www.02138mag.com
Scenes From a Marriage
by
Mike Robbins
March/April 2008
1900 Future Hollywood legend Douglas Fairbanks attends Harvard as a “special student” for a semester—or so his publicists will later claim. Some film historians will say that Fairbanks failed to get into Harvard and spent the semester attending Harvard parties, not Harvard classes. »
November 12, 1922 The Young Rajah premieres, featuring silent-film star Rudolph Valentino as fictional Harvard student Amos Judd.
« May 2, 1926 John Wayne makes his movie debut, a small, uncredited role in Brown of Harvard, a silent film about a fictional Harvard football player. The picture is a remake of the 1911 film of the same name.
March 15, 1927 Now-legendary Hollywood executives—including William Fox, Adolph Zukor, and Cecil B. DeMille—begin a series of lectures at Harvard Business School.
August 29, 1931 This Modern Age premieres. Joan Crawford stars as a good girl who falls for a Harvard football player in this formulaic but successful MGM melodrama.
June 1938 Walt Disney becomes the first Hollywood figure to receive an honorary degree from Harvard. »
May 1, 1941 Citizen Kane, a film based loosely on the life of William Randolph Hearst, is released.
December 18, 1941 Harvard, Here I Come! a comedy starring boxer-turned-actor “Slapsie Maxie” Rosenbloom, premieres.
July 28, 1950 Harvard’s Department of Legal Medicine plays a central role in the crime film Mystery Street, originally titled Murder at Harvard.
« 1951 Actress Gertrude Lawrence receives the first Hasty Pudding “Woman of the Year” award. Lawrence is selected because, as stepmother of a Hasty Pudding member, she is willing to attend the ceremony.
March 25, 1954 Daniel Taradash wins the Academy Award for best screenplay for From Here to Eternity. Taradash will later serve as president of the Writers Guild of America, West.
April 6, 1959 Alan Jay Lerner wins Academy Awards for best screenplay and best song for the film Gigi.
April 12, 1961 Legendary songwriter Cole Porter wins a Grammy for his soundtrack to the Hollywood musical Can-Can.
« April 9, 1962 The film adaptation of Broadway’s West Side Story, featuring the music of Leonard Bernstein, wins 10 Academy Awards, including best picture.
September 24, 1964 The first episode of the short-lived but oft-syndicated comedy series The Munsters appears on CBS. Fred Gwynne stars as Herman Munster.
November 18, 1965 Tom Neal, star of the 1945 noir classic Detour, is convicted of manslaughter in the death of his wife.
April 23, 1966 Actress Natalie Wood becomes the first recipient of the Harvard Lampoon’s Worst Actress Award to accept the honor in person.
September 26, 1968 James MacArthur takes over the role of Danno in the new CBS series Hawaii Five-0. (Another actor played the role in the pilot.) »
November 1, 1968 Motion Picture Association of America head Jack Valenti convinces theaters to enforce a film-content rating system.
December 16, 1970 Ryan O’Neal portrays a Harvard student and Ali MacGraw a “Cliffie” in the hit film Love Story. Future Oscar-winner Tommy Lee Jones makes his screen debut in the film, written by Erich Segal.
December 15, 1972 Norman Wexler, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Joe, Saturday Night Fever, and Serpico, is arrested for threatening the life of President Richard Nixon.
« April 2, 1974 Jack Lemmon wins his second best actor Academy Award for his role in Save the Tiger. Earlier in the evening, John Houseman won the best supporting actor Oscar for his portrayal of fictional HLS professor Charles W. Kingsfield Jr. in The Paper Chase.
June 20, 1975 The movie Jaws, based on the best- selling novel by Peter Benchley, is released. It will become Hollywood’s highest-grossing film before being eclipsed by Star Wars.
September 24, 1977 Fred Grandy sets sail as Gopher in the first episode of ABC’s The Love Boat. »
November 19, 1980 Big-budget western Heaven’s Gate premieres, and soon becomes legendary as one of the biggest flops in Hollywood history. The first 20 minutes of the film are set at Harvard, though actually shot at Oxford.
December 25, 1980 Altered States premieres, featuring future Oscar-winner William Hurt as a Harvard professor conducting dangerous mind research.
February 18, 1981 John Travolta says that being named Hasty Pudding’s Man of the Year is more exciting than receiving an Academy Award nomination.
