In 1912, French actress Sarah Bernhardt became the first great actress of the stage to appear in the new medium of films.

Silent film star Francis X. Bushman was the first film actor to be called "King of the Movies." That label would later be affixed to Clark Gable, where it has since remained.

Theda Bara was American cinema's first "vamp," and its first female sex symbol. Born Theodosia Goodman, the exotic actress was born in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Elmo Lincoln was filmdom's first Tarzan. Formerly an Arkansas policeman, bit actor Elmo Linkenhelt's shirt was partially torn off while filming a fight scene, revealing his muscular chest. Reportedly, director D.W. Griffith called him over and told him, "That's quite a chest you have there." Griffith modified his screen name to Elmo Lincoln and featured him in several of his films, including The Birth of a Nation. In 1918, Lincoln was given the title role in Tarzan of the Apes a few days after film production began. World War I had just begun, and the man first contracted to play the apeman -- Winslow Wilson, a husky actor and ukelele player -- unexpectedly quit and enlisted. Tarzan of the Apes was a box office hit, one of the first movies to bring in more than $1 million dollars.

The first film star to commit suicide during the height of their career was the lovely and popular actress Olive Thomas. The former Ziegfeld showgirl was the main star at Selznick Studios by age 20, and she was happily married to Jack Pickford, the successful actor-brother of Mary Pickford. In 1920, Thomas was found dead from an overdose of mercuric chloride in Paris. Her tragic death made headlines around the world. An investigation revealed her lurid private life, including drug addiction, which was far removed from the ingenue roles she believably portrayed on the screen.

Sterling Holloway was the first Hollywood actor drafted into the U.S. Army during World War II. Actor James Garner was the first man from the state of Oklahoma drafted into the Korean War.

The first kiss in a Japanese film was finally allowed in Twenty-Year-Old Youth in 1946.

James Dean was the first actor to be nominated for an Oscar posthumously in 1956. Dean was killed in an auto accident six months earlier, only a few days after he completed filming on Giant, the film for which he received his nomination. Dean did not win; Yul Brynner was the winner of the Best Actor Oscar for his performance in the musical The King and I.

The 1987 Empire of the Sun was the first major Hollywood movie to be made in the People's Republic of China. This required long face-to-face negotiations that took about a year to complete.

Author: Vicki McClure Davidson

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