1925 was just another year. Calvin Coolidge was, still, the U.S. president, placeholding his way through a decade of governmental time-biding as economic contradictions mounted. Society searched its soul with the “Scopes Monkey Trial,” whose mooted verdict could only reflect, not resolve, the perennial tension between “tradition” and “modernity.” Bridging the gap as effectively as anything in that decade of duality, the Grand Ole Opry put traditional sounds on modern airwaves with its first radio show. The Chrysler car company, destined for middling success in an increasingly crowded market, was born. Riding high in a different kind of market, Al “Scarface” Capone took control of the Chicago mob. Germany’s political convulsions lurched the country toward dystopia, with Hitler releasing his miserable tract Mein Kampf. The 20s did not roar along so much as simmer away, building and decaying toward greater and darker things.
Luckily for distraction-seekers then and now, Hollywood’s escapist formula was in fine form. A WWI flick, The Big Parade by King Vidor, won the 1925 box office with a sprawling, romance-tinged look back at the unlamented but morbidly fascinating Great War. Lon Chaney was an iconically creepy party-crasher in The Phantom of the Opera. Cecile B. DeMille took a spectacular pass at the story of Ben-Hur and his chariot race; the silent film version is nearly as good as William Wyler’s 1959 remake. Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd duked it out with The Gold Rush and The Freshman, respectively, the latter finishing with a slight box office advantage. Dinosaurs romped across the big screen, as they are still wont to do, in The Lost World. Soviet film reached an early zenith with The Battleship Potemkin, a movie that over time helped redefine the visual language of cinema.
Several other 1925 debuts presaged great things for movies. This year’s roster of births is a big one, and for the first time in this series it’s truly tempting to double the number of featured players to 20 to accommodate a bigger chunk of them. But in the spirit of Potemkin, we’ll edit the heck out of the list and present 10 all-timers who would turn 100 this year – including one living legend who, we fervently hope, will see his own centenary this December.
January 26 – Paul Newman
If it’s possible to seem grandfatherly while still in your prime as a leading man, then it was Paul Newman who proved it. And that’s no knock. He was smooth and virile in The Hustler, Hud, and Butch Cassidy, but his vibe was nothing like the smoldering youthfulness of Marlon Brando who, in a different reality, might have nabbed any of those roles. Newman seemed wise and settled beyond his years, and not just because of his prematurely whitening hair and eyes made for smile lines. His agelessness could play as alienating, as it needed to in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, but more often it lent this superstar an everyman quality, as in the sports comedy Slap Shot or the period caper The Sting. Perhaps it was also what kept Newman a compelling screen presence well into his twilight years, as he turned character actor for films like The Hudsucker Proxy and Road to Perdition and dipped into voice acting to help launch Pixar’s Cars franchise. His role in the latter was a clever homage to his side hustle as an actual racecar driver. If only Pixar had made a salad dressing movie while they were at it. Newman died in 2008.
Top 5 on Flickchart:
- Cool Hand Luke (1967) – #112 of all time
- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) – #156
- The Sting (1973) – #179
- The Hustler (1961) – #203
- Hud (1963) – #446
February 8 – Jack Lemmon
In a Jack Lemmon movie, Lemmon’s character’s assumption is that he’s fairly normal and that everybody around him is nuts. He’s anxious, but not outright neurotic – or if he is, he doesn’t know it. He’s easily flustered, but doesn’t think he’ll panic until he does. We’re on his side because he reacts with such pitiable dismay when things go poorly, and he’s funny because he’s ultimately brought it on himself through his well-meaning ineptitude. He’s much smarter and more genuinely ordinary than the goofballs of 1920s and 30s comedies, but he’s not as far gone into intellectual and behavioral extremes as a Woody Allen or an Albert Brooks in a high-concept comedy of the 70s and 80s. Lemmon was a comedian for the middle-of-the-road 50s and 60s, and he lured audiences into some unexpected places for it. Some Like It Hot is his most iconic comedy, The Apartment his most iconic dramedy, The Odd Couple his most perfectly cast role, and everything from the war farce Mister Roberts to Costa-Gavras’s politically heavy Missing to David Mamet and James Foley’s cynical Glengarry Glen Ross make up his sneakily rich movie legacy. Lemmon died in 2001.
