is 70 today. He debuted in the Disney Silly Symphony cartoon “The Wise Little Hen” on this date in 1934. (Donald Duck is one of three Disney characters with an “official” birthday. The others are Mickey and Minnie, who debuted on November 18, 1928.)
Donald Duck actually appeared in more theatrical cartoons than Mickey Mouse — 128. Donald’s middle name is Fauntleroy.
But the trivia question of the day is, who was Huey, Dewey and Louie’s mother?
Watch the trailer.
was born on this date in 1926. She was baptized Norma Jeane Baker (her father was unknown) and we know her as Marilyn Monroe. The following biographical information is taken from Marilyn Monroe’s Official Web Site.
Norma Jeane spent most of her childhood in foster homes and orphanages until 1937, when she moved in with family friend Grace McKee Goddard. Unfortunately, when Grace’s husband was transferred to the East Coast in 1942, the couple couldn’t afford to take 16-year-old Norma Jeane with them. Norma Jeane had two options: return to the orphanage or get married.
On June 19, 1942 she wed her 21-year-old neighbor Jimmy Dougherty, whom she had been dating for six months. “She was a sweet, generous and religious girl,” Jimmy said. “She liked to be cuddled.” By all accounts Norma Jeane loved Jimmy, and they were happy together until he joined the Merchant Marines and was sent to the South Pacific in 1944.
After Jimmy left, Norma Jeane took a job on the assembly line at the Radio Plane Munitions factory in Burbank, California. Several months later, photographer David Conover saw her while taking pictures of women contributing to the war effort for Yank magazine. He couldn’t believe his luck. She was a “photographer’s dream.” Conover used her for the shoot and then began sending modeling jobs her way. The camera loved Norma Jeane, and within two years she was a reputable model with many popular magazine covers to her credit. She began studying the work of legendary actresses Jean Harlow and Lana Turner, and enrolled in drama classes with dreams of stardom. However, Jimmy’s return in 1946 meant Norma Jeane had to make another choice- this time between her marriage and her career.
Norma Jeane divorced Jimmy in June of 1946, and signed her first studio contract with Twentieth Century Fox on August 26, 1946. She earned $125 a week. Soon after, Norma Jeane dyed her hair blonde and changed her name to Marilyn Monroe (borrowing her grandmother’s last name). The rest, as the saying goes, is history.
NewMexiKen posted items about Monroe’s marriage to Joe DiMaggio here and here.
Hard to imagine Marilyn Monroe at 78.
Morgan Freeman is 67 today. Freeman was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Street Smart, and for Best Actor in a Leading Role for Driving Miss Daisy and The Shawshank Redemption.
Freeman complains that in all his roles, he has never been cast in a romantic lead or opposite a female love interest.
But then he did get to drive the pace car at the Indianapolis 500 Sunday.
is 74 today. Eastwood directed a movie last year — Mystic River — that actually had acting. He should have won the Best Director Oscar, just as he did for Unforgiven.
the voice of Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Private Snafu, Sylvester, Tweety, Yosemite Sam, Pepe Le Pew, Foghorn Leghorn, Speedy Gonzalez, Marvin Martian, Wile E. Coyote, Tasmanian Devil, Barney Rubble, Tom, Jerry, Woody Woodpecker’s laugh and Jack Benny’s Maxwell automobile was born on this date in 1908.
Blanc was in a serious automobile accident in 1961 that left him comatose. Unable to bring him out of the coma for weeks, in desperation the doctor finally said to him, “How are you today, Bugs Bunny?” Blanc reportedly answered, “Eh…just fine, Doc,” in his Bugs voice and began to recover.
Mel Blanc died in 1989. His epitaph reads: “That’s All Folks!”
From Steve Harvey in the Los Angeles Times:
I read that Frances Fisher plays the mother of Julianne Moore in the movie “Laws of Attraction,” though she is just eight years older than Moore.
This kind of weird parenting is a tradition in the movies:
Paul Newman was actually three years younger than Jo Van Fleet, the woman who played his mother, in “Cool Hand Luke.”
In “The Manchurian Candidate,” Laurence Harvey was the son of Angela Lansbury, who would have been 3 when she gave birth.
