July 8, 1932: Audiences are repelled by scenes of real-life sideshow stars in Tod Browning’s horror film Freaks, which will go on to become a cult classic.
July 10, 1942: Taken out of Orson Welles’ hands by RKO and with over 40 minutes cut against the director’s wishes, The Magnificent Ambersons opens.
July 8, 1953: Otto Preminger‘s comedy The Moon Is Blue, whose dialogue contains such words as “pregnant,” “seduce” and “virgin,” opens sans Production Code approval.
July 6, 1957: To the stirring strains of “Kill the wa-bbit!,” Chuck Jones’ Looney Tunes short What’s Opera, Doc? premieres.
July 6, 1964: As Beatlemania continues to erupt, fans are privy to a day in the life of the Fab Four, with director Richard Lester‘s madcap farce A Hard Day’s Night.
July 7, 1964: Don Siegel’s The Killers, originally planned as a made-for-TV film, opens in theaters and marks Ronald Reagan’s final screen turn before entering politics.
July 8, 1967: With her final years characterized by bouts of depression, the film world’s beloved Scarlett O’Hara, Vivien Leigh, 53, dies of tuberculosis.
July 7, 1972: Shane co-star Brandon de Wilde, 30, dies in a car accident near Denver, where he was starring in a stage production of Butterflies Are Free.
July 8, 1972: At the invitation of the North Vietnamese government, Jane Fonda arrives in Hanoi to survey the results of U.S. bombing.
July 7, 1979: Robert Opel, who had 15 seconds of fame as the 1974 Academy Awards streaker, is killed during a robbery at his San Francisco erotic art gallery.
July 10, 1989: The voice of nearly every major Warner Bros. cartoon character, as well as Heathcliff the cat, Mel Blanc, dies at 80.
July 11, 1989: The portrayer of nearly every major Shakespearean male lead, as well as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, Laurence Olivier, dies at 82.
July 8, 1994: Tom Hanks’ star continues to rise thanks to his performance in Robert Zemeckis‘ Forrest Gump, for which he’ll win his second consecutive Oscar.
July 6, 1998: Western movie icon and “King of the Cowboys” Roy Rogers, 86, rides into the sunset one last time at his California home.
July 9, 2003: Johnny Depp swashbuckles and channels his inner Keith Richard as Captain Jack Sparrow in Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.
July 8, 2006: MGM’s “Girl Next Door,” actress June Allyson, dies at age 88.
July 8, 2012: Best Actor Oscar-winner (Marty) and McHale’s Navy star Ernest Borgnine passes away at 95.