MOVIE TRIVIA – PT 20.

June 9, 2018 Alan Royle 2

                           Orson Welles circa 1938 The Night That Panicked America (1975) was a tele-movie about the legendary 1938 radio broadcast by Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre group, of a version of The War of the Worlds, that ‘millions of […]

MOVIE TRIVIA – PT 18

June 3, 2018 Alan Royle 2

     In Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) there is a hair-raising scene in which a P-40 (pilotless) is seen taxiing down a runway, starting to lift off, and then careering into a row of parked aircraft and exploding. The P-40, which was about to crash into a group of stationery […]

MOVIE TRIVIA – PT9.

May 14, 2018 Alan Royle 4

                       Ali MacGraw & Robert Evans Steve McQueen’s performance in Papillon (1973) was overlooked when Oscar nominations were announced in 1974. The general feeling was that his stealing Ali MacGraw from Robert Evans, a very powerful studio executive, may well […]

MOVIE TRIVIA – PT5

May 6, 2018 Alan Royle 2

   Lee Marvin (L), John Wayne (C) & James Stewart When we watch the John Ford 1962 western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, there is a certain irony in the casting. Jimmy Stewart was a genuine World War Two USAAF hero, yet he plays a bookish weakling opposed to […]

Movie Trivia – PT4.

May 4, 2018 Alan Royle 0

                         Laurence Olivier as Crassus in Spartacus (1960) In the 1960 Stanley Kubrick film Spartacus, the role of the Roman general Marcus Licinius Crassus was played by Laurence Olivier. The real Crassus was a most interesting individual. He acquired the title […]

Movie Trivia – PT3

May 2, 2018 Alan Royle 0

Capucine as Angel in North to Alaska (1960) Richard Fleischer was all set to direct North to Alaska (1960) but thought Capucine was all wrong as the prostitute. In his opinion she was ‘not classy enough and not sexy enough’. He was unaware that she just happened to be producer Charles Feldman’s […]

More Movie Trivia

April 28, 2018 Alan Royle 1

   Clara Bow Silent star Clara Bow’s 1926 contract with Paramount guaranteed her a bonus of $500,000, a staggering amount of money at the time, if she could manage to stay ‘scandal-free’ for its tenure. She never even came close to collecting. Oddly enough, given her tawdry reputation, Clara had […]

Random Snapshots – Vol. 3.

October 4, 2017 Alan Royle 0

Sharon Stone                     ‘Any man in Hollywood will meet me if I want that’, proclaimed Sharon Stone after achieving worldwide fame in Basic Instinct (1992). ‘No, make that any man anywhere’, she added. One of her former boyfriends was Hart Bochner, the […]

Hollywood philanthropists – a quick look.

July 26, 2017 Alan Royle 2

  In the last 20-30 years there has developed a philanthropic culture in Hollywood involving superstars in the movie industry. Cynics are quick to accuse these people of ‘image-making’, or of diverting media attention from potential career-damaging headlines of a personal nature. In some instances that has certainly happened, but […]

Actors marrying other actors – Pt 10.

September 1, 2016 Alan Royle 2

  BROLIN, James                                SMITHERS, Jan                               1986 – 95 (div.)                                                                 STREISAND, Barbra                       1998 –   James Brolin […]