MOVIE TRIVIA – PT82

November 26, 2018 Alan Royle 2

  Franciska Gaal The name Franciska Gaal is long lost to modern movie-goers. Her Hollywood screen career was very short indeed, only three pictures released just prior to the outbreak of World War Two. Born in Budapest, Hungary, the Jewish Franciska had enjoyed success in German cinema until Hitler came […]

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MOVIE TRIVIA – PT45.

August 14, 2018 Alan Royle 0

   James Dean & Paul Newman screen testing                                          Dean with girlfriend Pier Angeli Paul Newman was a finalist for the Cal Trask role in East of Eden (1955), but it […]

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MOVIE TRIVIA – PT39.

August 2, 2018 Alan Royle 6

                  John Wayne accepts Gary Cooper’s Oscar for High Noon John Wayne and Ward Bond, two staunch supporters of the Senator McCarthy witch-hunts of the late forties and early fifties, were incensed over Carl Foreman’s screenplay for High Noon (1952), which they knew […]

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MOVIE TRIVIA – PT36

July 27, 2018 Alan Royle 0

                          Wanda Hendrix & Audie Murphy in Sierra                     Lovely Paramount actress Wanda Hendrix married war hero Audie Murphy after a two-year engagement, but the union was a disaster. He […]

Forties Movie Trivia – PT2

February 19, 2018 Alan Royle 4

If you have ever watched the Spencer Tracy/Robert Young film Northwest Passage (1940), you have more than likely wondered why the picture was given that title when at no time in the entire movie do they get anywhere even remotely near a ‘northwest passage’. In fact, it is never even […]

The Hollywood Canteen – a unique experience.

August 13, 2017 Alan Royle 6

  Between 1941 and 1944 over 6,000 Hollywood workers entered the services, 1,500 of whom were registered actors and actresses. The ‘Hollywood Unit’ made training and recruitment films (and newsreels). One recruitment film starring Jimmy Stewart was said to have been responsible for 100,000 men joining the air force. Hundreds […]

The many loves of Rita Hayworth

August 7, 2017 Alan Royle 14

  RITA HAYWORTH (1918-87) As a teenager Margarita Cansino (Rita Hayworth) was sexually abused by her abominable father, a Latin dancer named Eduardo Cansino, who not only abused her himself, but rented her out to his cronies. When she confided this to her husband Orson Welles he was rightly appalled. […]

Hollywood & Abortions

April 1, 2017 Alan Royle 2

  Over the past century or more that Hollywood has existed there has been no shortage of abortions performed on many of its aspiring young actresses. Unwanted offspring are not unique to the movie business, but they do tend to interfere with ambitions, not to mention reputations, more often in […]

Feminine allure in the movies – 50 of the best

July 13, 2016 Alan Royle 4

  These days if a man mentions that a woman looks ‘hot’ or ‘desirable’, he runs a very good chance of being labeled a ‘sexist’ by that annoying, nameless bunch that take it upon themselves to decide for the rest of us what is politically correct and what is not. […]