The Matrix is released on this date in 1999

On this day in 1999, the writing and directing sibling team of Andy and Larry Wachowski release their second film, the mind-blowing science-fiction blockbuster The Matrix.

Born and raised in Chicago, the Wachowski brothers both dropped out of college and started a house-painting and construction business before they got into the film industry. They collaborated on two screenplays, the second of which was made into the action movie Assassins (1995), starring Sylvester Stallone and Antonio Banderas. A year later, the Wachowskis wrote, directed and executive-produced their debut film, Bound. Critics praised the relatively low-budget crime thriller, about lesbian lovers who steal from the mob, and it became a cult hit.

The brothers’ next project, however, brought them to a whole new level. Filmed for $70 million, The Matrix was a stylish, innovative and visually spectacular take on a familiar premise--that humans are unknowing inhabitants of a world controlled by machines--central to films such as Alien and 2001: A Space Odyssey. The Matrix starred Keanu Reeves as a computer hacker who learns that human-like computers have created a fake world, the Matrix, to enslave the remaining humans while keeping them in the dark about their dire fate. Guided by the sleek, mysterious Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and Trinity (Carrie-Ann Moss), the hacker is dubbed Neo and told he alone can play the crucial role in deciding the fate of the world. Packed with slow-motion camera tricks and references from a myriad of sources--including comic books, the Bible, Lewis Carroll, Eastern philosophy and film noir--The Matrix also stunned viewers with its Hong Kong-style fight scenes, choreographed by the martial-arts master Yuen Wo Ping and performed with the help of invisible wires allowing the characters to fly through the air. Greeted with enthusiasm by computer-gaming fanatics and mainstream audiences alike, The Matrix earned a staggering $470 million worldwide and won four Academy Awards, for Best Editing, Best Sound Effects Editing, Best Visual Effects and Best Sound.

The Wachowskis had always envisioned The Matrix as a trilogy, and they shot back-to-back sequels, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, in Australia. Released six months apart in 2003, they were generally agreed to be less successful than the original film. All in all, however, the franchise--including a best-selling video game, Enter the Matrix--earned the production company, Warner Brothers, more than $1 billion. The Wachowskis, meanwhile, became famously reclusive, refusing to promote the Matrix sequels or give interviews. The air of mystery surrounding the brothers was exacerbated by rumors that Larry Wachowski had undergone a sex change and was living as a woman, Lana Wachowski. As reported by Fox News, Joel Silver, producer of the Matrix films, emphatically denied these reports in a 2007 interview.

As a follow-up to their phenomenal success, the Wachowskis wrote and produced for Animatrix, a series of short films based on The Matrix, and wrote and produced the provocative action thriller V for Vendetta (2006). In 2008, the brothers returned to directing (as well as writing and producing) with Speed Racer, a film adaptation of the Japanese anime series by the same name.

James Cagney

Who died on this date:

On March 30, 1986, actor James Cagney died. He was born on July 17, 1899 in New York City. Although he won acclaim and major awards in a wide variety of performances, he is best remembered for playing tough guys. Cagney's seventh film, The Public Enemy, became one of the most influential gangster movies of the period. Notable for its famous grapefruit scene, the film thrust Cagney into the spotlight, making him one of Warners' and Hollywood's biggest stars. In 1938, he received his first Academy Award for Best Actor nomination, for Angels with Dirty Faces, before winning in 1942 for his portrayal of George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy. He was nominated a third time in 1955 for Love Me or Leave Me. Cagney retired for twenty years in 1961, spending time on his farm, before returning for a part in Ragtime, mainly to aid his recovery from a stroke. He died on March 30, 1986 from a heart attack in Stanford, New York and is buried at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.

Warner Baxter

Who was born on this date:

Actor Warner Leroy Baxter was born on March 29, 1889 in Columbus, Ohio. He won the 1930 Best Actor Academy Award for In Old Arizona (1928). Baxter died on May 7, 1951 from pneumonia following an ill advised lobotomy. He is buried at Forest Lawn Glendale.

Marlon Brando Declines Academy Award - 1973

On this day in 1973, actor Marlon Brando declines the Academy Award for Best Actor for his career-reviving performance in The Godfather.

The Native American actress Sacheen Littlefeather attended the ceremony in Brando’s place, stating that the actor “very regretfully” could not accept the award, as he was protesting Hollywood’s portrayal of Native Americans in film. 

Now revered by many as the greatest actor of his generation, Brando earned his first Oscar nomination for his portrayal of the brutish Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). The role was a reprisal of Brando’s incendiary performance in the 1947 stage production of Tennessee Williams’ play, which first brought him to the public’s attention. Nominated again for roles in Viva Zapata! (1952) and Julius Caesar (1953), he won his first Academy Award for On the Waterfront (1954). 

Brando’s career went into decline in the 1960s, with expensive flops such as One-Eyed Jacks (1961), which he also directed, and Mutiny on the Bounty (1962). Aside from his preternatural talent, the actor had become notorious for his moodiness and demanding on-set behavior, as well as his tumultuous off-screen life. Francis Ford Coppola, the young director of The Godfather, had to fight to get him cast in the coveted role of Vito Corleone. Brando won the role only after undergoing a screen test and cutting his fee to $250,000--far less than what he had commanded a decade earlier. With one of the most memorable screen performances of all time, Brando rejuvenated his career, and The Godfather became an almost-immediate classic. 

On the eve of the 1972 Oscars, Brando announced that he would boycott the ceremony, and would send Littlefeather in his place. After Brando’s name was announced as Best Actor, the presenter Roger Moore (star of several James Bond films) attempted to hand the Oscar to Littlefeather, but she brushed it aside, saying that Brando could not accept the award. Littlefeather read a portion of a lengthy statement Brando had written, the entirety of which was later published in the press, including The New York Times. “The motion picture community has been as responsible as any,” Brando wrote, “for degrading the Indian and making a mockery of his character, describing his as savage, hostile and evil.”

Brando had been involved in social causes for years, speaking publicly in support of the formation of a Jewish state in the 1940s, as well as for African-American civil rights and the Black Panther Party. His Oscar statement expressed support for the American Indian Movement (AIM) and referenced the ongoing situation at Wounded Knee, the South Dakota town that had been seized by AIM members the previous month and was currently under siege by U.S. military forces. Wounded Knee had also been the site of a massacre of Native Americans by U.S. government forces in 1890.

Brando was the second performer to turn down a Best Actor Oscar; the first was George C. Scott, who politely declined to accept his award for Patton in 1971 and reportedly said of the Academy Awards hoopla: “I don’t want any part of it.” Scott had previously declined a Best Supporting Actor nomination for The Hustler (1961).

72nd Academy Awards Ceremony is Held - 2000

On this day in 2000, Billy Crystal hosts the 72nd annual Academy Awards ceremony at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. 

An Oscar crisis had been narrowly averted a week earlier, when Willie Fulgear, a man who made his living recovering and selling discarded objects, found 10 packing crates filled with 52 gold-plated Oscar statuettes near a dumpster in the Koreatown section of Los Angeles. The Oscars had been stolen from a loading dock around March 8 after they had been delivered from the Chicago factory that manufactured them. Two men who worked for the shipping company were later arrested in connection with the incident. Fulgear was rewarded with $50,000 and two tickets to the March 26th festivities. Three Oscars remained missing after Fulgear’s discovery; one was discovered by police during a drug investigation in Florida in 2003. 

