Scrabble day

Scrabble Day takes place annually on 13 April. It Commemorates the anniversary of the birth of American architect, And Scrabble inventor Alfred Butts, who was born, 13 April 1899 in Poughkeepsie, New York. His parents were Allison Butts and Arrie Elizabeth Mosher, His father was a lawyer, and his mother was a high school teacher. Alfred attended Poughkeepsie High School and graduated in 1917. He then attended the University of Pennsylvania from where he graduated with a degree in architecture in 1924. He was also an amateur artist, and six of his drawings were acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

He began working as an Architect until finding himself unemployed In the early 1930s Whereupon he set out to design a board game. He began by studying existing games and found that games fell into three categories: number games such as dice and bingo; move games such as chess and checkers; and word games such as anagrams. Butts was a resident of Jackson Heights, New York, when he decided to create a game that utilized both chance and skill by combining elements of anagrams and crossword puzzles, a popular pastime of the 1920s. Players would draw seven lettered tiles from a pool and then attempt to form words from their seven letters. A key to the game was Butts’ analysis of the English language. Butts studied the front page of The New York Times to calculate how frequently each letter of the alphabet was used. He then used each letter’s frequency to determine how many of each letter he would include in the game. He included only four “S” tiles so that the ability to make words plural would not make the game too easy.

Butts initially called the game “Lexiko”, but later changed the name to “Criss Cross Words”, and began to look for a buyer. The game makers he originally contacted rejected the idea, but Butts was tenacious. Eventually, he sold the rights to entrepreneur and game-lover James Brunot, who made a few minor adjustments to the design and renamed the game “Scrabble.”

In 1948, the game was trademarked and James Brunot and his wife converted an abandoned schoolhouse in Dodgingtown, Connecticut, into a Scrabble factory. In 1949, the Brunots made 2,400 sets, but lost $450. The game, however, steadily gained popularity, helped along by orders from Macy’s department store. By 1952, the Brunots could no longer keep up with demand and asked licensed game maker Selchow and Righter to market and distribute the game. So far at least One hundred and fifty million sets have been sold worldwide and between one and two million sets are sold each year in North America alone. To Commemorate Butts Contribution to board games There is a street sign at 35th Avenue and 81st Street in Jackson Heights that is stylized using letters, with their values in Scrabble as a subscript.

National Crossword puzzle day

Crossword puzzle day takes place annually on 21 December to commemorate the worlds first Crossword puzzle which was published in a ‘New York World’ newspaper edition on December 21, 1913. A crossword is a word puzzle that usually takes the form of a square or a rectangular grid of white-and black-shaded squares. The game’s goal is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words or phrases, by solving clues, which lead to the answers. In languages that are written left-to-right, the answer words and phrases are placed in the grid from left to right and from top to bottom. The shaded squares are used to separate the words or phrases.

The title for the world’s first crossword puzzle is disputed. Some such puzzles were included in The Stockton Bee (1793–1795), an ephemeral publication. The phrase “cross word puzzle” was first written in 1862 by Our Young Folks in the United States. Crossword-like puzzles, for example Double Diamond Puzzles, appeared in the magazine St. Nicholas, published since 1873. Another crossword puzzle appeared on September 14, 1890, in the Italian magazine Il Secolo Illustrato della Domenica. It was designed by Giuseppe Airoldi and titled “Per passare il tempo” (“To pass the time”). Airoldi’s puzzle was a four-by-four grid with no shaded squares; it included horizontal and vertical clues.

Crosswords in England during the 19th century were of an elementary kind, apparently derived from the word square, a group of words arranged so the letters read alike vertically and horizontally, and printed in children’s puzzle books and various periodicals. The modern version of these ancestral puzzles is the invention of Arthur Wynne, a British-born violinist and journalist from Liverpool, England who emigrated to Pennsylvania when he was 19. An d published a crossword which appeared On December 21, 1913 in the New York World. This puzzle is frequently cited as the first crossword puzzle, and Wynne as the inventor.

Later, the name of the puzzle was changed to “crossword”. Although Eugene T. Maleska is usually credited with the first crossword phrase (as opposed to a single word) in The New York Times, an 1862 puzzle in the Lady’s Book had phrases that are considered modern, such as the expression “I did it”. Crossword puzzles became a regular weekly feature in the World, and spread to other newspapers; the Pittsburgh Press, for example, was publishing them at least as early as 1916 and The Boston Globe by 1917. The crossword puzzle soon became the pastime of the more astute folk. 

