Movies

Paul Muni played idealistic Brooklyn doctor Sam Abel-man in the film. The Last Angry Man which was based on Gerald Green’s novel.

The first name of Dr. Frankenstein in the 1931 Universal version of Frankenstein was Henry, played by Colin Clive. In the book by Mary Shelley the character’s name was Victor. Victor’s son’s name in Son of Frankenstein (1931) was Wolf, as in Baron Wolf von Frankenstein, played by Basil Rathbone.

Marion Davies, an actress for whom Hearst founded a movie production company, Cosmopolitan Pictures (which was absorbed by MGM in 1925), was William Randolph Hearst’s extramarital love interest and the model for Susan Alexander in Citizen Kane (1941).

Moe and Nora di Sesso trained the rats used in the movie Willard (1971). They were assisted by their pet cat.

Robert Redford and director Sydney Pollack made seven movies together: This Property Is Condemned (1966); Jeremiah Johnson (1972); The Way We Were (1973); Three Days of the Condor (1975); The Electric Horseman (1979); Out of Africa (1987); and Havana (1990).

It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958) inspired the movie Alien (1979). Both movies were about a spaceship with an alien stowaway.

The Dakota, at Central Park West and 72 Street in New York City, was used as the location for Rosemary’s Baby (1968).

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) had its premiere on October 16, 1939, on “Mr. Smith Day” in Washington, D.C., at Constitution Hall. The film was at first poorly received by members of the Senate, who felt that the movie cast a negative light on democracy and on Washington, D.C.

Country singer Randy Travis is a ring member in Young Guns (1988).

Hoagy Carmichael won in 1951 for “In the Cool Cool Cool of the Evening,” which appeared in Here Comes the Groom, starring Bing Crosby.

Andy Robinson has continued to appear in action/mystery films, including Charley Varrick (1973), The Drowning Pool (1975), and Cobra (1986).

Rudolph Valentino’s real name was Rodolfo Alfonzo Raffaele Pierre Philibert Guglielmi d’Antonguolla, born on May 6, 1895, in Castellaneta, Italy.

An artist named Otto Messmer who worked for silent cartoon animator Pat Sullivan invented Felix the Cat. Messmer developed Felix for Paramount’s Screen Magazine in 1919. Paramount producer John King gave Felix his name. The first Felix cartoon in 1919 was called Feline Follies; the second was called Musical Mews.

Tom Selleck was first approached to play Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), then known for his commercials for Chaz Cologne. He turned the offer down for the lead in a TV series, “Magnum, PI” (CBS, 1980-88).

“Beautiful Dreamer,” sung by Terry Moore to the giant gorilla Joe Young, tamed the savage beast in Mighty Joe Young (1949). The song reappears in Batman (1989) as the theme song for the Joker.

Special-effects man Ken Strickfaden designed the electrical machinery used to create life in Frankenstein (1931).

Champion, the Wonder Horse was the name of Gene Autry’s horse.

Gregg Toland was the cinematographer on Citizen Kane (1941), who served in the same role on such classics as The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946).

Richard Burton, playing British malcontent Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger (1959).

Sissy Spacek was voice of the brain in The Man With Two Brains.

Gary Cooper said, “From what I hear about Communism, I don’t like it because it isn’t on the level”.

Between June 1928 and December 1929, the major studios spent about thirty-seven million dollars converting their filming structures to sound stages.

Isabella Rossellini was married to director Martin Scorsese from 1979 to 1982. Afterward, she became the companion of director David Lynch.

Steven Spielberg’s Always (1989) was a remake to A Guy Named Joe (1943). Richard Dreyfuss took the Spencer Tracy part and Holly Hunter took the Irene Dunne part, in this fantasy about a pilot who dies and helps another pilot romance his girlfriend.

Herman Raucher wrote the book Summer of ’42, which was also a movie.

Boris Karloff was working on Graft (1931), in which Karloff played a murderer, when director James Whale asked him to do a screen test for Frankenstein (1931). Whale spotted Karloff in the Universal commissary.

According to Jerry/Daphne (Jack Lemmon), it was Marilyn Monroe as Sugar who moved like “Jell-O on springs, in Some Like It Hot (1959).

Red Skelton said, “Give the people what they want, they’ll all show up” at Harry Cohn, head of Columbia’s funeral.

John Wayne said, “Don’t apologize. It’s a sign of weakness” in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), in the character of Captain Nathan Brittles. He was upbraiding one of his soldiers.

Ralph Bellamy played the “other man” twice, in The Awful Truth (1937), where Irene Dunne was the woman; and in His Girl Friday (1940), where Rosalind Russell was the woman.