Grateful recipients of the recovered Oscars included Hilary Swank, who won in the Best Actress category for playing Brandon Teena, a young transgender man who meets a brutal end in Boys Don’t Cry. Angelina Jolie won Best Supporting Actress for Girl, Interrupted and the veteran actor Michael Caine took home the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Cider House Rules. All of the evening’s other major awards went to American Beauty, a darkly humorous family drama directed by San Mendes. It was the first film for Mendes, a young Englishman known for his work directing for the stage (including hit Broadway productions of Cabaret and The Blue Room), as well as for the screenwriter, Alan Ball, who had previously penned an off-Broadway play and written for sitcoms. It was Mendes’s idea to cast the acclaimed character actor Kevin Spacey as Lester Burnham, a middle-aged man stuck in a dead-end job and an unsatisfying marriage to an uptight real-estate broker, played by Annette Bening. Things take a turn for the dramatic after an equally dysfunctional family moves in next door, complete with drug-selling son and rigid ex-Marine father, and after Lester became obsessed with a friend of his teenage daughter. 

At the Oscars, Ball won in the Best Original Screenplay category, while Spacey triumphed as Best Actor; Bening was also nominated in the Best Actress category. American Beauty also took home the evening’s last two awards, Best Director for Mendes and the coveted Best Picture. Ball followed up on his American Beauty success by creating the acclaimed HBO series Six Feet Under, while Mendes directed such films as The Road to Perdition (2002), Jarhead (2005) and Revolutionary Road (2008). The last project starred his wife, the actress Kate Winslet.

73rd Academy Award Ceremony is held - 2001

To some, Oscar night is more about the fashion than the awards themselves. Much of the audience tunes in to see who looks fabulous, who takes the biggest risks, and--of course--who’s the most egregious fashion disaster. Of the latter, the infamous “swan dress” worn by the Icelandic pop singer Bjork at the 73rd annual Academy Awards on this day in 2001 is among the most notorious.

Bjork earned critical praise for her portrayal of Selma (writing in the New York Times, A.O. Scott called her performance “miraculous”) as well as the polarizing film’s only Oscar nomination, in the Best Original Song category. On Oscar night, the ever-quirky Icelandic singer turned heads by showing up on the red carpet in an outfit resembling a dead swan. Over a nude body stocking and above a large white tutu-like skirt, the swan’s neck was draped around Bjork’s shoulders like a shawl, with its head lying on her chest. Bjork took the stage to perform her nominated song, “I’ve Seen It All,” which lost in its category to Bob Dylan’s “Things Have Changed,” from Wonder Boys.

Other winners at that year’s Academy Awards, which were hosted by Steve Martin, were Russell Crowe (Gladiator) as Best Actor and Julia Roberts (Erin Brockovich) as Best Actress. Steven Soderbergh won the Best Director award for Traffic over Ridley Scott, but Scott’s bloody Roman epic, Gladiator, was the Academy’s choice for Best Picture.

74th Academy Awards Ceremony is held - Halle Berry Wins Best Actress

On this day in 2002, the 74th annual Academy Awards ceremony is held at its brand new venue, the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles. Completed the previous November, the $94 million Kodak Theatre would be the first permanent home for the Academy Awards ceremony.

At the first Oscar ceremony since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the mood was relatively subdued, and security was tighter than ever. That year’s Oscar race had been seen as particularly close, with a number of high-profile films in the running for Best Picture: besides the front-runner, Ron Howard’s A Beautiful Mind, many were predicting wins for the musical Moulin Rouge or The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, the first installment of Peter Jackson’s big-screen adaptation of the popular J.R.R. Tolkien trilogy. Two sleeper picks, Robert Altman’s ensemble murder mystery Gosford Park and Todd Field’s In the Bedroom, rounded out the Best Picture category.

Before Best Picture was announced, however, the Oscars made history, when Halle Berry was presented with the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as the wife of a death row inmate in Monster’s Ball. Berry was the first African-American performer to win in the Best Actress category and only the second African-American actress ever to be honored by the Academy (the first was Hattie McDaniel, who won for her supporting role in 1939’s Gone With the Wind). As an emotional Berry clutched her Oscar, she tearfully called the moment “so much bigger than me” and declared that “the door had been opened” for actresses of color.

On the heels of Berry’s historic win, Denzel Washington became only the second African-American man to win in the Best Actor category, accepting the statuette for his role as a corrupt Los Angeles police officer in Training Day. It was the first time that African-American performers had taken home both of the year’s top acting awards. Sidney Poitier, the first black Best Actor winner (for 1964’s Lilies of the Field ) received an honorary Oscar that night as well.

In another Oscar first, the animated film Shrek, produced by Dreamworks SKG (a studio formed in 1999 by Hollywood heavyweights Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen), won the first-ever Academy Award given in a brand new category: Best Animated Feature Film. With Mike Myers voicing the titular character, a lovable green ogre, and Cameron Diaz voicing his adored Princess Fiona, Shrek beat out the two other entrants in its category, Monsters, Inc. and Jimmy Neutron. The night ended with Howard taking home the Oscar for Best Director and A Beautiful Mind winning Best Picture.

Joan Crawford

Who was born on this date:

Actress Joan Crawford was one of Hollywood’s most brilliant, unforgettable, and notoriously fickle actresses. She was born Lucille Fay LeSueur on March 23, 1905 (some sources have the year as 1908) in San Antonio, Texas. Her parents divorced when she was very young. She and her mother then lived a transient lifestyle moving from city to city in the Midwest. Crawford did attend private school but unfortunately did not progress pass a sixth grade education. She was a talented dancer and always dreamed of becoming an entertainer. As a teenager she was able to land employment as a chorus girl in Kansas City, Chicago, and Detroit. In 1924 during one of these shows Crawford was discovered by stage producer J.J. Shubert; he offered her a part in the chorus line of his Broadway play, Innocent Eyes. After several months of success in this play, Crawford was spotted by an MGM talent scout, she was offered a screen test and then was offered a bit part in the film, Pretty Ladies (1925). After several other small film roles, MGM suggested that she change her name, a public contest was held and Joan Crawford was selected. Initially, she hated the name wanting Joan to be pronounced, Jo-Anne, and thinking that Crawford sounded like crawfish but she had no choice in the matter, eventually she grew to embraced the new name and the opportunities she had been given.
In a legendary film career that would span forty-seven years (1925-1972), she would star in over eighty motion pictures. Her most famous film credits include: The Taxi Dancer (1927), Our Dancing Daughters (1928), Grand Hotel (1932), The Bride Wore Red (1937), The Shining Hour (1938), The Women (1939), Humoresque (1946), Queen Bee (1955), Autumn Leaves (1956) and The Best of Everything (1959). She won the Oscar for best actress in 1946, for her portrayal of the ambitious mother in Mildred Pierce (1945). She was not present at the ceremony because of illness and in a much staged and somewhat comical scene; she accepted the award from her bed, saying in the most theatrical way possible, “This is the greatest moment of my life.” It turned out that she had faked being sick because she was afraid of losing. Crawford was nominated for two further best actress Academy Awards, Possessed (1947) and Sudden Fear (1952). Her film roles were quite diverse ranging from chorus girls and flappers (1920’s), strong minded career woman (1930’s and 1940’s), and subdued older women (1950’s). But by the 1960’s, she was relegated to bit parts in B-movies and television appearances. She made a dramatic comeback in the thriller, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane (1962) but this revival was short lived, subsequent film roles were unsatisfactory, and she soon retired from film.

