Months before its release, Orson Welles’ film Citizen Kane began generating such controversy that Radio City Music Hall eventually refused to show it. Instead, Citizen Kane, now revered as one of
the greatest movies in history, made its debut at the smaller RKO
Palace Theater on May 1, 1941.

George Orson Welles
(May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985)

Orson Welles  is considered to be among the
greatest and most influential filmmakers of
all time.

SANDY KOZEL

On December 15, 1791, the new United States of America ratified the 
Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

On August 11, 1973, the nostalgic teenage coming-of-age movie American Graffiti, directed and co-written by George Lucas,
opened  in theaters across the United States. Set in California
in the summer of 1962, American Graffiti was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Director and Best Picture, and
helped launch the big-screen careers of Richard Dreyfuss and
Harrison Ford, as well as the former child actor and future Oscar-
winning filmmaker Ron Howard. The film’s success enabled
Lucas to get his next movie made, the mega-hit Star Wars (1977).

Robert Weston Smith, known as Wolfman Jack
(January 21, 1938 – July 1, 1995)

On July 24, 1998, director Steven Spielberg’s World War
II epic, Saving Private Ryan, was released in theaters
across the United States. The film, which starred Tom
Hanks and Matt Damon, was praised for its authentic
portrayal of war and was nominated for 11 Academy
Awards. It took home five Oscars, for Best Director,
Best Cinematography, Best Sound, Best Film Editing
and Best Sound Effects Editing.

The film’s lengthy opening scene was a bloody re-
enactment of American troops landing at Omaha
Beach in Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944.

On July 6, 1994, the movie Forrest Gump opened in U.S. theaters. A
huge box-office success, the film starred Tom Hanks in the title role
of Forrest, a good-hearted man with a low I.Q. who winds up at the
center of key cultural and historical events of the second half of the
20th century.

Forrest Gump was based on a 1986 novel of the same name by
Winston Groom, who (like his main character) grew up in Alabama
and served in the Army during Vietnam.

Robin Wright and Tom Hanks.

Tom Hanks won his second Oscar for Forrest Gump.