LENA HORNE (1917 – 2010) Throughout the Second World War, black USO entertainers were treated as second-class citizens, given segregated living quarters and ordered to perform to segregated audiences. Most of them were disinclined to complain or revolt at the injustice of it all. But not Lena Horne. […]
On-screen Henry Fonda came across as a man of integrity, common sense, gentleness and affability. Off-screen he was a private man, cold to his family, aloof, frequently angry […]
The Moon is Blue (1953) is a pretty tame picture, yet it was the first post-Hayes mainstream Hollywood movie to use the words ‘virgin’, ‘seduce’ and ‘mistress’ (in the sexual partner sense). The mere utterance of these three words was enough to get the picture banned from theatres in Boston, […]
It is generally conceded that Orson Welles’ 1941 classic Citizen Kane is loosely based on the career of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. What is not so generally known is that a sub-plot in which Susan Kane has an extra-marital affair was deleted late in the day by Welles himself. […]
Norma Shearer Norma & Jimmy Stewart circa 1939 Mickey Rooney in his Andy Hardy days Norma Shearer’s husband, Irving Thalberg, passed away in September 1936. […]
Christopher Reeve (1952 – 2004) The 6’4” Christopher Reeve won out over thousands of others for the lead in Superman (1978). Because he was decidedly slim he had to gain 30lbs in weight to portray the ‘Man of Steel’, a process that saw him spend hours each day in […]
Howard Hughes was a Texan, a maverick movie tycoon who hit the movie industry like a whirlwind in the Roaring Twenties and remained a force for a couple of decades. At the age of 19 he inherited 75% of his family’s fortune. His father had patented the two-cone roller […]
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