Born on this day – Jane Burr:

Jane Burr

Writer

December 27, 1882 – 1958

Exact date of death unknown.

Credits:

City Dust; I Build My House; Letters of a Dakota Divorcee; Marble & Mud; Married Men; Rare Antique: Fourteen Radio Plays; That Woman; The Glorious Hope; The Passionate Spectator.

Movie:

The Arnelo Affair (1947).

Born on this day – Sydney Greenstreet:

Sydney Greenstreet

Actor

December 27, 1879 – January 18, 1954

Credits:

Malaya (1949); It's a Great Feeling (1949); Flamingo Road (1949); The Velvet Touch (1948); The Woman in White (1948); Ruthless (1948); The Hucksters (1947); That Way with Women (1947); The Verdict (1946); Devotion (1946); Three Strangers (1946); Christmas in Connecticut (1945); Pillow to Post (1945); Conflict (1945); Hollywood Canteen (1944); The Conspirators (1944); The Mask of Dimitrios (1944); Between Two Worlds (1944); Passage to Marseille (1944); Background to Danger (1943); Casablanca (1942); Across the Pacific (1942); They Died with Their Boots On (1941); The Maltese Falcon (1941).

Recommended reading - Film Noir Reader 4: The Crucial Films and Themes (2004):

Film Noir Reader 4: The Crucial Films and Themes

by Alain Silver and James Ursini.

Published by Limelight.
Published 2004.
Paperback.
ISBN-10: 0879103051
ISBN-13: 978-0879103057

Description:

The earlier Film Noir Readers, which now boast a combined sale of well over 30 000 copies, have all quite deliberately conveyed a sweeping overview of the classic period, demonstrating how broad and inclusive noir movies are. Film Noir Reader 4 moves in a different direction. Its purpose is to identify the key films and motifs of noir and to analyze in depth the prototypical pictures that, while vivid examples of certain cinematic themes, bend and break their molds to find new ways to enthrall and frighten us. Like its predecessors, Film Noir Reader 4 is generously illustrated and features essays by such respected film critics and scholars as Robin Wood, J.P. Telotte, R. Barton Palmer, and Robert Porfirio. All have as their purpose to explain why and how these classic films work; the way screenplay, direction, acting, cinematography, editing and all the other filmmaking crafts blended together to produce work that exemplifies both a particular movement in film history and the innovations that keep the noir style fresh and compelling.

Gloria Steinem, on writing:

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else.

- Gloria Steinem.

On this day in television history - Space 1999 (1976):

Space 1999

Season 2. Episode 14.

Episode entitled: Space Warp.

Released December 26, 1976.

Directed by Peter Medak.

Written by Charles Woodgrove.

Series created by Gerry Anderson and Sylvia Anderson.

Music by Derek Wadsworth.

Cast:

Martin Landau, Barbara Bain, Catherine Schell, Tony Anholt, Nick Tate, Zienia Merton, Jeffery Kissoon, Peter Porteous, Tony Osoba, John Judd, Trevor Thomas, Andrew Lodge, Joe Dunne, Suzanne Heimer, Nick Hobbs, Jack Klaff, Quentin Pierre, Dinny Powell, Robert Reeves, Terry Walsh.

On this day in movie history - The Exorcist (movie & novel):

The Exorcist

directed by William Friedkin,

written by William Peter Blatty,

based on the novel by William Peter Blatty,

was released in the United States on December 26, 1973.
Music by Jack Nitzsche.
Excerpt from Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield.

Cast:

Ellen Burstyn, Jason Miller, Linda Blair, Max von Sydow, Lee J. Cobb, Kitty Winn, Jack MacGowran, Father William O'Malley, Father Thomas Bermingham, Peter Masterson, Robert Symonds, Barton Heyman, Rudolf Schündler, Arthur Storch, Vasiliki Maliaros, Titos Vandis, Dick Callinan, William Peter Blatty, Mercedes McCambridge, Eileen Dietz.

Recommended reading:

The Exorcist

By William Peter Blatty.

Published by Harper Paperbacks.

First published in 1971.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 006209436X

ISBN-13: 978-0062094360

Description:

Four decades after it first shook the nation, then the world, William Peter Blatty’s thrilling masterwork of faith and demonic possession returns in an even more powerful form. Raw and profane, shocking and blood-chilling, it remains a modern parable of good and evil and perhaps the most terrifying novel ever written.

On this day in movie history - Days of Wine and Roses (1962 movie & books):

Days of Wine and Roses

directed by Blake Edwards,

written by JP Miller,

based on the 1958 teleplay by JP Miller,

was released in the United States on December 26, 1962.
Music by Henry Mancini.

Cast:

Jack Lemmon, Lee Remick, Charles Bickford, Jack Klugman, Alan Hewitt, Tom Palmer, Debbie Megowan, Maxine Stuart, Jack Albertson, Leon Alton, Don Anderson, Carl Arnold, Roger Barrett, Russ Bender, Mary Benoit, Mel Blanc, Gail Bonney, Lynn Borden, Dick Crockett, Russell Custer, George DeNormand, Jennifer Edwards, Ella Ethridge, James Gonzalez, Lisa Guiraut, Chuck Hicks, Barbara Hines, Charlene Holt, Tai Yen Horowitz, Jerry Jensen, Kenner G. Kemp, Rita Kenaston, James Lanphier, Ken Lynch, John Bard Manulis, Mathew McCue, Harold Miller, Richard O'Brien, Doye O'Dell, Pat O'Malley, Alan Paige, Peggy Patten, Jack Riley, Tom Rosqui, Myrna Ross, Doc Scortt, Robert 'Buddy' Shaw, Stanley Sober, Olan Soule, Katherine Squire, Florence Stark, Bert Stevens, Lynn Terry, Arthur Tovey, John Truax, Charles Watts, Charles Wood.

Recommended reading:

Days of Wine and Roses

By J.P. Miller.

Published by Dramatist's Play Service.
Teleplay first published 1958.
Paperback.
ISBN-10: 0822202816
ISBN-13: 9780822202813

Description:

In the fast-moving milieu of Madison Avenue, social drinking is almost an occupational necessity, and one that fast-rising young Joe Clay adopts with too ready ease. Unfortunately, the girl he meets and marries shares his proclivity, and while they continue to tell themselves that they drink because they choose to, it is soon apparent that their habit has become a serious problem. But their failure to acknowledge this plunges them headlong into the shattering events of the play a career in shambles, a marriage destroyed, the esteem of friends and family lost, and a child who has become the innocent victim of their obsession. In the poignant ending of the play a spectre of hope arises but, more important, so does a galvanizing awareness of the depth of their torment, and of the lesson which their compulsive self-destruction must have for others.

Days of Wine and Roses

By David Westheimer.

Mass Market Paperback.

ISBN: B0000CLO9H

Published 1963.

Published by Bantam Books.

Description:

A story of Brandy Alexander and the insidious way alcohol can destroy a life. Based on J.P. Miller's play and includes three still pictures on back cover from the movie of the same name.