1925 was simply one other yr. Calvin Coolidge was, nonetheless, the U.S. president, placeholding his method by way of a decade of governmental time-biding as financial contradictions mounted. Society searched its soul with the “Scopes Monkey Trial,” whose mooted verdict might solely replicate, not resolve, the perennial stress between “custom” and “modernity.” Bridging the hole as successfully as something in that decade of duality, the Grand Ole Opry put conventional sounds on trendy airwaves with its first radio present. The Chrysler automobile firm, destined for middling success in an more and more crowded market, was born. Driving excessive in a distinct form of market, Al “Scarface” Capone took management of the Chicago mob. Germany’s political convulsions lurched the nation towards dystopia, with Hitler releasing his depressing tract Mein Kampf. The 20s didn’t roar alongside a lot as simmer away, constructing and decaying towards better and darker issues.
Fortunately for distraction-seekers then and now, Hollywood’s escapist formulation was in nice kind. A WWI flick, The Large Parade by King Vidor, gained the 1925 field workplace with a sprawling, romance-tinged look again on the unlamented however morbidly fascinating Nice Warfare. Lon Chaney was an iconically creepy party-crasher in The Phantom of the Opera. Cecile B. DeMille took a spectacular cross on the story of Ben-Hur and his chariot race; the silent movie model is almost nearly as good as William Wyler’s 1959 remake. Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd duked it out with The Gold Rush and The Freshman, respectively, the latter ending with a slight field workplace benefit. Dinosaurs romped throughout the massive display, as they’re nonetheless wont to do, in The Misplaced World. Soviet movie reached an early zenith with The Battleship Potemkin, a film that over time helped redefine the visible language of cinema.
A number of different 1925 debuts presaged nice issues for films. This yr’s roster of births is a giant one, and for the primary time on this sequence it’s actually tempting to double the variety of featured gamers to twenty to accommodate an even bigger chunk of them. However within the spirit of Potemkin, we’ll edit the heck out of the record and current 10 all-timers who would flip 100 this yr – together with one residing legend who, we fervently hope, will see his personal centenary this December.
January 26 – Paul Newman
If it’s doable to look grandfatherly whereas nonetheless in your prime as a number one man, then it was Paul Newman who proved it. And that’s no knock. He was clean and virile in The Hustler, Hud, and Butch Cassidy, however his vibe was nothing just like the smoldering youthfulness of Marlon Brando who, in a distinct actuality, might need nabbed any of these roles. Newman appeared smart and settled past his years, and never simply due to his prematurely whitening hair and eyes made for smile traces. His agelessness might play as alienating, because it wanted to in Cat on a Sizzling Tin Roof, however extra typically it lent this celebrity an everyman high quality, as within the sports activities comedy Slap Shot or the interval caper The Sting. Maybe it was additionally what saved Newman a compelling display presence properly into his twilight years, as he turned character actor for movies like The Hudsucker Proxy and Street to Perdition and dipped into voice appearing to assist launch Pixar’s Automobiles franchise. His function within the latter was a intelligent homage to his aspect hustle as an precise racecar driver. If solely Pixar had made a salad dressing film whereas they have been at it. Newman died in 2008.
High 5 on Flickchart:
- Cool Hand Luke (1967) – #112 of all time
- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Child (1969) – #156
- The Sting (1973) – #179
- The Hustler (1961) – #203
- Hud (1963) – #446
February 8 – Jack Lemmon
In a Jack Lemmon film, Lemmon’s character’s assumption is that he’s pretty regular and that everyone round him is nuts. He’s anxious, however not outright neurotic – or if he’s, he doesn’t realize it. He’s simply flustered, however doesn’t assume he’ll panic till he does. We’re on his aspect as a result of he reacts with such pitiable dismay when issues go poorly, and he’s humorous as a result of he’s finally introduced it on himself by way of his well-meaning ineptitude. He’s a lot smarter and extra genuinely peculiar than the goofballs of Nineteen Twenties and 30s comedies, however he’s not as far gone into mental and behavioral extremes as a Woody Allen or an Albert Brooks in a high-concept comedy of the 70s and 80s. Lemmon was a comic for the middle-of-the-road 50s and 60s, and he lured audiences into some sudden locations for it. Some Like It Sizzling is his most iconic comedy, The Condominium his most iconic dramedy, The Odd Couple his most completely solid function, and all the pieces from the struggle farce Mister Roberts to Costa-Gavras’s politically heavy Lacking to David Mamet and James Foley’s cynical Glengarry Glen Ross make up his sneakily wealthy film legacy. Lemmon died in 2001.