She had a very tough persona, notoriously difficult to work with and was always at odds with studio heads. In 1938, she was labeled “box-office poison” by industry insiders. By 1943, MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer had enough, and fired the actress for refusal to accept roles and abide by her contract. Crawford then signed with Warner Bros. and other studios, where she got roles that were much more to her liking.
Crawford had an infamous ongoing feud with Bette Davis. The two actresses detested one another. Davis was once quoted as saying (about Crawford), “She’s slept with every male star at MGM except Lassie,” and in return, Crawford replied, “I don’t hate Bette Davis even though the press wants me to. I resent her. I don’t see how she (Davis) built a career out of a set of mannerisms, instead of real acting ability. Take away the pop eyes, the cigarette, and those funny clipped words and what have you got? She’s phony, but I guess the public really likes that.” Ironically, the two archrivals would appear together to revive their careers in 1962’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, Crawford would say that working with Davis in this motion picture was the greatest challenge of her career.
Her personal life was filled with heart ache and turmoil. She married five times, divorced four husbands, and adopted four children, one of which, Christina, wrote a tell all biography, “Mommie Dearest,” in which Crawford was portrayed as being neurotic, obsessive and abusive. Because she saw this book as the ultimate betrayal, Crawford left her daughter completely out of her will and in the last paragraph of this infamous will, Crawford wrote, "It is my intention to make no provision herein for my son Christopher or my daughter Christina for reasons which are well known to them.” In 1955, Crawford married Pepsi Cola Company Chief Executive, Alfred Steele; she became a goodwill ambassador for the company and traveled around the globe promoting Pepsi. When Steele died in 1959, she was elected to fill his spot on the board of directors and held this position until 1973, when she was forced out.
Due to her advancing age and ill health, the last years of her life were spent secluded in her upper Eastside Manhattan, New York apartment. On May 10, 1977, Crawford died from a heart attack. She had been suffering from pancreatic cancer and was in a weakened state at the time of her death. Crawford’s alleged last words, spoken to her housekeeper (who had begun to pray out loud) were “Damin it! Don’t you dare ask God to help me.” Upon hearing of the death of her long time rival, Bette Davis said, “You should never say bad things about the dead; you should only say good things…Joan Crawford is dead. Good.”
Crawford was a devote Christian Scientist and her remains were cremated, a brief service was held on May 13, 1977 in which one hundred and fifty friends and family attended. A memorial service was held at the All Souls Unitarian Church in New York on May 16th in attendance were many Hollywood dignitaries that included good friend actress, Myrna Loy. Crawford’s ashes are interred with that of her late husband, Albert Steele, in the family crypt at the Ferncliff Cemetery mausoleum, Westchester County, Hartsdale, New York.

Titanic Wins Academy Award for Best Picture - 1998

By the time James Cameron took the stage to accept his Academy Award for Best Director on the night of March 23, 1998, the Oscar dominance of his blockbuster film Titanic was all but assured. Titanic tied the record for most Oscar nominations with 14—joining 1950's All About Eve—and by night's end would tie with Ben Hur (1959) for most wins by sweeping 11 categories, including the coveted Best Picture. 

With Aliens, The Abyss and the first two Terminator movies under his belt, Cameron had already proved himself a master of the action-packed science-fiction blockbuster genre. His ambition reached new heights with Titanic, a retelling of the ill-fated 1912 voyage of the unparalleled passenger steamship, which sank in the North Atlantic after striking an iceberg. Cameron's films were notorious for going long over schedule and way over budget, and Titanic was worse than most. Originally budgeted at $100 million, the film eventually topped out at about $200 million, more than any other film in history; it also missed its original release date, making the studio executives sweat as they envisioned another Heaven's Gate (the infamous big-budget flop that sank United Artists in the early 1980s). 

Personally, Cameron was known for his dictatorial style, hot temper and obsession with detail. For his reenactment of the historic ship's sinking, the film's crew constructed a 775-foot (90 percent scale) replica of the RMS Titanic and put it in a tank containing 17 million gallons of water. Production was done in Mexico, and members of the cast and crew later complained about the harsh conditions, including shooting days of more than 20 hours, much of that time spent standing in cold, murky Pacific Ocean water. 

Released just before Christmas in 1997, Titanic became a monster hit and continued to earn steadily at the box office over the next six months until it became the first movie ever to gross more than $1 billion internationally. Critical response to the film was divided. Many reviews were positive, but some critics praised the visual effects and action sequences—especially the last hour of the three-hour-plus movie, which depicts the epic sinking of the luxury liner—even while pointing out the weakness of the screenplay, which Cameron penned himself. In one particularly memorable pan, Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the film "reeks of phoniness and lacks even minimal originality." Cameron famously fired back in a letter to the editor, demanding (unsuccessfully) that the Times "impeach Kenneth Turan." 

On Oscar night, Cameron echoed Leonardo DiCaprio's character in Titanic by shouting "I'm the king of the world!" upon accepting his Best Director statuette. While accepting Best Picture (as the film's producer), the filmmaker was slightly more subdued, asking for a moment of silence in remembrance of the more than 1,500 people who drowned on the Titanic.

Karl Malden

Who was born on this date:

Actor Karl Malden was born Mladen George Sekulovich on March 22, 1912 in Chicago, Illinois. In a career that spanned more than seven decades, he performed in such classic films as A Street Car Named Desire, for which he won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor; On the Water Front; and One-Eyed Jacks. Among other notable film roles were Archie Lee Meighan in Baby Doll, Zebulon Prescott in How the West was Won, and General Omar Bradley in Patton. His best-known role, though, was on television as Lt. Mike Stone on the 1970s crime drama, The Streets of San Francisco. During the 1970s and 1980s, he was also the spokesman for American Express. He died on July 1, 2009 from natural causes and is buried at Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles.

Dallas TV Show - "Who shot JR" Episode aired - 1980

On this day in 1980, J.R. Ewing, the character millions love to hate on television’s popular prime-time drama Dallas, is shot by an unknown assailant. The shooting made the season-ending episode one of TV’s most famous cliffhangers, inspired widespread media coverage and left America wondering “Who shot J.R.?” for the next eight months. On November 21, 1980, the premiere episode of Dallas’s third season solved the mystery, identifying Kristin Shepard, J.R.’s mistress (and his wife’s sister), as the culprit.

The CBS television network debuted the first five-episode pilot season of Dallas in 1978; it went on to run for another 12 full-length seasons. The first show of its kind, Dallas was dubbed a “prime-time soap opera” for its serial plots and dramatic tales of moral excess. The show revolved around the relations of two Texas oil families: the wealthy, successful Ewings and the perpetually down-on-their-luck Barnes clan. The families’ patriarchs, Jock Ewing and Digger Barnes, were former partners locked in a years-long feud over oil fields Barnes claimed had been stolen by Ewing. To make matters more interesting, Ewing’s youngest son Bobby (Patrick Duffy) and Barnes’ daughter Pam (Victoria Principal) had married, linking the battling clans even more closely. The character of J.R. Ewing, Bobby’s oldest brother and a greedy, conniving, womanizing scoundrel, was played by Larry Hagman.
In the wake of the season-ending cliffhanger episode, “A House Divided,” audiences were hard-pressed to guess who was responsible for the shooting; J.R. had a host of enemies. That summer, the question “Who Shot J.R.?” entered the national lexicon, becoming a popular T-shirt slogan, and heightening anticipation of the soap’s third season, which was to come in the fall. Much to the dismay of Dallas fans, the premiere was delayed because of a Screen Actors Guild strike. When it finally aired, the episode revealing the shooter became one of television’s most-watched shows, with an audience of 83 million people, and helped put Dallas into greater worldwide circulation. It also popularized the use of the cliffhanger by TV writers.

