ON THIS DAY 3 23 2023

This Day in History: March 23

Featured Event

Titanic

film by Cameron [1997]



Titanic, American romantic adventure film, released in 1997, that centres on the sinking of the RMS Titanic. The film proved immensely popular, holding the all-time box-office gross record for more than a decade after its release.
The film begins with the robotic exploration of the Titanic’s wreckage by treasure hunters who hope to locate a fabled massive blue diamond, known as the Heart of the Ocean, that was supposedly lost when the ship sank. They recover a safe that contains some papers, including a drawing of a nude woman wearing a necklace with the gem in it. After the illustration is aired on television, the team is contacted by an old woman (played by Gloria Stuart) who tells them that she is the one depicted in the drawing, Rose DeWitt Bukater, thought to have died in the accident. Hoping that she can help them find the jewel, the treasure hunters bring Rose to their expedition ship. Most of the film’s story is then told in flashbacks as she recounts the Titanic’s fateful 1912 voyage.


Upper-class Rose (now played by Kate Winslet) boards the ship with her mother (Frances Fisher) and her well-to-do fiancé, Cal (Billy Zane), whom she is marrying for financial reasons. Distraught by the pressure of her arranged marriage, Rose contemplates suicide on the ship’s stern. She is talked down by third-class passenger Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio), a handsome but penniless artist. Over the course of the voyage, she becomes increasingly attracted to Jack. Meeting in secret, Rose asks him to draw her wearing the Heart of the Ocean necklace, which was a gift from Cal. Rose and Jack subsequently make love, and Rose tells Jack that she will go with him once the ship docks. Later that night, however, they witness the Titanic’s fatal impact with an iceberg.










Titanic
As the ship begins to sink, the couple seeks out Rose’s mother and Cal, who has discovered Rose’s romantic entanglement. He frames Jack for theft by having the necklace placed in Jack’s coat pocket. Jack is arrested, and Cal later puts the necklace in his own pocket. Though she initially hesitates, Rose comes to believe Jack’s claims of innocence, and she eventually finds him in the master-of-arms’ office, handcuffed around a pipe. Using an axe, she is able to free him as water floods the room. The lower-deck gates are locked, but Jack helps break down the one trapping them. He and Rose return to the upper deck, where Rose is placed in a lifeboat by Cal, who wraps his jacket around her—still containing the necklace. Cal lies to her, saying Jack will be able to leave the Titanic safely, but she refuses to leave Jack behind and jumps back onto the ship. Cal chases them in a jealous rage but eventually gives up to board a lifeboat, using a crying child as an excuse for passage. Rose and Jack are left on the ship as it breaks apart and sinks, the lifeboats having all been launched. Jack helps Rose onto a floating piece of the wreckage so that she can later be rescued by a returning lifeboat, while he himself dies of hypothermia. Onboard the Carpathia, the ship that rescued Titanic’s survivors, she adopts the name “Rose Dawson” and discovers the necklace in Cal’s jacket. The film returns to the present day, and centenarian Rose is revealed to still have the jewel in her possession. Her story told, she drops the famous necklace into the ocean.







James Cameron



the filming of Titanic



model ship used for the film Titanic
Though much of the film’s plot deals with the fictional romance between Rose and Jack, writer/director James Cameron put a great deal of work into the historical accuracy of the sets and story. Many real-life figures are featured throughout the film, including Capt. Edward J. Smith (Bernard Hill), J. Bruce Ismay (Jonathan Hyde), and “Unsinkable” Molly Brown (Kathy Bates), and actual underwater footage of the wreck was used for the opening scenes. Cameron himself went on several dives to explore the sunken ship, and he designed an almost-to-scale replica of the Titanic for the film’s production. At the time of its production, Titanic was the most expensive film ever made, costing some $200 million. However, it recouped its expenses several times over. The film was somewhat of a phenomenon, especially among teenage girls and young women enamoured with DiCaprio, and the media widely reported on instances of individuals seeing the movie dozens of times in the theatre.



Titanic was nominated for 14 Academy Awards, tying the record set by All About Eve (1950), and it won 11, equaling the record set by Ben-Hur (1959), which was later matched by Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003). In addition to winning Oscars for best picture and director, Titanic also received an Academy Award for the song “My Heart Will Go On,” performed by Céline Dion. A 3-D version of the film was released in 2012, shortly before the 100th anniversary of the ship’s sinking.

Elizabeth Taylor

American actress








Elizabeth Taylor, in full Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor, (born February 27, 1932, London, England—died March 23, 2011, Los Angeles, California, U.S.), American motion picture actress noted for her unique beauty and her portrayals of volatile and strong-willed characters.







Taylor made a smooth transition from juvenile to adult roles in the films Life with Father (1947), Father of the Bride (1950), and An American Tragedy (1951). She appeared as the frivolous wife of a writer in The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954) and as an East Coast woman who marries the patriarch of a disintegrating Texas ranching family (played by Rock Hudson) in Giant (1956). In Raintree County (1957), Taylor channeled a deracinated Southern belle who marries an abolitionist (Montgomery Clift). Her mature screen persona— that of a glamorous, passionate woman unafraid of expressing love and anger—was at its apogee in film adaptations of Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959).




Butterfield 8



Cleopatra
Taylor won an Academy Award for her performance as a conflicted New York call girl in Butterfield 8 (1960), though she publicly expressed her dislike of the film. She met and fell in love with the British actor Richard Burton while they were filming Cleopatra (1963). Both were still married at the time, and their affair became a scandal. The couple was hounded by photographers and denounced as immoral in forums as diverse as the Vatican newspaper and the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. The two ultimately divorced their respective spouses and were themselves married twice (1964–74, 1975–76).







Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Taylor won a second Academy Award for her performance opposite Burton as the vituperative but vulnerable Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), directed by Mike Nichols from the play by Edward Albee. She costarred with him again in an adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew (1967); the couple made five further films together. After the mid-1970s, however, Taylor appeared only intermittently in films, Broadway plays, and television films.






Elizabeth Taylor
Taylor’s closely scrutinized personal life presaged the advent of the tabloid frenzy of the latter decades of the 20th century. Her eight marriages provided no shortage of fodder: among her husbands were film producer Michael Todd, singer Eddie Fisher, and U.S. Sen. John Warner. An active philanthropist, Taylor helped to establish the American Foundation for AIDS Research (1985), partly motivated by the death of her friend Rock Hudson from the disease. She traveled the world as spokeswoman for the organization and in 1991 established the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation to provide direct services to those suffering from the disease. Taylor also used the allure of her public image to market lucrative perfume and costume jewelry lines. In 1993 she received the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award. She received the French Legion of Honour in 1987 and was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2000.

Courage of Lassie



National Velvet
Taylor’s American parents were residing in England at the time of her birth. Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, the family returned to the United States, settling in Los Angeles. Her father was an art dealer, and his business brought him into contact with members of the Hollywood elite. Though her mother, a former stage actress, initially balked at allowing the young Taylor to enter the film industry, an introduction to the chairman of Universal Pictures through one of her father’s clients led to a screen test. In 1942 Taylor made her first film, There’s One Born Every Minute. Though she was soon dropped by Universal, MGM Studios signed her to a contract and cast her in Lassie Come Home (1943). That was followed by a star-making performance in National Velvet (1944) as a young woman who rescues a horse and trains it to race.