Darwin Porter – Believe him or not? PT 2.

October 26, 2017 Alan Royle 0

  Part 2 contains more of the revelations to be found in the Darwin Porter best seller ‘Katharine the Great’, his biography of Katharine Hepburn. Below are more random statements about the private lives of Miss Hepburn (and others). Judge for yourself how much you believe or do not believe. […]

A Snapshot of Kate Hepburn

October 12, 2017 Alan Royle 0

Katharine Hepburn (1907-2003)                    In 1937 Kate Hepburn purchased her Turtle Bay, Manhattan townhouse for $33,000, (it would be worth four and a half million dollars by the time of her death in 2003), and moved in with Howard Hughes at Muirfield […]

The Many Loves of Bette Davis (1908-89).

August 15, 2017 Alan Royle 4

  Bette Davis was never a raving beauty. Indeed, when Jack Warner sent a representative to the railway station to greet her on her arrival in Tinsel Town, the man returned empty-handed, declaring that nobody even remotely looking like a movie star got off the train. Be that as it […]

The many loves of Ava Gardner.

August 3, 2017 Alan Royle 29

  AVA GARDNER (1922-90)            Ava was a ‘knockout’, possibly the sexiest woman ever to grace a movie screen. She married Mickey Rooney when he was the number one box-office draw in movies (she refused to sleep with him unless he married her first). Within three weeks or so of the […]

A couple of English roses – Simmons & Bloom.

July 30, 2017 Alan Royle 5

    JEAN SIMMONS (1929 – 2010) Jean Simmons was her real name and she hailed from Crouch Hill, London. She was barely sixteen when she landed a miniscule part in the British film Caesar and Cleopatra in 1945. The production proved to be an opportunity (however small) for several […]

Hollywood & the Catholic Legion of Decency (CLOD).

December 18, 2016 Alan Royle 6

  At the zenith of their power the ‘Seven Sisters’ (MGM, Warners, Paramount, Universal, Columbia, Fox and RKO) did much as they pleased. Few outsiders had any influence over their decisions or their conduct. Few, that is, with the exception of the Catholic Legion of Decency (CLOD). They were a […]

Two tragic Hollywood beauties.

September 13, 2016 Alan Royle 10

  Ava Gardner (1922-90) Mickey Rooney took one look at Ava Gardner when she arrived in Hollywood and was hooked. He pursued her, wooed her and did his utmost to bed her, but the 18 year-old virgin made it clear that any man who wanted to alter that status was […]

Greg Bautzer – Hollywood lawyer/playboy.

August 22, 2016 Alan Royle 7

  The story goes that renowned Hollywood lawyer Greg Bautzer set his sights on Hollywood from the moment he earned his law degree, borrowed $5,000 from someone (we know not whom), and used it to purchase a fine wardrobe and to get himself the best table at the Brown Derby […]

Jean Harlow – quite a woman.

June 21, 2016 Alan Royle 0

  Born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1911, 16 year-old Harlean Carpenter ran away from home to marry a 21 year-old businessman named Charles McGrew in 1927. The couple lived off his rather large inheritance for a couple of years, but it is believed that his drinking led to an […]

The enigma that was Howard Hughes

March 23, 2016 admin 14

   Howard Hughes was a Texan, a maverick movie tycoon who hit the movie industry like a whirlwind in the Roaring Twenties and remained a force for a couple of decades. At the age of 19 he inherited 75% of his family’s fortune. His father had patented the two-cone roller […]