The shooting of J.R. was not Dallas’s only notorious plot twist. In September 1986, fans learned that the entire previous season, in which main character Bobby Ewing had died, was merely a dream of Pam’s. The show’s writers had killed the Bobby character off because Duffy had decided to leave the show. When he agreed to return, they featured him stepping out of the shower on the season-ending cliffhanger, and then were forced the next season to explain his sudden reappearance. The last new episode of Dallas aired on May 3, 1991. A spin-off, Knots Landing, aired from December 27, 1979, until May 13, 1993. Dallas remains in syndication around the world.

The 20th Academy Awards Ceremony was held on this date in 1948

On this date in 1948, Hollywood’s elite braved freezing temperatures and strong winds to attend the 20th annual Academy Awards ceremony at the Shrine Civic Auditorium in Los Angeles, California. For the 20th anniversary of the Academy Awards, producers of the ceremony turned the stage at the Shrine Auditorium into an enormous birthday cake. Twenty large-scale Oscar statuettes stood in place of the candles. In addition to celebrating the best in film produced in the year 1947, and the 20th anniversary of its organization, the Academy was celebrating the film industry itself and how far it had come in the past two decades. In 1929, Hollywood was going through the sometimes painful transition from silent film to “talkies.” As studios struggled with technical difficulties with sound recording and editing, some of silent film’s biggest stars were pushed out of the limelight due to their inability to learn lines, their heavy foreign accents or less-than-melodious voices. The economic structure of Hollywood was also changing, as smaller studios like 20th Century Fox and Warner Brothers built themselves into major corporations in order to compete with already-established powerhouses such as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Paramount. 

In 1947, two years after the end of World War II, the Hollywood studio system produced and distributed more than 500 films. In an average week, 90 million Americans (out of a total population of 151 million) went to see a movie, paying around 40 cents for a single ticket. At the Shrine on that March night, the Oscar for Best Picture of 1947 went to Gentleman’s Agreement, produced by Fox. The film starred Gregory Peck as a journalist who poses as a Jewish man in order to investigate and report firsthand on anti-Semitism in America. Gentleman’s Agreement was an example of a new type of film that came out of Hollywood in the post-World War II years. Far removed from a typical genre film (musical, Western, gangster, etc.), it was a realistic, socially conscious drama that reflected some of the country’s darker realities. The film’s director, Elia Kazan, a former stage director, took home the Best Director Oscar.

As in 1929, the movie industry stood at another crossroads in 1948. Aside from the threat of a new, exciting entertainment medium--television--looming on the horizon, Hollywood was in the grip of anxiety over the attempts of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to root out Communist influence in the movie industry. For his part, Kazan earned the enduring contempt of many of his peers in 1952, when he complied with HUAC’s request to give the names of colleagues in New York’s Group Theater who had been secret members of the Communist Party. The era of the so-called “Red Scare” would change Hollywood forever, as the studios began blacklisting suspected Communists under pressure from Washington, ending the careers of many talented artists

Academy Awards Ceremony First Televised - 1953

On this night in 1953, for the first time, audiences are able to sit in their living rooms and watch as the movie world’s most prestigious honors, the Academy Awards, are given out at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood, California.

Organized in May 1927, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was envisioned as a non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of the film industry. The first Academy Awards were handed out in May 1929, in a ceremony and banquet held in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. The level of suspense was nonexistent, however, as the winners had already been announced several months earlier. For the next 10 years, the Academy gave the names of the winners to the newspapers for publication at 11 p.m. on the night of the awards ceremony; this changed after one paper broke the tacit agreement and published the results in the evening edition, available before the ceremony began. A sealed envelope system began the next year, and endures to this day, making Oscar night Hollywood’s most anticipated event of the year.

Public interest in the Oscars was high from the beginning, and from the second year on the ceremony was covered in a live radio broadcast. The year 1953 marked the first time that the Academy Awards were broadcast on the fledgling medium of television. The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) TV network carried the 25th annual awards ceremony live from Hollywood’s Pantages Theatre. Bob Hope was the master of ceremonies, while Fredric March, a two-time Academy Award winner for Best Actor (for 1932’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and 1946’s The Best Years of Our Lives), presented the awards. The statuette for Best Picture went to Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth, while John Ford won Best Director for The Quiet Man. Winners in the top two acting categories were Gary Cooper (High Noon) and Shirley Booth (Come Back, Little Sheba).

Hope, a star of stage and screen who tirelessly performed in United Service Organization (USO) shows for American troops during World War II, would become a mainstay of the new TV medium. He was also the most venerated Academy Awards host, playing MC no fewer than 18 times between 1939 and 1977. NBC broadcast the Oscars until 1961, when the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) took over for the next decade, including the first awards broadcast in color in 1966. Although NBC briefly regained the show in the early 1970s, ABC came out on top again in 1976 and has broadcast every Academy Awards show since. The network is under contract to continue showing the Oscars until 2014. 

Ratings for the Academy Awards have been notoriously uneven, with larger audiences tending to tune in when box-office hits are nominated for high-profile awards such as Best Picture. When Titanic won big in 1998, for example, the Oscar telecast drew 55 million viewers; the triumph of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in 2004 drew 44 million. The 80th Academy Awards ceremony, held in February 2008, drew the lowest ratings since 1953, with a total of about 32 million viewers--just 18.7 percent of America’s homes--tuned in to the telecast. Analysts blamed the relative obscurity of the Best Picture nominees--the winner, No Country For Old Men, made a relatively puny $64 million at the box office--and the lingering effects of a Hollywood writers’ strike for the poor viewer turnout.

Shemp Howard & Helen Hayes

Who was born on this date:

Comedic actor Shemp Howard was born Samuel Horwitz on March 17, 1895 in Brooklyn, New York. He is best known as a part of the Three Stooges comedy team. He was called "Shemp" because "Sam" came out that way in his mother's thick Litvak accent. He was an older brother of Moe Howard and Curly Howard as well as the "third stooge" in the early years of the act. He would rejoin the trio in May 1946 after Curly suffered a stroke. Shemp died on November 23, 1955 from a heart attack and is buried at Home of Peace Cemetery in East Los Angeles, California.

Who died on this date:

On March 17, 1993, Helen Hayes known as “the First Lady of the American theater” died. She was born Helen Hayes Brown on October 10, 1900 in Washington, District of Columbia. The diminutive star was an award winning actress of stage, film and television. Her show business career spanned seven decades from 1931 to 1985. Hayes had a much disciplined stage technique but was never totally at ease in Hollywood or with the star system. As a result she never fully embraced the screen but she adored the theater. Although her film appearances were few in quantity they were almost always high in quality. Her major film credits include; Arrowsmith (1931), A Farewell to Arms (1932), Another Language (1933), Night Flight (1933), Crime Without Passion (1934), Vanessa: Her Love Story (1935), and Airport (1970). She won two Academy Awards, first in 1932 for best actress, playing the role of a prostitute in The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931), which was her debut on the big screen. A second Oscar win was for best supporting actress and it came forty years later, in 1970’s Airport. She was nominated for numerous other awards including nine Emmy awards (winning one), two Golden Globes, and three Tony Award wins. Helen Hayes died on March 17, 1993 at the Nyack Hospital in Nyack, New York from heart failure at age ninety-two. Her funeral was held at St. Ann’s Catholic Church in Nyack. The funeral mass was attended by nearly five hundred mourners and was officiated by Cardinal John J. O’Connor. She is buried in a simple grave at the Oak Hill Cemetery in Nyack, New York.

