Showbiz History: Casablanca, The King's Speech, and "We Found Love"
Thursday, November 26, 2020 at 8:00AM 5 random things that happened on this day in showbiz history
1937 Nothing Sacred, one of the great screwball comedies of the 30s (but there are so many of them, he said with glee) opens in theaters after its NYC premiere the previous day. It was a personal favourite of Carole Lombard so in addition to being a genius actress, she had good taste in her own work.
1942 Casablanca premieres in NYC. It has one of the weirdest Oscar timetables ever for a Best Picture winner...
It played in NYC the calendar year before its Oscar eligibility and then opened in general theaters two months later which was fourteen months before its eventual crowning as the Best Picture of 1943. It is of course considered one of the greatest movies of all time, though no one expected it to be that while making it... or even thought of it that way in its release year where it was a semi-surprise winner (For Whom the Bell Tolls was the biggest hit among the BP nominees and The Song of Bernadette led the nomination count, won the most awards, and was also a bigger hit than Casablanca).
1945 Speaking of long Oscar-gestations... Brief Encounter opened in British movie theaters on this day. The following summer it premiered in the States and went on to three major Oscar nominations though it didn't win any statues in March of 1947 when the ceremony hit.
2010 The King's Speech opens in limited release and quickly overtakes then-Oscar frontrunner The Social Network (sigh) as the film to beat for Best Picture of 2010.
2011 "We Found Love" by Rihanna was the #1 song in America. It would become Rihanna's longest running #1 single, and sold over 10 million copies (!!!). The following year it was featured in the hit film Magic Mike and won MTV's "Video of the Year" award. The video was directed by Melina Matsoukas who went on to shoot Beyoncé's "Formation" and is now a film director (Queen & Slim).
Today's Birthday Suit
Happy 24th to Norwegian star Thea Sofie Loch Naess who you may have seen in one of two unrelated but very similarly titled Viking movies / tv series... the third season of the British series The Last Kingdom (2018) streaming on Netflix and The Last King (2016) a Norwegian film with several famous Scandinavians. She currently starts in the Norwegian TV series Hjerteslag. She has three new movies and one new TV series all in post-production so you might say the career is going well.
Actors celebrating birthdays today: Rob Raco (31), Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson (32), Tamsin Egerton (32), Trevor Morgan (34), Jessica Camacho (38), Peter Facinelli (47), Arjun Rampal (48), Kristin Bauer van Straten (54), Don Lake (64), and Mark Margolis (79)
Other showbiz people with birthday today: Singer-Songwriter Rita Ora (30), Writer/Director Leslye Headland (40), DJ Haled (45), Documentarian Jonathan Caouette (48), Director Hannes Holm (58), Producer Don Hahn (65), Director Julien Temple (67), Director Mark Lester (74), Rock star Tina Turner (79)
French film stars Michele Morgan & Henri Vidal in Fabiola (1949)... months before they married (and 10 years before his tragic sudden death)
Gone but not forgotten: Oscar winning screenwriter/producer Charles Brackett (Sunset Blvd, The Lost Weekend) born on this day in 1892, Actor Henri Vidal (Fabiola, Pension Edelweiss) born on this day in 1919, Cartoonist Charles M Schultz (Peanuts) born on this day in 1922, Documentarian Albert Maysles (Grey Gardens) born on this day in 1926, and actress Marian Mercer (9 to 5, It's a Living) born on this day in 1935
Reader Comments (14)
That photo of Henri Vidal and Michele Morgan took my breath away. Both superb physical specimens and very fine actors. Vidal's so alive and exciting in the film he really does seem to jump off the screen at certain points. Just before the scene pictured here, for example. he takes an energetic dip in the sea that's off the charts for sheer puppy dog abandon and high spirits. As for the film itself, "Fabiola" is a wonderful epic peplum. A French/Italian co-production, it was a sensation in Europe when released in 1949. But sadly only a very truncated and badly dubbed cut made it to America. The full version's available in France on two separate DVD's (Parts 1 and 2 - the thing's quite long in its original form). But unfortunately the French DVD's {Region 2} offer no English subtitles. Aside from being eye-filling and entertaining, the movie's a seminal work in its genre, influencing the whole wave of sword & sandal and biblical blockbusters that flourished in American cinemas in the 50's and 60's. And certainly cries out for a deluxe Criterion Blu-ray edition.
Where did Rihanna go?
Ingrid Bergman also never considered Casablanca highly, even after the film became a myth, she used to disdain and said once: "I made so many films which were more important, but the only one people ever want to talk about is that one with [Humphrey Bogart]." (quote from IMDB)
I prefer Hands Across the Table, The Princess Comes Across and To Be or Not to Be of Carole Lombard's comedies (and In Name Only of her dramatic work) to Nothing Sacred but it is a sprightly film with great work by Carole and Fredric March.
Casablanca might be my number one film that I’ve watched during the pandemic.
Carole Lombard is a blonde goddess with incredible talent for comedy and the body and face of an 90s top model. I saw some movies with her, the most recent just her last, released after her death, To Be or Not To Be, Ernst Lubistch's masterpiece. If Grace Kelly had not abandoned the screens, Hitchcock would remake Mr & Mrs Smith - which he directed in 1941 with Carole and Robert Montgomery - with Kelly and Cary Grant. Mr and Mrs Smith is a comedy about a complicated couple without the ingredients common to the director's universe that is worth a watch because of the stars.
Carole Lombard was robbed of a nomination for Twentieth Century in 1934 and robbed of an Oscar in 1936 for My Man Godfrey. Robbed, I tells ya.
I am totally with Rergman on the movie Casablanca.
I love Riri... why does Chris Brown still get attention? Honestly, fuck that guy. His music is shit.
Of course, the best use of "We Found Love" in a film is in AMERICAN HONEY, with Shia dancing in the supermarket.
Yeah-I could never figure out why Casablanca was released in late December of 1942, yet was named Best Picture of 1943.
Casablanca AND Brief Encounter?!?!? Melancholy Masterpieces!!!
Casablanca is one of the best edited movies ever; there are a hundred characters that come and go without any of them hitting the other and at no time does the film seem truncated. In the final part there is a sense of urgency due to our expectation of how the film will end and what will happen to the protagonists.
When I first saw it without knowing anything about the movie, I thought the obvious would happen: the death of Bergman's husband so that she could have her happy ending running away with Bogart.
The Best Film Editing Oscar went to a movie from the same studio (WB) and producer(Hal B. Wallis), Air Force.
1. I still think that "The King's Speech" was the best film of that year and one of the very best of the Century (probably top 5 to me). Number one to me is still Zhang Yimou's "Hero", by the way. TKS is always playing between 2 and 5. The Social Network isn't even on that top 10, and was number two of its year, admittedly not by a wide margin.
2. I still think that anyone preferring The Social Network to The King's Speech has a point, but is not understanding what film, as art, truly is, and does not grasp even the film's full extent of meaning and how masterfully it was achieved.
3. I still think that anyone still in rage that it defeated TSN for Picture, Director, Actor... is not understanding at all what Oscar should reward. TKS is a 100 times more daring film that TSN... TSN was always supposed to be a hit thanks to its visual, the director's pedigree and the hip theme on display... TKS on the surface would be just another Oscar wannabee that would have a limited attention and quickly dismissed as an Oscar project, when the film is so much more... and one of the Best and most deserving winners in Oscar history.