Top 5 on Flickchart:
- The Apartment (1960) – #23
- Some Like It Hot (1959) – #252
- Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) – #343
- The Odd Couple (1968) – #853
- Mister Roberts (1955) – #938
February 20 – Robert Altman
Robert Altman was arguably the definitive New Hollywood director, and certainly the definitive American one. He had an instantly recognizable style, most clearly evinced in his aggressively naturalistic sound design: everybody talking at once, the one or two most salient conversations scarcely more audible than the others, all in direct competition for your attention. He was a master of the ensemble film, eschewing obvious protagonists and character arcs in favor of carefully-structured chaos. The best examples of this, MASH and Nashville, enjoyed a degree of success that movies this cruel and misanthropic seldom achieve. They were statement movies, and that statement was “Can you believe these idiots?” – a remark that traveled very well in the late 60s and through the 70s as American society tore itself down and attempted to rebrand. Altman’s much later follow-ups in this vein, Gosford Park and A Prairie Home Companion, are equally well-observed and only a bit softer around the edges. Even when an Altman movie sticks close to an individual or two, like the barely-employed private detective of The Long Goodbye, the aimless women of 3 Women, the frontier losers of McCabe & Mrs. Miller, or the psychotic screenwriter of The Player, they scarcely resemble conventional movie characters. They are symbols of a new moment, and they search out the contours of that moment like bumbling fools. Few of us can claim to do any better. An Altman movie is smart, mean, low-key cool, and unforgettable. He worked with fellow 1925 baby Paul Newman in Buffalo Bill and the Indians, a funny takedown of the Wild West showman, and with Jack Lemmon in Short Cuts in which the comedian is at his most damaged and cowardly. Altman died in 2006.
Top 5 on Flickchart:
- The Long Goodbye (1973) – #198
- McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) – #280
- Nashville (1975) – #300
- 3 Women (1977) – #530
- The Player (1992) – #687
June 3 – Tony Curtis
Jack Lemmon’s dragged-up partner in Some Like It Hot, Kirk Douglas’s Bronx-accented second in Spartacus, Jamie Lee Curtis’s father… Tony Curtis is the kind of actor that makes you want to point and smile and say, “Look, Tony Curtis!” In that way he’s very much an actor cut from an older mode. Bernard Schwartz’s screen persona was built by and for the classic studio system, and virtually all of his best material is from the dying years of that system. It’s surprising, then, how much of Curtis’s output is not merely safe, familiar, and marketable. United Artists, a sort of anti-studio studio that aimed to liberate creative producers and directors from the more hidebound Hollywood firms, released a number of Curtis vehicles that had real weight to them. There was Some Like It Hot of course, but also the stylishly shocking Sweet Smell of Success with Burt Lancaster and the anti-racist The Defiant Ones with Sidney Poitier. Curtis himself entered the production side of the business early on, leading to a curious bit of trivia: his self-produced comedy 40 Pounds of Trouble was the first film shot inside Disneyland. Of course, as indicated, Curtis was at root an uncomplicatedly entertaining screen presence, so he racked up plenty of titles that are purely and even exorbitantly amusing: Operation Petticoat, The Great Race (again with Lemmon), Monte Carlo or Bust!… plus a grab-bag assortment of westerns, noir and mysteries, romances, satires, sports comedies, and even a musical. Curtis died in 2010.
Flickchart Top 5:
- Sweet Smell of Success (1957) – #106
- Some Like It Hot (1959) – #252
- Spartacus (1960) – #665
- The Defiant Ones (1958) – #1045
- The Great Race (1965) – #2558
September 8 – Peter Sellers
Peter Sellers got his start on the radio, which helps explain why, of all the talents on this list, he was the one who made the most use of his voice. When you saw Sellers’ name in a castlist, you never knew what you would get, or even how many of him you’d get. He might be an Italian movie director. He might be the American president, or a Nazi scientist. He might be Dr. Fu Manchu. His most famous creation was a French detective, Inspector Clouseau of the Pink Panther movies, for whom he combined an outrageous accent with top-shelf physical slapstick. Sellers played Clouseau over a period of 15 years, and was so closely associated with the role that when he died director Blake Edwards put together a posthumous entry in the series using Sellers’ old outtakes. Imagine what they’d have done with AI. Sellers’ strange career may have reached its zenith in 1974 when, in separate films, he played Adolf Hitler and Queen Victoria. Though very much a comedic switch hitter, Sellers did appear in a couple of high-profile dramatic movies, playing the bizarre “Quilty” in Lolita and a Forrest Gump-esque gardener in Being There. Sellers died in 1980.