Dustin Hoffman was the son of Sean Connery, seven years older, in “Family Business” and the son of William Daniels, 10 years his senior, in “The Graduate.”
And Anne Bancroft, the “older” woman who was Hoffman’s mistress in “The Graduate,” would have been just six grades ahead of Hoffman in school.
Most remarkable, perhaps, was Jessie Royce Landis portraying Cary Grant’s mother in “North by Northwest,” though she was actually 10 months younger than Grant. Perhaps this was the inspiration for the movie “Back to the Future.”
the voice of Miss Piggy, Fozzie, Cookie Monster, Bert, Grover, Yoda and so many more, is 60 today.
NewMexiKen saw Shrek 2 Sunday afternoon at a multiplex where it had to be playing on at least six screens (out of 24). Every showing was sold out in advance.
While not quite the equal of the first Shrek, 2 was delightful and warm-hearted (of course) with lots of laughs for all ages — or at least for all children and those adults able to catch the pop-culture riffs. Seeing the film in a full theater where half the audience’s feet didn’t reach the floor added to the delight. Young laughter is infectious.
Best new character — Puss-In-Boots.
known to us better as Scatman Crothers, was born on this date in 1910. Crothers is best remembered as the permissive orderly in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the concerned chef in The Shining and as Louie the Garbage Man on the TV show Chico and the Man. He was also a successful composer and singer and did a number of cartoon voices. The nickname Scatman came from his scat singing.
Crothers died in 1986.
Clyde Champion Barrow and Bonnie Parker were shot to death in an ambush near Sailes, Bienville Parish, Louisiana, on this date 70 years ago. The FBI has a web page with details about Bonnie and Clyde, including a photo of each.
Not exactly Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway and Gene Hackman (who portrayed Clyde’s brother Buck). All three were nominated for an acting Oscar, as was Michael J. Pollard. Estelle Parsons, who played Buck’s wife Blanche in the 1967 film, won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.
“Michael Moore gets Cannes’ top prize for his ‘Fahrenheit 9/11,’ a documentary that is an indictment of the Bush administration.” See Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan’s article.
Read Frank Rich’s review of the film [mentioned Friday by NewMexiKen].
Frank Rich tells us about “Fahrenheit 9/11” Michael Moore’s film.
Whatever you think of Moore, there’s no question he’s detonating dynamite here. From a variety of sources – foreign journalists and broadcasters (like Britain’s Channel Four), freelancers and sympathetic American TV workers who slipped him illicit video – he supplies war-time pictures that have been largely shielded from our view. Instead of recycling images of the planes hitting the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, once again, Moore can revel in extended new close-ups of the president continuing to read “My Pet Goat” to elementary school students in Florida for seven long minutes after learning of the attack.
*****Wasn’t it just weeks ago that we were debating whether we should see the coffins of the American dead and whether Ted Koppel should read their names on “Nightline”? In “Fahrenheit 9/11,” we see the actual dying, of American troops and Iraqi civilians alike, with all the ripped flesh and spilled guts that the violence of war entails. We also see some of the 4,000-plus American casualties: those troops hidden away in clinics at Walter Reed and at Blanchfield Army Community Hospital in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where they try to cope with nerve damage and multiple severed limbs. They are not silent. They talk about their pain and their morphine, and they talk about betrayal. “I was a Republican for quite a few years,” one soldier says with an almost innocent air of bafflement, “and for some reason they conduct business in a very dishonest way.”
*****Speaking of America’s volunteer army, Moore concludes: “They serve so that we don’t have to. They offer to give up their lives so that we can be free. It is, remarkably, their gift to us. And all they ask for in return is that we never send them into harm’s way unless it is absolutely necessary. Will they ever trust us again?”
Thanks to The Sideshow for the link.
was born on this date in 1908. Stewart was nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role five times, winning for The Philadelphia Story in 1941; the other four: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, It’s a Wonderful Life, Harvey and Anatomy of a Murder.