High 5 on Flickchart:
- The Condominium (1960) – #23
- Some Like It Sizzling (1959) – #252
- Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) – #343
- The Odd Couple (1968) – #853
- Mister Roberts (1955) – #938
February 20 – Robert Altman
Robert Altman was arguably the definitive New Hollywood director, and positively the definitive American one. He had an immediately recognizable type, most clearly evinced in his aggressively naturalistic sound design: all people speaking without delay, the one or two most salient conversations scarcely extra audible than the others, all in direct competitors to your consideration. He was a grasp of the ensemble movie, eschewing apparent protagonists and character arcs in favor of carefully-structured chaos. The very best examples of this, MASH and Nashville, loved a level of success that films this merciless and misanthropic seldom obtain. They have been assertion films, and that assertion was “Are you able to imagine these idiots?” – a comment that traveled very properly within the late 60s and thru the 70s as American society tore itself down and tried to rebrand. Altman’s a lot later follow-ups on this vein, Gosford Park and A Prairie Residence Companion, are equally well-observed and solely a bit softer across the edges. Even when an Altman film sticks near a person or two, just like the barely-employed non-public detective of The Lengthy Goodbye, the aimless girls of 3 Ladies, the frontier losers of McCabe & Mrs. Miller, or the psychotic screenwriter of The Participant, they scarcely resemble standard film characters. They’re symbols of a brand new second, and so they get hold of the contours of that second like bumbling fools. Few of us can declare to do any higher. An Altman film is sensible, imply, low-key cool, and unforgettable. He labored with fellow 1925 child Paul Newman in Buffalo Invoice and the Indians, a humorous takedown of the Wild West showman, and with Jack Lemmon in Quick Cuts by which the comic is at his most broken and cowardly. Altman died in 2006.
High 5 on Flickchart:
- The Lengthy Goodbye (1973) – #198
- McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) – #280
- Nashville (1975) – #300
- 3 Ladies (1977) – #530
- The Participant (1992) – #687
June 3 – Tony Curtis
Jack Lemmon’s dragged-up associate in Some Like It Sizzling, Kirk Douglas’s Bronx-accented second in Spartacus, Jamie Lee Curtis’s father… Tony Curtis is the form of actor that makes you need to level and smile and say, “Look, Tony Curtis!” In that method he’s very a lot an actor lower from an older mode. Bernard Schwartz’s display persona was constructed by and for the traditional studio system, and just about all of his greatest materials is from the dying years of that system. It’s shocking, then, how a lot of Curtis’s output isn’t merely secure, acquainted, and marketable. United Artists, a type of anti-studio studio that aimed to liberate inventive producers and administrators from the extra hidebound Hollywood corporations, launched plenty of Curtis automobiles that had actual weight to them. There was Some Like It Sizzling after all, but additionally the stylishly stunning Candy Odor of Success with Burt Lancaster and the anti-racist The Defiant Ones with Sidney Poitier. Curtis himself entered the manufacturing aspect of the enterprise early on, resulting in a curious little bit of trivia: his self-produced comedy 40 Kilos of Bother was the primary movie shot inside Disneyland. After all, as indicated, Curtis was at root an uncomplicatedly entertaining display presence, so he racked up loads of titles which might be purely and even exorbitantly amusing: Operation Petticoat, The Nice Race (once more with Lemmon), Monte Carlo or Bust!… plus a grab-bag assortment of westerns, noir and mysteries, romances, satires, sports activities comedies, and even a musical. Curtis died in 2010.
Flickchart High 5:
- Candy Odor of Success (1957) – #106
- Some Like It Sizzling (1959) – #252
- Spartacus (1960) – #665
- The Defiant Ones (1958) – #1045
- The Nice Race (1965) – #2558
September 8 – Peter Sellers
Peter Sellers received his begin on the radio, which helps clarify why, of all the abilities on this record, he was the one who made essentially the most use of his voice. If you noticed Sellers’ identify in a castlist, you by no means knew what you’ll get, and even what number of of him you’d get. He could be an Italian film director. He could be the American president, or a Nazi scientist. He could be Dr. Fu Manchu. His most well-known creation was a French detective, Inspector Clouseau of the Pink Panther films, for whom he mixed an outrageous accent with top-shelf bodily slapstick. Sellers performed Clouseau over a interval of 15 years, and was so intently related to the function that when he died director Blake Edwards put collectively a posthumous entry within the sequence utilizing Sellers’ outdated outtakes. Think about what they’d have carried out with AI. Sellers’ unusual profession might have reached its zenith in 1974 when, in separate movies, he performed Adolf Hitler and Queen Victoria. Although very a lot a comedic change hitter, Sellers did seem in a few high-profile dramatic films, taking part in the weird “Quilty” in Lolita and a Forrest Gump-esque gardener in Being There. Sellers died in 1980.