The actors wearing the ape costumes in Planet of the Apes (1967) breathed through a specially designed passage in the ape mask’s upper lip. The mask’s nostrils, raised higher than those of a human nose, were non-operating. The ape makeup was designed by John Chambers.

His former partner Harry Regan’s (Howard Duff) death leads Ira Wells (Art Carney) to team with Margo Sperling (Lily Tomlin) in The Late Show (1977). Regan had been hired by Sperling to locate her missing cat.

Mike Altman, son of the film’s director, Robert Altman, wrote the lyrics of “Suicide Is Painless,” theme song of M*A*S*H (1970). Johnny Mandel composed the music.

Robert DeNiro had a bit part as a gypsy cabdriver in Jennifer On My Mind (1971) before Taxi Driver.

Catherine Deneuve starred as Se’verine Se’rizy, prostitute by day, newlywed by night, in the film Belle de Jour (1967) by Luis Bufiuel.

Don Corleone’s phone number in The Godfather (1972) was Long Beach 4-5620. Don’t bother calling it; a recording will tell you it’s not in service.

The queen of diamonds is the card that triggers the brainwashed killer’s hypnotic obedience in The Manchurian Candidate (1962). The killer’s name was Raymond Shaw, played by Laurence Harvey.

Mitzi played Flipper. Susie played the dolphin in the sequel, Flipper’s New Adventure (1964), and in the TV series “Flipper” (NBC, 1964-68).

The stagecoach in the 1939 movie Stagecoach was going from Tonto, New Mexico, to Lordsburg, Arizona.

Universal Studios mogul Carl Laemmle was the manager of the Oshkosh, Wisconsin, branch of Continental Clothing, a clothing retailer. In 1906, after losing his job in an argument with his boss, he opened a movie theater in Chicago. He soon became a film distributor and, in 1912, founded Universal. According to one account, he got … Read more

Margo Channing was the name of Bette Davis’s character in All About Eve (1950). Anne Baxter played her young fan and rival Eve Harrington.

There were two film versions of Holiday. The 1930 film featured Ann Harding as Linda Se-ton and Robert Ames as John Case, the roles taken by Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant in the 1938 version. Edward Everett Horton played the same role in both films, Nick Potter.

Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather, were the two major all-black musicals released in 1943.

A secretary named Margaret Herrick, who later became executive director of the Academy gave the Academy Award statuette the name “Oscar”. According to legend, she looked at the statuette and said, “Why, he reminds me of my Uncle Oscar.” The uncle’s full name was Oscar Pierce.

Dore Schary replaced Louis B. Mayer as studio head of MGM in 1951. Schary himself was fired in 1956.

John Barrymore played Ahab in the original film version of Moby Dick. No one played Ishmael. The character was cut out of the screenplay, which differed heavily from Herman Melville’s novel.

Joel McCrea regularly listed acting as his hobby. He listed his occupation as “rancher.”

Caged Heat (1974), a low-budget epic released by New World, was director Jonathan Demme’s women-in-prison movie. Demme also wrote the screenplay.

Chuck Courtney was Billy the Kid in Billy the Kid vs Dracula (1966). John Carradine was Dracula. William Beaudine directed.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association sponsors the Golden Globe awards. Founded in 1940, it is an association of foreign journalists covering the Los Angeles entertainment scene. The awards were first presented in 1944, with the first Best Motion Picture award going to The Song of Bernadette (1943).

Slumber Party Massacre (1982) was the first slasher film to be made by women. It was written by feminist author Rita Mae Brown, produced by Amy Jones and Aaron Lipstadt, and directed by Amy Jones.

Hugs and Kisses (1966, Sweden) was the first movie to show full frontal female nudity.

Brigitte Bardot played the woman in Roger Vadim’s first version of And God Created Woman (1957). Rebecca De Mornay played the woman in Vadim’s 1987 And God Created Woman?

Misty Rowe played Marilyn Monroe in the screen biography Goodbye, Norma Jean (1975). The title refers to Monroe’s real name, Norma Jean Baker.

Meaning literally the “playing of a scene,” a mise-en-scene refers in film theory to the content of an individual frame. Orson Welles, F. W. Murnau, and Max Ophuls are all considered masters of the mise-en-scene, masters of composing a shot.

Richard Gere hired Julia Roberts for three thousand dollars a week, cash in Pretty Woman.

Jon Peters produced A Star Is Born (1976) and coproduced (with Streisand) The Main Event (1979). Peters went on to team with Peter Guber to produce Flashdance (1983), Rain Man (1988), and Batman (1989).

Tillie’ s Punctured Romance (1914), directed by Mack Sennett, was the first feature-length comedy.

