6 random things that happened on this day, December 19th, in showbiz history...
1915 Edith Giovanna Gassion born in Paris and immediately abandoned by her mother. She would be raised by prostitutes and would become the famous songbird Edith Piaf, her last name slang for "sparrow", and eventually an international icon. Her life was dramatized (in excruciatingly non-linear fashion as was the fad in the mid Aughts) in 2007's La Vie En Rose which won Marion Cotillard the Best Actress Oscar. Like her contemporary Judy Garland she would struggle with addiction and die at age 47 years in the 1960s.
1961 The now infamous drama The Children's Hour opens in theaters on its way to 5 Oscar nominations...
The play adaptation about a vicious lesbian rumor (which is accidentally half-true) that destroys the lives of two teachers (Audrey Hepburn and Shirley Maclaine) was much-apologized for in the brilliant documentary The Celluloid Closet (1995). Yes, even in the 1990s people were judging works of arts by current societal norms rather than considering the eras in which they were made. If you ask us The Children's Hour is fairly sympathetic to its closeted lesbian protagonist (for 1961, we mean) even if it's one of the reasons the "bury your gays" trope became so prevalent.
1967 Doctor Dolittle opens in the US a week after its London premiere. The very expensive film was a flop but the 20th Century Fox campaigned relentlessly and secured 9 Oscar nominations. We've recommended the book a bazillion times but Mark Harris' invaluable Pictures at a Revolution shares so many unbelivable stories about this film's journey to the Oscars. Disney remade it as soon as they bought 20th Century Fox and acquired all their IP.
1979 And now a confession about these "on this day in history lists"... we pull from a variety of sources and they don't always agree. At some point this weekend whether it was the 19th, the 20th, or the 21st (various sites disagree) a whole slew of big movies opened: Kramer vs Kramer, Being There, Roller Boogie, All That Jazz, The Black Hole, and The Electric Horseman among them. What is factual, even if the specific dates are muddy is that Kramer vs Kramer became an utter behemoth winning the Best Picture Oscar after being showered with box office dollars (the #1 film of its year) and precursor awards (it basically won everything except the National Society of Film Critics which went with Breaking Away instead).
1986 The wildly underrated movie musical Little Shop of Horrors and the Richard Gere and Kim Basinger crime drama No Mercy both opened in movie theaters. The 80s were not kind to the movie musical genre -- that was true even at the Golden Globes where Ellen Greene was snubbed for her utter brilliance as Audrey -- but Little Shop was a lonely bright spot.
2014 It was an uninspiring Friday night with Peter Jackson repeating himself with The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies, another sequel Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, and the remake of Annie as the new wide releases. The quality was in limited release as Mike Leigh's Mr Turner (4 Oscar nominations) and Cartoon Saloon's Song of the Sea (Best Animated Feature nominee) both opened. Were you at any of those pictures on opening night?
Today's Birthday Suit
Happy 40th to Jake Gyllenhaal. We first loved him in 2001 via Donnie Darko and all these years later we're still proud Gyllenhaalics.
Jake and Anne Hathaway in "Love and Other Drugs" - when was the last time two major stars were this exhibitionist about their beauty together?
Other showbiz types with birthdays today: Legendary Cicely Tyson (Sounder, The Help), the great Chilean actor Alfredo Castro (Tony Manero, From Afar), Production designer and Mr Sissy Spacek himself Jack Fisk (There Will Be Blood), Oscar nominated Sir Ralph Richardson (The Heiress, Greystoke, Doctor Zhivago), Model Tyson Beckford (Zoolander), Germany's Actor/Director/Hunk Til Schweiger (Inglourious Basterds, Atomic Blonde), the late TV star Robert Urich, French star Béatrice Dalle (Betty Blue, Trouble Every Day), Soji Arai (Pachinko, The Ramen Girl), Jennifer Beals (Flashdance, The L Word), Emmy winner Annie Murphy (Schitt's Creek), Amy Locane (Cry Baby), TV star Alyssa Milano (Who's The Boss?, Charmed), Ken Marino (Wanderlust), Luke Cook (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), Mike Looklinand (The Brady Bunch), BAFTA nominated cinematographer Andrzej Sekula (Pulp Fiction, American Psycho), songwriter Robert B Sherman (The Jungle Book, Mary Poppins), and Kristy Swanson (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Batman Returns)