In 1955 the director of On the Waterfront and Gentleman’s Agreement, Elia Kazan, wrote a letter of confession to his wife, apologizing for having an affair with Marilyn Monroe in 1950, just after her agent Johnny Hyde had passed away. Kazan came across her when she was distraught and […]
Marilyn met actor John Carroll and his wife Lucille Ryman in December 1947. Lucille was a talent scout for MGM. The three hit it off right away and their friendship resulted in Marilyn moving into their home for a while. Lucille even got her to sign a contract with […]
Jim Dougherty was Marilyn’s first husband back when she was known simply as Norma Jean Mortenson, and long before her transformation into the iconic sex symbol that was Marilyn Monroe. ‘I never knew Marilyn Monroe’, he told United Press International in 1990. ‘I knew and loved Norma Jean.’ They […]
Canadian-born Florence Lawrence became the first movie star to be identified by name. Before that she was simply ‘The Biograph Girl’, and that suited her just fine, as it did all the other featured players in other companies. Nobody wanted to be named because it might jeopardize their stage […]
It would most likely surprise fans of Frank Sinatra to learn that at his birth in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1915 he weighed an enormous 13.5 lbs! He would, however, grow up to be a very slight 5’7” (1.7m). His forceps delivery left a permanent scar on his face […]
From 1939 until 1984 Victor Mature appeared in 55 movies and one TV series, The Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1966). He wasn’t very good in many of them, and no-one was more aware of that than him. My Darling Clementine (1946) and Kiss of Death […]
If World war Two had not intervened and caused the cancellation of the 1940 and 1944 Olympics, Esther Williams would have, in all probability, represented the USA as a swimmer in both meets. In 1940 she was just 18 years old and already the holder of three National Swimming […]
Ever since Billboard has been used to assess the popularity of single recordings there have been a few actors who have unexpectedly surprised us by recording songs that went all the way to the top of the charts. There were two in 1957, one in 1958, one in 1962, […]
Betty Grable (1916-73): Betty appeared as a Goldwyn Girl three times, beginning with Whoopee! in 1930. Of course, her fame would ultimately stretch world-wide, mainly because of her staggeringly successful World War Two pin-up (above) and her highly publicized ‘million dollar legs’. In 1947 the United States Treasury Department […]
There were over 200 girls who formed the ranks of The Goldwyn Girls over the years they were in existence (from about 1930 until 1955). Over that period they appeared in eleven movies only. Several of these young hopefuls went on to big screen careers and one of them […]
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