Showbiz History: Bill Murray on David Letterman, Janet Jackson at the Superbowl
Monday, February 1, 2021 at 8:00AM 6 random things that happend on this day, February 1st, in showbiz history
1929 One of the earliest movie musicals Broadway Melody premieres in Los Angeles. The following year it would win Best Picture at the 2nd annual Oscars, the first sound film to do so...
1976 Rich Man, Poor Man, a 12 chapter family saga miniseries that begin in Post World War II and stretched through the 1960s premieres on ABC. It was a big big deal at the time winning 4 Golden Globes, 4 Emmys, and even landing a Grammy nomination for Best Score.
1982 Late Night with David Letterman begins on NBC (and will run through 1993). Bill Murray was the first guest.
2002 Birthday Girl hits movie theaters after the festival circuit the previous fall. Though released between The Others and The Hours (a very Kidman-Mania time period), the Russian mail order bride drama failed to find much of an audience.
2004 SuperBowl XXXVII was on but what people mostly remember today is that a "costume malfunction" in the half-time show revealed Janet Jackson's nipple-pierced breast. It weirdly ended her A list career, if not the career itself, because Americas were and still are hopelessly Puritan when it comes to sexuality.
2013 At the movie theaters, the zombie romcom Warm Bodies opened (remember how cute Nicholas Hoult's undead flesh eater was?). Meanwhile at home House of Cards began streaming on Netflix. Bingewatching was still kind of a new concept but everybody seemed to be doing it on this very day (except me. I was allergic to Kevin Spacey long before his career ended via predatory sexuality accusations)
Today's Birthday Suit
Happy 57th to British thespian Linus Roache who we always thought should have been a MUCH bigger star. He was so amazing in leading roles in the 1990s like Priest and The Wings of the Dove (both with amazing sex scenes) and the HBO film Shot Through the Heart. But then suddenly it was only supporting roles and then only television. Weird. Though perhaps it was devotion to the stage that prevented a big movie career?
Linus Roach in Priest
Other showbiz birthdays today: "King of Hollywood" Clark Gable (Gone With the Wind, It Happened One Night), Oscar's all-time favourite director John Ford (The Quiet Man, How Green Was My Valley, The Grapes of Wrath), 7 times Oscar nominated producer George Pal (War of the Worlds, The Time Machine) but all nominations were in Animated Short, Emmy winner Julia Garner (The Assistant, Grandma), Sherilyn Fenn (Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks), Michael C Hall (Dexter, Six Feet Under), Abbi Jacobsen (Broad City), Rachelle Lefevre (Twilight), Lee Thompson Young (Friday Night Lights), action star Ronda Rousey (Expendables 3, Furious 7), Germany's Barbara Auer (The Book Thief, Transit), comic actor Pauly Shore (Bio-Dome, Encino Man), Heather Morris (Glee, Spring Breakers), writer/actor Terry Jones (Monty Python and the Holy Grail, The Meaning of Life), Garret Morris (Saturday Night Live), Matt Lattanzi aka Olivia Newton-John's ex husband (My Tutor, Grease 2), Oscar nominee Stuart Whitman (The Mark, The Longest Day), Sherman Hemsley (The Jeffersons), Hong Kong's Tony Ka Fai Leung (The Lover, Cold War), musicians Harry Styles, Rick James, and Exene Cervenka, Helen Chandler the original "Mina Harker" (Dracula), Japan's Masahiro Higashide (Asako I & II, Death Note: Light up the New World) and the late promising star Brandon Lee (The Crow) son of Bruce.
Reader Comments (19)
I still like alot of Kevin Spacey performances. Guess i'm better st separating the art from the artist than most.
I've seen the videos plenty of time to think that both Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson knew what they were doing, it was all set up to have people talking about it and put the issue on the table... one of the signs that the USA was going to take a conservative, bigot turn, was that only Jackson suffered from the stunt... and that it lead to an increased censorship with a delay on the broadcast of live events, to avoid "undesirable" events to be known... applied of course, right away, to politics... and a forced self-censorship of celebrities, hosts, etc.
Man, Warm Bodies is such a little gem of a movie. Teresa Palmer and Analeigh Tipton both fall under my 'should be bigger stars' list - I thought both were great in that movie
"wardrobe malfunction" not costume malfunction -- Janet suffered because of sexism, racism, and ageism.
I remain to this day a huge Janet fan. Her career and influence are beginning to be re-evaluated, and she is rightfully starting to stake out a legacy that's just as influential as other artists. I don't think you have Beyonce/Lemonade without janet./The Velvet Rope, and she seems to be the blueprint for countless artists that have skated the line between R&B and pop, and emphasize choreography and visual spectacles to compensate for what may be lacking vocally (I think she has a sweet voice, but I'm not going to the show just to hear her sing).
As far as that Super Bowl performance goes, I don't think it was a stunt at all. Just before they cut to black, the woman looked mortified. Maybe it was the single best acting performance of her career, because she totally nailed a horrific WTF moment. That it got so much attention was and remains beyond silly, especially since there had to be at least 10 commercials about drugs for erectile dysfunction during the same Super Bowl! Boobs feed babies, this one just happened to be pierced and adorned with a sundial looking pasty. Nice.
