“The best time I ever had with Joan was when I pushed her down some stairs in Whatever happened to Baby Jane.” So said Bette Davis about her rival and sparring partner Joan Crawford. The mutual dislike between Davis and Crawford is the stuff of Hollywood legend, but how did it come about? Ironically two(…)
Old age ain’t no place for sissies: Bette Davis And on that note, I’ll just say Happy Sunday everyone! The original photo (above) is from a Jim Beam advert from 1974.
Jean Harlow, the original blonde bombshell, started the trend for bleaching hair in the 1930s. Before this it was very much just prostitutes woman of ill-repute who coloured their hair, it certainly wasn’t something done by ‘nice girls’ When Harlow exploded onto the silver screen in the early 1930s her white blonde hair caused a(…)
Some time ago the AFI (that’s the American Film Institute) released a list of the top 50 greatest screen legends from the Classic Hollywood era: 25 male and 25 female stars. I’m not sure exactly what their criteria were for reaching the top spot, but they classified a screen legend as an actor or actress:(…)
Bette Davis’ Hollywood career spanned an incredible six decades, but it was her style in the 1930s and 40s combined with her uncompromising movie roles which cemented her as a movie icon. She was no classic Hollywood beauty, and flatly refused to comply with the ideals of the studios, once claiming: ‘Hollywood wanted me to(…)
Quite a lot if we believe the Hollywood Studios of the 30s and 40s! There were only a handful of Classic Hollywood stars who kept their own names, including Jane Russell, Ava Gardner, Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn and Grace Kelly. The majority of actors and actresses had their identities completely re-written. How many of these 20(…)
The height of Hollywood stars is something which has always fascinated me. I’m not sure why, but actresses always seem taller than they actually are (perhaps because they’re projected onto an enormous screen!). I had no idea that I was the same height as Marilyn Monroe, or that Veronica Lake was a diminutive 4’11”. Veronica(…)