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(…)
The first movie I watched starring Ann Miller was On The Town, and I was totally wowed by her dancing. Her legs were the longest on screen (or at least they seemed to me to be) and her tap speed was truly astonishing! Here are some facts you might not know about the lovely Ann(…)
Brooklyn-born Tierney was a leading actress in 1940s Hollywood. She started out her adult life as a socialite, before becoming bored with the social scene and pursuing a career as a stage actress (her family thought being a ‘proper’ actress was more respectable than being in the movies). Her Broadway career started in a pretty(…)
Judy Garland is one of those movie stars that everyone is aware of, even if it’s just becaue they watch The Wizard of Oz every Christmas (surely everyone has seen that movie, haven’t they?). Everyone remembers the happy, talented girl on screen, but not so many are aware of the tragedy of her life which was filled(…)
Alice Brady was a silent movie actress who won an Oscar for best supporting actress in 1937, and successfully made the transition into talkies. She started her career on the stage and made her silent movie debut in 1914 in As Ye Sow. Over the next 10 years she appeared in over 50 movies as(…)
Of all the top models of the 1950s Dovima is perhaps the most well-known. Her fabulously unique model name came from a combination of all of her names: Dorothy Virginia Margaret Juba. She was scouted by the editor of Vogue on a street in New York. One of her most famous fashion photographs is the(…)
You probably know Barbara Bel Geddes best as Miss Ellie (JR’s long-suffering mother) in Dallas, but she actually had a movie career which started in the late 1940s. She started out on Broadway and was the original Maggie ‘The Cat’ in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, a role which was most famously played by(…)
Adrian Adolph Greenberg, better known as just ‘Adrian’ was one of the most amazing costume designers ever seen in Hollywood. He was MGM’s head costume designer from 1928 and 1941 and designed the costumes for over 250 movies during the 1930s and 40s. Remember Dorothy’s iconic glittering ruby slippers in the Wizard of Oz? Well(…)
Lupe Vélez was one of the very first Mexican actresses to have a successful Hollywood career in the 1920s and 30s. She was extremely popular but died tragically young at the height of her career aged just 36. Above: Photo of Jimmy Durante, Lupe Vélez and the Mills Brothers from the 1934 film Strictly Dynamite.(…)
Actress and singer Nichelle Nichols is best known as the fabulous Lieutenant Uhura in the 1960s Star Trek series. Her role was groundbreaking at the time as she was one of the first black women featured in a prominent role in a major TV series. When she considered leaving the series to pursue a career(…)
Taylor was married 8 times. Her shortest marriage was with her first husband Conrad Nicky Hilton which lasted just 9 months, and her longest marriage was with Richard Burton which lasted 10 years (plus an extra year when they re-married in 1975). Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton starred together in 11 movies.
Italian fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli was one of the most influential designers of the early 20th Century. Along with her great rival Coco Chanel, she transformed womens fashions during the 1920s and 30s and is famous for her ‘fashion-as-art’ dresses. She collaborated with artists and surrealists including Jean Cocteau and Salvador Dali to create amazing(…)
Pola Negri was a Polish silent movie star of the 1920s. She was famous for both her roles as a femme fatale and her tragic roles and, ever the drama queen, she never hesitated to use her personal life to boost her career having high-profile relationships with some of the biggest movie stars of the(…)
Hitchcock’s fair-haired heroines are perhaps those that spring to mind when you think of an ice-cold blonde. They was certainly the type of woman Hitch fixated on: beautiful women who were cold and distant on the exterior but full of passion underneath. However the ice-cold blonde has been around for a lot longer than that,(…)
Ida Lupino was a British actress and director who appeared in over 50 movies as well as becoming a pioniering and prolific director. She started her movie career working out of Teddington Studios in England in the early 1930s and moved to Hollywood in 1933. She continued to work in Hollywood throughout the 30s and(…)
Jayne Mansfield was an iconic bombshell of the 50s and 60s and was known as the ‘Working Man’s Monroe‘. She was a master of self-publicity and pioneered the use of the wardrobe malfunction to raise her profile. “A forty-one inch bust and a lot of perseverance will get you more than a cup of coffee-a(…)
Veronica Lake was one of the most popular movie stars in the early 1940s. She made her name paired with Alan Ladd and was known for playing sexy femme fatale roles. The image of her looking out from beneath her trademark hairstyle – the peek-a-boo fringe (said to be the inspiration for Jessica Rabbit’s hair)(…)
Nancy Kwan was one of the first EuroAsian-American actresses to play major roles in Hollywood movies. Born in Hong Kong she became a movie actress and sex symbol in the 1960s and was nicknamed the ‘Chinese Bardot’. Born in 1939 to a Cantonese father and British mother and became the first significant Asian actress in(…)