Scrabble Day

Scrabble Day takes place annually on 13 April. It Commemorates the anniversary of the birth of American architect, And Scrabble inventor Alfred Butts, who was born, 13 April 1899 in Poughkeepsie, New York. His parents were Allison Butts and Arrie Elizabeth Mosher, His father was a lawyer, and his mother was a high school teacher. Alfred attended Poughkeepsie High School and graduated in 1917. He then attended the University of Pennsylvania from where he graduated with a degree in architecture in 1924. He was also an amateur artist, and six of his drawings were acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

He began working as an Architect until finding himself unemployed In the early 1930s Whereupon he set out to design a board game. He began by studying existing games and found that games fell into three categories: number games such as dice and bingo; move games such as chess and checkers; and word games such as anagrams. Butts was a resident of Jackson Heights, New York, when he decided to create a game that utilized both chance and skill by combining elements of anagrams and crossword puzzles, a popular pastime of the 1920s. Players would draw seven lettered tiles from a pool and then attempt to form words from their seven letters. A key to the game was Butts’ analysis of the English language. Butts studied the front page of The New York Times to calculate how frequently each letter of the alphabet was used. He then used each letter’s frequency to determine how many of each letter he would include in the game. He included only four “S” tiles so that the ability to make words plural would not make the game too easy.

Butts initially called the game “Lexiko”, but later changed the name to “Criss Cross Words”, and began to look for a buyer. The game makers he originally contacted rejected the idea, but Butts was tenacious. Eventually, he sold the rights to entrepreneur and game-lover James Brunot, who made a few minor adjustments to the design and renamed the game “Scrabble.”

In 1948, the game was trademarked and James Brunot and his wife converted an abandoned schoolhouse in Dodgingtown, Connecticut, into a Scrabble factory. In 1949, the Brunots made 2,400 sets, but lost $450. The game, however, steadily gained popularity, helped along by orders from Macy’s department store. By 1952, the Brunots could no longer keep up with demand and asked licensed game maker Selchow and Righter to market and distribute the game. So far at least One hundred and fifty million sets have been sold worldwide and between one and two million sets are sold each year in North America alone. To Commemorate Butts Contribution to board games There is a street sign at 35th Avenue and 81st Street in Jackson Heights that is stylized using letters, with their values in Scrabble as a subscript.

National Mario day

National Mario Day takes place annually on March 10, (as the date MAR 10 resembles the name MARIO). Mario (マリオ) is a fictional character in the Mario video game franchise, owned by Nintendo and created by Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto who created Mario while developing Donkey Kong in an attempt to produce a best-selling video game for Nintendo. Originally, Miyamoto wanted to create a video game that used the characters Popeye, Bluto, and Olive Oyl At the time, however, Miyamoto was unable to acquire a license to use the characters (and would not until 1982 with Popeye), so he ended up making an unnamed player character’ which became Mario alongside, Donkey Kong, and Lady (later known as Pauline).

Mario is Depicted as a short, pudgy, Italian plumber who resides in the Mushroom Kingdom, his adventures generally center upon rescuing Princess Peach from the Koopa villain Bowser. His younger brother and sidekick is Luigi. The Mario franchise is the best-selling video game franchise of all time. Mario has appeared in over 200 video games since his creation. Outside of the Super Mario platform series, other Mario genres include the Mario Kart racing series, sports games such as the Mario Tennis and Mario Golf series, role-playing games such as Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario, and educational games such as Mario Is Missing!, Mario’s Time Machine and Mario Teaches Typing. Mario has also appeared in television shows, film, comics, and licensed merchandise. Since 1990, Mario has been voiced by Charles Martinet.

Mario was originally named Jumpman in the game’s English instructions and Mario in the sales brochure. Miyamoto originally named the character “Mr. Video” he was eventually named Mario after American warehouse landlord Mario Segale who owned the premesis where Nintendo was based, when he confronted then-president Minoru Arakawa, demanding back rent. Following a heated argument, the Nintendo employees eventually convinced Segale he would be paid, and opted to name the character in the game Mario after him.

