Timelines for year 1951
Madeline Zima
Was cast to play a teen-aged Lucille Ball in a movie/mini-series for CBS for 2003. This was a period piece were Madeline would play the "I Love Lucy" star from ages 13 to 18 and was scripted to film a scene with a teen-aged Bette Davis, with whom Ball attended drama school. For the role, Madeline would have to cut her long hair in a bob. The movie was tentatively titled the "I Love Lucy" movie or "Redhead".
Olympia Dukakis
She and Anita Gillette have had the same on-screen love interest twice: Larry Haines on "Search for Tomorrow" and Vincent Gardenia in Moonstruck .
Walt Disney
Personally disliked Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan because of the lack of "heart" and "warmth" in their main characters. Was very sad about the unfavorable reception of Fantasia as he was proud of the film. Ironically, the first re-issue of Fantasia after his death was the first time it turned a profit.
Lee Grant
Was blacklisted in 1951 by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) for refusing to testify against her husband, blacklisted playwright/screenwriter Arnold Manoff. As a result, she got very little work for about 12 years.
Doris Day
Childhood idol was Ginger Rogers, with whom she starred in Storm Warning .
Was a two-and-a-half pack a day smoker until about 1951.
James Ivory
Earned his undergraduate degree from The University of Oregon in 1951. He donated his personal papers to the university in 2003.
Walter Cronkite
At the birth of television, he and his team at CBS practically invented the institution of the evening news program. In 1951, one of the stage managers at CBS told him to sit at the desk and do the news. Cronkite asked what he meant and the managers simply said "I don't know just do it". His idea was to first just talk to the camera like another person and organize the news stories in the same vein as the newspaper beginning with the top story and working his way down to human interest stories.
Ingmar Bergman
Father of nine children. They include director Daniel Bergman, (with Käbi Laretei), actress Anna Bergman, actor Mats Bergman, director Eva Bergman, director Jan Bergman, (with Ellen Bergman), actress Lena Bergman, (with Else Fisher), airline captain Ingmar Bergman Jr. (born 1951) (with Gun Hagberg), writer Linn Ullmann, (with Liv Ullmann), and writer Maria won Rosen (with Ingrid Bergman).
Gary Cooper
He underwent four hernia operations between 1951 and 1953.
With the critical and commercial disaster You're in the Navy Now , the word got out that Cooper was finished. He couldn't even sell a good picture that was a sure-fire formula to begin with - or once had been. He had disappeared completely from the Motion Picture Herald's annual survey of the top ten box office stars. He had been on the list for nine successive years, moving up and down but always there, proof that he was still a guarantee if only as a commodity star. Now he had lost even that. As the host of It's a Big Country , Cooper got fabulous press coverage during filming but after a few engagements it was withdrawn out of embarrassment. It wasted a warehouse of first rate talent - Fredric March, William Powell, Gene Kelly, Ethel Barrymore, Janet Leigh, Van Johnson, Keenan Wynn and others. Cooper made another routine western, Distant Drums , and then he made the picture which would prove to be an enormous comeback vehicle for him - High Noon .
Separated from his wife Rocky in May 1951, mainly over his affair with Patricia Neal. They did not live together again until July 1954.
Anjelica Huston
Was born while her father was in Africa shooting The African Queen .
Her father, John Huston, directed The African Queen with Katharine Hepburn and played Gandalf in The Return of the King (TV). Anjelica herself later worked with her father's successor, Ian McKellen, in And the Band Played On (TV) and with Cate Blanchett, who appeared in the trilogy, as well as playing Hepburn in The Aviator , in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou . Also appearing in The Aviator was her brother, Danny Huston.
Martin Scorsese
As a teenager in the Bronx, Scorsese frequently rented Michael Powell's The Tales of Hoffmann from a store that only had one copy of the reels. When it wasn't available the owner told him, "that Romero kid has it," referring to George A. Romero who was also a big fan of the film. Today, both directors cite the film as a major influence.
Pernell Roberts
Had one son, Jonathan Christopher Roberts, with 1st wife Vera Mowry, born October 1951 (d. 1989).