On this day in 2003, Katharine Hepburn–a four-time Academy Award winner for Best Actress and one of the greatest screen legends of Hollywood’s golden era–dies of natural causes at the age of 96, at her home in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. Hepburn was born into a well-to-do New England family, the daughter of a prominent surgeon, […]
On this day in 2003, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II publishes the list of those she has chosen to appoint as Officers of the Order of the British Empire as part of the traditional Queen’s Birthday Honours. Included on the list were (among others) the soccer star David Beckham, the musician Sting, the actor Roger Moore […]
On this day in 2003, the film actor Gregory Peck, best known to many for his Academy Award-winning portrayal of the courageous, dignified lawyer Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), dies at his home in Los Angeles, at the age of 87. Born on April 5, 1916, in La Jolla, California, Peck graduated […]
Some 35 U.S. states declare it to be Bob Hope Day on this day in 2003, when the iconic comedic actor and entertainer turns 100 years old. In a public ceremony held in Hollywood, city officials renamed the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Avenue–famous for its historic buildings and as a central point on […]
The National Society of Film Critics, comprising 55 of America’s top critics, holds its 37th annual meeting at Sardi’s Restaurant in New York City on this day in 2003. The critics chose the director Roman Polanski’s wrenching Holocaust drama The Pianist as best picture of the previous year,. As a young boy in Krakow during […]
In the words of Jack Valenti, the longtime president of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA): “If Hollywood is Mount Olympus, Lew Wasserman is Zeus.” Wasserman, an agent and studio executive who was arguably the most influential mogul in Hollywood for some 40 years after World War II, died on this day in 2002, […]
Directed by Sam Raimi and starring Tobey Maguire in the title role, the eagerly awaited comic book adaptation Spider-Man was released on Friday, May 3, 2002, and quickly became the fastest movie ever to earn more than $100 million at the box office, raking in a staggering $114.8 million by Sunday, May 5. After a […]
On this day in the 2002, ABC airs the 10,000th episode of the daytime drama General Hospital, the network’s longest-running soap opera and the longest-running program ever produced in Hollywood. Created by Frank and Doris Hursley, General Hospital premiered on April 1, 1963. It was set in the fictional town of Port Charles in upstate […]
On this day in 2001, the fledgling movie studio Dreamworks SKG, founded by Hollywood heavyweights Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen, releases what will become its most successful film to date: the animated feature Shrek. Based on William Steig’s 1990 children’s book, Shrek was vividly re-imagined by Dreamworks animators as a subversive twist on […]
On this day in 2000, Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston, one of Hollywood’s highest-profile couples, marry at the Malibu, California, estate of the producer Marcy Carsey (The Cosby Show). The two actors reportedly met on a blind date in 1998 and quickly became favorites of the tabloid media once they went public with their romance. […]