WORLD WAR TWO – The stars & their stories – PT38.

WORLD WAR TWO – The stars & their stories – PT38.

December 29, 2020 Alan Royle 2

GEORGE NADER (1921 – 2002)                                                                                                                           George was an actor and writer who hailed from Pasadena, California where he was born in 1921. In the fifties he starred in a short-lived TV series called The Man and the Challenge (1959-60), and was a close friend of actor […]

MOVIE TRIVIA – PT153.

MOVIE TRIVIA – PT153.

April 15, 2020 Alan Royle 2

Marilyn Monroe Sir Laurence Olivier once gave his opinion to Michael Parkinson on Marilyn Monroe, his co-star in The Prince and the Showgirl (1957). Olivier said she was unhappy throughout the shoot and very difficult to work with, discomforted and forlorn in front of a movie camera. But then the […]

MOVIE TRIVIA – PT85.

December 6, 2018 Alan Royle 4

  Joan Crawford circa 1945 Joan Crawford worked full-time at being a movie star. Very little was left to chance, especially when she got older and her star had started to wane. For example, she always made a point of timing her arrival at a theatre seconds before the curtain […]

No Image

MOVIE TRIVIA – PT71.

October 21, 2018 Alan Royle 2

    Val Kilmer as Batman & Bruce Wayne Director Joel Schumacher described Val Kilmer as ‘childish and impossible’, after the actor refused to talk to him for two weeks during the filming of Batman Forever (1995). Later, he told an interviewer, ‘Val did me two great favors when I […]

MOVIE TRIVIA – PT 11.

May 18, 2018 Alan Royle 2

Warren Beatty & Faye Dunaway in Bonnie & Clyde (1967) Before he agreed to play the role of Clyde Barrow in the 1967 hit Bonnie and Clyde, Warren Beatty was chasing the director’s job and had already chosen the two actors he wanted to play the title roles – his sister Shirley […]

No Image

THE 10 WORST ‘BEST PICTURE’ OSCAR-WINNERS.

March 23, 2018 Alan Royle 0

Selecting the ten worst winners of the ‘Best Picture’ Oscar is a whole lot tougher than choosing the ten best. Why? Because I have not always bothered to see a lot of the rubbishy ones. Only recently I sat through several of those I had avoided like the plague for […]

Past Oscars – Pt 4 (1955-60)

October 31, 2016 Alan Royle 4

  1955               Marty – Best Picture                         Ernest Borgnine – Best Actor for Marty   Robert Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter Doris Day & Jimmy Cagney Well, at least Elia Kazan didn’t get Best Director for East of Eden despite being again nominated. […]

The Mike Todd saga.

September 19, 2016 Alan Royle 12

    In 1958 Kirk Douglas accepted an invitation from film producer Mike Todd to accompany him on a flight to New York aboard Mike’s private plane dubbed The Lucky Liz, in honor of his wife Elizabeth Taylor. ‘As I was packing my bags I suddenly felt a painful knotting […]

Hollywood – tales from the dark side.

December 14, 2015 admin 8

  Mabel Normand was one of the wildest of the silent stars whose off-screen antics ultimately wrecked her career and contributed to her early death. Mack Sennett credited her with inventing the pie-throwing gag that came to be used extensively throughout the silent picture era, claiming she threw one in […]

‘Stolen Oscars?’ Pt. 1

September 20, 2015 admin 10

  Down the decades there have been a number of, shall we say, dubious Oscar-winners who have collected the statuette at the expense of more worthy contenders. Sometimes this is due to studio manipulation of nominations. A classic example of this happened in 1972 when Paramount chose to nominate only […]