Oh, how I love a Hitchcock movie! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bad one, apart from ‘The Man Who Knew Too Much‘. And that’s just a strange story line told using unlikeable characters, as you might remember me complaining a while back. Actually that’s probably a good definition of a bad movie isn’t(…)
What on earth were the WAMPAS Baby Stars you might well ask? Well, if you lived in 1920s and 30s America you would have been very much aware of this campaign. It was run by the United States Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers (WAMPAS) who picked a lucky group of young actresses every year(…)
Greer Garson (or Eileen Evelyn Greer Garson Fogelson as she was christened) was a huge 1940s movie star who has rather faded from public memory. She was one of MGM’s biggest stars and also one of the biggest box-office draws during the mid 1940s. She also received an impressive 7 Oscar nominations! She was born(…)
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,(…)
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(…)
I took a break from Hitchcock movies and delved into the world of 1940s Film Noir this week. ‘Caught‘ is ‘The Story of a Desperate Girl’ who gets herself trapped in a marriage to a controlling sadistic husband but then ultimately falls for James Mason (who wouldn’t?). It’s the first movie James Mason made in(…)
There were some great movie actors around in the 1940s, it truly was the golden age of cinema! Here are my top 10 leading men of that decade – have I missed anyone crucial out? 1. Humphrey Bogart Bogart was ranked the greatest male movie star in history by the American Film Institute, and he(…)
If you follow my blog you might have noticed that I’m going through a bit of a Hitchcock phase at the moment. I very much enjoyed The 39 Steps last week (much to my surprise and delight) but sadly I can’t say the same about this movie. Up until this point I’ve pretty much enjoyed(…)
I think I’d be right in saying that The 39 Steps is the earliest Hitchcock movie I’ve seen. Released in 1935 the movie starred the dashing Robert Donat (below) and the feisty but beautiful Madeleine Carroll, both of whom were chosen because they were already well known in Hollywood and would help boost sales in(…)
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(…)
Jean Patchett was one of the best known models of the 1950s. Today, February 16th, was her birthday and she would have been 88 so here’s a look back at the girl that fashion photographer Irving Penn described as A young American goddess in Paris couture. Patchett started modelling in April 1948 and scored her(…)
Grace Kelly truly was one of the most stylish women of all time. She exuded such easy style and sophistication, which is perhaps why Hitchcock adored her so much. He wanted her to continue being his iconic ice-cool blonde, but she had a prince to marry (as you do) and retired from acting in 1956.(…)
Hitchcock’s preference for sophisticated icy blondes is well-known. He claimed that audiences would be suspicious of brunettes, but I think this quote shows a truer insight into his cinematic genius: Blondes are blondes make the best victims. They’re like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints My favourite Hitchcock blonde has always been Grace(…)
Gregory Peck embracing Ann Todd in publicity still for Alfred Hitchcock’s film “The Paradine Case”, 1947. You can see why he made the ladies swoon can’t you? Source and copyright: This work is in the public domain in that it was published in the United States between 1923 and 1977 and without a copyright notice.