Cinema

Louise Brooks: From Dancer to Showgirl to Scandalous Flapper Icon

Louise Brooks: From Dancer to Showgirl to Scandalous Flapper Icon

Louise Brooks with her sharply bobbed hair is one of the most iconic figures of 1920s cinema and epitomized the rebellious modern woman of the time. She started off her career as a chorus girl and dancer in 1922, and by 1925 was a dancer for Ziegfeld’s Follies. It was as a Follies girl that(…)

Silent Movie Icons: Norma Talmadge

Silent Movie Icons: Norma Talmadge

One of three sisters, Norma Talmadge was one of the most popular actresses of silent movies in the 1920s. She had a difficult childhood; her father was an unemployed alcoholic who abandoned his family when they children were still young, leaving Norma’s mother to try and make ends meet.  At 14 Norma began modelling, and(…)

Scream Queens: Elsa Lanchester

Scream Queens: Elsa Lanchester

You might not recognize the name Elsa Lanchester, but you’ll definitely recognize her in her most famous role: as the Bride of Frankenstein.  Actually that film title always annoyed me, since Frankenstein was the scientist, not the monster, but anyhoo… Here she is looking spectacular: Born in 1902 Lanchester worked in theater and film for(…)

Katharine Hepburn’s Costumes in The Philadelphia Story

Katharine Hepburn’s Costumes in The Philadelphia Story

Katharine Hepburn had a good start in Hollywood, moving from the stage to the big screen and getting rave reviews. However during the mid to late 1930s she had a series of flops which lost the studios a lot of money and led to her being dubbed as ‘box office poison’, which was effectively a(…)

Ingrid Bergman’s Costume Fitting for Joan Of Arc

Ingrid Bergman’s Costume Fitting for Joan Of Arc

Ingrid Bergman starred in both the stage play (Joan of Lorraine and the Hollywood movie adaptation of Joan of Arc, so I’m not sure which this is the costume for.  The photographs were captioned as being for Joan of Lorraine, but if you look at the suit of armor she wore in the movie (the(…)

Far From The Madding Crowd: The Costumes

Far From The Madding Crowd: The Costumes

If I had to make a movie of a Thomas Hardy novel,I would definitely choose ‘Far From the Madding Crowd‘, especially since I had to study ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles‘ at school and it was incredibly depressing.  Luckily for me, I don’t have to make the movie myself to enjoy a good slice of on-screen(…)

What 1930 Looked Like in the Movies

What 1930 Looked Like in the Movies

1930 bridged the gap between the decadent 1920s and the introduction and enforcement of the Hayes Motion Picture Code which cracked down on immorality, nudity and general fun at the movies*. Here are some of the films released in this year. They range from the sublime to the ridiculous and from racy to glamorous not(…)

Angela Lansbury before Murder She Wrote

Angela Lansbury before Murder She Wrote

We all know and love Angela Lansbury from Murder She Wrote, plus she was the voice of Mrs. Potts in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. However she didn’t start out in life as a middle-aged crime-solving widow (or a singing teapot). Back in the 40s and 50s she looked rather different and played a huge(…)

Pre-Code Hollywood Movies Which Shocked the Censors

Pre-Code Hollywood Movies Which Shocked the Censors

The Hays Code was introduced in 1930 to regulate the morals of the US motion picture industry and influenced film production up until 1968. Before it was introduced censors were independent in each State, meaning that different films could be banned, cut or shown to differing degrees in different parts of the country. This caused(…)

10 Classic Hollywood Stars Before They Were Famous

10 Classic Hollywood Stars Before They Were Famous

We all know that the Studio System of 30s, 40s and 50s Hollywood remade and remoulded their actors and actresses, but what did they look like before they were styled by the star factory? Here are some of my favourite Classic Hollywood actresses before they were famous. Who do you think had the biggest transformation?(…)

Great Feuds from Classic Hollywood #1: Bette Davis vs Joan Crawford

Great Feuds from Classic Hollywood #1: Bette Davis vs Joan Crawford

“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(…)

What the Creature From the Black Lagoon Really Looked Like!

What the Creature From the Black Lagoon Really Looked Like!

The Creature from the Black Lagoon is one of those iconic monsters that everyone recognizes, like King Kong, Dracula and Frankensteins’s Monster. Unsurprisingly he was much better looking without his head on! Ricou Browning played the Gill-man in all 3 Creature movies, but only in the underwater scenes – different actors played the creature on(…)

10 Things You Didn’t Know About Mary Pickford

10 Things You Didn’t Know About Mary Pickford

Even if you’re not a silent movie buff you’ve probably heard of ‘America’s Sweetheart‘ Mary Pickford. Here are some interesting facts you might not have known about the famous Blondilocks: She co-founded the movie studio United Artists with Charlie Chaplin, husband Douglas Fairbanks Sr and D.W. Griffith in response to the restrictive and controlling ‘Star(…)

Movie Tuesday: Dial M For Murder (1954)

Movie Tuesday: Dial M For Murder (1954)

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(…)

Movie Sunday: A Trip To The Moon (1902)

Movie Sunday: A Trip To The Moon (1902)

Well, this is definitely the oldest movie I’ve watched, and it’s truly fabulous! It’s quite incredible that it was made way back in 1902. Only fifteen minutes long, Le Voyage dans la Lune was the first sci-fi film ever made and tackles the idea of a trip to the moon they way they thought it(…)

Still Making Money from Marilyn

Still Making Money from Marilyn

I’ve just read that Max Factor have announced Marilyn Monroe as their new ‘global glamour ambassador’. They’ve done this based on the fact that Marilyn was a client of Max Factor back when they ran a beauty salon in the 1940s and they claim to have been responsible for her trademark starlet makeover. I’m not(…)

Hollywood Heart Throbs of the Silent Era: John Gilbert

Hollywood Heart Throbs of the Silent Era: John Gilbert

John Gilbert ‘The Great Lover’ was one of the few stars of the silent movie era who could rival Rudolph Valentino, and you can see why, handsome devil wasn’t he? Like Valentino his life ended tragically young (although not quite as young as Valentino) aged just 38. During this time he made in excess of(…)

Movie Friday: The Thing from Another World (1951)

Movie Friday: The Thing from Another World (1951)

Oh, I love a good comfy horror / sci-fi movie. Nothing gruesome or truly frightening, just something really enjoyable and this movie definitely fits that bill.  It’s nothing like the 1982 Kurt Russell remake of The Thing, which was bleak and gruesome, it’s a delight from start to finish. From it’s swashbuckling army hero (Kenneth(…)