HEDDA & LOUELLA Movie-struck columnist Louella Parsons used extortion and blackmail to rule Hollywood’s gossip mill with an iron glove for decades. It would be accurate to say that it was more the stories she did not print that gave her a vice-like grip on the studios and their […]
(L) Hedda Hopper & Louella Parsons Beginning in 1912 with Photoplay, there have always been movie magazines, most of which relied almost entirely on being fed carefully orchestrated morsels of ‘facts’ about their stars by the studios’ publicity departments. The public was so hungry for ‘behind the scenes’ information […]
CLINT EASTWOOD: [On surviving a plane crash in the early fifties] ‘They had one plane, a Douglas AD, sort of a torpedo bomber of World War Two vintage, and I thought I’d hitch on that. Everything went wrong. Radios went out. Oxygen ran out. And finally […]
Henry Fonda & his wife Margaret Sullavan Tallulah Bankhead in Lifeboat (1944) Tallulah Bankhead was dismissive about her only sexual encounter with legendary screen star Henry Fonda. ‘Oh, please, dah-ling, don’t mention Hank to me’, she laughed. ‘I went to bed with him only one time. He failed to […]
Harpo Marx Harpo Marx was offered $50,000 to utter the solitary word, ‘Murder!’ in the 1946 film A Night in Casablanca. He declined the offer, adhering to his policy of remaining mute on-screen and in public. In fact, he never spoke a word in any […]
Gregory Peck & Ava Gardner in On the Beach (1959) When Ava Gardner came to Australia to make On the Beach (1959), she did not exactly endear herself to the nation when she remarked that Melbourne was the most appropriate place on Earth to make a picture about the end of […]
Some movies seem to take on a life of their own. Suddenly and often inexplicably, they are lauded as masterpieces, works of art, living statements of the times. Easy Rider (1969) is one such film. I have always thought it was an over-rated ‘nothing’ picture, inhabited by two ‘druggies’ […]
In 2013, singer/actress Deanna Durbin passed away at the age of 91 in her adopted country, France. Actor Joseph Cotten had preceded her by nearly twenty years. Way back in 1943, Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper set the cat among the pigeons when she wrote that Deanna and Joe, […]
To baby-boomers the name Honor Blackman conjures up two distinct and memorable images – Cathy Gale in all of the first 43 episodes of the hit TV series The Avengers – and Pussy Galore in the 1964 James Bond classic Goldfinger. In August 2015, the wonderful Honor Blackman turned ninety […]
John Huston directed and Sterling Hayden starred in The Asphalt Jungle in 1950. At the time both were members of The Committee for the First Amendment, a group formed in September 1947 to support the Hollywood Ten and to oppose those who wished to blacklist actors, writers etc. who […]
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