Woody Allen once said, “I don’t want to be immortal through my works. I want to be immortal by not dying.” This Week in Film History, no less than four of Hollywood’s best known personalities made their final exits and to paraphrase comedian Robert Benchley’s remarks, “they sleep alone at last.”
March 5, 1919: Pioneering black producer/director Oscar Micheaux releases his first film, The Homesteader.
March 5, 1922: A “strange symphony of terror” is unleashed on screens across the world with the debut of Germany’s Nosferatu, a unauthorized adaptation of Dracula.
March 5, 1936: Writer Dudley Nichols becomes the first person to refuse an Oscar (for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Informer) during a boycott of the Academy.
March 7, 1945: Barry Fitzgerald becomes the first actor to receive two Academy Award nominations for the same role, for Going My Way.
March 9, 1945: Filmed over a seven-month period during the Nazi occupation of France, Marcel Carne‘s masterpiece, Les Enfants du Paradis, premieres in Paris.
March 3, 1950: Marx Brothers Groucho, Chico and Harpo make their final film appearance as a team in Love Happy, with a young Marilyn Monroe.
March 9, 1955: After bit parts on TV and in film, James Dean becomes an overnight sensation with his starring film debut in East of Eden, which premieres today.
March 5, 1960: After a two-year stint, rock ‘n’ roller and movie star Elvis Presley is released from the U.S. Army and will begin filming G.I. Blues.
March 5, 1962: George C. Scott becomes the first actor to refuse an Oscar nomination (for The Hustler), in protest of fellow actors’ practice of campaigning for awards.
March 9, 1977: Protesting Mohammad, Messenger of God, a group of Black Muslims takes hostages at Washington, D.C., theaters showing the epic.
March 5, 1982: Comedian and former Saturday Night Live star John Belushi, 33, is found dead from a drug overdose in a Los Angeles hotel.
March 7, 1988: The actor known as “the most beautiful woman in the world,” John Waters mainstay Divine, dies of a heart attack at 42.
March 9, 1996: A few weeks after celebrating his 100th birthday, cigar-loving comedian and Academy Award-winner George Burns passes away.
March 7, 1999: Stanley Kubrick, 70, iconoclastic director of 2001: A Space Odyssey, dies four months before the opening of his final film, Eyes Wide Shut.