Flickchart Top 5:
- Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) – #39
- Being There (1979) – #310
- A Shot in the Dark (1964) – #919
- The Ladykillers (1955) – #1265
- Murder by Death (1976) – #1528
October 16 – Angela Lansbury
Angela Lansbury must have known she was in the right career when she got an Academy Award nomination for her first movie, Gaslight, and then another one the very next year for The Picture of Dorian Gray. Not bad for an Irish-English woman who only came to the U.S. to avoid the Blitz. Despite appearing in well-received movies for decades, including a memorable villainess role in The Manchurian Candidate, Lansbury arguably did not become a household name until she was in her 60s and starring in the long-running American TV show Murder, She Wrote. Her persona for the role of Jessica Fletcher – independent, unflappable, poised, gracious, broad-minded, righteous – made that show appointment viewing for 12 seasons, and made Lansbury into an ersatz cool aunt or hip grandmother for a broad demographic of fans. She wasn’t done with movies, either; perhaps her most iconic role is a voice-only one, that of the singing teacup Mrs. Potts in the Disney Renaissance movie Beauty and the Beast. Lansbury’s unpretentious singing voice in the titular lullabye launched her into Disney Legend status, though for many she’d already earned it as a witch in training (and another cool aunt figure) in 1971’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Lansbury enjoyed a lengthy retirement in the Irish countryside before dying in 2022 at the age of 96.
Flickchart top 5:
- The Manchurian Candidate (1962) – #383
- Gaslight (1944) – #384
- Beauty and the Beast (1991) – #650
- The Court Jester (1955) – #848
- The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) – #2081
November 10 – Richard Burton
You can’t think about Richard Burton without thinking about Elizabeth Taylor. The cross-continental power couple thrived on offscreen drama, and they attracted so much attention for it that they’re almost more remembered for their love affair than for the movies they made together and separately. But hey, it’s his 100th birthday this year, so let’s try to narrow the focus to his performances. And we won’t even dwell on Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the sickening tale of codependence he made with Taylor. Instead, let’s remember what a scene-stealer he is while fully reclining, injured during the D-Day invasion, in The Longest Day. Let’s give him credit for bringing the world of John le Carré to the screen as a doomed MI6 pawn in The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. Let’s remember his powerful Marc Anthony in the sumptuously colorful Cleopatra, in which he falls tragically in love with Elizabeth Tay– no, not that again. Well, if we’re not talking about that aspect of Burton’s life, then we’re probably talking about his even more destructive relationship with alcohol, which was reportedly as all-consuming as any substance abuse story in the annals of entertainment. It was a contributor to his death at the age of 58 in 1984. Yet Burton’s best work, including Becket, Where Eagles Dare, and an acclaimed filmed stage production of Hamlet, still forms a fixed landmark in the roadmap of postwar British cinema, looming as large for film historians as his personal exploits do for collectors of celebrity lore.
Flickchart Top 5:
- Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) – #246
- Where Eagles Dare (1968) – #1206
- The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1965) – #1215
- Becket (1964) – #1360
- Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) – #2160
November 17 – Rock Hudson
An actor as good-looking and talented as Rock Hudson can do just about any movie they want to do, and Hudson seemed to take that as a responsibility. He could have remained in middling Westerns and swashbucklers of the sort he started out in, or made a career out of comfortable, light romances like Pillow Talk which was a surprising Oscars favorite. Instead he took up challenges like Giant, a monumental saga in which he plays a complicated patriarch traversing a quarter century of social and economic change. Then there are the movies he made with Douglas Sirk – Magnificent Obsession, All that Heaven Allows, Written on the Wind – which use melodrama to interrogate the choices people make and the way society constrains those choices. Perhaps his most interesting role was a fairly late one, in John Frankenheimer’s Seconds, in which Hudson appears about halfway through as the result of the lead character’s plastic surgery. That film posits that while one might change a face or body using science, personality and predilection are less mutable. Hudson is now famous for having spent his career in the closet, and when he died in 1985 he became the AIDS epidemic’s most well-known casualty. Though some friends and colleagues criticized him for not being more open about his condition, one of his last acts was to contribute a significant amount of money for AIDS research.
