THE LITTLE COLONEL (1935)

THE LITTLE COLONEL (1935)

February 20, 2022 Alan Royle 2

  THE LITTLE COLONEL (1935)                 This was the first of four films in which African-American dancer Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson partnered the child superstar Shirley Temple in dance routines on the big screen; the other three being The Littlest Rebel (1935), Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1938), and Just Around the Corner […]

SINCE YOU WENT AWAY (1944) – A CLASSIC.

May 12, 2020 Alan Royle 2

It could be argued with confidence that there was more going on off-screen than there was on it, with regard to the 1944 feature film Since You Went Away. This superb example of what this writer considers to be ideal cinema entertainment, focused on the trials and tribulations of an […]

THE BEST OSCAR YEARS – 1939 & 1950.

April 5, 2019 Alan Royle 0

  Clark Gable as Rhett Butler in GWTW (1939)         The Academy Awards is a competition, but it is one that has seldom been conducted on a level playing field. A winner one year may very well not even have been nominated in a stronger year. Historically, the two […]

WAR MOVIES WORTH WATCHING – PT8.

March 14, 2019 Alan Royle 2

               SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (1998) – World War Two War movies took on a whole new realistic look with Steven Spielberg’s extraordinary World War Two feature Saving Private Ryan (1998). The opening 30 minutes or so was, quite possibly, the most harrowing footage in the history of mainline cinema […]

MOVIE TRIVIA – PT93.

December 26, 2018 Alan Royle 0

    Barbara Hale, William Hopper & Raymond Burr in Perry Mason        Fans of the Perry Mason TV series will no doubt remember William Hopper, son of gossip columnist Hedda, who played Perry’s assistant Paul Drake. During World War Two he served as a frogman with the US […]

MEMORABLE PERFORMANCES – PT2

November 10, 2018 Alan Royle 0

Michael Caine as Peachy Carnehan in The Man Who Would Be King (1975) and Sean Connery as Daniel Dravot Michael Caine and Sean Connery were the fifth intended pairing for Rudyard Kipling’s terrific The Man Who Would be King to be transferred to the screen. In the fifties it was to […]

More Thirties Movie Trivia – PT6

February 13, 2018 Alan Royle 6

Jon Hall in The Hurricane (1937) Director John Ford was convinced that no actor could effectively fake the pain experienced in a flogging, so the star of The Hurricane (1937), Jon Hall, volunteered to be whipped for real and was horse-whipped until his back bled! The censors, however, took one look at […]

RANDOM SNAPSHOTS – PT5.

November 7, 2017 Alan Royle 4

BERGMAN, Ingrid  (1915-82)                                                             Joseph Mankiewicz had this to say about Ingrid Bergman. ‘Even when she learned about Spencer Tracy’s involvement with […]