March 18, 1910: An important entry in the nascent horror genre is the Edison Company’s Frankenstein, with stage veteran Charles Ogle as the monster.
March 13, 1934: Walt Disney, accepting his prize for The Three Little Pigs, is the first winner to refer to the gold statuette as an “Oscar.”
March 13, 1940: In roles originally planned for Jack Oakie and Fred MacMurray, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby first team up in Road to Singapore.
March 14, 1946: Rita Hayworth heats up movie screens with her rendition of “Put the Blame on Mame” in the steamy drama Gilda.
March 13, 1947: Harold Russell, who lost both hands in a WWII hand grenade explosion, wins two Oscars for playing a returning G.I. in The Best Years of Our Lives.
March 15, 1950: Audiences delight to the antics of Francis and sidekick Donald O’Connor in the first of seven films starring the talking mule.
March 19, 1953: Television audiences are invited to the Academy Awards ceremony for the first time. Bob Hope hosts in Hollywood, Conrad Nagel in New York.
March 16, 1960: The French New Wave comes ashore with Jean-Luc Godard‘s Breathless, an unconventional gangster drama that pays homage to American “B” movies.
March 18, 1968: One-time Your Show of Shows writer Mel Brooks makes his directorial debut with The Producers, starring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder.
March 17, 1970: The Boys in the Band is a groundbreaking, albeit stereotypic, step in mainstream cinema’s depiction of homosexuals.
March 15, 1972: Francis Ford Coppola‘s The Godfather debuts in theaters to unprecedented attention, breaking box office records across the country.
March 17, 1972: The University of Baltimore is the scene of the premiere of underground filmmaker John Waters‘ infamous “exercise in poor taste,” Pink Flamingos.