Showbiz History: An Unmarried Woman, Oscar Balloting, and Hula Hoops
Friday, March 5, 2021 at 8:00AM 7 random things that happened on this day, March 5th, in showbiz history...
Best Actor and Best Actress, Victor McLaglen & Bette Davis
1936 The 8th Academy Awards are held honoring the best of 1935. Victor McLaglen (The Informer) and Bette Davis (Dangerous) take the acting Oscars. Mutiny on the Bounty wins Best Picture (and nothing else). That happened three times in the first eight years of Oscar history and has literally never happened since. That same night John Ford wins the first of his four Best Director prizes (the all time record) for The Informer. Curiously only one of his Best Director wins, How Green Was My Valley, came with a companion Best Picture win. (So he's like if you combined Alfonso Cuaron and Ang Lee's records, both of whom have won twice without a companion Best Picture win, and rewrote history -- which we'd sure like to *cough Brokeback* -- to add in 1 random Best Picture win.) The four wins without much help from Best Picture frontrunner status is such a crazy record if you think on it for even half a second. It's hard to imagine that it will ever be broken...
The only living/working directors anywhere in Ford's winning vicinity are Eastwood, Iñárritu, Lee, Spielberg, Cuarón, and Stone ...and they've all only won half as many times!
1963 The Hula Hoop is patented. Remember how hilariously the Coen brothers rewrote that history in The Hudsucker Proxy?
Jill Clayburgh double feature!
1978 An Unmarried Woman has its world premiere in NYC. The zeitgeist hit nabs three major Oscar nominations a year later: Picture, Actress (Jill Clayburgh), and Original Screenplay.
1982 I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can, another Jill Clayburgh vehicle, hits movie theaters. (Did you know that Supporting Actress Queen Dianne Wiest made her first two movies in Clayburgh vehicles?!? Well now you do. This was Wiest's second picture after 1980's It's My Turn.)
1999 Cruel Intentions hits movie theaters starring Ryan Phillipe's ass and Sarah & Selma's french-kissing.
2006 The 78th Academy Awards are held. It's the infamous night when the masterpiece Brokeback Mountain, which had cleaned up precursor Best Picture wins and led the nominations, lost at the Oscars. Such a heartbreaking evening from which we still have lingering sharp pains on occassion. In fact we prefer not to think about it at all. Let's move on...
2021 THAT'S TODAY AND HERE'S SOME OSCAR TALK.
Freeze the buzz when making your predictions since the Academy starts filling out their nomination ballots right now. Though they're not due until Wednesday March 10th, we've been told numerous times that most AMPAS members fill out their ballots in the first few days of the process.
It's also worth noting that today marks the first weekend of eligibility for the NEXT Oscar race (due to the weird extension of "2020" until February 28th of 2021). Unless the Academy panics again there will only be 10 months of eligiblity for 2021. Supposedly a whole huge swath of movies arrives today -- our first contenders how cute! -- on streaming or in theaters or both including: Boogie, Chaos Walking, Coming 2 America, Boss Level, My Salinger Years, Pixie, Son, and Raya and the Last Dragon. Happy watching!
Today's Birthday Suit
Happy 50th to Yuri Lowenthal, seen here in a fun Spider-Man suit.
We never honor voice actors around here so we figured why not honor him today on his half century mark. You might not know his handsome dad face but you probably know his (ubiquitous) voice if you're into anime or superhero series or gaming. In addition to numerous video games you can hear him on series like Ben 10, Marvel Future Avengers, Batman Unlimited, DC Super Friends, Bleach, and Spider-Man among many many MANY more. He's also very active on social media.
Bonus Birthday Suit
Happy 38th to Albanian star Nik Xhelilaj (The Albanian, Winetou, and the 2009 Oscar submission Alive!)
Other showbiz birthdays today: Oscar nominee Dean Stockwell (Married to the Mob, Dune), Oscar nominee Adriana Barraza (Babel, Drag Me to Hell), Oscar nominee Samantha Eggar (The Collector, The Brood), Argentina's Darío Grandinetti (Talk to Her, Wild Tales), Eva Mendes (Hitch, Training Day), Riki Lindhome (Enlightened, Under the Silver Lake), Jake Lloyd (The Phantom Menace), Kevin Connolly (Entourage, The Notebook), Karolina Wydra (Be Kind Rewind, A Score to Settle), Matt Lucas (Little Britain, Bridesmaids), Sweden's Hanna Alström (Sami Blood, Kingsman The Secret Service), Aasif Mandvi (Evil, The Proposal), Neil Jackson (Stargirl, Welcomee to Marwen) Paul Blackthorne (Lagaan, Arrow), Australia's Pallavi Sharda (Lion, Begum Jaan), Emmy nominee James Sikking (Hill Stret Blues, The Pelican Brief), Aislinn Paul (Degrassi the Next Generation, Freakish), blaxploitation star Fred Williamson (From Dusk till Dawn, Black Caesar), Norway's Iben Akerlie (Victoria, In the Sea), Nico Greetham (The Prom, Power Rangers Ninja Steel), "Hope/Penny" herself Rena Riffel (Showgirls), Murray Head (Sunday Bloody Sunday, White Mischief), John Paul Pitoc (Trick, Six Feet Under), Penn Jillette of the duo Penn & Teller, Oscar winning visual effects giant Chris Corbould (Inception, Christopher Robin), and musical theater legend Elaine Paige.