Mario’s profession was chosen to fit with the game design. Since Donkey Kong was set on a construction site, Mario was made into a carpenter. When he appeared again in Mario Bros., it was decided he should be a plumber, since a lot of the game is played in underground settings. Mario’s appearance was dictated in part by the graphical limitations of arcade hardware at the time, Miyamoto clothed the character in red overalls and a blue shirt to contrast against each other and the background and added A red cap. Over time, Mario’s appearance has become more defined; blue eyes, white gloves, brown shoes, a red “M” in a white circle on the front of his hat and gold buttons on his overalls have been added. The colors of his shirt and overalls were also reversed from a blue shirt with red overalls to a red shirt with blue overall. Then To make him appear human onscreen despite his small size, Mario was given distinct features, prominently a large nose and a mustache, which avoided the need to draw a mouth and facial expressions. Nintendo did not initially reveal Mario’s full name. However Miyamoto eventually confirmed that his name was indeed Mario Mario at the September 2015 at the Super Mario Bros. 30th Anniversary festival.

More International and National events happening 10 March

• International Bagpipe Day 
• Harriet Tubman Day 
• landline Telephone Day
• Pack Your Lunch Day
• U.S. Paper Money Day 
• Women & Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day

Scrabble Day

Scrabble Day takes place annually on 13 April. It Commemorates the anniversary of the birth of American architect, And Scrabble inventor Alfred Butts, who was born, 13 April 1899 in Poughkeepsie, New York. His parents were Allison Butts and Arrie Elizabeth Mosher, His father was a lawyer, and his mother was a high school teacher. Alfred attended Poughkeepsie High School and graduated in 1917. He then attended the University of Pennsylvania from where he graduated with a degree in architecture in 1924. He was also an amateur artist, and six of his drawings were acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

He began working as an Architect until finding himself unemployed In the early 1930s Whereupon he set out to design a board game. He began by studying existing games and found that games fell into three categories: number games such as dice and bingo; move games such as chess and checkers; and word games such as anagrams. Butts was a resident of Jackson Heights, New York, when he decided to create a game that utilized both chance and skill by combining elements of anagrams and crossword puzzles, a popular pastime of the 1920s. Players would draw seven lettered tiles from a pool and then attempt to form words from their seven letters. A key to the game was Butts’ analysis of the English language. Butts studied the front page of The New York Times to calculate how frequently each letter of the alphabet was used. He then used each letter’s frequency to determine how many of each letter he would include in the game. He included only four “S” tiles so that the ability to make words plural would not make the game too easy.

Butts initially called the game “Lexiko”, but later changed the name to “Criss Cross Words”, after considering “It”, and began to look for a buyer. The game makers he originally contacted rejected the idea, but Butts was tenacious. Eventually, he sold the rights to entrepreneur and game-lover James Brunot, who made a few minor adjustments to the design and renamed the game “Scrabble.”

In 1948, the game was trademarked and James Brunot and his wife converted an abandoned schoolhouse in Dodgingtown, Connecticut, into a Scrabble factory. In 1949, the Brunots made 2,400 sets, but lost $450. The game, however, steadily gained popularity, helped along by orders from Macy’s department store. By 1952, the Brunots could no longer keep up with demand and asked licensed game maker Selchow and Righter to market and distribute the game. So far at least One hundred and fifty million sets have been sold worldwide and between one and two million sets are sold each year in North America alone. To Commemorate Butts Contribution to board games There is a street sign at 35th Avenue and 81st Street in Jackson Heights that is stylized using letters, with their values in Scrabble as a subscript

National Mario Day

National Mario Day takes place annually on March 10, (as the date MAR 10 resembles the name MARIO). Mario (マリオ) is a fictional character in the Mario video game franchise, owned by Nintendo and created by Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto who created Mario while developing Donkey Kong in an attempt to produce a best-selling video game for Nintendo. Originally, Miyamoto wanted to create a video game that used the characters Popeye, Bluto, and Olive Oyl At the time, however, Miyamoto was unable to acquire a license to use the characters (and would not until 1982 with Popeye), so he ended up making an unnamed player character’ which became Mario alongside, Donkey Kong, and Lady (later known as Pauline).

Mario is Depicted as a short, pudgy, Italian plumber who resides in the Mushroom Kingdom, his adventures generally center upon rescuing Princess Peach from the Koopa villain Bowser. His younger brother and sidekick is Luigi. The Mario franchise is the best-selling video game franchise of all time. Mario has appeared in over 200 video games since his creation. Outside of the Super Mario platform series, other Mario genres include the Mario Kart racing series, sports games such as the Mario Tennis and Mario Golf series, role-playing games such as Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario, and educational games such as Mario Is Missing!, Mario’s Time Machine and Mario Teaches Typing. Mario has also appeared in television shows, film, comics, and licensed merchandise. Since 1990, Mario has been voiced by Charles Martinet.

