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The History of American Cinema: 1968

January - June

15/1 -

Customs officials seize a copy of Jack Smith’s underground film, Flaming Creatures and brand it obscene. As a result the Justice Department begins legal proceedings against its distributor. [ADD]

19/1 -

Customs officials seize a copy of Vilgot Sjöman, Jag är nyfiken - en film i gult (I Am Curious -- Yellow). US attorney Arthur Olick confirms it was seized because ‘it leaves nothing to the imagination, including the act of fornication.’ [ADD]

Jan -

Robert Aldrich acquires the former Sutherland and Occidental Studios to open [ADD]

21/2 -

Industry journal Variety reports that the 1967 re-release of Gone With the Wind (1939) earned MGM $7.5 million in film rentals. [ADD]

25/2 -

A four-page advertisement in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Star launches MGM’s publicity campaign for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. [ADD]

3/4 -

Franklin J. Schaffner's Planet of the Apes is released. Charlton Heston stars as the lone survivor of a spacecraft that lands on an earth-like planet populated by talking apes. Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter are concealed behind John Chambers’ remarkably realistic ape make-up as a pair of sympathetic scientists who aid Heston in his attempts to return home. [ADD]

6/4 -

Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, an adaptation by Arthur C. Clarke of his own story, The Sentinel, is released. Filmed in England at a cost of $10.5 million, the film concerns the mysterious appearance of a monolith that may have been left on earth by aliens. Keir Dullea stars. [ADD]

10/4 -

The 40th Annual Academy Awards are staged after a 48-hour postponement due to the assassination of civil rights leader Reverend Martin Luther King. Norman Jewison’s In the Heat of the Night wins the Best Picture Award. [MORE]

17/4 -

Trade journal Variety announces that Frank Sinatra and Elizabeth Taylor will star together in The Only Game in Town, due to start shooting in early September. [ADD]

18/4 -

Enrolment in film study courses soar. 60,000 graduate and under-graduate students attend 1,500 film courses at 120 colleges and universities throughout the States. [ADD]

22/4 -

In the case of Ginsburg v. New York, the US Supreme Court rules that material that is not obscene for adults can still be considered obscene for children while, in the case of Interstate v Dallas, it is ruled that film classification schemes are constitutional if clearly defined. [ADD]

28/4 -

The American premiere of Voyna I mir, the 8-hour Russian version of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, takes place at the DeMille Theater on Seventh Avenue and 47^th Street in New York. The film is screened in two parts: alternate matinee and evening screenings. The best seats cost a record $7.50. [ADD]

2/5 -

Gene Saks’ screen adaptation of Neil Simon’s Broadway hit The Odd Couple is released. Walter Matthau reprises his role as crusty slob Oscar Madison, while Jack Lemmon replaces Art Carney as hypochondriac Felix Unger. [ADD]

3/5 -

Producer Joseph E. Levine sells his company Embassy Films to Avco for $40 million. [ADD]

1/6 -

French director Jacques Demy begins shooting The Model Shop in Los Angeles. [ADD]

3/6 -

Andy Warhol is rushed to hospital in New York after being shot several times by Valerie Solanis, one of his entourage. [ADD]

12/6 -

Roman Polanski’s Hollywood debut, the contemporary horror Rosemary’s Baby based on Ira Levin’s novel, is released. Mia Farrow stars as the young woman singled out to carry the devil’s child by a coven headed by elderly Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer. John Cassavetes also stars as Farrow’s husband. [ADD]

19/6 -

Norman Jewison’s The Thomas Crown Affair is released. Steve McQueen stars as Crown, a suave playboy who plans heists for fun, while Faye Dunaway is the sexy insurance investigator on his trail. [ADD]

The History of Cinema: 1968