Three Hollywood legends were born on this day, albeit a few years apart. Spencer Tracy was the first, in 1900, who lent his gravitas to a brilliant version of Jekyll and Hyde and Northwest Passage. He could also play a hard man - Bad Day at Black Rock - as well as high comedy - It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Movie Trivia - Tracy's first job on screen was as a non-speaking robot, alongside his lifelong friend, Pat O'Brien.
Bette Davis followed in 1908, playing femmes fatales from The Letter to Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. Movie Trivia - she was famously taken off by Liz Taylor in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - 'What a dump!'
Last comes the baby of the bunch, dear old Gregory Peck, he of the raised eyebrow. He was outstanding as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird and I liked him (but nobody else did) as Captain Ahab in Moby Dick. But then I am one of the few people living who has read the book - although I had to have a good long lie down afterwards.
Movie Trivia - Atticus Finch was voted the greatest screen hero of all time in 2003, beating Indiana Jones and James Bond into 2nd and 3rd places respectively - and quite right too!
In other news ...
Poor old Oscar Wilde went on trial today in 1895. He brought his misfortunes on himself by bringing libel charges against the appalling Marquess of Queensbury, whose son Alfred ('Bosie') was one of Wilde's lovers. The whole thing backfired disastrously and Wilde, previously the darling of the West End theatre-going public, ended up in Reading Gaol with two years' hard labour.
The love that dare not speak its name was criminalized by Henry Labouchere MP in his Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1884 and was the famous occasion when Queen Victoria used the royal veto because she thought lesbians were the natives of Lesbos!
Aren't our royal family wonderful?
