Movie Film Trivia

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Top 5 earliest surviving acting Oscar wins (at present):

1954
Eva Marie Saint (BSA On the Waterfront)

1960
Shirley Jones (BSA Elmer Gantry)

1961
Sophia Loren (BA Two Women)
George Chakiris (BSA West Side Story)
Rita Moreno (BSA West Side Story)

along with Schell in BA (Judgment at Nuremberg) that youthful 1961 lineup were an average age of just under 30 at the time of their Oscar wins. Schell the oldest at 31. And unusually ethnically diverse as well to go with it. Those 3 are also the last surviving acting nominees from that year after Piper Laurie (BSA The Hustler) passed a year ago.

for the record if you’re wondering, in Best Actor it’s currently Hackman in 1971 (French Connection).
 
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Roobs321 said:
Top 5 earliest surviving acting Oscar wins (at present):

1954
Eva Marie Saint (BSA On the Waterfront)

1960
Shirley Jones (BSA Elmer Gantry)

1961
Sophia Loren (BA Two Women)
George Chakiris (BSA West Side Story)
Rita Moreno (BSA West Side Story)

along with Schell in BA (Judgment at Nuremberg) that youthful 1961 lineup were an average age of just under 30 at the time of their Oscar wins. Schell the oldest at 31.

for the record if you’re wondering, in Best Actor it’s currently Hackman in 1971 (French Connection).
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At age 94, Shirley Jones has already outlived two of her five on-screen kids in 'The Partridge Family'. These are David Cassidy - in real life Shirley Jones' stepson - who played eldest son Keith and died in 2017 at age 67; and Suzanne Crough who played daughter Tracy and despite being the youngest of the cast was the first of the kids to die at age 54 in 2015.
 
emuboy said:
At age 94, Shirley Jones has already outlived two of her five on-screen kids in 'The Partridge Family'. These are David Cassidy - in real life Shirley Jones' stepson - who played eldest son Keith and died in 2017 at age 67; and Suzanne Crough who played daughter Tracy and despite being the youngest of the cast was the first of the kids to die at age 54 in 2015.
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and to that, apparently Chakiris appeared in the final ep of The Partridge Family as Shirley’s high school sweetheart and their kiss goodbye was the final scene of the series. She obviously presented him the Oscar as the previous year’s winner in her respective category as listed above.

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all the semi-famous Shirley actress contemporaries of that period appear to have lived long lives (as well as in other lines of work and entertainment such as Bassey (87*))

Shirley’s Abicair (94*), Booth (94), Palmer (91), MacLaine (90*), Bonne (90*), Jones (90*), Cain (89*), Dynevor (89), Bell Cole (89), Eaton (87*), Anne Field (87), Douglas (86), Temple (85) and Knight (83).

Charlotte Bronte’s novel is often pointed to as when it began shifting towards a female given name, simultaneously the Shirley Letters during the California Gold Rush, then I’d imagine Anne of Green Gables being a massive success helped (still surname and male given name there though), and a few bumps since then like Temple brought it to a pitch. So by the 50s/60s there was a wave of celebrity entertainers with that name.
 
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Paul Morrissey died aged 86 overnight. He collaborated with Andy Warhol on a lot of Warhol’s films, but after Warhol was shot and became increasingly reclusive Morrissey increasingly had more creative control on the films. Many of the stars in the films he made (particularly the trilogy of Flesh, Trash and Heat) are more famous as the names Lou Reed mentions in Walk on the Wild Side.

Morrissey and Warhol fell out after Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula were alternatively released as Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein and Andy Warhol’s Dracula despite Warhol having no say over the films. Warhol had been looking for new talent to take under his wing, and had recently seen Pink Flamingos and extended the offer to John Waters. Waters saw Morrissey’s conundrum and didn’t overly want Andy Warhol’s Female Trouble to be a thing and declined the offer.
 
Steven Spielberg bought the Rosebud sled from Citizen Kane for $55,000 in 1982. Orson Welles commented to his frequent collaborator Gary Graver, “If I knew people would spend this much money, I would’ve just made sleds.”
 
Three American actors who also found success in other fields were all born on 10th August 1928.

