JULIE ADAMS Julie in Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) ‘No matter what you do, you can act your heart out, but people will always say, ‘Oh, Julie Adams – Creature from the Black Lagoon’. CLAUDIA CARDINALE ‘I wasn’t speaking a word of Italian until I was […]
From time to time I will insert an article consisting of randomly selected quotes from movie people. This is the first of them. One of my books, The Skeletons are Out, consists entirely of quotes by actors and actresses taking shots at each other, but the quotes on these […]
Greg Bautzer & Lana Turner There has never been a shortage of playboys in Hollywood, especially during the studio system’s heyday. I thought it might be of interest to take a close look at some of these gentlemen as they cut a swathe […]
Wendy Barrie as Jane Seymour in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) Whenever I see the Alexander Korda feature The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), the one in which Charles Laughton so memorably plays the title role, I find myself drawn to the actress playing Jane […]
Joan Crawford with her adopted daughter Christina, author of Mommie Dearest Debate still rages over the validity of the claims of child abuse levelled by Christina Crawford against her mother, actress Joan Crawford, in her scathing 1978 book titled Mommie Dearest. Friends and supporters of Joan remain convinced that the volume […]
Marie Prevost (1898-1937) Marie Prevost was another of Hollywood’s sad stories. Born Mary Dunn in Ontario in 1898, she found her way to Hollywood in her teens and became one of Mack Sennett’s Bathing Beauties. By 1921, however, Irving Thalberg had signed her to an acting contract at Universal. Not […]
Joan Crawford circa 1945 Joan Crawford worked full-time at being a movie star. Very little was left to chance, especially when she got older and her star had started to wane. For example, she always made a point of timing her arrival at a theatre seconds before the curtain […]
Jane Wyman & Ronald Reagan Lew Ayres & Jane Wyman in Johnny Belinda (1948) Ronald Reagan married Jane Wyman in 1940, but by the time she made Johnny Belinda (1948) she wanted out. She was tired, she said, of her husband’s incessant talking, for one thing. Her unutterable boredom was palpable to […]
Several scenes in the 1952 film The Sound Barrier required stars Nigel Patrick and Ann Todd to be seated in one of the new de Havilland Comets. They were blissfully unaware that in just two years’ time two de Havilland Comets would break up in mid-air, killing everyone on board […]
Many of the characters in Singin’ in the Rain (1952) are based on real people in Hollywood history. R.F. Simpson, the studio head, is a parody of L. B. Mayer; director Roscoe Dexter is a thinly disguised Erich von Stroheim; Dora Bailey is obviously a caricature of Louella Parsons; […]
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