Happy April 9, dear reader! Time to join Movieline on another breezy expedition through the historical arcana and milestones that helped shaped the pop culture you know and love today. And there's a lot of it, comprising birthdays (make a wish, Jeff Zucker!), awards commemorations and the popping of Bob Hope's television cherry. Read on and allow me to explain.
· 1950: Bob Hope appears on television for the first time in an Easter special produced by Frigidaire. Six months later Hope would have his own weekly show on NBC, produced for the jaw-dropping sum of $1,500 per minute. The other networks would never stand for this.
· 1965: Highly respected NBC potentate Jeff Zucker is born in Homestead, Fla. By the time he was 4, he was already attempting to move his time of birth back to 12:05 a.m. to collect another day's worth of presents.
· 1979: The youngest Huxtable (and, perhaps more notably, greatest Celebrity Fear Factor winner), Keshia Knight Pulliam, is born in Newark, N.J.
· 1984: Terms of Endearment won five Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Actress for Shirley Maclaine, who famously accepted her prize with the humble acknowledgment, "I deserve this!" Robert Duvall, Jack Nicholson and Linda Hunt also scored acting hardware, making for some of Oscar's most memorably weird backstage group photos.
· 1990: Kristen Stewart is born to play Bella Swan in The Twilight Saga. Happy 20th! This calls for a smoke!