One was Jimmy Dean, also a singer (mostly country and some rockabilly) and a businessman in the food industry and had three children. Dean shared his birthday with Eddie Fisher a successful actor and singer, married at various times to Debbie Reynolds (their children Carrie and Todd Fisher), Elizabeth Taylor (no children) and to Connie Stevens (their children Joely and Tricia Leigh Fisher) as well as two other marriages later in life with no kids. Third was Gus Mercurio (father of Paul Mercurio) who liked Australia so much when he visited Melbourne for the 1956 Olympic games and decided to emigrate. He was also a boxer and worked for years as a referee in the sport as well as a chiropractor and given Paul is one of seven children, one wonders when Gus found the time to sleep.

Born on the same day in America, finding success not only in acting but in other fields and fathering quite a number of kids, Jimmy Dean, Eddie Fisher and Gus Mercurio all had one other thing in common - all died in 2010.
 
emuboy said:
Three American actors who also found success in other fields were all born on 10th August 1928.

One was Jimmy Dean, also a singer (mostly country and some rockabilly) and a businessman in the food industry and had three children. Dean shared his birthday with Eddie Fisher a successful actor and singer, married at various times to Debbie Reynolds (their children Carrie and Todd Fisher), Elizabeth Taylor (no children) and to Connie Stevens (their children Joely and Tricia Leigh Fisher) as well as two other marriages later in life with no kids. Third was Gus Mercurio (father of Paul Mercurio) who liked Australia so much when he visited Melbourne for the 1956 Olympic games and decided to emigrate. He was also a boxer and worked for years as a referee in the sport as well as a chiropractor and given Paul is one of seven children, one wonders when Gus found the time to sleep.

Born on the same day in America, finding success not only in acting but in other fields and fathering quite a number of kids, Jimmy Dean, Eddie Fisher and Gus Mercurio all had one other thing in common - all died in 2010.
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Gus Mercurio also had a wonderful gravelly voice.
 
The 1993 comedy-drama film 'Groundhog Day' in which an abrasive weatherman Phil Connors played by Bill Murray gets trapped in the same day over and over again wasn't the first film to feature a time loop plot, but it was the first high profile movie of its kind, with the few time loop movies made before this obscure, B grade or made for TV movies, with some produced overseas. So popular was Groundhog Day that it made an indelible mark on the world, and any time loop films since then will most usually be referred to as 'Groundhog Day' movies. You hear of people complaining that 'It feels like Groundhog Day' when experiencing a run of long boring days much the same where nothing interesting happens.

Since 1993 quite a number of films featuring time loops have been produced. Some have been a success in their own right - such as the 'Happy Death Day' horror films and 'Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children' while others are more obscure.

One that was soon forgotten was a sci-fi romantic comedy called 'Palm Springs' where not one but two wedding guests - one male and female - get stuck in a time loop together along with a grumpy elderly man who claims to have been living the same day for a century or more. For the female guest it is her first time in the loop but the male guest admits he has been living the same day for decades. The main reason the film is largely forgotten is that it was released in the early months of 2020 and the world was starting to go completely crazy.

The leads in Palm Springs were interesting given the wedding setting - Andy Samberg and Cristen Milloti - as both had well-known roles in much-maligned wedding themed movies/TV shows in the early 2010s. For Andy Samberg it was the 2012 Adam Sandler movie 'That's My Boy' where Sandberg is getting married and he and his bride-to-be have their wedding weekend turn to chaos when the groom's irresponsible and estranged father (played by Sandler) turns up without notice. Kristen Milloti's maligned wedding project was in 2014, and much higher profile. It was the last season of the sitcom 'How I Met Your Mother' where she played the titular mother Tracy, the only bright spot of a 26 episode final series of a show years past its use-by date at this point and which was set entirely at Barney and Robin's wedding, the series drawing to an agonizingly slow conclusion before the entire show from Pilot to the Finale came crashing down in a disastrous ending still hated by the majority of fans to this day.

Playing Robin was Canadian actress Cobie Smulders, and in kind of an odd preview of HIMYM would turn out in the 2012 film 'Safe Haven' (an adaptation of the Nicholas Sparks novel) she played Jo, a local woman who befriends Katie, a newcomer with a troubled past who comes to town and falls in love with a widower, Alex. But in a twist ending disliked much like the HIMYM finale, Smulders' character Jo is revealed to be dead all along and a ghost, that of Alex's late wife.