The Movie Erin Brockovich was Released in 2000

With Erin Brockovich, released on this day in 2000, Julia Roberts becomes the first actress ever to command $20 million per movie.

Born in Smyrna, Georgia, on October 28, 1967, Roberts followed her brother Eric into acting, making her film debut in 1988’s girl-band drama Satisfaction. Her bona-fide breakout onto Hollywood's A-list came in 1990, with the release of the box-office smash Pretty Woman. As Vivian Ward, a Hollywood Boulevard prostitute who charms a wealthy businessman (Richard Gere) into a happily-ever-after ending, Roberts grinned her way to her first Best Actress Oscar nomination. She had previously snagged an Academy Award nomination, in the Best Supporting Actress category, for her performance in the 1989 tear-jerker Steel Magnolias.

After another blockbuster (1993’s The Pelican Brief) and a string of relative disappointments (including 1996’s Mary Reilly), Roberts returned with a box-office bang in My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997), in which she deftly upended her “America’s sweetheart” reputation by playing a character who desperately schemes to steal another woman’s fiancee., In 1999, Roberts made two more high-profile romantic comedies, Notting Hill and The Runaway Bride, which reteamed her with Gere; though critics panned the latter film, both were huge hits.

Roberts then signed on for the title role in the director Steven Soderbergh’s Erin Brockovich, based on the true story of a single mother who talks her way into an administrative job at a law firm. She soon discovers that a California energy company, Pacific Gas & Electric, had poisoned the groundwater around one of its plants, causing hundreds of people to contract cancer. Pursued by Brockovich and her boss, Ed Masry (played in Soderbergh’s film by Albert Finney), the case ends in a record $333 million settlement.

By that time, $20 million had become the standard paycheck for Hollywood’s A-list male movie stars, including Mel Gibson, Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise and Sylvester Stallone, among others. Roberts was the first female performer to command this amount. As was reported in Newsweek at the time of Erin Brockovich’s release, Universal Pictures was initially reluctant to hand Roberts her record-breaking paycheck. Her agent, Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas, reportedly convinced the studio by pointing out the injustice of Hollywood’s double standard. With five movies that grossed more than $100 million, Goldsmith-Thomas argued, Roberts was well worth the same paycheck as male stars such as Leonardo DiCaprio or Adam Sandler, each of whom had commanded $20 million after scoring only one hit of that magnitude.

Roberts’ Erin Brockovich haul put her far out in front of her closest peers at the time, Meg Ryan and Jodie Foster, who had reportedly each made $15 million for a single movie. In Erin Brockovich’s short skirts and push-up bras, Roberts proved worthy of her enormous paycheck, leading the film to more than $125 million at the U.S. box office and five Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. Dressed in black-and-white vintage Valentino, a tearful and triumphant Roberts took home the statuette for Best Actress at the 73rd annual Academy Awards. Though other actresses, including Cameron Diaz, Renee Zellweger and Reese Witherspoon, have since passed the $20 million mark, Roberts smashed the glass ceiling again in 2003, earning $25 million for Mona Lisa Smile. The film was a relative disappointment at the box office, and her paycheck alone equaled almost 40 percent of its domestic earnings.

Mercedes McCambridge & Conrad Nagel

Who was born on this date:

Actress Mercedes McCambridge was born Carlotta Mercedes Agnes McCambridge on March 16, 1916 in Joliet, Illinois. In 1936, while studying English and theater at Mundelein College in north suburban Chicago, Mercedes caught the eye of an NBC radio program director. During the late 1930’s and early 1940’s, McCambridge had roles in numerous popular radio programs such as Dick Tracy, Inner Sanctum, The Thin Man, and Bulldog Drummond. Throughout the middle 1940’s, she appeared in numerous Broadway productions of varying success.

In 1949, she got her big break in motion pictures and in her debut performance won an Oscar for best supporting actress in the role of the hardnosed and manipulative political aide, Sadie Burke in All the Kings Men. In a career that spanned nearly four decades from 1949 to 1988, she appeared in over twenty feature films and numerous television programs, her feature film credits include: Johnny Guitar (1954), A Farewell to Arms (1957), Touch of Evil (1958), Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), Cimarron (1960), The Other Side of the Wind (1972), and Airport 79’ (1979). In 1956, she was nominated for a second best supporting actress Academy Award for her portrayal of Liz Benedict the strong willed older sister of Rock Hudson’s character in Giant (1956). She worked continuously in film, television, and Broadway her entire adult life and even earned a Tony Award nomination in 1972 for The Love Suicide at Schofield Barracks. While her film career did not live up to the high levels of expectations that were initially promised with her debut Oscar win, she remained quite satisfied with how her career evolved.

In 1987, tragedy struck, when her only son John Lawrence Markle killed his wife and two daughters in a murder suicide. She would battle alcoholism her entire adult life, and even testified before the U.S. Senate subcommittee on alcoholism and narcotics in 1969. She was married and divorced twice. In the mid-1980’s she retired from show business. McCambridge then moved to the seaside town of La Jolla, California. She died on March 2, 2004 of natural causes while living at a local assisted living facility. McCambridge had no known survivors. Mercedes McCambridge’s remains were cremated and scattered at sea near San Diego. 

Actor Conrad Nagel was born on March 16, 1897(1897-03-16) in Keokuk, Iowa. He was an actor of the (1970-02-24)silent film era and founding member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He died on February 24, 1970 and is buried at the Lutheran Cemetery in Warsaw, Illinois (which is in dispute).

              

Ann Sothern

Who died on this date:

On March 15, 2001, actress Ann Sothern died. She was born Harriet Arlene Lake on January 22, 1909 in Valley City, North Dakota. Sothern began her film career as an extra in the 1927 film, Broadway Nights at the age of 18. In 1934, Sothern signed a contract with Columbia Pictures, but after two years the studio released her. In 1936, she was signed by RKO and after a string of films that failed to attract an audience; Sothern left RKO and was signed by MGM, making her first film for them in 1939. MGM cast Sothern in Maisie (1939), and after years of struggling, Sothern had her first major success, and a string of "Maisie" comedy sequels. In 1949, Sothern appeared in the Oscar winning film, A Letter to Three Wives. The film earned her excellent reviews, but failed to stimulate her career. She resumed working sporadically on television until the mid-1980s. Her final film role was in The Whales of August in 1987. Her role as the neighbor of elderly sisters played by Lillian Gish and Bette Davis brought Sothern her only Best Supporting Academy Award nomination. In 1987, Sothern retired from acting and moved to Ketchum, Idaho, where she spent her remaining years. On March 15, 2001, Sothern died from heart attack at 92. She is buried at Ketchum Cemetery in Ketchum, Idaho.

