Movies

Mothra, Rodan, and Godzilla appear in the Japanese horror film Ghidrah, the Three-Headed Monster (1965), directed by Inoshiro Honda.

Rene Clair directed the first version of And Then There Were None (1945), starring Barry Fitzgerald and Walter Huston. The Agatha Christie story was remade three times, each time as Ten Little Indians: in 1966 (directed by George Pollock), in 1975 (Peter Collinson), and in 1989 (Alan Birkinshaw).

Three of Bob Hope’s movies have the word favorite in the title: My Favorite Blonde (1942), My Favorite Brunette (1947), and My Favorite Spy (1951).

Dr. Pasteur in The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936)—Paul Muni Dr. Ehrlich in Dr. Ehrlich’ s Magic Bullet (1940)—Edward G. Robinson Dr. Newman, U.S. Navy, in Captain Newman (1963)—Gregory Peck Dr. Strangelove in Dr. Strangelove (1963)—Peter Sellers

Divine’s real name was Harris Glenn Milstead. He was born in Baltimore in 1946 and was a high school friend of John Waters, with whom he made several films. Divine died in 1989. His last film with Waters was Hairspray (1988), in which Divine played a housewife and mother.

Robert Duvall’s film debut was Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962).

The French Golgotha (1937), directed by Julien Duvivier was the first sound film about the life of Christ. It starred Robert Le Vigan as Jesus, and Jean Gabin as Pontius Pilate.

Alfred Hitchcock wrote the foreword to the first edition of Hall-well’s Filmgoer’s Companion (1965). Leslie Halliwell, pioneer film encyclopedist, died in January, 1989.

Cecil B. DeMille’s last picture was The Ten Commandments (1956).

Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks were the artists who founded United Artists. They founded this producing, releasing, and distributing company in 1919.

Alan Hale played Robin Hood’s sidekick Little John, alongside Errol Flynn as Robin. Nicol Williamson played the part in Robin and Marian (1976), alongside Sean Connery. Nick Brimble played Robin Hood’s sidekick Little John, alongside Kevin Costner in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991).

Married in 1987 and separated in 1990, the two actors Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis met on the set of Transylvania 6-5000 (1985). Their other collaborations were The Fly (1986) and Earth Girls Are Easy (1989).

Fraser Clarke Heston went on to write the screenplay for The Mountain Men (1980), a film starring his father. He also wrote and produced Mother Lode (1982), again starring his father. Charlton Heston also codirected the latter film, with Joe Canutt, son of Western actor Yakima Canutt.

As noted at the end of the film, John Milner (Paul LeMat) was killed by a drunken driver in December, 1964; Terry Fields (Charlie Martin Smith) was reported missing in action near An Loc in December, 1965; Steve Bolander (Ronny Howard) is an insurance agent in Modesto, California; Curt Henderson (Richard Dreyfuss) is a writer … Read more

No, the Atlanta Civil War scenes were not shot on location. Atlanta was built on the MGM studio back lot. Many of the burning buildings were recycled from movies like King Kong (1933), Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936), and The Garden of Allah (1936).

The Big Clock (1948) was the basis for No Way Out (1987), set in the world of magazine publishing instead of at the Pentagon. Ray Milland played the role later taken by Kevin Costner and Charles Laughton played the Gene Hackman role.

Beach Party (1963) was Annette Funicello’s and Frankie Avalon’s first movie together. Their arch-nemesis in that film was Eric Von Zipper, the would-be tough biker, played by Harvey Lembeck.

Elvis died in one, his first, Love Me Tender (1956). It was also the only one in which Elvis did not receive top billing. Its original title was The Reno Brothers, but the title was changed when a song from the movie, “Love Me Tender,” became a hit.

The whaling movie Down to the Sea in Ships (1922) was shot on location in the traditional home of New England whalers, New Bedford, Massachusetts.

John Wayne got the nickname “Duke” because he had a dog named “Duke” as a child. To distinguish them, the dog was known as “Big Duke” and Wayne as “Little Duke.”

Harry Lillis Crosby get the nickname “Bing” from a comic strip he liked called “The Bingville Bugle.”

The cinematographer on Jonathan Demme’s movies was usually Tak Fujimoto. He was the cinematographer on the following Demme films: Caged Heat (1974) Crazy Mama (1975) Last Embrace (1979) Melvin and Howard (1980) Swing Shift (1984) Something Wild (1986) Married to the Mob (1988) The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Pinky Rose (Sissy Spacek) and Milly Lammoreaux (Shelley Duvall) are fellow Texans who work in an old-age home in Robert Altman’s Three Women (1977). Willie Hart (Janice Rule) is a painter whose husband owns a motorcycle bar. The three interact.

