setting old-time publish dates?

i’m doing a site with coverage of historical content (old movies) and i’d like to set the publication date for various posts to be the release dates of those movies.

i tried this with “son of frankenstein” (release date: january 13, 1939) and when i save the post and change (yep, i do the date and click ok first), it reverts to today’s date.

i’m able to get it to save dates like 1979 but not much earlier.

is there some hidden cutoff in the calendar function of WP that i’m not aware of? thanks in advance for any help anyone can offer!

jim