February

1st            1988
12 year old Heather O’Rourke, pretty young star of the “Poltergeist” movies, died from complications during intestinal surgery 4 months before the release of “Poltergeist III” She was replaced by a blonde stand-in and her character was written out of the finale. The second tragedy for her family… her fraternal twin brother died in vitro.

2nd             1957
Elizabeth Taylor married Mike Todd.

5th             1957
Actor Errol Flynn won $30,000on the NBC quiz show “The Big Surprise” hosted by Mike Wallace. The category was “Seas and Ships”. Silent film star Francis X. Bushman won the same amount in the poetry category.

9th           1956
Wardrobe malfunction! At a press conference at New York’s Plaza Hotel to announce the production for “The Prince and the Showgirl” starring Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe, a strap broke on Marilyn’s gown nearly exposing her bare bosom. Rumor had it…it was no accident!

11th           1955
Ona Munson, who played Belle Watling in “Gone With The Wind”, died at 49 from an overdose of sleeping pills. She left a suicide note.

12th          1709
Alexander Selkirk left Juan Fernandez Island, his home for 4 years, and went back home to Largo, Scotland. He had been on the uninhabited island since going ashore after a fight with his ship’s captain. The story of his sojourn there inspired Daniel Defoe’s saga of “Robinson Crusoe”.

                   1976
Actor Sal Mineo was stabbed to death outside his apartment. He was returning home from a rehearsal for the hit play “P.S. Your Cat Is Dead” with Keir Dullea. In 1979 a drifter, Lionel Ray Williams, was convicted of the crime and sentenced to life in prison.

15th         1916
President Woodrow Wilson watched the first full length film ever shown at the White House. It was D. W. Griffith’s controversial “Birth of a Nation”.

16th             1933
David O. Selznick was made vice-president at MGM. The producer was a possible replacement for gravely ill Irving Thalberg.

18th           1913
Thomas Edison did it first! Fourteen years before “The Jazz Singer” he screened a very rudimentary “talking Picture” in New York. By using his Kinephone process, he screened a series of film shorts synchronized with a phonograph record.

22nd           1934
Frank Capra’s “It Happened One Night” premiered at the Radio City Music Hall. It became the first film to sweep the Oscars for best actor, actress, director and picture. That wouldn’t happen again until 1975 when Milos Forman’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” did it for the second and last time to date.

23rd           1915
It was now a legal ‘fait accompli’! In the landmark case of Mutual Film Company vs. Industrial Commission of Ohio, the US Supreme Court ruled that the government could censor films, upholding state laws of two years past.

25th         1966
Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Were Made For Walking” hit the top of the charts making her and daddy Frank one of the few father-daughter combos to to get there.

26th         1957
James Stewart was promoted to Brigadier General in the USAF Reserve by President Dwight D.Eisenhower.

28th        1945
Clark Gable, swerving to avoid a head-on collision, crashed his car into a tree and had to spend 2 days in the hospital. It was widely rumored, but not publicly expressed, that the star was drunk at the time and other people were injured. However, the MGM legal eagle, Howard Strickland, made sure no such reports turned up in the press.

1st            1896
The Lumiere brothers introduced their Cinematograph to the public in Brussels, Belgium. It was a major advance over previous equipment because it not only could record moving pictures but project them on a screen as well.

2nd          1920
Silent star Mary Pickford divorced Owen Stone. She married leading man Douglas Fairbanks 26 days later!

3rd          1994
Ezra Stone, who played Henry Aldrich on stage and radio, died in a car accident. Stone also directed the television hit series “The Flying Nun”. He was 76.

4th          1905
Theodore Roosevelt became the only president to complete an inaugural address without using the word “I” even once!

8th          1971
Screenwriter Borden Chase died at 71. Chase was born Frank Fowler and got his new name from a milk bottle (Borden) and a bank ad (Chase Manhattan).

10th        1932
The first feature-length movie ever shown on television aired on WGXOA, an experimental station in Los Angeles. The film was “”The Crooked Circle” and starred Zazu Pitts, Ben Lyon and James Gleason.

11th          1818
Mary Shelley’s novel “Frankenstein” went on sale in London, England.

                 1979
Actor Victor Kilian was killed by intruders who broke into his Hollywood apartment. He was 88 years old.

12th          1930
Mahatma Gandhi began a 200-mile march to protest a British tax on salt. It reminds one of some American protesters who dumped tea into a harbor for the same reason. The march was portrayed in “Gandhi” the Oscar-winning film in 1982.

13th         1940
An all-star double feature! When “The Road to Singapore’ premiered at the Paramount Theater, it was the first screen appearance of Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour. On stage for the event was Tommy Dorsey’s Orchestra with their new singer Frank Sinatra and a comic….Red Skelton!

14th          1932
George Eastman, whose invention of perforated film made motion pictures a reality, committed suicide after a long illness. He was 72.

16th          1948
At Romanoff’s restaurant in Hollywood, the country’s two most famous and influential gossip columnists, Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, called a temporary truce to their feud. It had been 11 years since L. B. Mayer launched Hedda, one of his contract players, to bash Louella who was putting pressure on his stars to divulge studio gossip.

19th         1962
Alfred Hitchcock’s new thriller “Marnie” was supposed to star Grace Kelly, now Princess Grace of Monaco. But Prince Rainier nixed the idea and Tippi Hedren got the part.

22nd         1958
Mike Todd, producer and entrepreneur, died in the crash of his plane “The Lucky Liz”. Ironically, his wife, Elizabeth Taylor had become ill and couldn’t fly with him on the plane named for her.

23rd         1975
Comedian-actress Cass Daley died in a freak accident in her home when she tripped over a glass-topped coffee table. The glass broke and a shard slashed her throat. She bled to death before anyone could save her. She was 59.

25th        1969
In Copenhagen, Denmark, Judy Garland sang “Over the Rainbow” for the last time. She died a little over three months later.

29th      1968
Warner Bros. announced that Gordon Parks would direct “The Learning Tree”. The film, based on his autobiographical novel would be the first major motion picture directed by an African-American.