Playing Katie in Safe Haven was actress Julianne Hough, and four years later she would star in another much disliked movie in which a wedding was a central theme - this time 'Dirty Grandpa' in which she plays Meredith, the materialistic, bad-tempered and controlling bride-to-be. Julianne Hough got her start as a dancer, and it was this experience that helped her land her break-out role in film - that of Reverand Shaw's rebellious daughter Aeriel in the 2009 remake of 'Footloose'.

Playing the Reverand in the Footloose remake was Dennis Quaid, and his wife (and obviously Aeriel's mother) was played by Andie McDowell. And this brings us back to Groundhog Day in 1993, where Andie McDowell played the love interest to Bill Murray's Phil Connors.
 
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Margaret Hamilton played three roles in the classic 1939 movie 'The Wizard of Oz', these being the unpleasant Mrs. Glutch in Kansas, and in Oz the Wicked Witch of the West and her briefly seen sister, the Wicked Witch of the East. While the earth-bound Mrs. Glutch's mode of transport was a bicycle, the evil witch sisters flew around on broomsticks. In real life Margaret Hamilton had one sister - and amazingly her name was Dorothy Brush.

One early contender to play the witch before Hamilton was cast in the role was an actress named Gale Sondergaard - and Dorothy's surname is of course Gale.
 
Emma Stone and Bryce Dallas Howard starred together in the 2011 historical drama 'The Help', with Emma playing the movie's main protagonist and Bryce the film's main antagonist, this character possibly one of the biggest fictional Karens ever created.

Prior to making this movie Bryce Dallas Howard had played the Marvel character Gwen Stacey in the 'Spiderman' film series in the 2000s opposite Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst. In 2012, 'The Amazing Spiderman' film series commenced, and this time it would be Emma Stone portraying the role of Gwen Stacey.
 
Mean girls were very popular characters in movies back in the 1990s and 2000s, and lots of young actresses in these decades had at least one such role on their resume.

One who never really got a chance at a mean girl role in a movie during this era when she was starting out was Anne Hathaway, but later in the decade when older and more experienced she did play a Bridezilla in a Rom Com and a drug-addicted and selfish party girl who shamelessly mooches off her family in a drama.

Anne Hathaway's first role playing a mean girl however would have come much earlier and soon after her break-out role in 2001's 'The Princess Diaries', in a movie titled 'Saved!'. Hathaway's role would be a different sort of mean girl, a high school senior named Hilary Faye, the eldest daughter of a fundamentalist Christian minister who is the Queen Bee of the religious high school she attends and who uses her Christian values and faith to help mask a very selfish, controlling, manipulative and mean-spirited girl, who is seen to be doing all the right things for all for the wrong reasons.

Ongoing delays to getting the movie into production in late 2002 coupled with a busy schedule for rising star Hathaway saw her leave the project, and her place was taken by Mandy Moore. Moore was an interesting choice for the role, as she had just played a genuinely nice Reverand's daughter whose life was tragically short in 'A Walk to Remember' earlier that year, and in 2001 had played opposite Anne Hathaway in 'The Princess Diaries', Ann's character Mia a nice girl, but Mandy playing a bullying cheerleader Lana who rules over the high school with an iron fist. This movie would be the breakout movie for both Anne Hathaway and Mandy Moore as actresses, however Moore was not a complete unknown, having been a teen pop singer in the late 1990s and very early 2000s.

Lana and Hilary are two mean girls on Mandy Moore's acting resume, but there was also a third and lesser known one, the role of Sally in the forgotten satirical comedy 'American Dreamz' in 2006. While Sally was not as overtly nasty as the other characters - she was more vapid and not very bright - her ambition to be famous knew no bounds, and woe betide anyone who stood in her way.
 

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troybe said:
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels was released OTD in 1988. It was originally to star Mick Jagger and David Bowie until they dropped out and were replaced by Caine and Martin
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And it was itself a remake of the 1964 film Bedtime Story, which starred David Niven (Caine) and Marlon Brando (Martin).
 

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Movie Film Trivia

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