June 2, 1916: Victor Schertzinger composes the first original film score for an American feature, Thomas H. Ince‘s Civilization.
June 6, 1933: The first drive-in movie theatre (called a “park-in”) opens in Camden, N.J. The evening’s main feature: Wives Beware with Adolphe Menjou.
June 1, 1936: Director Cecil B. DeMille launches his Lux Radio Theater series with Clark Gable and Marlene Dietrich in The Legionnaire and the Lady, based on the film Morocco.
May 31, 1938: NBC broadcasts the first feature film on television shown in a single installment, The Return of the Scarlet Pimpernel.
June 1, 1943: The plane carrying refined British actor Leslie Howard, 50, is shot down by German fighters over the Bay of Biscay near Lisbon, Portugal.
June 4, 1951: Actors Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh are wed in Greenwich, Conn. The marriage will last until 1962.
June 3, 1955: The Seven Year Itch opens, but a poster of star Marilyn Monroe, skirts blown up by a passing subway, is removed in New York amid cries of indecency.
June 3, 1959: François Truffaut’s debut feature as director, the semi-autobiographical The 400 Blows, opens in France.
June 4, 1959: After 25 years and 190 films, the final Three Stooges short, Sappy Bullfighters, is released by Columbia.
June 5, 1967: The American Film Institute, an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the heritage of film and television, is established.
May 31, 1971: The body of 46-year-old World War II hero and actor Audie Murphy is discovered in the wreckage of a Virginia plane crash.
May 31, 1977: Horror film magnate (The Tingler) and “gimmick king” William Castle dies at 63.
June 5, 1983: NYU student filmmaker Spike Lee’s master’s thesis “joint,” Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barberbshop: We Cut Heads, wins the Merit Award at the Student Academy Awards.
June 3, 1985: In an article in New York magazine, writer David Blum dubs a contingent of twentysomething Hollywood stars the “Brat Pack.”
June 3, 1988: Thanks to an enchanted fortune-telling machine, Tom Hanks is a boy in a man’s body in the hit comedy Big, which debuts today.
June 3, 2001: Two-time Academy Award-winning actor Anthony Quinn (Zorba the Greek) passes away at 86.
June 5, 2004: Former Warner Bros. contract player (Kings Row) and SAG president Ronald Reagan dies at 93 in his California home.
June 6. 2005: Anne Bancroft, who earned a Best Actress Oscar for The Miracle Worker, dies from cancer at 73.
June 5, 2009: A Las Vegas bachelor party turns into a nightmare for Justin Bartha, Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis and Ed Helms in the comedy hit The Hangover, opening today.
June 6, 2013: Swimming champ-turned-MGM musical star Esther Williams, dubbed “America’s Mermaid,” passes away at 91.