The Disney movie Son of Flubber (1963) was a sequel to The Absent-Minded Professor (1961). Both films starred Fred MacMurray as Professor Ned Brainard. Flubber, or “flying rubber,” was an invention of his.

The Heiress is based on the book Washington Square, by Henry James.

The exterior set of Fort Knox in the climax of Goldfinger (1964), built at Pinewood Studios in England, was accurate down to the driveway. The interior, however, was completely invented, since the filmmakers were not allowed to explore inside. Production designer Ken Adam dreamed up a set full of tubular chrome and gold piled forty … Read more

Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz met on the set of Too Many Girls (1940), produced by RKO and directed by George Abbott.

Tim McIntire gave his voice to the telepathic dog Blood in the post-apocalyptic science fiction movie A Boy and His Dog. Blood himself was played by Tiger of TV’s “The Brady Bunch” (ABC, 1969-74).

Peter Kurten played the model for the child murderer in Fritz Lang’s M (1931). He was a middle-aged German factory worker who committed nine serial murders in Dusseldorf from 1929 to 1930. He was guillotined in 1931.

Macauley Connor worked for Spy magazine in The Philadelphia Story.

Charlton Heston starred in only one horror film, The Awakening (1980). He played archaeologist Matthew Corbeck in this latter-day mummy film.

The O in David O. Selznick (1902-1965) stood for Oliver.

Fritz Lang directed three Westerns: The Return of Jesse James (1940), Western Union (1941), and Rancho Notorious (1952).

Lee Harcourt Montgomery played Danny Garrison, a boy with a heart condition and a friend of Ben in the movie Ben (1972).

Fandango (1985), Costner’s first starring role, and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) were films Kevin Costner made with director Kevin Reynolds. Reynolds also shot second-unit footage on Dances With Wolves (1990), directed by Costner.

In the prologue that frames the story, Douglas Walton plays Shelley and Gavin Gordon plays Lord Byron in The Bride of Frankenstein. Elsa Lanchester plays Mary Shelley (author of the novel Frankenstein), as well as the monster’s bride.

Piper Laurie’s last film before her role as Carrie’s insane mother in Carrie (1976) was The Hustler (1961). Before that she had mostly played ingenues in films such as Son of Ali Baba (1952). She retired from movies in 1962 to marry film critic Joseph Morgenstern.

Gene Autry’s “Ten Commandments of a Cowboy” were: 1. A cowboy never takes unfair advantage, even of an enemy. 2. A cowboy never betrays a trust. 3. A cowboy always tells the truth. 4. A cowboy is kind to small children, to old folks, and to animals. 5. A cowboy is free from racial and … Read more

It was a stand-in who stabbed Janet Leigh in Psycho (1960), a young woman wearing a wig, not Anthony Perkins.

In Grand Hotel (1932), to John Barrymore, Greta Garbo says, “I want to be alone”.

The miracle in Miracle of Morgan’s Creek was the birth of sextuplets to Trudy Kockenlocker (Betty Hutton). She was a woman who got married and pregnant without remembering it after drinking too much at a World War II servicemen’s dance.

Rick (Humphrey Bogart) in Casablanca (1942) said, “The problems of the world are not my department. I’m a saloon keeper”.

Twentieth Century Fox was formed in 1935. The Fox Film Corporation which was founded in 1915 by William Fox (1879-1952) merged with Twentieth Century Productions, established in 1933 by Joseph M. Schenk (1878-1961) and Darryl F. Zanuck (19021979).

New York was the city in the movie On the Waterfront (1954).

Howie Mandel did the voice for the gremlin Gizmo in Gremlins (1984).

John Huston and Truman Capote wrote the screenplay for Beat the Devil (1954). Huston directed.

“Oaters” were Westerns, particularly low-budget Westerns.

Silent film star Francis X. Bushman (1883-1966) was known as “The Handsomest Man in the World”.

Freedonia and Sylvania were the mythical countries in Duck Soup. The mythical country in Million Dollar Legs ( 1932 ) was Klopstokia. The mythical country in The Mouse That Roared ( 1959 ) was The Duchy of Grand Fenwick.

In 1970, Lillian Gish received a special Oscar for her cumulative work, then spanning nearly sixty years. She began making films in 1912; in 1987, she appeared in The Whales of August.

Monty Norman and John Barry have both been credited with writing the James Bond theme song.

Ray Bolger, her costar (as the Scarecrow) in The Wizard of Oz (1939).

No one won the Cannes Film Festival prize for Best Film in 1968. Political demonstrations led by directors like Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and Claude Lelouch forced the festival to close in mid-proceedings that year.

Sean Young was originally cast as Vicki Vale in Batman (1989). She fractured her shoulder in a riding accident two weeks before the start of principal filming. Kim Basinger took over.