No monsters, no ghosts,
No nightmares, no witches;
No people coming in the kitchen and smashing the dishes—
No devils coming out of the mirror;
No dolls that come alive…
Bob Somerby really likes In America. So does NewMexiKen. Scroll down near the bottom of The Daily Howler to read Somerby on the film.
was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on this date in 1915. The following is taken from a longer piece at The Writer’s Almanac:
He was a child prodigy. He started reading Shakespeare when he was three years old, and he had a role in Madame Butterfly the same year. While he was still in high school, he co-authored a textbook on Shakespeare that sold twenty thousand copies.
By the time he was sixteen he had been accepted to Harvard, but instead of going there he went off to Ireland, bought a donkey and a cart, and traveled around the country painting. When he got to Dublin he was completely out of money; he later said, “I guess I could have gotten an honest job, as a dishwasher or a gardener, but I became an actor.” He posed as a professional actor from New York to get a job at the Gate Theatre in Dublin, and it was there that he made his acting debut, at the age of sixteen.
Rudolph Valentino and George Clooney were born on this date. Valentino in 1895. Clooney in 1961.
would have been 75 today. (She died in 1993.)
Ms. Hepburn was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role five times, winning the first time for Roman Holiday in 1954. She also received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, posthumously in 1993. Hersholt had presented the Oscar to Hepburn in 1954.
Audrey Kathleen Hepburn-Ruston was born in Brussels, Belgium, daughter of John Victor Hepburn-Ruston and Ella van Heemstra.
In 1963, it was Audrey Hepburn who sang Happy Birthday to President Kennedy.
Jill, Mack’s mommy, also reports that watching a bunch of three-, four- and five-year-olds doing jumping-jacks is funnier than any movie Hollywood has put out in 20 years. Some clap, some jump, but no one gets the whole thing together.
was born on this date in 1863. Was Hearst the model for Charles Foster Kane? Here is what Orson Welles had to say in 1975 (written to promote a book about Hearst and actress Marion Davies).
When Frederick Remington was dispatched to the Cuban front to provide the Hearst newspapers with sketches of our first small step into American imperialism, the noted artist complained by telegram that there wasn’t really enough shooting to keep him busy. “You make the pictures,” Hearst wired back, “I’ll make the war.” This can be recognized not only as the true voice of power but also as a line of dialogue from a movie. In fact, it is the only purely Hearstian element in Citizen Kane.
There are parallels, but these can be just as misleading as comparisons. If San Simeon hadn’t existed, it would have been necessary for the authors of the movie to invent it. Except for the telegram already noted and the crazy art collection (much too good to resist), In Kane everything was invented.
Let the incredulous take note of the facts.
William Randolph Hearst was born rich. He was the pampered son of an adoring mother. That is the decisive fact about him. Charles Foster Kane was born poor and was raised by a bank. There is no room here for details, but the differences between the real man and the character in the film are far greater than those between the shipowner and the newspaper tycoon.
And what of Susan Alexander? What indeed.
It was a real man who built an opera house for the soprano of his choice, and much in the movie was borrowed from that story, but the man was not Hearst. Susan, Kane’s second wife, is not even based on the real-life soprano. Like most fictional characters, Susan’s resemblance to other fictional characters is quite startling. To Marion Davies she bears no resemblance at all.
Kane picked up Susan on a street corner—from nowhere—where the poor girl herself thought she belonged. Marion Davies was no dim shop-girl; she was a famous beauty who had her choice of rich, powerful and attractive beaux before Hearst sent his first bouquet to her stage door. That Susan was Kane’s wife and Marion was Hearst’s mistress is a difference more important than might be guessed in today’s changed climate of opinion. The wife was a puppet and a prisoner; the mistress was never less than a princess. Hearst built more than one castle, and Marion was the hostess in all of them: they were pleasure domes indeed, and the Beautiful People of the day fought for invitations. Xanadu was a lonely fortress, and Susan was quite right to escape from it. The mistress was never one of Hearst’s possessions: he was always her suitor, and she was the precious treasure of his heart for more than thirty years, until his last breath of life. Theirs is truly a love story. Love is not the subject of Citizen Kane.
