp seeds in protest against their marijuana laws.
← 1999 Just as she'd cemented herself as a movie star via Selena (1997, Golden Globe nomination) and Out of Sight (1998, critical respect) Jennifer Lopez becomes a pop star with the release of her debut album "On the 6" which goes triple platinum and spawns multiple hit singles.
2001 After two weeks on the coasts, Moulin Rouge! opens nationwide in theaters. It opens at #4. Imagine being dumb enough to go see Pearl Harbor, Shrek, or Rob Scheider in The Animal instead of Moulin Rouge! on that historic weekend (they were the #1-3 spots at the box office). The Baz Luhrmann musical turns into a leggy hit, though, grossing $179 million globally and, more importantly, becoming an all time classic.
The movie eventually won two measly Oscars but it did much better at our site (then in its infancy stage) where it won a slew of prizes and was eventually named #1 film of the Aughts. Were you there on opening weekend?
2007 The comedy Knocked Up opens in theaters to boffo box office while Katharine Heigl sets fire to her career by letting it be known that she though it a bit sexist. Super curiously, at least to us, she follows it up with worse movies that weren't even trying not to be sexist. Have you ever seen The Ugly Truth? Ugly is right!
2012 Snow White and the Huntsman opens in theaters giving Kristen Stewart her only box office smash after the Twilight franchise. But, for us, that film was all about Queen Charlize Theron.
2018 OPENING TODAY: Looks like kind of a dire movie weekend. Your wide release choices are the slapstick comedy Action Point, Shailene Woodley attempting to survive the ocean in Adrift, and the starless sci-fi actioner Upgrade. Really, Hollywood? That's it? You were that scared of Solo's second weekend? Oops.
Next weekend is MUCH more exciting. Stay tuned.