August 9, 1930: The Fleischer Studio’s Betty Boop sashays onto the screen (as a dog!) in the cartoon short Dizzy Dishes.
August 14, 1940: Top screenwriter of Easy Living and If I Were King, Preston Sturges, makes his directorial debut with The Great McGinty.
August 10, 1950: Director Billy Wilder is accused of biting the hand that feeds him with his darkly funny look at Hollywood past, Sunset Boulevard.
August 14, 1951: A Place in the Sun opens. Paramount removes the name of actress Anne Revere, who had refused to cooperate with HUAC, from the publicity.
August 13, 1967: Arthur Penn‘s biodrama Bonnie and Clyde, starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, ushers in a wave of screen realism and violence.
August 9, 1969: A massacre in the Hollywood Hills claims Roman Polanski‘s wife, Sharon Tate, and four others; the “Manson Family” will be convicted in Jan. 1971.
August 11, 1976: Depicting, ironically, a famed gunslinger’s battle with cancer, John Wayne‘s last film, The Shootist, opens.
August 12, 1988: Director Martin Scorsese‘s controversial The Last Temptation of Christ opens to protests from religious groups.
August 13, 1997: American audiences are introduced to a British slang term, thanks to the unexpected comedy hit The Full Monty.