Walter Huston played the part of Captain Jacobi, the ship’s officer who delivers the falcon, in The Maltese Falcon (1941). His role was unbilled.

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo depicts the first American air raid on Japan, staged in 1942 by Lt. Colonel Jimmy Doolittle (played by Spencer Tracy). The movie was based on the book of the same name by Ted Lawrence, a pilot on the raid (Van Johnson). The air strike was important in lifting American morale early … Read more

Pia Zadora was born in Forest Hills, New York, in 1954. It is her real name.

Dorothy Malone plays the bookstore owner with whom Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) has a passing encounter in The Big Sleep (1946).

Daphne du Maurier wrote the short story that inspired Hitch-cock’s The Birds.

Bad Sister (1931) was Bette Davis’s film debut.

The last picture show in The Last Picture Show (1971) was Red River (1948). The name of the theater was The Royal.

Tony Curtis said, “With all the unrest in the world, I don’t think anybody should have a yacht that sleeps more than twelve” to hoped-for conquest Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot (1959).

Walt Disney’s animated cartoons first appeared in Kansas City in 1919. Disney started working for the Kansas City Film Ad Company, which produced short cartoon commercials to be shown in local theaters. By 1922, Disney had developed his own series of theatrical cartoons, “Laugh-O-Grams,” which were parodies of fairy tales.

Will Rogers said, “Pictures are the only business where you can sit out front and applaud yourself”.

No. “Letters of transit,” authorizing people to travel without question, were a fiction used in the movie Casablanca (1942).

The Harder They Fall (1956), directed by Mark Robson, was Humphrey Bogart’s last film. Humphrey Bogart died of cancer in 1957.

Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson played Marianne and Johan in the Ingmar Bergman film Scenes from a Marriage (1973).

The canine silent movie star Rin Tin Tin is buried in Cimetiere du Chiens in Paris, France. The black onyx tombstone is inscribed “The Greatest Cinema Star”.

Fahrenheit 451 (1967) is Francois Truffaut’s only film in English.

A Place in the Sun is based on the book An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser.

The Scarlett Letters were letters written to David O. Selznick by hopeful unknown actresses desiring to play Scarlett O’Hara.

SPECTRE in the James Bond movies stand for “Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion.”

It was the 1927 movie It, directed by Clarence Badger and Josef von Sternberg. Clara Bow’s character was named Betty Lou.

The first all-talking movie was not The Jazz Singer (1927), which only featured sound in parts, but The Lights of New York (1928), a Warner Brothers gangster movie. The New York Times called it “seven reels of speech.”

Greta Garbo was Elena the temptress in The Temptress (1926).

Dirty Harry said he was called dirty because he does “every dirty job that comes along.” Clint Eastwood played Harry Callahan.

Henry V (1945) was Laurence Olivier’s directorial debut.

Yakima Canutt’s oldest son Joe was the stuntman who somersaults out of Ben-Hur’s chariot during the chariot race in Ben-Hur (1959). The younger Canutt was doubling for Charlton Heston and was accidentally tossed out of the chariot when the vehicle hit some wreckage on the racecourse. The shot was so effective that it was left … Read more

Jack Nicholson ordered a plain omelet, a cup of coffee, and a chicken salad sandwich on wheat toast, hold the butter, lettuce, mayonnaise, and chicken (i.e., just bring the toast), at the diner in Five Easy Pieces (1970).

Gregory Peck was exempt from service during World War II because of a spinal injury. This helped to bring him into high demand as a leading man for films such as Days of Glory (1944), The Keys of the Kingdom (1945), and Spellbound (1945).

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) was not the man given credit for it, Senator Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart). It was Tom Doniphon (John Wayne), a relic of an older, less civilized West.

Miss Jean Brodie’s (Maggie Smith’s) pupils were the “crime de la creme” in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969).

Longfellow Deeds (Gary Cooper) in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) was portrayed in newspapers as “Cinderella Man”. The newspaper reporter writing about (and falling in love with) him was Babe Bennett (Jean Arthur).

James Dean was born on February 8, 1931, and died in a car crash on September 30, 1955.

The director’s mother, Susanna Pasolini, played Mary in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1966).

Ted Turner owns three film libraries: those of RKO, MGM/UA, and Warner Brothers.

George Burns and Gracie Allen were married in 1926. Their marriage lasted until Gracie’s death in 1965.

Born in Vienna in 1890, the director Fritz Lang came to Hollywood in 1934. Fritz Lang’s first American film was Fury (1936), for MGM. His last was Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956), for RKO. After that, the director quit making films in the United States, fed up with the trials and tribulations of the studio … Read more

A Boy’s Life was Steven Spielberg’s working title for E.T. (1982).