Flickchart High 5:
- Dr. Strangelove or: How I Discovered to Cease Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) – #39
- Being There (1979) – #310
- A Shot within the Darkish (1964) – #919
- The Ladykillers (1955) – #1265
- Homicide by Dying (1976) – #1528
October 16 – Angela Lansbury
Angela Lansbury will need to have identified she was in the appropriate profession when she received an Academy Award nomination for her first film, Gaslight, after which one other one the very subsequent yr for The Image of Dorian Grey. Not dangerous for an Irish-English lady who solely got here to the U.S. to keep away from the Blitz. Regardless of showing in well-received films for many years, together with a memorable villainess function in The Manchurian Candidate, Lansbury arguably didn’t turn out to be a family identify till she was in her 60s and starring within the long-running American TV present Homicide, She Wrote. Her persona for the function of Jessica Fletcher – impartial, unflappable, poised, gracious, broad-minded, righteous – made that present appointment viewing for 12 seasons, and made Lansbury into an ersatz cool aunt or hip grandmother for a broad demographic of followers. She wasn’t carried out with films, both; maybe her most iconic function is a voice-only one, that of the singing teacup Mrs. Potts within the Disney Renaissance film Magnificence and the Beast. Lansbury’s unpretentious singing voice within the titular lullabye launched her into Disney Legend standing, although for a lot of she’d already earned it as a witch in coaching (and one other cool aunt determine) in 1971’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Lansbury loved a prolonged retirement within the Irish countryside earlier than dying in 2022 on the age of 96.
Flickchart prime 5:
- The Manchurian Candidate (1962) – #383
- Gaslight (1944) – #384
- Magnificence and the Beast (1991) – #650
- The Court docket Jester (1955) – #848
- The Image of Dorian Grey (1945) – #2081
November 10 – Richard Burton
You possibly can’t take into consideration Richard Burton with out interested by Elizabeth Taylor. The cross-continental energy couple thrived on offscreen drama, and so they attracted a lot consideration for it that they’re nearly extra remembered for his or her love affair than for the films they made collectively and individually. However hey, it’s his a centesimal birthday this yr, so let’s attempt to slim the main focus to his performances. And we gained’t even dwell on Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the sickening story of codependence he made with Taylor. As a substitute, let’s bear in mind what a scene-stealer he’s whereas totally reclining, injured throughout the D-Day invasion, in The Longest Day. Let’s give him credit score for bringing the world of John le Carré to the display as a doomed MI6 pawn in The Spy Who Got here in From the Chilly. Let’s bear in mind his highly effective Marc Anthony within the sumptuously colourful Cleopatra, by which he falls tragically in love with Elizabeth Tay– no, not that once more. Properly, if we’re not speaking about that facet of Burton’s life, then we’re in all probability speaking about his much more damaging relationship with alcohol, which was reportedly as all-consuming as any substance abuse story within the annals of leisure. It was a contributor to his loss of life on the age of 58 in 1984. But Burton’s greatest work, together with Becket, The place Eagles Dare, and an acclaimed filmed stage manufacturing of Hamlet, nonetheless varieties a hard and fast landmark within the roadmap of postwar British cinema, looming as giant for movie historians as his private exploits do for collectors of movie star lore.
Flickchart High 5:
- Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) – #246
- The place Eagles Dare (1968) – #1206
- The Spy Who Got here in From the Chilly (1965) – #1215
- Becket (1964) – #1360
- Nineteen Eighty-4 (1984) – #2160
November 17 – Rock Hudson
An actor as handsome and proficient as Rock Hudson can do nearly any film they need to do, and Hudson appeared to take that as a duty. He might have remained in middling Westerns and swashbucklers of the kind he began out in, or made a profession out of snug, gentle romances like Pillow Discuss which was a shocking Oscars favourite. As a substitute he took up challenges like Big, a monumental saga by which he performs a sophisticated patriarch traversing 1 / 4 century of social and financial change. Then there are the films he made with Douglas Sirk – Magnificent Obsession, All that Heaven Permits, Written on the Wind – which use melodrama to interrogate the alternatives folks make and the way in which society constrains these selections. Maybe his most attention-grabbing function was a reasonably late one, in John Frankenheimer’s Seconds, by which Hudson seems about midway by way of as the results of the lead character’s cosmetic surgery. That movie posits that whereas one would possibly change a face or physique utilizing science, character and predilection are much less mutable. Hudson is now well-known for having spent his profession within the closet, and when he died in 1985 he turned the AIDS epidemic’s most well-known casualty. Although some associates and colleagues criticized him for not being extra open about his situation, one in every of his final acts was to contribute a major sum of money for AIDS analysis.
