On this date, Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio married at San Francisco City Hall in a ceremony that was meant to be private but became a media circus. Their marriage lasted only 274 days, but DiMaggio's love for Monroe endured until his death, symbolized by the roses he sent to her grave for decades after her tragic passing in 1962.

On this date, Johnny Cash performed at Folsom Prison in California, recording what would become one of the most celebrated live albums in music history. The performance resurrected his struggling career and established him as a champion for prisoners and the forgotten members of society, a role he would embrace for the rest of his life.

On January 9, 1976, Sylvester Stallone began filming Rocky in Philadelphia, launching a low-budget underdog story that would become one of cinema's greatest rags-to-riches tales both on and off screen.

In 1939, the film adaptation of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men was released, starring Burgess Meredith and Lon Chaney Jr. and bringing the novel’s powerful themes to the big screen during Hollywood’s Golden Age.