Showbiz History: Room at the Top & The Age of Innocence
Friday, January 22, 2021 at 8:00AM 5 random things that happened on this day, January 22nd, in showbiz history
1954 The 11th Golden Globes are held. The Robe wins Best Drama but there wasn't a Best Comedy or Musical category for 1953 films. How strange... I mean Kiss Me Kate AND Roman Holiday AND Calamity Jane AND How to Marry a Millionaire AND The Band Wagon were all right there! But really it's true of almost every awards institution that the first decade plus is rife with inconsistencies. The Globe only really settled into the traditional field of nominees and categories we have now later in the 1950s.
1959 Room at the Top premieres in the UK...
It will open in the US a couple of months later and go on to six Oscar nominations including Best Picture and win Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Actress for Simone Signoret.
1982 Shoot the Moon opens in limited release. While it has devout fans -- including some right here at TFE -- enthusiasm didn't last for a full year until the Oscars and the movie received no nominations despite mild success at the Globes and BAFTA.
1994 51st Golden Globes are held with Schindler's List and Mrs Doubtfire winning the movie prizes and NYPD Blue and Seinfeld taking the TV awards. NO acting category transferred fully intact to the Oscars thereafter. The film which took the biggest dive from the Globes to the Oscars that year were Mrs Doubtfire which was up for Picture and Actor here and only Makeup at the Oscars and The Age of Innocence which was up for Picture, Director, Actress, Supporting Actress, and Screenplay at the Globes but took a big hit come Oscar nomination morning missing in all but the latter two.
Bizarrely, Michelle Pfeiffer now claims she's not proud of her Countess Olenska performance!
MICHELLE STOP YOU ARE PERFECT IN THAT https://t.co/ddaOWsRSCm pic.twitter.com/SvL4WBwRJf
— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) January 21, 2021
2016 Comedy Dirty Grandpa, horror film The Boy, and scifi action film The 5th Wave were the new releases that Friday but audiences were still way more interested in two December releases, Oscar hopeful The Revenant in its 5th weekend and The Force Awakens in its sixth money-guzzling weekend.
Today's Birthday Suit
Happy 56th to Oscar nominee Diane Lane. Everyone remembers how spectacularly she navigated confused desire in Unfaithful (2002) but she was also terrific in similar less erotic-thriller more period drama terrain with Viggo Mortensen in A Walk on the Moon (1999). Such an underrated talent! She currently stars in the crime drama Let Him Go (2020) with Kevin Costner.
Other showbiz birthdays today: Oscar nominee Ann Sothern (Whales of August, Lady in a Cage), Conrad Veidt (Casablanca, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari), John Hurt (1984, The Elephant Man), Director Jim Jarmusch (Paterson, Only Lovers Left Alive), O-T Fagbenie (Handmaid's Tail, Looking), Oscar nominee Linda Blair (The Exorcist), Oscar nominee Piper Laurie (The Hustler, Carrie), Olivia d'Abo (Conan the Destroyer, Point of No Return), Germany's August Wittgenstein (The Crown, Das Boot), Jennifer Spence (You Me Her, Continuum), Christopher Masterson (Malcolm in the Middle), Balthazar Getty (Lord of the Flies, Brothers & Sisters), John Wesley Shipp (Dawson's Creek, The Flash), Gabriel Macht (The Good Shepherd), Bill Bixby (The Incredible Hulk), Choi Min-sik (Old Boy), Oscar nominee Seymour Cassell (Faces, Dick Tracy), two-time Tony winner Katie Finneran (Bloodline, Wonderfalls), Oscar winning composer Justin Hurwitz (La La Land, First Man, Whiplash), rockstars Michael Hutchence of INXS fame and Steve Perry of Journey fame, and early film pioneers Sergei M Eisenstein (Battleship Potemkin) and D.W. Griffith (Intolerance), and singer Sam Cooke (who would have turned 90 today if not for his early tragic death at just 33) who is surely finding new fans thanks to Leslie Odom Jr's portrayal in One Night in Miami.
Reader Comments (22)
Ford wasn't Oscar nominated for The Fugitive. Laurence Fishburne for What's Live Got to Do with It was instead. Ford's only Oscar nomination to date comes from Witness in 1985.