Mario was originally named Jumpman in the game’s English instructions and Mario in the sales brochure. Miyamoto originally named the character “Mr. Video” he was eventually named Mario after American warehouse landlord Mario Segale who owned the premesis where Nintendo was based, when he confronted then-president Minoru Arakawa, demanding back rent. Following a heated argument, the Nintendo employees eventually convinced Segale he would be paid, and opted to name the character in the game Mario after him.

Mario’s profession was chosen to fit with the game design. Since Donkey Kong was set on a construction site, Mario was made into a carpenter. When he appeared again in Mario Bros., it was decided he should be a plumber, since a lot of the game is played in underground settings. Mario’s appearance was dictated in part by the graphical limitations of arcade hardware at the time, Miyamoto clothed the character in red overalls and a blue shirt to contrast against each other and the background and added A red cap. Over time, Mario’s appearance has become more defined; blue eyes, white gloves, brown shoes, a red “M” in a white circle on the front of his hat and gold buttons on his overalls have been added. The colors of his shirt and overalls were also reversed from a blue shirt with red overalls to a red shirt with blue overall. Then To make him appear human onscreen despite his small size, Mario was given distinct features, prominently a large nose and a mustache, which avoided the need to draw a mouth and facial expressions. Nintendo did not initially reveal Mario’s full name. However Miyamoto eventually confirmed that his name was indeed Mario Mario at the September 2015 at the Super Mario Bros. 30th Anniversary festival.

More International and National events happening 10 March

• International Bagpipe Day
• Harriet Tubman Day
• landline Telephone Day
• Pack Your Lunch Day
• U.S. Paper Money Day
• Women & Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

The novel Lord of the Flies by by Nobel Prize-winning British author William Golding was first published 17 September 1954. The book focuses on a group of British boys stranded on an uninhabited island after a British aeroplane crashes in a remote region of the Pacific Ocean. The only survivors include Two boys—the fair-haired Ralph and an overweight, bespectacled boy nicknamed “Piggy”— who find a conch, which Ralph uses as a horn to convene all the survivors to one area. Ralph is optimistic, believing that grown-ups will come to rescue them but Piggy realizes the need to organize: And Ralph is elected “chief”.

The members of a boys’ choir, led by the red-headed Jack Merridew, form a separate clique of hunters. Ralph establishes three primary policies: to have fun, to survive, and to constantly maintain a smoke signal that could alert passing ships to their presence on the island and thus rescue them. The boys establish a form of democracy by declaring that whoever holds the conch shall also be able to speak at their formal gatherings and receive the attentive silence of the larger group. Jack organises his choir into a hunting party responsible for discovering a food source. Ralph, Jack, and a quiet, dreamy boy named Simon soon form a loose triumvirate of leaders with Ralph as the ultimate authority. The boys discover fruit and wild pigs for food and use Piggy’s spectacles to create a fire.

Sadly, Despite this promising start the situation gradually get worse and The semblance of order quickly deteriorates as the majority of the boys turn idle. Piggy is quickly made into an outcast by the older boys. Simon, in addition to supervising the project of constructing shelters, feels an instinctive need to protect the “littluns” (younger boys). The older boys give little aid in building shelters, spend their time having fun and begin to develop paranoias about the island. Jack, who has started a power struggle with Ralph, gains a level of control over the group. A ship travels by the island, however the signal fire goes out and vessel continues without stopping. Ralph angrily confronts Jack about his failure to maintain the signal. Jack assaults Piggy, breaking his glasses. Piggy persuades Ralph to remain leader in order to protect him from Jack.

One night, an aerial battle occurs near the island while the boys sleep, during which a fighter pilot ejects from his plane and dies in the descent. the twins Sam and Eric, now assigned to the maintenance of the signal fire, find the dead pilot. Later Jack leads Ralph and Roger, to explore the other side of the island, where they discover a mountain of stones, Castle Rock, and they also discover the dead parachutist” Jack then tries unsuccessfully to turn the others against Ralph, before forming his own tribe. Roger and the older boys abandon Ralph to join Jack’s tribe. Jack’s tribe continues to lure recruits from the main group by promising feasts of cooked pig. Jack’s tribe begin to paint their faces and enact bizarre rites, including sacrifices to the beast.

