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In this week’s Ann Blyth Quiz, we mentioned that she made her mark at Universal studios in tandem with Donald O’Connor, who became a longtime personal friend. There they are below as costars of 1957’s The Buster Keaton Story, which suited O’Connor’s athletic dancing capabilities to a T. Born into vaudeville — actually his parents […]
How much did you know about this star of the 40s and 50s? Did you realize how good a singer Ann Blyth proved to be? At the height of her fame in the early Fifties, she balanced her appearances in all sorts of pictures — she played a Russian countess opposite Gregory Peck in 1952’s […]
She hit the screen BIG as the bitchy Veda, daughter of Joan Crawford in 1945’s Mildred Pierce, then went on to play sweet young things and perfect young ladies. And, she sang pretty well, too. Despite that sugary veneer — Ann Blyth gained a well-earned reputation as a genuinely nice person, rare for a movie […]
In Classic Hollywood, when a star’s career was on the wane, he or she often found themselves at Republic Studios, one of the colony’s lesser-ranked production factories. But, interestingly enough, often that mid-level studio would produce an “A” movie and surround that star with a great supporting cast. Case in point is director Nicholas Ray’s […]
Who indeed? Every once in awhile we like to resurrect lesser known actors from Hollywood’s Golden Era. One actor, who had the good looks to be a leading man, but who never made it (perhaps he should have changed that name) — was William Ching. Certainly, classic Hollywood was no stranger to name changes — […]
So, how much did you know about her career and personal life? Above is one of the few photos of Jane Wyman projecting the sex appeal she so conspicuously lacks in most of the roles she plays at her peak as one of Hollywood’s most lauded female stars of the Forties and Fifties. Viewing this […]
One of our very favorite actresses, Rhonda Fleming, died last Wednesday in Santa Monica, Cal. She was 97. We’ve delayed the answers to our Jane Wyman Quiz one day in Rhonda’s honor. This gorgeous redhead, who graced a broad range of pictures in the late Forties and Fifties, was often presented as an unnervingly beautiful, […]
She had a decades long career and was an Oscar winner. She’ll be a footnote in history books as the first wife of the first divorced president of the United States. Yes, many people would say Jane Wyman is famous because she was Ronald Reagan’s first wife. Wyman would have said HE was famous for […]
She was between studios and with her third husband. Here’s Donald Gordon, who whenever he could joined his famous Forties Hollywood friends in an informal snapshot. This one (above) concludes a week of photos from our DG Collection. Can you guess with whom he is posing here? Yes, they were married at the time. Joan Crawford, […]
Donald’s Gordon’s collection — which we have been sampling this week –contains photos of some European stars who came to Hollywood during World War II. Can you name the one pictured above? (Note the informal quality of the shot, unusual for a depiction of a glossy foreign film star. That was typical of DG’s stills, […]