You are browsing archives for
Strange, isn’t it, how scenes from old films linger in our minds? Months ago, one of our readers. Faith Van Enk, wrote to us for help. “When I was a very young girl in the 1960’s I watched a murder mystery. In the show there was a child, a girl I think, who everyone thinks […]
The lazy, late afternoon dusk of an Indian summer day on a lonely stretch of Highway 466 begged the driver of that spiffy new Porsche Spider to lay it on, and the driver — James Dean — obliged. The destination was Paso Robles, a northern California town some 150 miles away, before dinnertime. Dean’s riding […]
We’ve written a lot about James Dean over the years, in part a reflection of the still continuing discussion among classic movie fans of just how good an actor he really was — or wasn’t. A big help in sorting this out is the publication of a superb new book, The Real James Dean: Intimate […]
We, like many before us, dismissed actor John Gilbert‘s fall from stardom to the fact that he had a high, squeaky voice. That, of course, is part of the Hollywood myth of the transition from silents to talkies. Many stars of the silents faded when sound came in. In some cases their voices did not […]
We may think that sexy pictures of stars only exist today, but even back in the 1930s there were publicity photos deemed too provocative. The photo of Joan Blondell (above) was banned, yes banned, when it first appeared 80 years ago. Sex sells. Did you like this? Share it:Tweet
Time to dip back into our trusty e-mailbag. As you should know by now, we love getting reader feedback — good, bad and indifferent. We welcome your views. It’s been more than four years since we published our speculative blog, WAS VAN JOHNSON GAY?, and we still get reader responses. This time it’s Josee, who […]
Well, you knew him from the monster movies but what about his other films? And did you realize that he was one of classic Hollywood’s most popular good guys offscreen — often described as “sweet” — but still in all given to tippling and roughouse practical jokes. Lon Chaney Jr. died of throat cancer and […]
You know him as a monster or a bad guy, but originally Creighton Tull Chaney, later known as Lon Chaney Jr., was a leading man. After all, take a close look at that handsome dude above (the young Jr.) early in his career. Being the son of a famous and successful silent movie actor — […]
Yes, that was the star of the Ziegfeld Follies and one of the biggest radio hits of all time, Baby Snooks, Fanny Brice, pictured yesterday. That great candid, taken by our pal Donald Gordon back in the early 1940s, shows Brice off screen. She only made a handful of films. None notable, but at least she […]
Here’s another star from the Golden Era of Hollywood. The shot is taken from The Donald Gordon Collection, named for our late pal who found himself under studio contract in the Forties, and photographed many of his pals. Our mystery subject may NOT a Big star in Films, but is nonetheless one of the biggest […]