March 11, 1931: The German director of Nosferatu and Sunrise, F.W. Murnau, 42, is killed in a car accident on the Santa Barbara Highway.
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 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 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.