Susan Hayward

Who died on this date:

On March 14, 1975, actress Susan Hayward died. She was born Edythe Marrenner on June 30, 1917 in Brooklyn, New York. After working as a fashion model in New York, Hayward travelled to Hollywood in 1937 when open auditions were held for the leading role in Gone with the Wind (1939). Although she was not selected, she secured a film contract, and played several small supporting roles over the next few years. By the late 1940s, the quality of her film roles had improved, and she achieved recognition for her dramatic abilities with the first of five Academy Award nominations for Best Actress for her performance Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman (1947). Her career continued successfully through the 1950s and she won the Oscar for Best Actress for her portrayal of death row inmate Barbara Graham in I Want to Live (1958). Following her Oscar-winning performance, her film appearances became infrequent, although she continued acting in film and television until 1972. She died on March 14, 1975 from brain cancer. There is speculation that she may have been affected by radioactive fallout from atmospheric atomic bomb tests while making The Conqueror with John Wayne. Several production members, as well as Wayne himself, later succumbed to cancer and cancer-related illnesses. Her cremated remains are interred at Our Lady of Perpetual Care Help Cemetery in Carrolton, Georgia.

Gordon MacRae & Betty Hutton

Who was born on this date:

Actor Gordon MacRae was born on March 12, 1921 in East Orange, New Jersey. He is best known for his appearances in the film Oklahoma (1955) and Carousel. In 1951, he starred with Doris Day in On Moonlight Bay, followed by the sequel By the Light of the Silvery Moon in 1953. MacRae made numerous TV appearances. He died on January 24, 1986 from cancer of the mouth and jaw and is buried at Wyuka Cemetery in Lincoln, Nebraska. 

Who died on this date:

On March 12, 2007, actress Betty Hutton died. She was born Elizabeth June Thornburg on February 26, 1921 in Battlecreek, Michigan. In 1939 she appeared in several musical shorts for Warner Bros., and appeared in a supporting role on Broadway in Panama Hattie and Two for the Show. In 1942, Hutton was signed with Paramount Studios and appeared in The Fleet’s In, co-starring Dorothy Lamour. Hutton was an instant hit with the movie-going public. Paramount did not immediately promote her to major stardom, however, but did give her second leads in, Star Spangled Rhythm (1943), and another Lamour film. In 1943 she was given co-star billing with Bob Hope in Let’s Face It and with the release of The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek the following year, Hutton attained major stardom. By the time Incendiary Blonde was released in 1945, she had supplanted Lamour as Paramount's number one female box office draw. Hutton made 19 films from 1942 to 1952 including the hugely popular The Perils of Pauline in 1947. She was billed above Fred Astaire in the 1950 musical Let's Dance. Hutton's greatest screen triumph came in Annie Get Your Gun (1950) for MGM, which hired her to replace an exhausted Judy Garland in the role of Annie Oakley.  

Her career as a Hollywood star ended due to a contract dispute with Paramount following the Oscar-winning The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) and Somebody Loves Me (1952). The New York Times reported that the dispute resulted from her insistence that her husband at the time, Charles O'Curran, direct her next film. When the studio declined, Hutton broke her contract. Hutton's last completed film was a small one, Spring Reunion, released in 1957, a drama in which she gave an understated, sensitive performance. Unfortunately, box office receipts indicated the public did not want to see a subdued Hutton. Hutton got work in radio, appeared in Las Vegas and in nightclubs, and then tried her luck in the new medium of television.  

After the 1967 death of her mother in a house fire and the collapse of her last marriage, Hutton's depression and pill addictions escalated. She divorced her fourth husband, and declared bankruptcy. Hutton had a nervous breakdown and later attempted suicide after losing her singing voice in 1970. After regaining control of her life through rehab, and the mentorship of a Roman Catholic priest, Father Peter Maguire, Hutton converted to Catholicism and took a job as a cook at a rectory. She made national headlines when it was revealed she was working in a rectory. 

Her last known performance, in any medium, was on Jukebox Saturday Night, which aired on PBS in 1983. Hutton stayed in New England and began teaching comedic acting at Boston's Emerson College. After the death of her ally, Father Maguire, Hutton returned to California, moving to Palm Springs in 1999. Hutton hoped to grow closer with her daughters and grandchildren. She died from colon cancer on March 12, 2007 and is buried at Desert Memorial Park in Cathedral City, California.

Cyd Charisse

Who was born on this date:

Actress Cyd Charisse was born on March 8, 1922 in Amarillo, Texas. Her Hollywood film career began in the 1940s. Her roles usually focused on her abilities as a dancer, and she was paired with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly; her films include Singin’ in the Rain (1952), The Band Wagon (1953) and Silk Stockings (1957). She stopped dancing in films in the late 1950s, but continued acting in film and television, and in 1992 made her Broadway debut. Charisse died on June 17, 2008from a heart attack and is buried at Hillside Memorial Park in Culver City, California.

Anna Magnani

Who was born on this date:

Actress Anna Magnani was born on March 7, 1908 in Rome. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Rose Tatoo (1955). She was referred to as "La Lupa," the "perennial toast of Rome" and a "living she-wolf symbol" of the cinema. Her film career had spread over almost 20 years before she gained international renown as Pina in Roberto Rossellini’s Roma (1945). She fell in love with Rossellini and as artists they complemented each other well while working on neorealist films. Eventually he promised to direct her in a film he was preparing which he told her would be "the crowning vehicle of her career". However, when the screenplay was completed, he instead gave the role for Stromboli to Ingrid Bergman, which resulted in Magnani's permanent breakup with Rossellini. Magnani died on September 23, 1973 from pancreatic cancer and is buried at Cimitero Comunale in Lazio, Italy.

Lou Costello & Teresea Wright

Who was born on this date:

Comedic actor, Lou Costello was born on March 6, 1906 in Patterson, New Jersey. He is best known as half of the comedy team of Abbott and Costello. In 1927, Costello went to Hollywood to become an actor and his athletic skill brought him occasional work as a stunt man. While working in vaudeville in the 1930s, Costello became acquainted with Bud Abbott. After working together sporadically, Abbott and Costello formally teamed up in 1936. They performed together in burlesque shows. In 1938 they received national exposure for the first time by becoming featured performers on The Kate Smith Hour, radio program. They were hugely successful, which ultimately led to their appearance in a Broadway play and signing with Universal Studios in 1940. The team's breakout picture was Buck Privates in 941. They immediately became the top-ranking comedy stars in Hollywood and fans looked forward to each of their pictures as a major event. Costello's child-like demeanor was strictly acting, and he aggressively battled with the more easy-going Abbott as well as the studio. The duo made 36 films between 1940 and 1956. They were among the most popular and highest-paid entertainers in the world during World War II. Abbott and Costello split up in July 1957, after troubles with the IRS forced both men to sell off their large homes and the rights to some of their films. Costello died of a heart attack in Beverly Hills on March 3, 1959, three days before his 53rd birthday. He is interred at the Calvary Cemetery in East Los Angeles, California.

Who died on this date:

On March 6, 2005, actress Teresa Wright died. The award winning actress who often played the sweet, pretty girl next door role was born Muriel Teresa Wright on October 27, 1918 in the borough of Harlem, New York. Her parents divorced when she was very young, and she moved often, living with various relatives. Wright began acting at an early age and she had great success on the Broadway stage. She was discovered by MGM talent scouts and offered a contract by Samuel Goldwyn. Her first film in 1941, The Little Foxes, garnered a best supporting actress Oscar nomination in her sophomore effort, Mrs. Miniver (1942), she won the best supporting actress Academy Award, and in her third effort, The Pride of the Yankees (1942) was nominated for a best lead actress Oscar. She is the only actress in Academy Award history to be nominated three times for her first three films.  