Susan was forced into a singing career because Kane had been forced out of politics. She was pushed from one public disaster to another by the bitter frustration of the man who believed that because he had married her and raised her up out of obscurity she was his to use as he might will. There is hatred in that.
Hearst put up the money for many of the movies in which Marion Davies was starred and, more importantly, backed her with publicity. But this was less of a favor than might appear. That vast publicity machine was all too visible; and finally, instead of helping, it cast a shadow—a shadow of doubt. Could the star have existed without the machine? The question darkened an otherwise brilliant career.
As one who shares much of the blame for casting another shadow—the shadow of Susan Alexander Kane—I rejoice in this opportunity to record something which today is all but forgotten except for those lucky enough to have seen a few of her pictures: Marion Davies was one of the most delightfully accomplished comediennes in the whole history of the screen. She would have been a star if Hearst had never happened. She was also a delightful and very considerable person.
From The New York Times
Up on the big screen, Jim Carrey sat behind his steering wheel, sobbing uncontrollably as the opening credits for “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” rolled by.
In the theater some members of the audience cried, too. One, Sophia Lee, waved a clean cloth diaper at Mr. Carrey, a not inappropriate gesture considering that Sophia is only 9 1/2 months old.
These pint-size patrons, accompanied by their mothers and a stray father or two, were at the Madstone Theater for their weekly morning movie outing one Tuesday in early spring.
It used to be that new parents were fated to watch “The Lion King” or “Finding Nemo” endlessly on video while waiting for current, more adult fare to be released for the home market. But now thousands of moms and dads across the country are taking advantage of new programs that enable them to see first-run films with their children.
Theater chains like Loews Entertainment, Showcase Cinemas and the Madstone group and some individually owned theaters have begun holding weekly showings for parents and babies, usually 2 and younger.
is 58 today. That is, of course, actress Talia Shire, who played Adrian in the Rocky movies. She was also Connie Corleone-Rizzi in the Godfather movies. Miss Shire was nominated for the best supporting actress Oscar for Godfather II (1974) and for the best actress Oscar for Rocky (1976).
Talia Shire’s actual name is Talia Rose Coppola. She is the sister of director Francis Ford Coppola, which makes her the aunt of Sofia Coppola (daughter of Francis Coppola) and the aunt of Nicolas Cage (son of another Coppola brother).
From the Christian Science Monitor, ‘Lost in Translation’ doesn’t translate well in Japan:
The Oscar-winning film by Sofia Coppola opened to a lukewarm reception in Tokyo this past week . Critics say it draws on ‘unpleasant’ stereotypes.
Maybe the Japanese just have a low threshold for boredom.
New Zealand professor Denis Dutton On Peter Jackson and Lord of the Rings, from which the following is excerpted.
Films promise so much. Yet what have they delivered? Between 1939 and 1942, barely a decade after the advent of sound, Hollywood could produce Citizen Kane, Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, His Girl Friday, Casablanca, Fantasia, and The Maltese Falcon. Ask yourself, how much better have movies gotten since then?
The Wizard of Oz, like the Rings, is a fantasy-adventure plotted around a quest. It has Munchkins for its Hobbits, flying monkeys for its Orcs, a malevolent witch who lives in a castle, and even humanoid trees. Although the tornado is still a tour de force, its 1939 special-effects are not there to astonish so much as to push the action along. The Wizard of Oz possesses an eternal freshness, its witty, beautifully-paced tale told with singing and dancing actors of phenomenal talent: Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, and Bert Lahr. Who can remember anything out of Howard Shore’s vapid, overblown score for Lord of the Rings? Who can forget Harold Arlen’s for The Wizard of Oz?
Add it all up — acting talent, script, pacing, humor — and you have in The Wizard of Oz an essential feature completely missing in Lord of the Rings: charm. Most importantly, the 1939 film presents the audience with the vulnerabilities and idiosyncratic interior lives of Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion. They are as much fantasy characters as any elf out of Tolkien, but they are at the same time deeply human personalities. Margaret Hamilton’s Wicked Witch of the West expresses a sense of authentic menace that Jackson’s flaming, computer-generated evil-eye cannot match. Among the Rings characters, only Gollum comes near to having an intriguing internal life.