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The Day the Earth Stood Still – a highly regarded science fiction film – is released on this day in 1951 by 20th Century Fox studios. The film’s central character — Klatau — an alien who lands a flying saucer on the mall in Washington DC to bring a  the message that earth must become a peaceful planet. “Your choice is simple,” Klaatu says. “Join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration.”

James Cameron,  director, producer, and screenwriter known for films such as Titanic and Avitar is born on this day in 1954.

 Charlie Chaplin returns to the United States for the first time on this day in 1972  since being labeled a communist during the Red Scare in the early 1950s.

Kinetoscope — An early prototype of cinema, Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope, is first introduced on this day in 1891. The one-person viewer holds enough film for only a few minutes worth of viewing, making the device a novelty but not really a practical way to watch films.  Edison begins marketing kinetoscopes around 1893, but the reaction is mixed. In France, the Lumiere Brothersthink Edison has missed the mark, and work on a way to “get the pictures out of the box” and project them on a screen. They are successful by 1895. In response, Edison’s “Vitagraph” projected images follow in 1896.

Paul Robeson  American actor, director and political activist, is born on this day in 1898.  He was known especially for his 1933  role as “Emperor Jones,” a strong film that set off riots and lynchings in the American South.  Robeson was the first African- American movie star and the most visible activist against racism in the 1930s and ’40s.  He was hounded by the FBI and the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s. When he refused to recant his public advocacy for the Soviet Union, he was blacklisted and the U.S. State Department withdrew his passport. He moved to Harlem and co-founded (with W. E. B. Du Bois) a periodical called Freedom, which was critical of US policies, from 1950 to 1955. Robeson’s right to travel was eventually restored as a result of the 1958 United States Supreme Court decision Kent v. Dulles.  Robeson could have moved permanently to the Soviet Union, given his affinity with its political ideology, but he did not, saying:  “Because my father was a slave and my people died to build  [the United States and], I am going to stay here, and have a part of it just like you and no fascist-minded people will drive me from it!” He retired in the early 1960s and died in 1976. 

Windsor McCay’s  animated short “Little Nemo” is first released in theaters on this day in 1911.  McCay was originally the  creator of the newspaper strip “Little Nemo in Slumberland.” He became intrigued with his son’s flip books and decided to make a cartoon movie. After Little Nemo, McCay also made Gertie the Dinosaur and a few other animated shorts. But after 1921, newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst made McCay  give up on animation and devote his time to  his newspaper illustrations.  

Eadweard Muybridge, a photographer who anticipated motion picture technology, is born on this day in 1830.  Muybridge made  photographic history with this series of photos  after being challenged by California Gov. Leland Stanford to settle a bet about whether or not a horse’s hooves left the ground when it ran. Muybridge’s photos from the 1870s  — later assembled in motion  pictures — showed  that they hooves do indeed leave the ground.

The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin’s most successful movie, is released on this day in 1940. The movie follows the life of a barber who is a look-alike with dictator Adenoid Hynkle. Word got out that Chaplin was making this film but movie studios were against it. So President Roosevelt sent Harry Hopkins to encourage Chaplin to go ahead.

Race censorship ends in Virginia — On this day in 1966, four and a half decades of official film censorship comes to an end in one of the last states with a censorship board.  The board had been created in 1922 in order to pre-screen every movie in the state and either grant a license for showing, ban it entirely or require the filmmaker to delete scenes or dialogue.  Although the official mission was to fight obscenity, the real job of the board was to ensure that portrayals of African Americans fit sterotypes on the screen: the faithful servant, the ignorant child, and the loathsome criminal, according to historian Douglas Smith. Another scholar, Melissa Ooten, explains in “Censorship in Black and White” that Virginia censors favored demeaning and negative portrayals of African Americans in movies. One result was to place severe limits on black film makers like Oscar Micheaux, who lived in Roanoke, Va. in the 1920s.