Her fourth movie, Alfred Hitchcock’s, Shadow of a Doubt (1943), did not earn an award nomination but was a classic. This was followed up by Casanova Brown (1944) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). Wright’s career had an unprecedented meteoric rise but she did not want any part of the typical Hollywood publicity and often refused to participate in photo shoots or magazine interviews. She would only accept roles as the wholesome daughter, wife or sweetheart but never the seductress.  

At first, MGM was understanding and tolerant of Ms. Wright’s attitude but this wore thin and eventually totally eroded. The situation culminated in 1948, when MGM head Samuel Goldwyn’s patience ran out and he fired the talented but difficult actress for “uncooperative” behavior. Her career would survive, but motion pictures were not as forthcoming and she turned to television and the stage. Wright’s successful television and motion picture career spanned five decades, from 1941 to 1997, which included over eighty roles. Her last film appearance was in John Grisham’s Rainmaker (1997), after which she permanently retired. The Academy Award winning actress died on March 6, 2005 at the Yale-New Haven Hospital in New Haven, Connecticut from a heart attack. Wright’s body was donated to the Yale University Medical School for research and final disposition of her remains are unknown. Ironically, the true life Eleanor Gehrig died on the same date in 1984.   

Rex Harrison & William Powell

Who was born on this date:

Actor Rex Harrison was born Reginald Carey on March 5, 1908 in Huyton, Lancashire, England. He first appeared on stage in 1924 in Liverpool but his acting career was interrupted because of World War II. During which he served in the Royal Air Force, reaching the rank of Flight Lieutenant. He acted in the West End of London when he was young, appearing in the Terence Rattigan play French Without Tears, which proved to be his breakthrough role.

Harrison's film debut was in The Great Game (1930), and other notable early films include The Citadel (1938), Night Train to Munich (1940), Major Barbara (1941), Blithe Spirit (1945), Anna and the King of Siam (1946), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), and The Foxes of Harrow (1947). He was best known for his portrayal of Professor Henry Higgins with Audrey Hepburn in the 1964 film version of My Fair Lady, based on the Broadway production of the same name, for which Harrison won a Best Actor Oscar. He also starred in 1967's Doctor Doolittle. Harrison was not by general terms a singer; thus, the music was generally written to allow for long periods of recitative, generally identified as "speaking to the music." 

Although excelling in comedy he attracted favorable reviews in dramatic roles such as his portrayal of Julius Caesar in Cleopatra (1963) and as Pope Julius II in The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), starring opposite Charlton Heston as Michelangelo. He alternated appearances between the stage and film throughout his career. He appeared in numerous plays in both London and New York. Highlights include Bell, Book and Candle (1950), Venus Observed, The Cocktail Party, The Kingfisher, and The Love of Four Colonels, which he also directed. He won his first Tony Award for his appearance as Henry VIII in Anne of the Thousand Days and international superstardom (and a second Tony Award) for his Henry Higgins in the musical My Fair Lady, in which he appeared opposite a young Julie Andrews. Later appearances included Pirandello's Henry IV, a 1984 appearance at the Haymarket Theatre with Claudette Colbert in Frederick Lonsdale's Aren't We All?, and one on Broadway at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre presented by Douglas Urbanski, at the Haymarket in J. M. Barrie's The Admirable Crichton with Edward Fox. He returned as Henry Higgins in a highly paid revival of My Fair Lady directed by Patrick Garland in 1981, cementing his association with the plays of George Bernard Shaw which included a Tony nominated performance as Shotover in Heartbreak House, Julius Caesar in Caesar and Cleopatra, and General Burgoyne in a Los Angeles production of The Devil's Disciple. He also appeared as an aging homosexual man opposite Richard Burton as his lover in Staircase (1969). 

In his personal life Harrison was a mess enduring numerous scandals and six marriages. In 1942, he divorced his first wife, Colette Thomas, and then married actress Lilli Palmer. They appeared together in numerous plays and films, including The Four Poster (1952). In 1947, while still married to Palmer, Harrison began an affair with actress Carole Landis. In 1948, Landis committed suicide after spending the night with Harrison. His involvement in her death and the subsequent scandal briefly damaged his career. He and Palmer divorced in 1957 and that same year, Harrison married for a 3rd time to actress Kay Kendall. Two years later tragedy struck again when Kendall died of leukemia. In 1962, he married for a 4th time to Welsh-born Rachel Roberts. This marriage lasted nine years and also ended in divorce. In 1980, Roberts committed suicide. Harrison married for a 5th time in 1971 to Elizabeth Rees-Williams and sadly this union also ended in divorce after four years. His 6th and final marriage was to Mercia Tinker. 

Having retired from films in the late 1970’s, Harrison continued to act on Broadway until the end of his life, despite suffering from glaucoma, painful teeth, and a failing memory. In 1989 he appeared on Broadway in The Circle by W. Somerset Maugham, opposite Glynis Johns and Stewart Granger. On July 25, 1989 Harrison was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. An orchestra played the music of songs from My Fair Lady. He died of pancreatic cancer at his home in Manhattan on June 2, 1990 at the age of 82. His ashes were scattered in Portofino, Italy and at the grave of his second wife Lilli Palmer at Forest Lawn, Glendale.

 Who died on this date:

On March 5, 1984, actor William Powell died. He was born on July 29, 1892 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He began his Hollywood career in 1922 playing a small role in a production of Sherlock Holmes that starred John Barrymore. His most memorable role in silent movies was as a bitter film director opposite Emil Jannings' Academy Award-winning performance as a fallen general in The Last Command (1928), which led to Powell's first starring role as amateur detective Philo Vance in The Canary Murder Case (1929).  

Powell's most famous role was that of Nick Charles in six Thin Man films, beginning with The Thin Man in 1934. The role provided a perfect opportunity for Powell to showcase his sophisticated charm and his witty sense of humor, and he received his first Academy Award nomination for The Thin Man. Actress Myrna Loy played his wife, Nora, in each of the Thin Man films. Their partnership was one of Hollywood's most prolific on-screen pairings, with the couple appearing in 14 films together. He and Loy also starred in The Great Ziegfeld the Oscar winning film of 1936 and that same year, he also received his second Academy Award nomination, for the comedy My Man Godfrey. 

In 1935, he starred with Jean Harlow in Reckless. Soon it developed into a serious romance, though she died in 1937 before they could marry. His distress over her death, as well as his own battle with colon cancer around the same time, caused him to accept fewer acting roles. His career slowed considerably in the 1940s, although in 1947 he received his third Academy Award nomination for his work in Life with Father. His last film was Mister Roberts in 1955 and despite numerous offers to return to the screen; Powell refused all and stayed retired.

In his personal life Powell was married three times, first to Eileen Wilson, which ended in a divorce in 1930. The following year he married actress Carole Lombard and they divorced in 1933. As previously discussed, Powell had a close relationship with actress Jean Harlow beginning in 1935, but they never married and the relationship was cut short by her untimely death in 1937. Powell paid for her final resting place, a $25,000 private room in the Sanctuary of Benediction of the Great Mausoleum, Forest Lawn Glendale. On March 5, 1984, Powell died of heart failure in Palm Springs, California and is buried at the Desert Memorial Park, in Cathedral City, California.