October 24, 1986 Soul Man is released. The comedy features C. Thomas Howell as a Caucasian man who pretends to be African-American in order to secure a Harvard scholarship.
September 13, 1993 Former Simpsons writer Conan O'Brien debuts as host of Late Night with Conan O’Brien.
June 11, 1993 Jurassic Park, a film based on the best-selling novel by Michael Crichton, premieres. It will become one of the highest-grossing movies of the 20th century. Crichton will later win an Emmy as creator of the hit TV show ER.
April 29, 1994 With Honors premieres, featuring Joe Pesci and Brendan Fraser as a homeless man and a Harvard student, respectively. »
March 25, 1996 Mira Sorvino wins the best supporting actress Academy Award for her work in Mighty Aphrodite, while fellow Harvard nominee Elisabeth Shue loses to Susan Sarandon in the leading actress category.
September 8, 1996 John Lithgow wins the first of the three Emmy Awards he will receive for his work on 3rd Rock from the Sun. Eight years later, Lithgow will appear in Kinsey, a biopic about controversial Harvard-educated professor Alfred Kinsey.
« November 11, 1996 Thomas Werner, co-founder of the production company behind sitcoms The Cosby Show, Roseanne, 3rd Rock From the Sun, and That 70s Show, is inducted into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame.
March 23, 1998 Matt Damon accepts an Academy Award for his screenplay Good Will Hunting, a film set at MIT.
June 29, 1998 Fictional Harvard Law grad Ally McBeal appears on the cover of Time above the headline “Is Feminism Dead?” »
September 13, 1998 Frasier, a sitcom about fictional Harvard grad Frasier Crane, becomes the first show to win five consecutive Emmys for outstanding comedy series.
January 8, 1999 The Thin Red Line, director Terrence Malick’s first new film in two decades, is released.
March 21, 1999 Producer Ed Zwick wins the best picture Academy Award for Shakespeare in Love.
1999 Mia Riverton co-founds Harvardwood, a professional network for Harvard alumni in the entertainment industry. See Harvardwood Calling.
December 31, 1999 Time names The Simpsons the best TV show of the 20th century. Almost 30 of the show’s writers graduated from Harvard.
« June 21, 2000 Bullwinkle J. Moose creator Jay Ward receives a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
July 13, 2001 The Reese Witherspoon comedy Legally Blonde premieres. The hit film is set at Harvard Law School.
August 1, 2001 Harvard Man, a film written and directed by Oscar-nominated alum James Toback, is released.
December 21, 2001 Stoner comedy How High premieres. Its premise: Smoking weed can get you into Harvard.
May 16, 2002 Star Wars: Episode II is released, starring Harvard undergrad Natalie Portman. »
September 13, 2002 Tom Green stars in the comedy Stealing Harvard. An earlier title, Stealing Stanford, had to be scrapped when Stanford insisted upon story changes.
September 22, 2002 Actress Stockard Channing wins two Emmys in one evening, for her roles in The West Wing and The Matthew Shepard Story.
September 21, 2003 David Javerbaum, writer and future producer of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, wins the first of his eight Emmy Awards.
June 9, 2004 As the ribald Ali G, Sacha Baron Cohen delivers a controversial Class Day address, saying, “A lot of you women is probably feminists, or as we call them in England, ‘lezzies.’”
May 17, 2006 The Da Vinci Code premieres at the Cannes Film Festival, featuring Tom Hanks as fictional Harvard professor Robert Langdon.
February, 2007 is named president and CEO of NBC Universal, joining fellow Harvard-educated Hollywood power brokers Michael Lynton of Sony Pictures Entertainment, Alan Horn of Warner Bros. and Sumner Redstone of Viacom.
November 5, 2007 Writers Guild of America, West president Patric Verrone and chief negotiator John Bowman lead a three-month writers’ strike that virtually shuts down Hollywood.
November 28, 2007 Entertainment Weekly names producer David Heyman one of the 50 smartest people in Hollywood for turning the Harry Potter novels into the most profitable movie franchise in history.
December 25, 2007 The Wiley College debate team takes on Harvard in The Great Debaters. The film is based on a true story—but, in real life, Wiley faced USC in the crucial contest. »
02138 Magazine Copyright © 2006 - 2007 All rights reserved