The brain set in Fantastic Voyage (1966) was one hundred by two hundred feet and thirty-five feet high. The web-like nerve cells were made of spun fiberglass.

The 1950 remake of To Have and Have Not (1944) was The Breaking Point (1950). More faithful to the Ernest Hemingway novel To Have and Have Not, it starred John Garfield as Harry Morgan and Patricia Neal as Leona Charles.

The warring tribes in the original One Million B.C. were the Rock People, represented by Tumak (Victor Mature), and the Shell People, represented by Loana (Carole Landis). The roles were taken by John Richardson and Raquel Welch in the remake, One Million Years B.C. (1967).

The RKO movie studio come to an end in 1958, when it was sold to Desilu.

Ron Howard’s directorial debut was Grand Theft Auto (1977). The movie featured Marion Ross, Howard’s TV mom on “Happy Days” (ABC, 1974-84).

Yes, the characters in A Man and a Woman (1966) did have names. The man’s name was Jean-Louis Duroc (Jean-Louis Trintignant). The woman’s name was Anne Gauthier (Anouk Aimee).

“Think God.” was the slogan was used to promote God in the movie Oh, God, Book II.

According to Mr. Memory, “The Thirty-Nine Steps is an organization of spies, collecting information on behalf of the foreign office of…” At this point, he was shot.

Lillian Gish was older than Dorothy Gish, by almost two years. Lillian was born in 1896; Dorothy was born in 1898 and died in 1968.

Rope (1948) was Alfred Hitchcock’s first film in color.

The mummy’s name was Im-Ho-Tep, aka Ardeth Bey, played by Boris Karloff. In the four sequels that followed, The Mummy’s Hand (1940), The Mummy’s Tomb (1942), The Mummy’s Ghost (1944), and The Mummy’s Curse (1944), the mummy’s name was Kharis. Western star Tom Tyler played Kharis in the first of the sequels; Lon Chaney, Jr., … Read more

The Life of an American Fireman (1903), by Edwin S. Porter (1869-1941), was the first movie to rely heavily on film editing. Porter was the first person to piece together strips of film containing different scenes in order to tell a story. Before Porter, most movies were shot in one take from one camera position.

She was born Audrey Hepburn-Ruston near Brussels, Belgium, on May 4, 1929. Her father was an English banker and her mother a Dutch baroness.

The dinner at eight was held at the Park Avenue home of Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Jordan. Lord and Lady Ferncliffe were supposed to be the guests of honor. They never showed.

Buddy Ebsen was originally supposed to play the Tin Woodsman in The Wizard of Oz (1939). He left the picture when he had an allergic reaction to the makeup. He was replaced by Jack Haley.

The Japanese spy films were Kagi No Kag (1964), or Key of Keys, directed by Senkichi Taniguchi.

Bob Hope and Una Merkel starred in the film Some Like It Hot.

Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall appeared in five movies. To Have and Have Not (1944); The Big Sleep (1946); Dark Passage (1947); Key Largo (1948); and Two Guys from Milwaukee (1946), in which they played themselves in an unbilled appearance.

Anne Archer’s mother was Marjorie Lord, who played Kathy, the wife of Danny Williams (Danny Thomas) on “The Danny Thomas Show” (ABC, CBS, 1953-64).

William Finley played Winslow, the Phantom, in this rock-musical version of Phantom of the Opera. He was stalking evil record producer Swan (Paul Williams).

Clint Eastwood was elected mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, in 1986.

The name of the fictitious soap opera in Soap-dish was “The Sun Also Sets.”

Brad Majors and Janet Weiss were the names of the young couple played by Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975).

Director John Ford’s (1895-1973) real name was Sean Aloysius O’Feeney.

Clint Eastwood said, “Go ahead. Make my day” in the movie Sudden Impact (1983).

Two of the four of Bing Crosby’s sons have killed themselves. Lindsay Crosby shot himself in 1989; Dennis Crosby shot himself in 1991.

Yul Brynner was born on July 12, 1915, on Sakhalin, an island east of Siberia and north of Japan. In the late 1960s Brynner moved to Switzerland and became a Swiss citizen. His ancestry was part Gypsy. He died in 1985.

Yes, the Japanese made a Frankenstein movie called Frankenstein Conquers the World (1966).

Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) in Annie Hall (1977), had been killing spiders since he was thirty.

Charlie Chaplin shared a cooked boot in The Gold Rush (1925) with Mack Swain, playing Big Jim McKay.

Four of William Goldman’s novels have been adapted for the screen: Marathon Man (1976), Magic (1978), Heat (1987), and The Princess Bride (1987).

The X in Francis X. Bushman’s name stood for Xavier.