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WALT’S WORLD (continued) by Graham Hill The Disney studio’s first career milestone was Mickey Mouse in Steamboat Willie in 1929. Not the first sound cartoon, but the first to have a post-synchronized soundtrack of dialogue, music and sound effects. Disney’s chief rivals at the time were the Fleischer brothers Max and Dave. Working out of […]
Walt’s World –Not Always Living The Dream! By Graham Hill We talk about some people and even ourselves as being in our own world – well if there was ever someone who spent his whole life in his own world – it’s Walt Disney. Unlike all the rest of us though, he would not just […]
There are many famous quotes from the classic play and subsequent film A Streetcar Named Desire. One is: I don’t want realism, I want magic. (Most people misremember it as: I don’t want reality, I want magic) Some people have said that this blog reflects the romantic and sentimental side of Old Hollywood. Yes, we’ll […]
All week so far we’ve paid homage to some of the Janes of the screen, and we end today with two of the sexiest ladies ever named Jane. Russell and Greer. They lit up the screen in the 1940s and 50s. A longstanding Hollywood myth is that RKO mogul and notorious Hollywood womanizer Howard Hughes […]
Today’s “plain Janes” were two of the screen’s most venerable supporting players, Jane Cowl and Jane Darwell (above). You’ve probably seen them so many times in various movies you’ve forgotten how good they were. For example, Darwell rolled up a whopping 210 movie and tv credits over a career that lasted more than half a […]
So did you know many of the films Jane Wyatt made before she met Robert Young? (Some of them were pretty big, and chocked with big stars.) One thing is certain. Wyatt had a long career, stretching from her first movie (1934’s One More River, a melodrama about the wife of an abusive husband who […]
Yes, Father Knows Best — the prototypical family sitcom, which scored on the three major American tv networks in the 1950’s — made her a household name and everybody’s favorite Mom. (She played costar Robert Young’s wife and mother of three children.) But Jane Wyatt was before her prime time tv success a movie star. Granted that […]
There’s no doubt the James Dean became and has remained a star even though he only made 3 major films in his brief lifetime. Can you name them? And on the distaff side we feel Mae West made a lasting impact with the fewest number of film releases, 12 features from 1932’s Night After […]
The back-to-back deaths of Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher last month has made us think of other Mother/Daughter stars from the Golden Era. Of course the best known duo are Judy and Liza. (Note: No last names needed) But there are others. Janet Leigh and Jamie Lee Curtis, Jayne Mansfield and Mariska Hargitay, Tippi Hedren and […]
Despite starring in two of the screen’s most successful adaptations of Broadway hits as well as other notable musicals — especially those with Doris Day (above) which have held up well — Gordon MacRae is almost forgotten today by classic movie fans. Why? That was the question posed in our blog last March 23 (STALWART STARS — […]