For me Cary Grant will always be the ultimate leading man. Sophisticated, debonaire and witty (not to mention a bit of a goof-ball at times) he was a Hollywood icon millions of women fell in love with. He acted alongside the greatest leading ladies from 3 decades of Hollywood, from Greta Garbo to Mae West,(…)
“Graham Chapman, probably best remembered as ‘the dead one from Monty Python’, writes and stars in the animated movie of his own life story, A LIAR’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. Although Chapman selfishly dropped dead in 1989, he had taken the trouble to record himself reading his book, A Liar’s Autobiography — and those recordings have now ingeniously(…)
A movie called The Gay Falcon today would be a very different movie from this! Far from being what you might expect, this is the first in a series of detective movies starring the debonair and rather rakish investigator Gay Lawrence “The Falcon” played by George Sanders*. *George Sanders voiced the deep enthralling tiger Shere Khan(…)
Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly: Mae West
Marion Davies is as well known for being a famous man’s mistress as she is for being a movie star. She already had a successful movie career when she first met newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst and became his lover. The relationship didn’t do her career any harm at all. He both financed her movies(…)
It was a total coincidence that I watched Grand Prix on the same weekend we heard about James Garner’s death. It is a movie I’ve meant to watch for a long time. I spent this weekend pretty much immersed in motorsport, with my son karting at Buckmore Park all day on Saturday plus it being(…)
Some of the biggest movie parts in history were first offered to other actors, including the part of Indiana Jones. Can you imagine anyone else playing that part? Take a look at the actors who turned these parts down below. Do you think the movies would have been as successful if the directors had secured(…)
Chaplin, along with his mother and siblings, were sent to the dreaded Victorian workhouse when he was aged just 7. After the breakdown of his parents marriage, his mother struggled to keep the family from destitution but without any help from his father she was unable to keep them out of the workhouse. Parents were(…)
Continuing on the theme from yesterday with Hollywood stars before they were famous, here’s a very young and rather risqué photo of Joan Crawford back in her flapper days. Totally different to her later on-screen image isn’t it! Image source and copyright: Some rights reserved
We all know what Mae West looked like (above). Her sexy on-screen image is probably one of the most iconic of all time. So much so that she had life preservers named after her during WW2 and Salvador Dali created his iconic lips sofa because of his fascination with her. But what did she look(…)
Marie Doro was an American silent movie actress of the early 1920s. Isn’t she stunning? She started out as a chorus girl and actress at which time she inspired a young Charlie Chaplin to fall madly in love with her. She moved into silent movies in 1915 but sadly 13 out of the 18 movies(…)
There are 4 major versions of Cleopatra that I know of: the silent movie version with the exotic vamp Theda Bara in the title role, the art deco masterpiece starring Claudette Colbert, the Taylor-Burton 1960s version and this: Caesar and Cleopatra. This is a very different version of the Cleopatra story to the others which(…)
If you’ve watched Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (and I’m pretty sure you will have done) you’ll remember those twin girls. Hello Danny. Come and play with us. Come and play with us, Danny. Forever… and ever… and ever. The photo above is from an exhibit in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. I think they’ve(…)
You may not have heard of Vera Kholodnaya, but she was Russia’s first major silent movie star. The majority of her movies were destroyed by the Soviet regime and she died under suspicious circumstances aged just 25 but she managed to in a lot of living in her short life! Born in 1893 in Poltava,(…)
Swedish-born Greta was christened Greta Lovisa Gustafsson. Garbo’s first job was as a soap-lather girl in a barbershop. She also worked as an errand girl in a department store, in the millinery department selling hats and as a model before her acting career took off. After being spotted by MGM she moved to America where(…)
After last week’s disappointment watching Citizen Kane I was delighted to discover a real gem this week. Don’t be put off by the grim movie poster (right), this isn’t a harrowing war movie it’s a delightful James-Bond-style wartime spy thriller with the delectable Christopher Plummer as debonair British double agent Eddie Chapman. I knew nothing(…)
Mans Desire: A story of the clash of elemental passions in the depths of the forest primeval. Replete with exceptional snow and storm scenes. I just loved this movie poster from 1919 – the movie sounds cracking doesn’t it? I’ll have to try to track down a copy! Image source and copyright: This media file(…)
Am I the first person to ask what all the fuss is about Citizen Kane? It has been heralded as one of the greatest movies of the 1940s. I only watched it for the first time this week and I have to say I don’t really get it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a perfectly(…)