Showbiz History: Harvey Milk elected and Moonlight and La La Land both win... no take backs
Friday, January 8, 2021 at 9:00AM 6 random things that happened on this day, January 8th, in showbiz history
1941 William Randolph Hearts forbids any of his papers for running advertisements for Citizen Kane (not in theaters till later that year), after Hedda Hopper informs him of the film's content and treatment of Marion Davies. His anger about the film spreads to Hollywood, where he had many allies and where the arrogant young Welles had already pissed off many in power. Citizen Kane struggled at the box office and was supposedly booed at the Oscars (imagine... though it's hard to fact check that since the awards weren't televised then) but history has, of course, been kind to it.
1942 Stephen Hawking born in Oxford, England...
He would become a very famous theoretical physicist. Eddie Redmayne later wins an Oscar playing him in the biopic Theory of Everything (2014) while he was still alive (long-outliving expectations given Lou Gehrig's Disease. He died in 2018 at the age of 76.
1976 Ragtime wins the National Book Critics Circle Award. An underrated film version (which we discussed this summer) arrives five years later.
1978 Harvey Milk is sworn into office, the first openly gay person elected to public office in California. He is assassinated ten months later. The Times of Harvey Milk, a superb Oscar winning documentary about his short but hugely impactful life arrived eight years later. Much later Sean Penn wins a second Oscar playing in the biopic Milk.
1988 James Wood and Lesley Ann Warren star in the neo-noir Cop, new in theaters. The plot description sounds like a nightmare of internet triggers in 2020. Woods (of all people) investigating the murder of a feminist and Lesley Ann Warren as feminist bookstore owner with gang rape trauma in her past.
2017 The 74th Golden Globe Awards honoring the films of 2016 are held with Moonlight (Drama) and La La Land (Musical or Comedy) both winning Best Film, setting up that exciting and completely bizarre Oscar finish the next month.
Today's Birthday Suit
David Bowie would have turned 74 today but, alas, we lost him in 2016. Shameful confession: I have never seen his film debut in The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976)
Other showbiz people celebrating birthdays today: Cynthia Erivo (Harriet, Widows), Freddie Stroma (UnREAL, Bridgerton), Sam Riley (Control, Maleficent), BAFTA nominated Saeed Jaffrey (My Beautiful Laundrette, A Passage to India), Oscar nominated makeup artist Nicki Ledermann (Joker, The Greatest Showman), Gaby Hoffman (Transparent, Girls), José Ferrer the first Puerto Rican actor to win an Oscar (Cyrano de Bergerac, Moulin Rouge), Harriet Samson Harris (Phantom Thread, Addams Family Values), Oscar nominee Ron Moody (Oliver!), Michelle Forbes (Kalifornia, The Killing), Yvette Mimieux (Where the Boys Are, The Time Machine), Sarah Polley (Stories We Tell, Dawn of the Dead), Amber Benson (Tara on Buffy), director John McTiernan (Die Hard), Richard Cromwell (Baby Face Morgan, Men of the Hour), Damián Alcázar (Narcos), Khylin Rhambo (Teen Wolf, 47 Meters Down), the most famous stripper of the 20th Century Gypsy Rose Lee, Bond songstress Shirley Bassey, and iconic Elvis Presley who is getting a Baz Luhrmann directed biopic this year.
Reader Comments (11)
David Bowie, Shirley Bassey, and Elvis were all born the same day? That's a lot of good music right there.
Ragtime could have used a bit of a trim but overall is an excellent, and you're right, unappreciated film.
If we have a zillion movies about Elvis, why can't we have one about Shirley Bassey? I'm sure there is an interesting story there, though good luck finding anyone who can match her vocal power.
I was so happy to see Freddie Stroma show up in Bridgerton. He was great in UnReal and then I just never saw him again. He always seems to be in on the joke/shenanigans.
I was in High School and just becoming aware that someone could be gay and out when the whole Harvey Milk assassination occurred. We lived maybe 90 miles away and it was on the news all the time. Talk about a tragedy. I'm glad he has not been forgotten.
Amy Winehouse could sound astonishingly similar to Bassey, but she was the wrong ethnicity, she wasn't an actress and, of course, she's no longer with us.
Andra Day could do it. She has the pipes and the looks and we'll soon see if she has the chops.
Wait, that was Freddie Stroma from UnREAL as Bridgerton's German prince?!? I didn't recognize him and now I'm really impressed...
dave & working stiff -- re: stroma. i thought his performance in UnREAL was just great but since he's so "pretty" no one noticed. But i haven't seen him in enough else to judge how strong an actor he is.
Wait, Stephen Hawking, Harvey Milk... is this means Charles Dance is going to win the Oscar for playing William Randolph Hearts?
Luiserghio - omg.
@joel6 Personally, I feel like RAGTIME was too short. According to the New York Times, in 1976, Robert Altman, the first director hired to make the film, "had the idea of making — two films — “Ragtime I” and “Ragtime II,” the total running time to be six hours. He also wanted to shoot four additional hours, so that the entire 10 hours could be presold to a television network, and eventually packaged into five two‐hour specials." THAT would have been amazing.
Dame Shirley Bassey shares the same birthday with the King, Stephen Hawking, and David Bowie? GODDAMN!!! And she scored a top 5 album a couple of months ago in the U.K. as made history having a top 5 album in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s.... you can't beat that unless you're Cliff Richard who also had a top 5 album last year and had one since the 1950s and so on.... Why is it that U.K. audiences seem to care more about their artists from the past than ones here in America?
BTW, Happy Stephen Shirley Elvis Bowie day everyone. I think it should become a major holiday.
Going by the Globes pictures the better film and more fuckable film maker prevailed at the Oscars.