and late greats like... Auteur legend Pier Paolo Pasolini (Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, Teorema), Joan Shawlee (Some Like it Hot, The Apartment), Oscar winner Rex Harrison (My Fair Lady, Cleopatra), Virginia Christine (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Judgment at Nuremberg), Emmy nominee Jack Cassidy (The Eiger Sanction, He & She), and singers Teena Marie and Andy Gibb
Reader Comments (17)
I will never forget Jack Nicholson's "whoa" after announcing Crash as best picture. Also, 3 Six Mafia's acceptance speech = pure joy. Jon Stewart cracked that they were the only ones excited to be there that night.
Cruel Intentions still has one of my favorite endings. That perfect Bittersweet Symphony needle drop. (sidenote: I watched Dangerous Liaisons for the first time last year, and Cruel Intentions is surprisingly faithful to the plot.)
Crash has aged terribly. It's appallingly bad.
I wonder if Brokeback Mountain had won the Best Picture Oscar it deserved, would the drive to award Moonlight Best Picture been sufficient to see the film best La La Land.
John Paul Pitoc (Trick, Six Feet Under) --- SWOON! ;-)
Bette Davis took a lot of heat for the way she was dressed when she won the award for Dangerous which is why when she won for Jezebel she was all decked out in ostrich feathers and a fancy gown.
It's odd, Jill Clayburgh really seemed poised to be one of the megastars of her generation after An Unmarried Woman. Her ascension was pretty rapid and she was at the top for a brief time but almost as suddenly she was through as a leading star. It seems to have been a combination of things, a happy marriage to David Rabe and children right after her breakthrough, a life centered in the East, some poor choices in material (she turned down Norma Rae among other films) and then health issues, she struggled with leukemia for 20 years before it lead to her death. Too bad she was an interesting actress.
I am a Jane Fonda forever Stan but Jill Clayburgh was sooooo robbed of the '78 Oscar. That performance and movie ranks on my all-time top 10 lists. Love it to bits. Also I know he had a great career but I wish people talked more about Alan Bates these days. He was such a talent - and so good looking.
Clayburgh’s daughter Lily Rabe has consistently been a saving grace on American Horror Story. I wish someone (not Ryan Murphy) would write her an Unmarried Woman.
I wonder how much John Ford's independence, and lack of studio ties, doomed his films' best picture chances. He was obviously talented and well loved within the director's branch, but I suspect his early bucking of the system may have cost his films the support needed to win in BP.
I love Jill Clayburgh and I think, even though she was mostly doing supporting and guest parts in TV, that her presence is really missed on screen. I think if the cable anti-hero trend had taken hold in the 90s, she would have gotten a Glenn Close Damages-esqe role that she would have knocked out of the park. Still, I'm glad she had her late-70s to early 80s run - few actresses get that.
George everyone knows Page or Bergman should have had 78's Oscar.
Jill was the best part of Running with Scissors,Her choices of films had more to do with her downturn plus Jessica,Sissy,Meryl,Diane and Meryl taking the better roles.
The double whammy of the Brokeback Mountain and Lincoln snubs is why I'm only half-in anymore as far as the Oscars go, and haven't watched a second of the actual ceremony in years. Of course I obsess over the nominations (I just can't quit you, Oscars), but the actual winners mean next to nothing.
The Oscar should have gone to Ingrid Bergman. Also, Page and Clayburgh were better choices than Fonda.
George Stevens also won two Best Director trophies without corresponding Best Pictures.
Frank Borzage won twice for non-Best Picture winners.
DI - I'm in complete agreement.
"Crash has aged terribly. It's appallingly bad."
oh lord, it didn't even need to age, it was appallingly bad the day was released! Worst BP winner ever, IMHO.
Besides, of course, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, I think SMG's performance in CRUEL INTENTIONS is her best one. I really wish NBC had gone through on the sequel series with SMG reprising her Kathryn Merteuil role. I would kill to see the Pilot they filmed!
CLAYBURGH4EVA
Pardon me while I put on my Mr. Negative hat. I can't imagine anything more boring and painful than having to watch Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall. Both of them need to go back to the 1980's.