Jean Harlow

Who was born on this date:

Actress Jean Harlow was born on March 3, 1911. She is best known as the sex symbol of the 1930s. Famous for her platinum blonde hair, she is ranked as one of the greatest movie stars of all time by the American Film Institute. Harlow starred in several films, mainly designed to showcase her magnetic sex appeal and strong screen presence, before making the transition to more developed roles and achieving massive fame under contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Harlow's enormous popularity and "laughing vamp" image were in distinct contrast to her personal life, which was marred by disappointment, tragedy, and ultimately her sudden death from renal failure on June 7, 1937 at age 26. She was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California in the Great Mausoleum.

Jennifer Jones, Mercedes McCambridge, Sandy Dennis & Randolph Scott

Who was born on this date:

Actress Jennifer Jones was born Phylis Lee Isley on March 2, 1919 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She became interested in acting at an early age, eventually studying acting at both Northwestern University and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. After several failed attempts to break into film, she settled in New York. Her big break came in 1943, when she met her future husband, producer David O. Selznick, who cast her in The Song of Bernadette (1943). Selznick began to groom his new protégé for stardom, carefully choosing her roles and eventually marrying the actress in 1949. Their union would last fifteen years until his death in 1965.  

One of Hollywood’s most underrated award winning actresses, Jones’ film career would span twenty plus years (1943-1974), she appeared in twenty seven films that include; Madame Bovary (1949), The Wild Heart (1952), Ruby Gentry (1952), A Farewell to Arms (1957), Tender is the Night (1962), and The Towering Inferno (1974). She was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning for best actress in 1944 (in her debut film), The Song of Bernadette (1943), She was nominated again in 1945 in a supporting role for Since You Went Away (1944), and for a third consecutive year (1946) was nominated for a best lead actress Oscar for Love Letters (1945). In 1947 and 1956, she was again nominated for a best actress Oscar’s for Duel in the Sun (1946) and Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955).  

Despite her successes in Hollywood, Jones remained a very private person. This caused her to be less noticed and her film career began to wane. In 1974, after filming The Towering Inferno, Jones decided to permanently retire from film making and instead concentrate on philanthropic work. She had married industrialist and art collector, Norton Simon in 1971 and the pair started the Norton Simon Foundation and Art Museum in Pasadena, California. No stranger to mental health issues, Jones attempted suicide in 1967 by taking an overdose of drugs and in 1976, her daughter, Mary J. Selznick, committed suicide. After which, Jones became an advocate for mental health issues. Jennifer Jones died on December 17, 2009 from natural causes at her home in Malibu, California. Jennifer Jones’ cremated remains were given to family and final disposition is unknown. It has been speculated that she may be interred with her second husband, David O. Selznick, and their daughter in the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn, Glendale. Her third husband, Norton Simon’s ashes were scattered at sea.     

Who died on this date:

On March 2, 2004, actress Mercedes McCambridge died. She was born Carlotta Mercedes Agnes McCambridge on March 16, 1916 in Joliet, Illinois. In 1936, while studying English and theater at Mundelein College in north suburban Chicago, Mercedes caught the eye of an NBC radio program director. During the late 1930’s and early 1940’s, McCambridge had roles in numerous popular radio programs such as Dick Tracy, Inner Sanctum, The Thin Man, and Bulldog Drummond. Throughout the middle 1940’s, she appeared in numerous Broadway productions of varying success.  

In 1949, she got her big break in motion pictures and in her debut performance won an Oscar for best supporting actress in the role of the hardnosed and manipulative political aide, Sadie Burke in All the Kings Men. In a career that spanned nearly four decades from 1949 to 1988, she appeared in over twenty feature films and numerous television programs, her feature film credits include: Johnny Guitar (1954), A Farewell to Arms (1957), Touch of Evil (1958), Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), Cimarron (1960), The Other Side of the Wind (1972), and Airport 79’ (1979). In 1956, she was nominated for a second best supporting actress Academy Award for her portrayal of Liz Benedict the strong willed older sister of Rock Hudson’s character in Giant (1956). She worked continuously in film, television, and Broadway her entire adult life and even earned a Tony Award nomination in 1972 for The Love Suicide at Schofield Barracks. While her film career did not live up to the high levels of expectations that were initially promised with her debut Oscar win, she remained quite satisfied with how her career evolved.  

In 1987, tragedy struck, when her only son John Lawrence Markle killed his wife and two daughters in a murder suicide. She would battle alcoholism her entire adult life, and even testified before the U.S. Senate subcommittee on alcoholism and narcotics in 1969. She was married and divorced twice. In the mid-1980’s she retired from show business. McCambridge then moved to the seaside town of La Jolla, California. She died on March 2, 2004 of natural causes while living at a local assisted living facility. McCambridge had no known survivors. Mercedes McCambridge’s remains were cremated and scattered at sea near San Diego.                

  

On March 2, 1992, actress Sandy Dennis died. She was born on April 27, 1937 in Hastings, Nebraska. She made her TV debut in 1956 in The Guiding Light and her film debut in Splendor in the Grass (1961). However, she was more committed to following a career in the theater. She won consecutive Tony Awards in 1963 and 1964. She won the Oscar for best Supporting Actress for her role as Honey, the fragile, neurotic young wife of George Segal in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966). She followed this with well-received performances in Up the Down Staircase (1967), The Fox (1967), Sweet November (1968) and The Out of Towners (1970). An advocate of method acting, Dennis was often described as neurotic and mannered in her performances; her signature style included running words together and oddly stopping and starting sentences. Her last significant film role was in Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982). Dennis died from ovarian cancer on March 2, 1992 and is buried at Lincoln Memorial Park in Lincoln, Nebraska.

On March 2, 1987, actor Randolph Scott died. He was born on January 23, 1898 in Orange County, Virginia. Scott appeared in a variety of film genres; however, his most enduring image is that of a Western hero. Out of his more than 100 film appearances more than 60 were in Westerns. Around 1927, Scott developed an interest in acting and decided to make his way to Los Angeles and seek a career in the motion picture industry. Fortunately, Scott's father had become acquainted with Howard Hughes and provided a letter of introduction for his son to present to the eccentric millionaire filmmaker. Hughes responded by getting Scott a small part in Sharp Shooters (1928). In the next few years, Scott continued working as an extra and bit player in several films, including The Virginian (1929) with Gary Cooper. In 1931 Scott played his first leading role in Women Men Marry and followed that up with a supporting part in, A Successful Calamity. Following that, however, Paramount cast him as the lead in Heritage of the Desert (1932), his first significant starring role and also the one that established him as a Western hero. By 1935 Scott was firmly established as a popular movie star and, thus, following the release of Rocky Mountain Mystery (1935), Paramount moved him up to a star of "A" features. Scott married twice. In 1936 he became the second husband of heiress Marion Du Pont, the daughter of William Du Pont. Reputedly the couple spent little time together and the marriage ended in divorce three years later. Prior to and between his first and second marriages Scott was romantically linked with several prominent film actresses, including Lupe Velez, Sally Blane, Claire Trevor and Dorothy Lamour. In 1944 Scott married Patricia Stillman, with whom he adopted two children. The marriage lasted until Scott's 1987 death. His most notable feature films include Roberta (1935), Follow the Fleet (1936), The Last of the Mohicans (1936), Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1938), Jesse James (1939), Virginia City (1940), and My Favorite Wife (1940). Following Ride the High Country (1962), Scott retired from film at the age of 64. Scott died of heart and lung ailments on March 2, 1987 in Beverly Hills, California and he is buried at Elmwood Cemetery in Charlotte, North Carolina.