Schindler’s List, starring Liam Neeson in the true story of
a German businessman who saves the lives of more than
a thousand Polish Jews during the Holocaust, opened in
theaters.

The film was nominated for 12 Academy Awards and took
home seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best
Director.

It was the first Best Director win for Spielberg, who had
been nominated in the category for three of his earlier
films: 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1981’s
Raiders of the Lost Ark and 1982’s E.T.: The Extra-
Terrestrial.

Director Steven Spielberg will be 79 December 18th.
 

On November 4, 1990, Dances with Wolves, a film about an
American Civil War-era soldier and a group of Sioux Native
Americans that stars Kevin Costner and also marks his
directorial debut, premiered in Los Angeles.

Dances with Wolves took home seven Oscars, including Best
Picture and Best Director, and solidified Costner’s place on
Hollywood’s A-list.

On July 13, 1990, the romantic-thriller Ghost, starring Demi
Moore, Patrick Swayze and Whoopi Goldberg, opened in
theaters across the country.

On June 11, 1979, John Wayne, famous for starring in countless westerns, died at age 72 after battling cancer for more than a
decade.

The actor was born Marion Morrison on May 26, 1907, in Winterset,
Iowa, and moved as a child to Glendale, California. A football star
at Glendale High School, he attended the University of Southern California on a scholarship but dropped out after two years.

After finding work as a movie studio laborer, Wayne befriended
director John Ford, then a rising talent. His first acting jobs were
bit parts in which he was credited as Duke Morrison, a childhood nickname derived from the name of his beloved pet dog.

Wayne’s first starring role came in 1930 with The Big Trail, a film
directed by Raoul Walsh.

Best known to his many fans for one of his most memorable
screen incarnations—San Francisco Police Inspector “Dirty”
Harry Callahan—the actor and Oscar-winning filmmaker Clint
Eastwood is born on May 31, 1930, in San Francisco, California.

With his father, Eastwood wandered the West Coast as a boy
during the Depression. Then, after four years in the Army
Special Services, Eastwood went to Hollywood, where he got
his start in a string of B-movies.

For eight years, Eastwood played Rowdy Yates in the popular
TV Western series Rawhide, before emerging as a leading man
in a string of low-budget “spaghetti” Westerns directed by
Sergio Leone: Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More
(1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966).