Ralph and Piggy decide to go to one of Jack’s feasts and witness Jack and his followers conducting a sacrifice to the imaginary Beast who rules the island whom he dubs “Lord of the Flies”. The boys start displaying feral, warlike behaviour as any semblance of order breaks down. Then When Simon discovers the truth behind “The Beast” he finds himself in great danger from the other tribe members. Jack and his rebel tribe steal Piggy’s glasses the only means the boys have of starting a fire. Ralph, journeys to Castle Rock to confront Jack over Piggy’s glasses accompanied by Piggy, Sam, and Eric. However the tribe capture and bind the twins under Jack’s command. Then Ralph confronts Jack, while Roger confronts Piggy with tragic consequences. Ralph manages to escape, but Sam and Eric are tortured by Roger until they agree to join Jack’s tribe. Sam and Eric warn Ralph that Jack and Roger intend to hunt him and behead him. Jack orders his tribe to begin a hunt for Ralph and Ralph faces a fight for survival as he tries to escape Jack’s rampaging savages.

International Games Masters Day

International Games Master’s Day takes place anuually on 4 March. GM’s Day was born on EN World in December 2002. Originally a simple messageboard post by EN World member Spunkrat (later renamed Heathen72), the idea quickly gained popularity, championed by Mark Clover of Creative Mountain Games and, of course, EN World itself.

GM’s Day is an annual day to show your GAmes Master, DUngeon Master, Storyteller, or Referee) how much you appreciate them. Publishers and retail outlets across the world now join in GM’s Day, offering discounts, sales, and other cool stuff. From a single messageboard thread, GM’s Day now includes hundreds of publishers, websites, bloggers, such as RPGNow/DriveThruRPG’s who host a massive GM’s Day sale. Marth 4th is also the anniversary of the sad passing of Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax who sadly died 4 March 2008.

Toy Soldier Day

The name of Toy Soldier Day is a bit deceiving. Rather than collecting or displaying plastic toys or replicas, Toy Soldier Day is actually intended to unite fans of various role-playing activities. Toy Soldier Day was orignally started as a fan club by The Army of Toy Soldiers to give recognition to talented street performer, including musicians and the internet personality Dr. Steel who started his career in 1999 in Los Angeles, Putting on shows combining puppetry and video projections to help his audience better understnd the meanings of his steampunk songs. countless fans of stage persona Dr. Steel celebrate Toy Soldier Day annually Including nurses, scouts and soldiers) one of the primary goals of Toy Soldier Day is to collaborate, compare and share costume ideas.

More International, National events and Holidays happepning on 4 March

International Scrapbooking Industry Day
March Forth Day
National Day of Unplugging
National Grammar Day
National Poundcake Day
National Snack Day
Old Inauguration Day

Ole Kirk Christiansen (LEGO(tm)

Danish businessman and LEGO(Tm) creator Ole Kirk Christiansen, was born 7 April 1891 in Filskov, Denmark. He trained as a carpenter and started making wooden toys in 1932 to make a living after having lost his job during the depression. Sadly though, shortly after the depression Christiansen’s wife also died, leaving him to raise his four sons by himself. Christiansen knew the value of hard wearing toys So to make ends meet he decided to construct a small wooden duck toy for his children. When he found that his sons loved the new toy he decided to put the ducks into production using the leftover wood from his old business. He then went on to making miniature versions of the houses and furniture, which also became quite successful.

Unfortunately though In 1942 a fire broke out at the factory destroying Ole’s life’s work and forcing them to rebuild from scratch. So in 1947 he invested in a revolutionary injection-moulding machine Imported from Britain for 30,000 Danish kroner (£3,200). After Building a new factory, Ole set about re-making his lost designs and moved on to manufacturing plastic items rather than wood, which originally consisted of small plastic bears and rattles. By 1949 he had produced over 200 plastic and wooden toys. Then, two years after buying the injection-moulding machine, he produced the first Lego bricks, called Automatic Binding Bricks, they looked similar to today’s blocks but had a slit in the sides and were completely hollow. Ole Kirk Christiansen came up with the name Lego from the Danish words leg godt, meaning “play well”, and the company grew to become the Lego Group.

Then In 1954, Ole’s son Godtfred, the firm’s junior managing director returned from a UK toy fair with the idea of creating a toy system in which every element could connect together to build things, and by 1958 the firm had patented the colourful bricks with hollow tubes on the underside which could be locked together and the story of the Lego brick began. Sadly though On 11 March 1958, Christiansen died from a heart attack when he was 66 years old, however his third son Godtfred Kirk Christiansen promptly took over the company and developed his idea of interconnecting bricks culminating in The first Lego set, Town Plan No.1, which had everything a child needed to make their own model town centre, this became a huge success.

