December 8, 1908: Under the name “Dorothy Nicholson,” Mary Pickford makes her screen bow in the D.W. Griffith short Mrs. Jones Entertains.
December 7, 1913: The debuting The Sea Wolf, the first film version of Jack London’s maritime novel, features the author playing a sailor.
December 7, 1919: Austrian-born actor Erich von Stroheim, silent cinema’s “Man You Love to Hate,” has his directorial debut with Blind Husbands.
December 11, 1930: A Berlin protest of All Quiet on the Western Front by members of the Nazi Party will lead to the anti-war drama’s banning in Germany.
December 9, 1937: In a poll conducted by gossip columnist Ed Sullivan, Clark Gable and Myrna Loy are crowned “King and Queen of Hollywood.”
December 12, 1939: Douglas Fairbanks, dashing and athletic leading man of the silent era and co-founder of United Artists, dies of a heart attack at age 56.
December 12, 1941: Lon Chaney, Jr. follows in his father’s frightening footsteps, playing the title role in The Wolf Man and reviving Universal’s horror genre.
December 6, 1942: RKO’s Cat People, the first in a series of understated, low-budget horror classics from producer Val Lewton, opens.
December 8, 1949: Scandal erupts around actress Ingrid Bergman when columnist Hedda Hopper reports she’s pregnant by director Roberto Rossellini.
December 7, 1955: United Artists withdraws from the MPAA over the refusal to grant approval to the drug addiction drama The Man with the Golden Arm.
December 10, 1962: A relatively-unknown Peter O’Toole stars in David Lean’s highly-anticipated, 70mm epic Lawrence of Arabia, which makes its debut in London.
December 11, 1963: The Cardinal, the first film released in Panavision 70, a process which enlarges 35mm film to 70mm and is then projected onto a wide screen, debuts.
December 7, 1964: Director Sam Peckinpah is fired by the producer of The Cincinnati Kid for shooting nude scenes that were not written in the script.
December 11, 1967: Stanley Kramer’s drama Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner marks Spencer Tracy’s final film and his ninth screen pairing with Katharine Hepburn.
December 12, 1972: Audiences flip for The Poseidon Adventure. Its success will lead to a rash of disaster films, many made by Poseidon producer Irwin Allen.
December 10, 1978: Ed Wood, Jr., auteur of such classic turkeys as Glen or Glenda and Plan 9 from Outer Space, dies in Hollywood at the age of 54.
December 7, 1979: More than a decade after the cult TV show that inspired it left the airwaves, Star Trek: The Motion Picture opens.
December 8, 1982: Eddie Murphy becomes the latest Saturday Night Live regular to jump to big-screen stardom with the action-comedy 48 Hrs.
December 9, 1983: “Say hello to” Cuban-born drug kingpin Tony Montana (Al Pacino) in Brian DePalma’s crime drama Scarface, which opens today.
December 11, 1987: “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good,” Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) proclaims in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street.
December 11, 1991: Despite success with Dances with Wolves and The Silence of the Lambs, Orion Pictures files for bankruptcy protection in federal court.
December 11, 1992: A catchphrase is born when Jack Nicholson tells Tom Cruise he “can’t handle the truth” in the military courtroom drama A Few Good Men.
December 6, 1993: Don Ameche, ‘30s leading man who won a 1985 Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Cocoon, passes away at 85 from cancer.
December 8, 2000: The martial arts genre is taken to new heights in director Ang Lee’s sweeping Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, opening in the U.S. today.
December 12, 2003: Keiko, the former captive orca and title star of the film Free Willy, dies off the coast of Norway from pneumonia. His age is estimated at 26.
December 12, 2008: Popular ‘40s MGM leading man Van Johnson (Brigadoon) dies at 92.
December 12, 2013: Tom Laughin, hard-kicking star of the Billy Jack films, passes away at 82.