July 14, 1908: Edison Company actor D.W. Griffith makes his directing debut with The Adventures of Dollie, the first of over 500 works to come.
July 12, 1912: Adolph Zukor releases a French film, Queen Elizabeth with stage star Sarah Bernhardt, in America, giving a new respectability to motion pictures.
July 17, 1913: A film comedy staple is started when Mabel Normand throws a custard pie in “Fatty” Arbuckle’s face in the Keystone short A Noise from the Deep.
July 14, 1916: The first feature film with an all-black cast, The Colored American Winning His Suit, is released.
July 12, 1930: Lon Chaney’s first talking picture—and, sadly, his final film–The Unholy Three opens.
July 15, 1932: The Disney Studio releases the first cartoon using the three-color Technicolor process, the “Silly Symphony” short Flowers and Trees.
July 14, 1933: E.C. Segar’s comic strip creation Popeye the Sailor is set afloat in his first film appearance, in Max Fleischer’s cartoon short.
July 17, 1935: Variety, in a story about Midwestern audiences’ preference for sophisticated films, declares in a headline “Sticks Nix Hick Pix.”
July 14, 1937: After her memorable debut appearance in Warners’ They Won’t Forget, 17-year-old Lana Turner will earn the nickname “the sweater girl.”
July 13, 1949: Independent producer David O. Selznick marries his longtime lover, actress Jennifer Jones. The couple stays wed until Selznick’s death in 1965.
July 17, 1955: Walt Disney’s long-dreamt-of theme park, Disneyland, “the happiest place on Earth,” opens in Anaheim, California.
July 18, 1963: “Total Filmmaker” Jerry Lewis releases what many will consider his masterpiece, The Nutty Professor, a comedic take on the Jekyll-and-Hyde story.
July 14, 1969: Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda’s low-budget “road” picture, Easy Rider, debuts, and will make a star of Jack Nicholson and spawn a host of imitators.
July 15, 1988: Yippee-ki-yay! Bruce Willis shoots his way into the pantheon of Hollywood action heroes with the debut of Die Hard.
July 15, 1998: Cameron Diaz sports a unique hair-do in the year’s most unlikely hit, the “gross-out” comedy There’s Something About Mary.
July 16, 1999: Amid cries of “Is it real?,” the $60,000 pseudo-documentary The Blair Witch Project opens to packed houses and will become the top independent film to date.
July 14, 2000: Marvel Comics’ mutant superhero team make their long-awaited big-screen bow with the debut of X-Men.
July 15, 2011: After 10 years and eight films, the Harry Potter franchise concludes with the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2.