February 2, 1914: The Keystone comedy Making a Living marks the screen debut of Mack Sennett’s newest signing, 24-year-old British stage performer Charles Chaplin.
February 1, 1929: MGM’s The Broadway Melody starring Fred Astaire, premieres in Hollywood, becoming the first musical with an original score.
February 1, 1937: During Clark Gable’s birthday party on the MGM lot, Judy Garland sings “You Made Me Love You,” a song she’ll perform in Broadway Melody of 1938.
January 31, 1943: Italian director Luchino Visconti‘s gritty drama Ossessione adds the phrase “neo-realism” to the cinematic lexicon.
January 28, 1952: The Screen Actors Guild negotiates the first contract granting performers residuals for films sold to television.
January 29, 1964: Originally intended as a tense Cold War thriller until evolving into a satire, Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, with Peter Sellers, opens today.
February 1, 1966: After a career that spanned 50 years, with successes on stage, and in front of and behind the camera, Buster Keaton, 70, dies of lung cancer.
February 2, 1969: “King of Horror” Boris Karloff dies of respiratory disease in his native England at 81.
February 1, 1973: A record $5.00 ticket price is being charged at New York’s Trans-Lux East Theatre for Last Tango in Paris.
January 31, 1974: Legendary producer Sam Goldwyn of Guys and Dolls and The Best Years of Our Lives fame dies at the age of 74.
February 1, 1978: Just before he’s about to be sentenced for the statutory rape of a teenage girl at Jack Nicholson‘s L.A. home, director Roman Polanski flees the United States.
February 2, 1996: Athletic screen hoofer and choreographer Gene Kelly dies at the age of 83.