"The only category to transfer fully intact to the Oscars thereafter was Best Actor"... Harrison Ford was not nominated for "The Fugitive". Laurence Fishburne was nominated instead for "What's Love Got to Do with It".
Pfeiffer is wonderful as countless Olenska in Scorsese’s (at least for me) magnificent film. For me she deserved an Oscar nom at least (ok, I’m boring since I always said that regarding The Age of the Innocence), but I get that Best Actress 1993 has a more than respectable line-up
Harrison Ford did not get an Oscar nom for The Fugitive!
**channeling my inner Elizabeth Taylor**: NO SALE
Vivien Leigh was the first choice for A Room at the Top, a role tailored to her talent and age and if she hadn’t refused, she might have received her third nomination and possibly her third Oscar, setting a new 3/3 record. It's a pity that such an incredible actress had refused or lost so many important roles.
PS.: Simone Signoret is great in the movie and her Oscar was well deserved.
fabitof / moviefilm - sorry about that fixed. I must have been thinking about witness. my oops.
david -- i'm always here for a BUtterfield8 reference!
giovanni -- i loooove Vivien Leigh but it is strange how sparse her filmography is given those two titanic Oscar wins.
The Age of Innocence got 4 nominations at the Globes and 5 at the Oscars.
Simone Signoret's Best Actress is my all-time favorite - and Room at the Top should have won Best Picture in 1959.
Finally caught Room at the Top a few months ago. Signoret was great. It's just unfortunate, as a modern viewer who knows a bit about that era's need to moralize, that I immediately knew what was going to happen. (Sorry, trying to minimize 60-year-old spoilers.)
Also, let's bring back that film's Hermione Baddeley as the prime example of "nominated for a a way too short performance" instead of Ellen Burstyn. Baddeley still holds the record for shortest performance in a film (Burstyn's was in TV) to be nominated.
The Age of Innocence (including Pfeiffer's performance of course) is perfect. One of the best movies of the 1990s.
I love Room at the Top and Signoret in it. It's a film I wish more people knew. That said, that tidbit about Leigh is fascinating and now I'm very curious how that would have turned out.
I like it when actors critique their own performances,though I like her in it something felt slightly off,I don't think she sold the free spirit/independent thing but i'd still nominate her.
Lane is great in Let him Go shame it's a thriller piece,in the 90's she would be a shoe in.
I'm just adding that I'm a fan of "Room at the Top", and only sought the film out after reading Simone Signoret's excellent autobiography, "Nostalgia isn't what it used to Be".(1978)
If you have the time seek out this book, Signoret lead a fascinating life.
Heather Sears? I'm always fascinated by someone who gets to share top billing with two big stars and I've never even heard of her. I need to see Room At The Top again. Signoret is always great and Laurence Harvey has a sort of fascinating anti-magnetism.
Diane Lane is a terrific
Room at the Top and Shoot the Moon are brilliant films full of great work and at the diametric end of the spectrum Robert DeNiro proved once and for all with Dirty Grandpa that he doesn't give a damn about his legacy as a performer. Fortunately his string of cash grab roles can never ruin his early work.
Yes, Simone Signoret is outstanding in Room at the Top - one of my favourite Best Actress winners ever. A good film - and go, Hermione Baddeley, with your 2.5 mins of nominated screen time!
The Age of Innocence was perfect! Winona deserved that Oscar.
Luiserghio -- yes but the Oscars have more categories and the categories it was nominated in at the Globes were the big ones.
I love "The Robe" - last scene so moving (available on YouTube), what a glorious, beautiful actress Jean Simmons was, Richard Burton (in an unflattering perm) always resonates (Oscar nominee for this and the movie, too) and Jay Robinson particularly nasty. It was the first movie released in Cinemascope, although "How To Marry A Millionaire was filmed first, but "The Robe" was more prestigious.40 years later saw the release of "Mrs. Doubtfire", hysterical classic.
Diane Lane... mmm...
Those movies that came out in 2016 were terrible and... why in the hell do people keep hiring Julianne Hough in movies? She can't act for shit let alone sing.