December 1, 1903: Edwin S. Porter’s The Great Train Robbery, the first motion picture to use intercutting scenes to form a unified narrative, is released.
December 2, 1910: Hefty funnyman John Bunny, the cinema’s first comedy star, makes his debut in Vitagraph’s Jack Fat and Jim Slim at Coney Island.
December 4, 1924: Greed, previewed in a nine-hour, 42-reel version earlier in the year, opens in a studio-mandated 10-reel cut that director Erich von Stroheim disavows.
December 4, 1925: A bureau known as the Central Casting Corporation is set up by the major Hollywood studios as a pool of extras available to film productions.
December 3, 1927: While they had appeared in other films independently, the silent short Putting Pants on Philip marks the first pairing of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy as a team.
December 1, 1938: The first movie with an “all-midget cast,” the B-western The Terror of Tiny Town, opens to a Lilliputian box office.
December 2, 1939: Humphrey Bogart’s sole entry in the horror genre, The Return of Doctor X, opens.
November 30, 1940: Up-and-coming actress Lucille Ball marries musician Desi Arnaz in Connecticut. From the nearly 20-year union would come two kids, a pair of films, and the TV classic I Love Lucy.
November 30, 1942: B-western star Buck Jones dies from injuries sustained in a fire two days earlier at Boston’s Cocoanut Grove nightclub that claimed 491 lives.
December 6, 1942: RKO’s Cat People, the first in a series of understated, low-budget horror classics from producer Val Lewton, opens.
November 30, 1952: The first 3-D color feature. Bwana Devil, debuts and launches the ‘50s 3-D film craze.
December 2, 1960: After two decades of marriage, Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier file for divorce. The couple would officially separate two months later.
December 4, 1967: Bert Lahr, stage and film comedian best known as the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz, dies at 72.
December 5, 1976: Bound for Glory, the first film to take advantage of Garret Brown’s Steadicam, a device which stabilizes handheld cameras, is released.
November 30, 1979: The last surviving Marx Brother, youngest sibling Herbert (Zeppo), dies at his California home at 78.
December 2, 1982: Cockeyed British funnyman Marty Feldman (Young Frankenstein) dies at 49.
December 2, 1988: The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!, starring Leslie Nielsen and based on a short-lived TV series, opens.
December 6, 1993: Don Ameche, ‘30s leading man who won a 1985 Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Cocoon, passes away at 85 from cancer.
November 30, 2013: Paul Walker, 40, co-star of the Fast and Furious action film series, is killed in a California car crash.