And ditto on Linus Roach. Oh to be alive at a time when Brits were making gay dramas with legit sexy sex scenes...
In today's world that SuperBowl outcome would be very very different and although she keeps making music her 86 - 98 peak years were gone forever after it whilst underservedly Timberlake soared to greater heights.
Priest is an underrated movie,it's a hard watch but it does protray 90's Uk gay life accurately and the sex scene is very tastefully done.
oh, people can be so naive... the dress was clearly designed to that part to be removable. Timberlake, clearly aims to that part. Even if he wouldn't remove that part, his fingers grabbed JJ's breast - which would cross the line - and gripping it, he removed the removable part.
Thus... it was made on purpouse. The dress was carefully chosen. JT knew where he had to grab. And it was probably clearly staged. What purpouse? God knows. Both probably wanted publicity and have people talking about them, but the aftermath was an increase on puritanism and media censorship, and clearly backfired for Janet's career, and not for Timberlake's showing once more how patriarch is western society.
Broadway Melody is not great. I think Hollywood wanted to honor a musical in the new era of sound, and Broadway Melody fit the bill. 42nd Street was nominated for best picture just a few years later and it's sooooo superior to Broadway Melody in basically every way. It's a pretty comical comparison, actually.
People probably gave up on it, but Linus Roache was in the most recent/final season of Homeland (as the White House chief of staff, and was good in a somewhat thankless role).
As a big lover of musicals I honestly think Broadway Melody is a dreadful mess and won only for the novelty that it presented at the time. It's too bad the Academy didn't wait a few years and reward a truly worthwhile early musical once some of the kinks had been worked out.
Rich Man, Poor Man was HUGE!! The very definition of a water cooler show, it wasn't quite as big as Roots but I think it whetted the public's appetite for that show the next year, pulling them into the multi episode format. The show made the careers of the three leads-Peter Strauss and Susan Blakely became important TV stars for a couple of decades but it really propelled Nick Nolte into stardom, his judicious choice of films took him further but this was what took him from promising featured actor to leading man.
It's funny how most people in the USA love violence but can't stand sexuality.
Broadway Melody is wonderful! Of course it's crude and primitive, but so what! I enjoy it as a look into a world that's long gone, lost to history. The musical numbers are quite a revelation as to what audiences wanted back nearly 100 years ago. So is one of its competitors for Best Picture, Hollywood Revue of 1929 (which also proves conclusively that there was nothing wrong with John Gilbert's voice). I cherish these films as historical arefacts. It's a shame the Academy didn't reward some of Ernst Lubitsch's mini-operettas (especially The Smilin' Lieutenant) or Rouben Mamoulien's great Love Me Tonight. Even the year of Forty-Second Street, the Academy got it wrong - kind of. They chose the wrong musical. Gold Diggers of 1933 on got a sound nomination but it's Busby Berkeley's supreme masterpiece and should have been a Best Picture nominee.
Warm Bodies: I don't think I knew until this post that that adorkable zombie was played by Nicholas Hoult. Oops.
SuperBowl XXXVII Halftime: an American tragedy. Or farce.
Linus Roache: swoon-worthy.
Clark Gable: original "whatta man" man.
Linus Roche, totally swoonworthy. I've had to make do all these years with his recurring role on "Law and Order".
I always had the feeling that "costume malfunction" was absolutely planned. "Priest" was superb as was Linus Roache, very handsome and an exquisite actor. The UK DVD is the one to watch, since American version cuts over 7 minutes, including less sex in the scenes, and pointedly, the black character (played by Paul Barber) is almost gone. Sherman Hemsley - "Weezy!", the actor was actually 20 years younger than Isabel Sanford, who played his wife. I love "Dracula" and Helen Chandler was great, the film holds up and is 90 years old this year!
Let me get this straight? It's OK to wear the American flag as a poncho but it's not OK to show a nipple? So it's OK to call people in your own home country Dumb-fuckistan but it's not OK to express your sensuality? This country is fucked up. It sucks that Janet Jackson doesn't get much love these days though I have to admit that some of her recent music isn't that great yet Kid Cocksucker gets a pass because he's friends with our former dictator. This is bullshit.
Also when Cloris died I shed a tear. When Cicely passed I wept. Now with Screech gone I am inconsolable.
Kevin Spacey. Such a terribly smug performer who in the '90s had a knack of finding great roles in interesting movies but once he got super famous nothing was appealling about his choices. Since 2000, I've only seen BABY DRIVER (didn't like), SUPERMAN RETURNS (didn't like) and MARGIN CALL (don't remember much about it).
Kevin Spacey: I was an early fan, when he could be relied on to punch dialogue with such delicious relish (Swimming with Sharks, The Ref… younger Spacey was a delight). All that is lost now.
Janet Jackson: Though we will never know if the dress "reveal" was planned, I am remain forever peeved at Justin Timberlake's shady behavior. He's terrible, and I can never enjoy him.