My 30 Favorite Movie Villains: PT1

April 8, 2018 Alan Royle 6

  Here is part one of my list of the 30 performances by movie villains I have enjoyed the most down the decades. That does not mean I have chosen the scariest or even the best-acted roles; just the ones I have enjoyed watching the most. I have seen every […]

FIFTIES MOVIE TRIVIA – PT4.

March 19, 2018 Alan Royle 8

Director Charles Laughton thought Robert Mitchum was one of the finest actors in the world and he also respected him as a person. He wrote in Esquire about the American who starred in his masterpiece The Night of the Hunter in 1955: ‘All this tough talk is a blind, you […]

More Thirties Movie Trivia – PT4

February 9, 2018 Alan Royle 0

        Wendy Hiller and Leslie Howard in Pygmalion (1938) The scene in both Pygmalion (1938) and My Fair Lady (1964) where Eliza accidentally swallows a marble during her elocution lessons was never part of George Bernard Shaw’s original story. In the 1938 film Wendy Hiller suddenly exhibited a pained […]

A couple of English roses – Simmons & Bloom.

July 30, 2017 Alan Royle 5

    JEAN SIMMONS (1929 – 2010) Jean Simmons was her real name and she hailed from Crouch Hill, London. She was barely sixteen when she landed a miniscule part in the British film Caesar and Cleopatra in 1945. The production proved to be an opportunity (however small) for several […]

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 […]

Sarah Miles – a candid eccentric?

October 25, 2016 Alan Royle 0

  Her father was an affluent engineer so Sarah grew up in a house with servants. She claims her childhood was a happy one although her mother often beat her with a hairbrush whenever she was naughty. Young people today probably regard this as a contradiction in terms, but being […]

Did you know? (G)

July 3, 2016 Alan Royle 4

    Olivier & Leigh If you look closely at the long shots of Elizabeth Taylor in Elephant Walk (1954), you can see they are actually of Vivien Leigh, the actress she replaced four weeks after filming began. Miss Leigh had a major breakdown on the set, suffering memory loss […]

To believe or not to believe?

February 26, 2016 admin 4

  Scott Bowers at 88 In 2012 a Hollywood man named Scott Bowers wrote a book called Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars’ that was published by the reputable Grove Press. It is not a very well written book, but several gay […]

A few snippets from Frank Langella.

July 20, 2015 admin 2

  Oscar-nominated actor Frank Langella published his most entertaining biography titled, Dropped Names: Famous Men & Women as I Knew Them, in 2013. It is a scathing one that pulls few, if any, punches. Here are a few snippets from it, some of his observations down the decades, along with […]