Judy Holliday @ 100: The Oscar Winner's Fascinating Career

by Brent Calderwood

I’m just going to say it. I’m glad Judy Holliday won the Best Actress Oscar for the 1950 comedy Born Yesterday. I’m not saying she should have won—I’m not even saying I would have voted for her if I’d been a member of the Academy. But if I could have been there when the winner was announced on March 29, 1951, I would have been cheering the loudest.

Today—100 years after Holliday’s birth and 56 years and two weeks after her untimely death—Holliday’s Sea Biscuit victory over frontrunners Bette Davis for All About Eve and Gloria Swanson for Sunset Boulevard is still a topic of discussion and debate...

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Juanita Moore: Give this woman a star on the Walk of Fame!

by Brent Calderwood

Juanita Moore lived to be 99 but she's immortal via her Oscar-nominated classic

In case you were wondering, today marks the 2021 due date to submit nominations for the Hollywood Walk of Fame. More importantly, it also marks the third year in a row that Juanita Moore has been nominated. Each year the selection committee chooses about 20 winners from among 200 or so nominees, and for the past two years, Moore has been passed over, despite her Oscar-nominated performance in 1959’s Imitation of Life, and despite the annual efforts of her nephew Arnett Moore. Here’s hoping that this will finally be Juanita Moore’s year. 

In 1959, Juanita Moore earned nearly unanimous praise for her star turn in Imitation of Life. Moore plays Annie Johnson, the Black mother of a light-skinned daughter, Sarah Jane, who is assumed by her classmates to be white...

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Showbiz History: Warren Beatty's habitual Oscar fate, 1954's lame Best Picture lineup, and more...

4 random things that happened on this day, March 30th, in showbiz history

1946 The 3rd annual Golden Globes were held on this day honoring The Lost Weekend, 75 years ago. It was AFTER the Oscars. How bizarre right? But the Globes were more like the NBR at the start announcing winners (no nominees) in advance of a banquet.  

1955 The 27th Academy Awards are held honoring the best of 1954 On the Waterfront leads the nominations and wins an incredible 8 Oscars.  Though the Academy nominates all the wrong movies as its competition so it had an easy time of it. The Best Picture lineup went like so...

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Simone Signoret @ 100: A love letter to a great actress

by Cláudio Alves

This week, we've been celebrating Simone Signoret's centennial, an unlikely sex-symbol of the midcentury and an even more atypical Oscar champion. Previously, Daniel wrote about the French actress' brief appearance in La Ronde, and Eric paid tribute to what's probably her most excellent vehicle, Casque d'Or. Now that it's my turn to wax poetic about Madame Signoret, I find myself in a bit of a conundrum. You see, even before the centennial celebrations, the actress had been on my mind. Though, it wasn't because of a film she starred in or individual performance. Watching the animated film No. 7 Cherry Lane, I can't help but think that no one will ever be able to create a more beautiful homage to this star than director Yonfan…

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Showbiz History: Duplicity, The King and I, and the 1951 Oscars

5 random things that happened on this day, March 20th, in showbiz history...

1949 The 20th Academy Awards are held honoring the films of 1947. The anti-semitism journalism drama Gentleman's Agreement takes Best Picture with Miracle on 34th Street probably a distant second. We had so much fun discussing this year last summer and we highly recommend you watch Crossfire (which lost all five of its nominations) because it's excellent...

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