6 random things that happened on this day, December 18th, in showbiz history
1941 Thirteen year-old Shirley Temple, her contract bought out from Twentieth Century Fox after two 1940 flops, attempts her first "comeback" (though she'd only been gone from screens for a single year) with MGM in a film called Kathleen about a poor little rich girl. It also flopped. A few more hits were in her future but the writing was on the wall (she'd retire, for good, from movies by the age of 21)...
1969 Future Oscar hit Anne of a Thousand Days and the latest James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service with George Lazenby (the first of many to take up the 007 mantle after Sean Connery) both open in US theaters.
1973 Federico Fellini's Amarcord premieres in Italy (and comes to America about 10 months later and has a two-year Oscar run back when they allowed that for foreign-language films). Meanwhile Cinderella Liberty opens in the US. Both films score 3 Oscar nominations. We've written about both so why not click those links. Use our back catalogue when you need something to read ;)
1981 Press ethics drama Absence of Malice opens in movie theaters, expecting to be one of the biggest at the Oscars but it doesn't work out that way with just three nominations (Actor, Supporting Actress, and Screenplay). We discussed it just this summer on the podcast.
1985 Out of Africa and The Color Purple share an opening day in movie theaters. Both films end their runs among the top five grossers of the year with very similar box office hit dollars (remember when that happened to adult dramas? I guess only if you're Generation X or older. Sigh) They also compete at the Oscars with the same number of nominations (11!) though Out of Africa triumphs there with 7 wins while The Color Purple joins the history books in a tie as the most-nominated film without any Oscar wins.
2010 Katy Perry's "Firework" hits #1 on the Billboard 100
Today's Birthday Suit
Happy 57th birthday to one of our greatest and most beautiful movie stars, Brad Pitt.
He's won two Oscars, Best Picture (12 Years a Slave) and Best "Supporting" Actor (Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood), and we hope he never retires. Up next: action flick Bullet Train (from the director of Atomic Blonde!) with a really fun ensemble which is about five assassins on a moving train and after that Damien Chazelle's Old Hollywood epic Babylon.
Other showbiz people born on this day: Legend Steven Spielberg (E.T., Schindler's List), legend George Stevens (Giant, A Place in the Sun), formidable character actress Gladys Cooper (Now Voyager, Song of Bernadette), Oscar winning cinematographer Walter Lassally (Zorba the Greek), Director Alan Rudolph (Choose Me), Jason Mantzoukas (Big Mouth, The House), pin up film star Betty Grable (How to Marry a Millionaire), Director Jules Dassin (Topkapi), character actor Ossie Davis (Do the Right Thing), Oscar nominated Celia Johnson (Brief Encounter), Oscar nominated Rachel Griffiths (Hilary & Jackie), rocker Keith Richards, rapper DMX (Romeo Must Die), Ray Liotta (Goodfellas), Director Gillian Armstrong (Little Women), Norwegian director Bent Hamer (Kitchen Stories, O'Horten), Emily Swallow (The Mandalorian), Peggy Cummins (Gun Crazy), Hunky Casper Van Diem (Starship Troopers, Tarzan and the Lost City), Katie Holmes (Dawson's Creek), film critic Leonard Maltin, and pop stars Sia, Christina Aguilera, and Billie Eilish... that's a lotta pop star for one day!