July 31, 1928: Audiences first hear MGM mascot Leo the Lion’s mighty roar with the studio’s first sound film, White Shadows in the South Seas.
July 28, 1934: Min and Bill and Tugboat Annie stars Marie Dressler dies at 65, the first Academy Award-winning performer to pass away,
July 27, 1940: “Be vewwy, vewwy quiet. I’m hunting wabbits.” The first true Bugs Bunny/Elmer Fudd cartoon, Tex Avery’s A Wild Hare, debuts.
July 26, 1948: A month before his death, baseball icon Babe Ruth makes his last public appearance at the premiere of The Babe Ruth Story, starring William Bendix.
July 27, 1950: George Pal‘s Destination Moon, one of the first films to offer a serious look at space exploration, opens.
July 30, 1951: Held up while close-ups of Alec Guinness’s Fagin deemed anti-Semitic are excised, David Lean’s 1948 adaptation of Oliver Twist finally opens in the U.S.
July 26, 1960: Art director Cedric Gibbons, who took home the Oscar statuette (which he designed) 11 times, dies at the age of 67.
July 30, 1966: With all the “BIFF! POW! SOCK!” of the campy TV show, Batman, starring Adam West, marks the hero’s first film appearance since 1943.
August 1, 1970: Actress Frances Farmer, whose ’40s mental hospital ordeals were depicted in the 1982 biodrama Frances, dies from cancer at 56.
August 1, 1973: American Graffiti, George Lucas‘ nostalgic ’60s time capsule, opens. The cast of then-unknowns includes Richard Dreyfuss and Harrison Ford.
July 28, 1978: “Toga! Toga!” The raucous frat comedy National Lampoon’s Animal House, starring John Belushi, opens.
July 27, 1983: Tom Cruise teaches audiences the fine art of dancing in one’s underwear in the hit comedy Risky Business.
August 1, 1986: The first feature film based on a Marvel Comics series, the infamous cinematic “turkey” Howard the Duck, opens.
July 31, 1987: Timothy Dalton takes over the role of secret agent James Bond with the 007 adventure The Living Daylights.
July 26, 1991: Actor/comic Paul Reubens, aka Pee-wee Herman, is arrested in a Florida adult movie theater and charged with indecent exposure.
July 29, 2000: Hollywood power couple Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt wed; the marriage will last a little over five years.
July 27, 2003: America says “Thanks for the Memories” as stage/screen/radio/TV comedy legend Bob Hope dies at the age of 100.
August 1, 2003: The infamous Gigli, starring real-life couple Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, opens. The $75 million action/comedy will earn less than $8 million.
July 30, 2007: A pair of iconic European filmmakers–Italy’s Michelangelo Antonioni and Sweden’s Ingmar Bergman, pass away at 94 and 89, respectively.
July 30, 2010: Seventeen years after buying it for $60 million, Disney sells off Miramax Films to an outside investor firm for $660 million.