Flickchart High 5:
- Seconds (1966) – #593
- Big (1956) – #648
- All That Heaven Permits (1955) – #734
- Written on the Wind (1956) – #1818
- Pillow Discuss (1959) – #2321
December 2 – Julie Harris
Few if any of the folks on this record might be mentioned to vanish into a personality. That’s not the form of expertise they’d. Even Peter Sellers was showy about his disguises, not attempting to deceive you a lot as impress you. Inside this record, Julie Harris stands alone. Though she belongs to precisely the identical technology because the others, her appearing type feels way more up to date. She was not exactly a star, however knowledgeable. One stat tells the story: Harris owns the file for essentially the most Tony awards for Finest Actress in a Play, with 5 wins out of 9 nominations. She was additionally a Grammy and an Emmy winner, and though the Oscar eluded her, she did obtain one Finest Actress nomination for her debut movie, The Member of the Marriage ceremony. After that she was in East of Eden with James Dean, performed the unforgettable “Nell” in The Haunting (a private favourite of mine), appeared with beginning yr peer Paul Newman in Harper, supported Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando in John Huston’s Reflections in a Golden Eye, was a part of the sadly little-remembered all-star manufacturing Voyage of the Damned, co-led The Bell Jar, and performed such icons as flapper Sally Bowles (I Am a Digital camera), Shakepeare’s Ophelia (Hamlet, 1964), and Charlotte Brontë (Brontë). Along with films and theater, tv offered Harris with a whole lot of selection components, together with Joan of Arc, Eliza Dolittle, Mary Todd Lincoln, Emily Dickinson, and Isak Dineson. Harris died in 2013.
Flickchart High 5:
- East of Eden (1955) – #496
- The Haunting (1963) – #670
- Harper (1966) – #3110
- Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962) – #3540
- Gorillas within the Mist (1988) – #3692
December 13 – Dick Van Dyke
It’s going to be a protracted yr. Why can’t he have been born in January? Properly, it gained’t really feel as lengthy to Dick Van Dyke; after celebrating 99 of them, that a centesimal birthday should really feel prefer it’s developing fairly shortly. Simply weeks in the past he sang and danced in a brand new music video by Coldplay, and some years again (not way back within the scheme of his life) somebody filmed him at a restaurant doing a hearty rendition of “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.” Just lately the Marvel/Disney TV present WandaVision paid homage to The Dick Van Dyke Present, and when Disney did a sequel to Mary Poppins in 2018 Van Dyke requested to be in it. (After all they mentioned sure.) After which there was his amusing heel flip in Evening on the Museum. However sufficient about Van Dyke’s surprisingly prolific twenty first century. Most know him for his look 61 years in the past as Bert the chimney sweep in Mary Poppins – a task that introduced him a whole lot of criticism for his try at a Cockney accent, however that by now’s totally, unironically beloved. He additionally performed the fun-to-say Caractacus Potts, inventor and fun-loving single father of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. There are extra characters in his repertoire, after all, however as a result of Van Dyke is so recognizable – so tall, so skinny, so jovial – and due to his quite a few eponymous reveals and specials, his most enduring function has been himself. He has been a residing legend for a lot longer than he’s been one of many leisure world’s oldest residing legends. Completely satisfied birthday, Dick.
Flickchart High 5:
- Mary Poppins (1964) – #973
- Evening on the Museum (2006) – #3545
- Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) – #3964
- Bye Bye Birdie (1963) – #3991
- Mary Poppins Returns (2018) – #7239
The record goes on, after all. These stars would additionally flip 100 in 2025, although even this isn’t an exhaustive record:
Lee Van Cleef (January 9), Joan Leslie (January 26), Elaine Stritch (Feb 2), John Fiedler (February 3), Hal Holbrook (Feb 17), George Kennedy (Feb 18), Sam Peckinpah (Feb 21), Rod Steiger (April 14), Iwao Takamoto (April 29), John Neville (Might 2), Oona O’Neill (Might 14), Mai Zetterling (Might 24), Jeanne Crain (Might 25), Maureen Stapleton (June 21), June Lockhart (June 25), Ginny Tyler (August 9), Honor Blackman (August 22), Donald O’Connor (August 28), Doris Roberts (November 4), Johnny Mandel (November 23), Claude Lanzmann (November 27), Sammy Davis Jr (December 8), Robert B. Sherman (December 19)
