Darwin Porter – Believe him or not? PT 1.

October 24, 2017 Alan Royle 0

Darwin Porter is a prolific writer, a man who has been an entertainment columnist for The Miami Herald since he was 20 years old. He has written and sold more celebrity biographies than anyone else, yet he has his ‘knockers’, people who think he is little more than a sensationalist […]

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 […]

WAMPAS Baby Stars – PT5 (1926)

December 28, 2016 Alan Royle 4

  MARY ASTOR (1906-87)                            1526 For some reason 1926 was quite a year for WAMPAS Baby Stars. Most of them ended up being major movie stars. Mary Astor is the first of these. Born Lucile Langhanke, her career started in 1921 and lasted over forty years and 154 screen credits. […]

A few Hollywood substance abusers. PT 1.

November 2, 2016 Alan Royle 18

  John Barrymore John Barrymore became famous for playing sympathetic drunks on film, no great stretch for him given he was a fully-fledged, dedicated alcoholic off-camera all his life. As a Shakespearian stage actor he was brilliant in his youth, able to memorize and deliver extraordinarily long speeches effortlessly and […]

Two tragic Hollywood beauties.

September 13, 2016 Alan Royle 10

  Ava Gardner (1922-90) Mickey Rooney took one look at Ava Gardner when she arrived in Hollywood and was hooked. He pursued her, wooed her and did his utmost to bed her, but the 18 year-old virgin made it clear that any man who wanted to alter that status was […]

Actors marrying other actors – PT 4.

July 31, 2016 Alan Royle 1

  BANDERAS, Antonio                                   GRIFFITH, Melanie             1996 to 2015 (div.)   Antonio as Zorro And as the voice of Puss in Boots Melanie as Tess McGill in  Working Girl (1988) Antonio and Melanie met in 1995 on the set of Two Much when both actors were married to others. Banderas had […]

The 4 ‘Romeo & Juliets’ – enough already!

November 25, 2015 admin 6

  The chronic problem with casting Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is finding actors who are both young and experienced enough in stage acting to carry it off. After all, in Bill the Bard’s play Juliet is just fourteen years old. MGM producer Irving Thalberg unwisely chose to tackle the problem […]

What’s in a name Part One?

August 2, 2015 admin 0

Back in the good old studio days it was customary for studios to come up with snappy nicknames for their female stars. Well, they thought they were snappy, anyway. For some reason these were seldom given to male actors, although that is not to say that some of these guys […]

JOHN BARRYMORE – A drunk, a rake & a rare talent.

February 5, 2015 admin 5

  John Barrymore’s siblings, Lionel and Ethel, both won Oscars in their careers, but most critics are agreed that John was the best actor of the three. Not everyone agreed, however. Playwright George Bernard Shaw detested his ‘Hamlet’, describing it as one of the worst portrayals in history, accusing the […]