JUDY GARLAND

JUDY GARLAND

March 13, 2020 Alan Royle 0

Judy Garland Born Frances Ethel Gumm in Grand Rapids, Minnesota in 1922, Judy Garland was singing from the age of two. Her mother recognised her potential at once and carted her around the country, having her perform solo in nightclubs, cabarets, hotels and theatres. The family was in constant turmoil, […]

Hollywood Mysteries Pt 2.

July 18, 2017 Alan Royle 2

      The victim – 1959 – Beverly Hills, California  George Reeves (45) The corpse of George Reeves, television’s Superman, was found naked in his bedroom at 1.59am by his party guests who then waited 45 minutes before calling police. Why the delay? And why would George get completely […]

Girl # 27 – Patricia Douglas Part 1.

March 17, 2016 admin 2

     This story will be in two parts. It is a tale of a young woman’s quest for justice in an era and a place where greedy and powerful men determined who was entitled to fair treatment and who was not. Ptricia Douglas was a ‘nobody’, one of thousands […]

Studio cover-ups in the early days of Hollywood.

January 7, 2016 admin 2

  A British actor in the fifties named Steve Hayes probably summed up the studio bosses as well as anyone, not that he said so when he was under contract, of course. To do so would have been career suicide, as well he knew. ‘All these guys were ruthless bastards’, […]

Tragic Hollywood – Who killed funnyman Ted Healy?

December 18, 2015 admin 8

  Wallace Beery won the Oscar in 1931-2 for The Champ, even though he actually scored one less vote than Fredric March that year. The rules of the previous year awarded Oscars to performers who finished within three votes of the winner. Presenter Conrad Nagel, unaware that the regulations had […]

Hollywood – tales from the dark side.

December 14, 2015 admin 8

  Mabel Normand was one of the wildest of the silent stars whose off-screen antics ultimately wrecked her career and contributed to her early death. Mack Sennett credited her with inventing the pie-throwing gag that came to be used extensively throughout the silent picture era, claiming she threw one in […]

MGM’s ‘fixers – Mannix & Strickling.

November 29, 2015 admin 0

    Back when the studio system was in vogue, back in the ‘Golden Years of Hollywood, each of the ‘Big Five’ had its ‘fixers’, men whose job it was to keep scandal and bad publicity at bay; to do whatever it took to ensure that the paying public remained […]

MICKEY ROONEY – Will the real Mickey please stand up?

August 28, 2015 admin 3

  young Lana Turner If you happen to be a Mickey Rooney fan (I am most certainly not, by the way), then you should definitely not read his sleazy autobiography titled Life Is Too Short. I have and I wish I hadn’t. My reason for repeating a couple of excerpts […]

George Reeves – who killed Superman?

March 19, 2015 admin 7

  Today, to the younger generations, the name George Reeves means nothing. To baby-boomers (those born just after the end of World War Two) he was just a TV actor whose face became instantly recognizable because he portrayed Superman in 102 episodes of the hit TV series The Adventures of […]