MOVIE TRIVIA – PT 29.

July 5, 2018 Alan Royle 0

                             Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction Why did John Travolta get nominated for Best Actor in Pulp Fiction (1994), while Samuel L Jackson had to settle for the lesser Supporting Actor nomination? And how did the mediocre […]

MOVIE TRIVIA – PT9.

May 14, 2018 Alan Royle 4

                       Ali MacGraw & Robert Evans Steve McQueen’s performance in Papillon (1973) was overlooked when Oscar nominations were announced in 1974. The general feeling was that his stealing Ali MacGraw from Robert Evans, a very powerful studio executive, may well […]

FIFTIES MOVIE TRIVIA – PT7.

April 2, 2018 Alan Royle 7

        Martin Milner The brilliant film noir Sweet Smell of Success (1957) was to have starred Robert Vaughn in his breakout role, but the draft intervened and he was sent off to do national service. Martin Milner inherited the role of Steve Dallas in this superb classic and […]

FIFTIES MOVIE TRIVIA – PT4.

March 19, 2018 Alan Royle 8

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 […]

FORTIES MOVIE TRIVIA – PT 6.

March 11, 2018 Alan Royle 10

                     George Raft George Raft turned down the leads in High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon (both in 1941), thereby giving Humphrey Bogart’s career a huge kick-start. Contrary to public opinion though, he never turned down Casablanca (1942). Why? Because he […]

B-List Beauties – PT7.

October 30, 2017 Alan Royle 0

       FAITH DOMERGUE (1924 – 99)                    Cult of the Cobra (1955)                                   Faith Domergue’s name has become synonymous with Howard Hughes and his ‘stable’ of […]

Darwin Porter – Believe him or not? PT 3

October 28, 2017 Alan Royle 4

The third and final segment regarding ‘Katharine the Great’, the controversial Darwin Porter biography of Katherine Hepburn. Eleanor Roosevelt *Eleanor Roosevelt had a heavy crush on Kate although it was not reciprocated. In the early 1940s the First Lady wrote her many passionate letters, but it was a one-way love […]

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 […]