Curated playlist
Cecil B. DeMille Award Golden Globe winners
- Alfred HitchcockAlfred Hitchcock was born on the 13th of August 1899 above a greengrocer's shop at 517 High Road in Leytonstone, Essex. By the time he died in 1980, his films had collected 46 Academy Award nominations and his name had become an adjective…
- Frank SinatraFrancis Albert Sinatra weighed 13.5 pounds when he was born on the 12th of December 1915, in a tenement at 415 Monroe Street in Hoboken, New Jersey. The delivery required forceps, which scarred his left cheek and neck and left lifelong…
- Martin ScorseseMartin Scorsese had asthma as a boy and could not play sports or join in games with the other children. So his parents and his older brother took him to the movies instead. That is where his passion for cinema began, in a child who could…
- Woody AllenWoody Allen has made 50 feature films. That single fact sits at the center of a career so long and so productive it resists easy summary. Born Allan Stewart Konigsberg in the Bronx on the 30th of November 1935, he has written for film,…
- Al PacinoAl Pacino was born Alfredo James Pacino on the 25th of April 1940, in East Harlem, Manhattan, to Sicilian Italian-American parents. His father emigrated from San Fratello, his mother's family from Corleone. By the time he was two, his…
- Steven SpielbergSteven Spielberg was born on the 18th of December 1946, in Cincinnati, Ohio, and by the time he was twelve years old, he had already staged and filmed a train wreck with his Lionel set. That eight-millimeter camera, borrowed from his…
- James StewartJames Stewart gave away his only competitive Academy Award. He won Best Actor for the 1940 romantic comedy The Philadelphia Story, then handed the statuette to his father, who set it in the window of the family hardware store in Indiana,…
- Meryl StreepMeryl Streep walked into a casting meeting with Dino De Laurentiis in 1976, hoping to audition for his King Kong remake. De Laurentiis looked at her and said, in Italian, to his son: "This is so ugly. Why did you bring me this?" What he…
- Kirk DouglasKirk Douglas was born Issur Danielovitch on the 9th of December 1916, the only son among seven children in a Russian-Jewish immigrant family in Amsterdam, New York. His father had been a horse trader in Russia and became a ragman in…
- Elizabeth TaylorElizabeth Taylor was born on the 27th of February 1932 in Hampstead Garden Suburb, northwest London, in a family home called Heathwood. She died on the 23rd of March 2011 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Between those two…
- Joan CrawfordJoan Crawford, born Lucille Fay LeSueur in San Antonio, Texas, built one of the most tenacious careers in Hollywood history from a foundation of almost nothing. Her father abandoned the family when she was ten months old. Her schooling…
- Harrison FordHarrison Ford was born on the 13th of July, 1942, at the Swedish Covenant Hospital in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of Chicago. He spent years as a self-taught carpenter, building shelves and cabinets for Hollywood writers, before anyone…
- Jack NicholsonJack Nicholson improvised a single line for a 1980 horror film, and it outlived almost everything else he ever filmed. "Here's Johnny!" was not in Stanley Kubrick's script for The Shining. Nicholson invented it on the spot, playing writer…
- Judy GarlandJudy Garland was born Frances Ethel Gumm on the 10th of June 1922, in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, to a family that lived and breathed performance. Her parents were vaudevillians who ran a movie theater. Her first appearance on any stage came…
- Bette DavisBette Davis died on the 6th of October, 1989, at the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, too weak to make the journey home after her cancer returned during a visit to Spain. Her tombstone reads: "She did it the hard way." That…
- Clint EastwoodClinton Eastwood Jr. entered the world at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco on the 31st of May, 1930, weighing 11 pounds 6 ounces. The nurses at the hospital nicknamed him "Samson." Nobody in that delivery room could have…
- Jack L. WarnerJack Leonard Warner ran Warner Bros. Studios for more than half a century, longer than any other pioneering Hollywood mogul. His career began with a pawned horse and a borrowed chair, and it ended with an estate valued at $15 million and a…
- John WayneMarion Robert Morrison weighed thirteen pounds when he was born at 224 South Second Street in Winterset, Iowa, on the 26th of May 1907. A fireman in Glendale, California, later renamed him for the dog he never went anywhere without, a huge…
- Michael DouglasMichael Kirk Douglas was born on the 25th of September, 1944, into a household already saturated with Hollywood ambition. His father, Kirk Douglas, had risen from poverty to become one of the defining stars of American cinema. His mother,…
- Tom HanksTom Hanks lost 35 pounds for a single role. He thinned his hair, learned to walk differently, and prepared to play a dying man on screen. The film was Philadelphia, released in 1993, and when it was over, Hanks stood at the Academy Award…
- Audrey HepburnAudrey Hepburn stood on a train platform in occupied Arnhem as a young girl, watching a boy in an oversized coat board a train bound for a concentration camp. "I was a child observing a child," she said later. That image never left her. It…
- Bing CrosbyBing Crosby's recording of "White Christmas" has sold over 50 million copies worldwide, making it the bestselling single of all time. That fact alone might seem to define the man, but it barely scratches the surface. Harry Lillis Crosby…
- Lucille BallLucille Ball was born on the 6th of August, 1911, at 69 Stewart Avenue in Jamestown, New York, and by the time she died on the 26th of April, 1989, she had appeared on 39 covers of TV Guide, more than any other person in history. TV Guide…
- Laurence OlivierLaurence Kerr Olivier was born on the 22nd of May 1907 in Dorking, Surrey, the youngest child of a nomadic Church of England clergyman who never quite found a permanent post. By the time he was ten years old, Ellen Terry had written in her…
- Walt DisneyWalt Disney holds the record for most Academy Awards won by an individual, with 22 wins from 59 nominations. Yet the man behind that record was, in private, shy, self-deprecating, and insecure. He once told a friend, "I'm not Walt Disney.…
- Robin WilliamsRobin McLaurin Williams was voted "Most Likely Not to Succeed" by his high school classmates in 1969. Within a decade, he was on the cover of Time magazine, and within two, he had won an Academy Award. What made Williams so difficult to…