October 16, 1894: Rodeo star Lee Martin, from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows, becomes the first screen cowboy when he rides for the camera at Thomas Edison’s New Jersey studio.
October 15, 1915: The Supreme Court finds Edison’s Motion Picture Patents Company guilty of restraint of trade against the independents, spelling the trust’s doom.
October 17, 1916: Swimming star-turned-actress Annette Kellerman causes a sensation when she appears in the nude in Daughter of the Gods.
October 14, 1926: After three years of unbilled bit roles, Gary Cooper gets his first feature film credit in the frontier drama The Winning of Barbara Worth.
October 11, 1930: James Cagney makes his screen debut in the Warner Bros. crime drama Sinners’ Holiday.
October 12, 1940: Famed screen cowboy Tom Mix, 60, is killed in an automobile accident while driving through Arizona.
October 15, 1940: “Chaplin Speaks” as Adenoid Hynkel, ruler of Tomania, in Charlie’s satire on Hitler’s rise to power, The Great Dictator.
October 17, 1942: Founded by Bette Davis, John Garfield and others, the Hollywood Canteen nightclub opens its doors, with top stars entertaining U.S. servicemen.
October 11, 1944: Gene Tierney creates a memorable portrait of seductive danger in the film noir classic Laura, directed by Otto Preminger.
October 11, 1944: “You know how to whistle, don’t you?,” Lauren Bacall asks future husband Humphrey Bogart in their first movie together, To Have and Have Not.
October 13, 1950: Show business takes a biting look at itself as All About Eve, starring Bette Davis and Anne Baxter, premieres in New York City.
October 14, 1954: The holidays may be months away, but Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye put audiences in the Yuletide mood with the debut of White Christmas.
October 11, 1955: The landmark musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Oklahoma!, filmed in both a CinemaScope and a Todd-AO version, is released.
October 17, 1956: Producer Mike Todd’s all-star casting coups on Around the World in 80 Days, which opened today, give rise to the phrase “cameo role.”
October 12, 1958: At the Brussels World’s Fair, an international panel of 117 cinema historians votes Sergei Einsenstein’s The Battleship Potemkin the best film of all time.
October 14, 1959: Errol Flynn, roguish star of Warner Bros. action classics through the ’30s and ’40s, dies of a heart attack at age 50.
October 11, 1961: Piano-playing, would-be Italian Leonard “Chico” Marx is the first of the performing siblings to die, at age 74.
October 17, 1966: A month after the Production Code is revised, Georgy Girl is the first film released with the label “suggested for mature audiences only.”
October 14, 1972: Director Bernardo Bertolucci’s steamy Last Tango in Paris premieres at the New York Film Festival amid great controversy.
October 10, 1975: If at first…Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor wed for the second time (the re-marriage lasts less than 10 months).
October 12, 1978: Rival Chicago film critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel take their local show nationwide with the debut of Sneak Previews on PBS.
October 11, 1981: Moviegoers get cinematic food for thought with the release of Louis Malle’s My Dinner with Andre.
October 12, 1994: Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg announce the formation of Dreamworks SKG, the first major studio in over 50 years.
October 14, 1994: American audiences learn what a Quarter Pounder is called in France, courtesy of Quentin Tarantino’s groundbreaking crime thriller Pulp Fiction, opening today.
October 15, 1999: What is the first rule of David Fincher’s Fight Club opening on this date? You do not talk about David Fincher’s Fight Club opening on this date!
October 16, 2007: The King and I co-star Deborah Kerr, winless in six Best Actress Academy Award nominations, passes away at 86.