Darryl F. Zanuck – the last tycoon.

March 28, 2017 Alan Royle 5

  If anyone epitomized the Hollywood studio system it was Darryl F. Zanuck. His rise to power is quite extraordinary given he was minimally educated and barely literate. Born in Wahoo, Nebraska in 1902 to an alcoholic father and the daughter of Wahoo’s only hotel owner, Darryl was abandoned by […]

‘CAT BALLOU’ (1965 – LEE MARVIN’S MASTERPIECE

March 26, 2017 Alan Royle 2

  There have been very few genuinely funny westerns made. James Garner’s Support Your Local Sheriff (1969) was, in my opinion, the very best ever, but two Lee Marvin films were not far behind it. One was Paint Your Wagon, released in the same year and hilarious, but it probably fits […]

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OSCARS ‘ MEMORABLE MOMENTS.

March 24, 2017 Alan Royle 4

  There have been a few blunders (and near-blunders) at the Oscars ceremonies over the decades, although the shambles at the 89th Academy Awards of 2017 reached a new low. The debacle brought about when Warren Beatty was given the wrong results envelope for Best Picture was bad enough, but […]

WAMPAS Baby Stars of 1931.

March 18, 2017 Alan Royle 0

If you have been following my WAMPAS Baby Stars posts since the first one (1923), you will have noticed that there was no article for 1930. In fact, there was no presentation by the Western Association of Motion Pictures Advertisers that year and in 1933 because independent studios objected to […]

MM in Britain.

March 16, 2017 Alan Royle 0

  PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL, THE (1957)                                                                 This was the first film produced by Marilyn Monroe’s own company. It made a slight profit, but God only knows how because it is as dull […]

‘Gallipoli’ (1981)

March 14, 2017 Alan Royle 0

  Two years after he burst on the scene in the grossly over-rated Mad Max (1979), Mel Gibson made a war picture called Gallipoli, a movie loosely based on the Australian and New Zealander (ANZAC) landings in Turkey in 1915. As we know, Mel went on to become a super-star, […]

The making of ‘Caligula’ (1979)

March 12, 2017 Alan Royle 5

  Legendary movie critic Roger Ebert went along to see and review Caligula and did something he admitted he rarely ever did. He walked out of the theatre part-way through the showing. It was during the Brothel-Boat-orgy sequence, which he described as ‘sickening, utterly worthless, shameless trash.’ He went on […]