07.19.10 | Jay Steinberg | This Week in Film HistoryPrint this Post
July 22, 1934: After seeing MGM's Manhattan Melodrama at Chicago's Biograph Theater, gangster John Dillinger is gunned down outside by G-men.
July 20, 1938: The major film studios are named to a governmental antitrust lawsuit over their dominance in both production and distribution of motion pictures.
July 23, 1947: The subject of anti-Semitism is dramatized in RKO's Crossfire and, in November, by 20th Century Fox's Oscar-winning Gentleman's Agreement.
July 23, 1948: Film pioneer D.W. Griffith, 73, who last directed in 1931, dies. Studios observe a three-minute moment of silence during his funeral five days later.
July 20, 1950: Playing a wheelchair-bound WWII veteran, newcomer Marlon Brando wows audiences and critics in The Men.
July 20, 1951: After a 16-year run, the Time, Inc.-produced newsreel series The March of Time no longer marches on.
July 22, 1959: Steve Reeves first flexes his pecs to American audiences in the Italian-made Hercules, beginning a flood of imported "sword-and-sandal" actioners.
July 19, 1961: TWA becomes the first airline to offer in-flight movies on a regular basis. First up, Lana Turner as an unfaithful wife in By Love Possessed.
July 23, 1962: After a six-year stint producing independent films, former studio V.P. Darryl Zanuck is now at the helm of a financially-troubled 20th Century Fox.
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 23, 1966: After what one writer called "the world's longest suicide," troubled actor Montgomery Clift, 45, is found dead in his New York brownstone.
July 20, 1973: Mystery surrounds the death of martial arts star Bruce Lee, 32, the cause of which will be attributed to a brain edema.
July 23, 1982: A helicopter crash on the set of Twilight Zone-The Movie results in the deaths of Vic Morrow and two child actors.
July 22, 1983: With 89-year-old Abel Gance in attendance, the restored edition of his 1927 epic Napoleon has its "re-premiere" in Paris.
July 24, 1998: Director Steven Spielberg and star Tom Hanks acquaint a new generation with the drama and sacrifice of World War II in Saving Private Ryan.
Abel Gance died in 1981 in Paris. It would have been impossible for him to attend the 're-premiere' in Paris. At age 89, he did attend a showing of the restored film in the summer of 1979 at the Telluride Film Festival.