October 9

Miriam Hopkins dies of a heart attack in New York City, 1972. Hopkins made her movie debut in Fast and Loose (1930) and, in the three years that followed, made some of her best films: The Smiling Lieutenant (1931), Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), Trouble in Paradise (1932) and Design for Living (1933). Through it all, she developed a reputation for being difficult and temperamental on the set. “Me temperamental?” the actress responded. “I never was. Proof of that is that I made four pictures with Willie Wyler, who is a very demanding director. I made two with Rouben Mamoulian, who is the same. Two with Ernst Lubitsch, such a dear man.” In 1940, she butted heads with her Virginia City director. “[Michael Curtiz] was a complete madman—mad and adorable,” Hopkins remarked. “For 12 weeks he yelled at me and I yelled back at him. We’re exactly alike.” Harmony was also absent during the shooting of The Old Maid (1939) and Old Acquaintance (1943), both costarring Bette Davis, who said, “Miriam is a perfectly charming person, socially. Working with her is another story…I usually had better things to do than waste my energies on invective and cat fights.”