Errol Flynn Errol Flynn tried everything to get into uniform during World War Two, but he was simply not a well man. He had a heart condition, tuberculosis and malaria. He even suffered from a severe back problem that precluded him from carrying anything remotely heavy for any length of […]
Burt Reynolds & Sally Field in Smokey & the Bandit (1977) Burt Reynolds had been smitten with Sally Field for some time, ever since he saw her debut in Gidget on TV in 1965, and wanted her for the role of Carrie in Smokey and the Bandit (1977). She had […]
Ava Gardner in 55 Days at Peking (1963) Ava Gardner had a long-running nervous breakdown during the making of 55 Days at Peking (1963). She was drunk on several days, continually demanded rewrites, and was extremely difficult to deal with. Charlton Heston stated that her character, Baroness Natalie Ivanoff, was killed off […]
Lee Marvin (L), John Wayne (C) & James Stewart When we watch the John Ford 1962 western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, there is a certain irony in the casting. Jimmy Stewart was a genuine World War Two USAAF hero, yet he plays a bookish weakling opposed to […]
On-screen Henry Fonda came across as a man of integrity, common sense, gentleness and affability. Off-screen he was a private man, cold to his family, aloof, frequently angry […]
Director Charles Laughton thought Robert Mitchum was one of the finest actors in the world and he also respected him as a person. He wrote in Esquire about the American who starred in his masterpiece The Night of the Hunter in 1955: ‘All this tough talk is a blind, you […]
Joan Collins in The Opposite Sex (1956) The Opposite Sex (1956) was a musical re-make of the 1939 film The Women. It was also one of the early vehicles for the new British bombshell Joan Collins. New to the movies and to MGM, she recalled walking past the studio […]
Wendy Hiller and Leslie Howard in Pygmalion (1938) The scene in both Pygmalion (1938) and My Fair Lady (1964) where Eliza accidentally swallows a marble during her elocution lessons was never part of George Bernard Shaw’s original story. In the 1938 film Wendy Hiller suddenly exhibited a pained […]
HARRY JAMES (1916-83) Harry James was a very good trumpet-player and a successful bandleader. He was also a bona fide skirt-chaser all his life and wound up marrying America’s number one pin-up girl of the entire Second World War – Betty Grable. Harry carried around an ego the size of […]
RYAN, Robert (1909 – 73) I recently had the pleasure of watching a terrific western named The Proud Ones (1956). It has gone completely unheralded, yet it is clearly a couple of cuts above the average western fare. I watched it for one simple reason, because Robert Ryan was its […]
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