Flickchart Top 5:
- Seconds (1966) – #593
- Giant (1956) – #648
- All That Heaven Allows (1955) – #734
- Written on the Wind (1956) – #1818
- Pillow Talk (1959) – #2321
December 2 – Julie Harris
Few if any of the people on this list could be said to disappear into a character. That’s not the kind of talent they had. Even Peter Sellers was showy about his disguises, not trying to deceive you so much as impress you. Within this list, Julie Harris stands alone. Although she belongs to exactly the same generation as the others, her acting style feels much more contemporary. She was not precisely a star, but a professional. One stat tells the tale: Harris owns the record for the most Tony awards for Best Actress in a Play, with five wins out of nine nominations. She was also a Grammy and an Emmy winner, and although the Oscar eluded her, she did receive one Best Actress nomination for her debut film, The Member of the Wedding. After that she was in East of Eden with James Dean, played the unforgettable “Nell” in The Haunting (a personal favorite of mine), appeared with birth year peer Paul Newman in Harper, supported Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando in John Huston’s Reflections in a Golden Eye, was part of the sadly little-remembered all-star production Voyage of the Damned, co-led The Bell Jar, and played such icons as flapper Sally Bowles (I Am a Camera), Shakepeare’s Ophelia (Hamlet, 1964), and Charlotte Brontë (Brontë). In addition to movies and theater, television provided Harris with a lot of choice parts, including Joan of Arc, Eliza Dolittle, Mary Todd Lincoln, Emily Dickinson, and Isak Dineson. Harris died in 2013.
Flickchart Top 5:
- East of Eden (1955) – #496
- The Haunting (1963) – #670
- Harper (1966) – #3110
- Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962) – #3540
- Gorillas in the Mist (1988) – #3692
December 13 – Dick Van Dyke
It’s going to be a long year. Why can’t he have been born in January? Well, it won’t feel as long to Dick Van Dyke; after celebrating 99 of them, that 100th birthday must feel like it’s coming up pretty quickly. Just weeks ago he sang and danced in a new music video by Coldplay, and a few years back (not long ago in the scheme of his life) someone filmed him at a restaurant doing a hearty rendition of “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.” Recently the Marvel/Disney TV show WandaVision paid homage to The Dick Van Dyke Show, and when Disney did a sequel to Mary Poppins in 2018 Van Dyke asked to be in it. (Of course they said yes.) And then there was his amusing heel turn in Night at the Museum. But enough about Van Dyke’s surprisingly prolific 21st century. Most know him for his appearance 61 years ago as Bert the chimney sweep in Mary Poppins – a role that brought him a lot of criticism for his attempt at a Cockney accent, but that by now is fully, unironically beloved. He also played the fun-to-say Caractacus Potts, inventor and fun-loving single father of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. There are more characters in his repertoire, of course, but because Van Dyke is so recognizable – so tall, so thin, so jovial – and because of his numerous eponymous shows and specials, his most enduring role has been himself. He has been a living legend for far longer than he’s been one of the entertainment world’s oldest living legends. Happy birthday, Dick.
Flickchart Top 5:
- Mary Poppins (1964) – #973
- Night at the Museum (2006) – #3545
- Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) – #3964
- Bye Bye Birdie (1963) – #3991
- Mary Poppins Returns (2018) – #7239
The list goes on, of course. These stars would also turn 100 in 2025, though even this isn’t an exhaustive list:
Lee Van Cleef (January 9), Joan Leslie (January 26), Elaine Stritch (Feb 2), John Fiedler (February 3), Hal Holbrook (Feb 17), George Kennedy (Feb 18), Sam Peckinpah (Feb 21), Rod Steiger (April 14), Iwao Takamoto (April 29), John Neville (May 2), Oona O’Neill (May 14), Mai Zetterling (May 24), Jeanne Crain (May 25), Maureen Stapleton (June 21), June Lockhart (June 25), Ginny Tyler (August 9), Honor Blackman (August 22), Donald O’Connor (August 28), Doris Roberts (November 4), Johnny Mandel (November 23), Claude Lanzmann (November 27), Sammy Davis Jr (December 8), Robert B. Sherman (December 19)
