March 2, 1906: Biograph Studios wins appeal of kinetoscope inventor Edison’s patent claims, preventing (temporarily) a potential monopoly on the making of movies.
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 2, 1933: “The Eighth Wonder of the World,” King Kong, is unleashed on New York by RKO Pictures, during its hair-raising premiere.
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 2, 1939: B-Western hero John Wayne is catapulted to stardom when he plays the Ringo Kid in John Ford’s hit frontier drama Stagecoach.
March 7, 1945: Barry Fitzgerald becomes the first actor to receive two Academy Award nominations for the same role, for Going My Way.
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 4, 1952: In a marriage that would take them from Hollywood to the White House, actor Ronald Reagan and actress Nancy Davis are wed.
March 3, 1959: Three days before his 53rd birthday, a heart attack claims chubby funnyman Lou Costello, half of the comedy duo Abbott and Costello.
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 2, 1965: “The hills are alive” as Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music comes to the screen, starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer.
March 1, 1978: The remains of Charlie Chaplin, who died the previous December, are stolen from his Swiss grave by two immigrants in an ill-fated ransom scheme.
March 5, 1978: Actor Martin Sheen suffers a heart attack during the shooting of Apocalypse Now. He’ll eventually return to finish the film.
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 2, 1984: Actor-turned-director Rob Reiner makes an auspicious debut with his acclaimed comedy This Is Spinal Tap.
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 8, 1996: The Coen Brothers’ “based on a true story” Midwest crime saga Fargo, starring Frances MacDormand, opens.
March 7, 1997: “King of all media” Howard Stern brings his life story to the big screen with the debut of the shock jock’s comedy Private Parts.
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.