Since then Lego(tm) has grown to become a household name, annually selling many million sets worldwide. Then In 1968 they opened a theme park at their HQ in Billund, Denmark — the first of six worldwide. A year later came Lego Duplo for under-fives and in 1978 “minifigure” people. Since then, all manner of themed Lego sets have hit shelves, from pirates, Outer Space, Lord of the Rings, Ninjago to Harry Potter and today, eight Lego sets are sold every Second worldwide. The UK even has its own Legoland which opened in Windsor in 1996 and there are now Lego-only stores, Lego computer games including Lego batman. There are also a number of rather entertaining LEGO Movies and Television series (Ninjago, Lego Star Wars) and even a clothing range.

Peter O’Toole

British Actor Peter James O’Toole sadly passed away 14 December 2013. Born 2 August 1932, He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and began working in the theatre, gaining recognition as a Shakespearean actor at the Bristol Old Vic and with the English Stage Company, before making his film debut in 1959.He achieved stardom playing T. E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) for which he received his first Academy Award nomination. He received seven further Oscar nominations – for Becket (1964), The Lion in Winter (1968), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969),The Ruling Class (1972), The Stunt Man (1980), My Favorite Year (1982) and Venus(2006) – and holds the record for the most Academy Award acting nominations without a win. He won four Golden Globes, a BAFTA and an Emmy, and was the recipient of anHonorary Academy Award in 2003.

O’Toole began working in the theatre, gaining recognition as a Shakespearean actor at the Bristol Old Vic and with the English Stage Company, before making his television debut in 1954. He first appeared on film in 1959 in a minor role in The Day They Robbed the Bank of England. O’Toole’s major break came when he was chosen to play T. E. Lawrence in David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia (1962). His performance was ranked number one in Premiere magazine’s list of the 100 Greatest Performances of All Time. The role introduced him to US audiences and earned him the first of his eight nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actor.O’Toole is one of a handful of actors to be Oscar-nominated for playing the same role in two different films; he played King Henry II in both Becket (1964) and The Lion in Winter (1968). O’Toole played Hamlet under Laurence Olivier’s direction in the premiere production of the Royal National Theatre in 1963. He demonstrated his comedic abilities alongside Peter Sellers in the Woody Allen-scripted comedy What’s New Pussycat? (1965). He also appeared inSeán O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock at Gaiety Theatre, Dublin.

He played King Henry II in The Lion in Winter(1968) and fulfilled a lifetime ambition  in 1970, when he performed in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot alongside Donal McCann in Dublin. In 1972, he played both Miguel de Cervantes and his fictional creation Don Quixote in Man of La Mancha, the motion picture adaptation of the 1965 hit Broadway musical, opposite Sophia Loren. The film was a critical and commercial failure, criticised for using mostly non-singing actors. O’Toole’s singing was dubbed by tenor Simon Gilbert, but the other actors sang their own parts. O’Toole and co-star James Coco, who played both Cervantes’s manservant and Sancho Panza, both received Golden Globenominations for their performances. In 1980, O’Toole starred as Tiberius in the Penthouse-funded biographical film Caligula. In 1980, he received critical acclaim for playing the director in the behind-the-scenes film The Stunt Man. He received good reviews as John Tanner in Man and Superman and Henry Higgins in Pygmalion, and won a Laurence Olivier Award for his performance in Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell (1989). He was nominated for another Oscar for My Favorite Year (1982), a romantic comedy set behind-the-scenes at a 1950s TV variety-comedy show, in which O’Toole plays an ageing swashbuckling film star reminiscent of Errol Flynn. He also appeared in 1987’s acclaimed The Last Emperor.

In 1999 O’Toole won an Emmy Award for his role in the mini-series Joan of Arc and in 2004, he played King Priam in the summer blockbuster Troy. In 2005, he appeared on television as the older version of legendary 18th century Italian adventurer Giacomo Casanova in the BBC drama serial Casanova. The younger Casanova, seen for most of the action, was played by David Tennant, who had to wear contact lenses to match his brown eyes to O’Toole’s blue. O’Toole was once again nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award for his portrayal of Maurice in the 2006 film Venus, directed by Roger Michell, his eighth such nomination.O’Toole co-starred in the Pixar animated film Ratatouille (2007), an animated film about a rat with dreams of becoming the greatest chef in Paris, as Anton Ego, a food critic. O’Toole appeared in the second season of Showtime’s successful drama series The Tudors(2008), portraying Pope Paul III, who excommunicates King Henry VIII from the church; an act which leads to a showdown between the two men. On 10 July 2012, O’Toole released a statement that he was retiring from acting