MOVIE TRIVIA – PT26

June 29, 2018 Alan Royle 0

Someday I would like someone to explain to me how Annie Hall (1977) won four Academy Awards. This typical Woody Allen self-indulgent rubbish won the Best Picture Oscar, Best Director (Allen), Best Writing (Allen) and Best Actress (Diane Keaton)! Hollywood’s love affair with this guy seems boundless. He was even […]

Forties Movie Trivia – PT5.

February 25, 2018 Alan Royle 4

Richard Jaeckel was a terrific character actor who racked up a total of 190 screen credits in his 51-year career. In 1943 he was a 17 year-old messenger boy at 20th Century Fox when he was cast as a US Marine private in his first picture Guadalcanal Diary. If you […]

RANDOM SNAPSHOTS – PT5.

November 7, 2017 Alan Royle 4

BERGMAN, Ingrid  (1915-82)                                                             Joseph Mankiewicz had this to say about Ingrid Bergman. ‘Even when she learned about Spencer Tracy’s involvement with […]

SNAPSHOTS

August 21, 2017 Alan Royle 6

           PIPER LAURIE (1932 – )                with Ronald Reagan in Louisa (1950)   with Paul Newman in The Hustler My favourite Piper Laurie performance was in The Hustler (1961), where she played Paul Newman’s lame girlfriend Sarah Packard. In her highly readable […]

The many loves of Lana Turner.

August 1, 2017 Alan Royle 5

  LANA TURNER (1921-95)   1936:   Wayne Morris, who would become a fighter pilot hero in World War Two, was Lana’s first Hollywood crush.   1937:   Ronald Reagan was her first studio-arranged romance, although it is generally believed that their relationship did not go beyond a few horse-riding outings. However, […]

Did you know?

February 10, 2017 Alan Royle 3

  Bette Davis was born Ruth Elizabeth Davis in 1908. Fortunately, she did not hear her mother’s first words on her arrival: ‘Take it away! It’s horrible!’ she screamed. As a child little Ruth was a handful, cantankerous and precocious. She and her mentally unbalanced sister were raised by their […]

The loves in the life of Marilyn Monroe Pt.2

April 12, 2016 admin 0

  Marilyn met actor John Carroll and his wife Lucille Ryman in December 1947. Lucille was a talent scout for MGM. The three hit it off right away and their friendship resulted in Marilyn moving into their home for a while. Lucille even got her to sign a contract with […]

Actors in WW2 – The final word.

December 30, 2015 admin 3

  Brilliant actor Sir Alec Guinness, who will probably (and unforgiveably) be best remembered by the general public for his portrayal of Obi-Wan-Kenobi in the Star Wars series of films, saw a lot of action during World War Two. This gentlest of men joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve in […]

JOHN WAYNE – The man and the myth.

October 14, 2015 admin 8

  A lot has been written about John Wayne and his early days as an actor in ‘B’ westerns during the 1930s, although even he thought ‘B-Grade’ was rather over-generous description. ‘Hell, they were a lot farther down the alphabet than that’, he recalled. And they were, too. Rock bottom in […]

CLARK GABLE – Skeletons in the closet.

September 5, 2015 admin 14

  A lady named Franz Dorfler was responsible for getting Clark Gable his first acting job, but he soon ditched her for acting teacher Josephine Dillon. Jo was 41, plain and matronly, but she took the 23 year-old aspiring young actor to Hollywood, and in 1924 they married. It was […]