John Wayne, an actor who came to epitomize the American
West,was born in Winterset, Iowa.

Born Marion Robert Morrison, Wayne’s family moved to
Glendale, California, when he was six years old. As a teen,
he rose at four in the morning to deliver newspapers, and
after school he played football and made deliveries for local
stores.

When he graduated from high school, he hoped to attend the
U.S. Naval Academy. However, after the school rejected him,
he accepted a full scholarship to play football at the University
of Southern California in Los Angeles.

In the summer of 1926, Wayne’s football coach found him a job
as an assistant prop man on the set of a movie directed by John
Ford. Ford started to use Wayne as an extra, and he eventually
began to trust him with some larger roles.

1954

1969

Wayne won the Academy Award for Best
Actor and the Golden Globe Award for
Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama,
his only competitive win for either
institution.

In 1999, the American Film Institute (AFI) ranked Jimmy Stewart 
third on its list of the greatest American male actors. He received numerous honors including the AFI Life Achievement Award in
1980, the Kennedy Center Honor in 1983, as well as the Academy Honorary Award and Presidential Medal of Freedom, both in 1985.

1957

George Wendt, best known for playing Norm on Cheers, died
peacefully in his sleep while at home early Tuesday morning,
on the 32nd anniversary of the Cheers series finale. He was 76.

Wendt was on Cheers for the entirety of the show’s epic run
from 1982–1993.

On May 16, 1929, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences handed out its first awards, at a dinner party for
around 250 people held in the Blossom Room of the
Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, California.

The brainchild of Louis B. Mayer, head of the powerful MGM
film studio, the Academy was organized in May 1927 as a
non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement and
improvement of the film industry.

Its first president and the host of the May 1929 ceremony was
the actor Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. Unlike today, the winners
of the first Oscars—as the coveted gold-plated statuettes
later became known—were announced before the awards
ceremony itself.

The first official Best Picture winner was Wings, directed by
William Wellman. The most expensive movie of its time, with
a budget of $2 million.
   

Joe Don Baker, the broad-shouldered Texas tough guy who
portrayed characters on both sides of the law, most notably
Sheriff Buford Pusser in the unexpected box-office hit 
Walking Tall (1973), died Monday May 7.