Movies

The song “White Christmas” first appeared in Holiday Inn (1942), in which it is sung by Bing Crosby.

The last movie Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin made together was Hollywood or Bust (1956). It ended a successful string of seventeen releases, beginning in 1949 with My Friend Irma.

Dr. Strangelove was based on a novel, Red Alert, by Peter George.

The last American movie without a soundtrack released for general distribution was The Poor Millionaire (1930), directed by George Melford and starring Richard Talmadge. A few later films, such as City Lights (1931), featured synchronized music and sound effects but no spoken dialogue.

The name of the spaceship in Silent Running (1971) was The Valley Forge. It got its name from the location used for filming some of its interiors, a decommissioned aircraft carrier called the U.S.S. Valley Forge.

The sun sets in the east in the closing moments of the movie The Green Berets (1968).

Katharine Hepburn was born on November 9, 1907, in Hartford, Connecticut. She came from a respected New England family. Her father was a surgeon and her mother a suffragette.

Humphrey Bogart—The Harder They Fall (1956) Gary Cooper—The Naked Edge (1961) Buster Keaton—A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1967) Errol Flynn—Cuban Rebel Girls (1969) Maurice Chevalier—Monkeys Go Home (1956)

Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 Century was released on July 25, 1953. Chuck Jones directed; Daffy Duck and Porky Pig starred.

The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend (1949), starring Betty Grable, was advertised with the line, “She’s got the biggest six-shooters in the West!”.

Dorothy Gish started making movies with An Unseen Enemy in 1912 and ended with The Cardinal in 1963.

Animal Crackers (1930) featured Groucho singing “Hooray for Captain Spaulding”. Groucho’s character was Captain Jeffrey Spaulding, the African explorer.

Each second of screen time, projected at the normal sound speed of 24 frames per second, takes up 1.5 feet of 35-millimeter film. A two-hour movie uses 10,800 feet of film, or a little over two miles.

The actor who played the Mayor of Munchkinland in The Wizard of Oz (1939), Billy Curtis, was four feet, two inches tall. Curtis (1909-1988) was also the star of the first all-little-people Western The Terror of Tiny Town (1938).

The tongue-twister that kicks off a song-and dance number in Singin’ in the Rain (1952) was “Moses supposes his toses are roses but Moses supposes erroneously.”

The University of Oregon, Eugene, was used as the location for the movie Animal House.

“Rosebud,” said by Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles), is the first spoken line in Citizen Kane (1941). “Throw that junk in,” said by Kane’s butler, Raymond (Paul Stewart), as the “Rosebud” sled is thrown into the flames, is the last spoken line in Citizen Kane (1941).

Ivan Triesault says to Claude Rains at the end of Notorious (1946), “Alex, will you come in please? I wish to talk to you”.

“Bruce” was the nickname the crew gave to the mechanical shark used in Jaws (1975). The shark was designed by Joe Alves.

Before he met Bette Joan Perske (aka Lauren Bacall), he had been married three times: first, to Helen Menken, then to Mary Philips, both actresses. These marriages had ended in divorce. When he met Bacall on the set of To Have and Have Not (1944), he was married to Mayo Methot.

The name of director Howard Hawks’s musical remake of his own film Ball of Fire (1941) was A Song Is Born (1948). Who played the leads in each film? Ball of Fire, Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck; A Song Is Born, Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo.

Katharine Hepburn’s film debut was A Bill of Divorcement (1932).

Yes, a Hollywood Canteen was more than the title of a 1944 movie featuring Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. During World War II, it was a gathering place in Hollywood for servicemen and women. It was founded by Bette Davis and John Garfield.

Zsa Zsa Gabor, Stan Laurel, Mickey Rooney, Elizabeth Taylor, and Lana Turner have each been married eight times.

Screenwriter Robert Bolt won two Oscars, for Dr. Zhivago (1965) and for A Man for All Seasons (1966).

The Variety headline “Stix Nix Hix Pix” refers to the idea that small-town residents do not like movies about small-town life.

Humphrey Bogart never said “Tennis, anyone” in any movie or play, though Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations has quoted him as saying it.

John Ford shot nine films in Monument Valley, on the Arizona-Utah line.

I Am Curious (Blue) (1970) was the sequel to the X-rated Swedish movie I Am Curious (Yellow) (1969).

James Stewart played Glenn Miller in The Glenn Miller Story (1954). Steve Allen played Benny Goodman in The Benny Goodman Story (1955).

Harold Lloyd, whose best-known movie is Safety Last (1923), was the “King of Daredevil Comedy”.

Yes, novelist Joseph Heller worked in Hollywood With David R. Schwartz, he cowrote the screenplay of Sex and the Single Girl (1964), the sex farce based on Helen Gurley Brown’s book of the same title. It starred Natalie Wood, Tony Curtis, Lauren Bacall, and Henry Fonda.

The real names of the following Western actors are: Slim Pickens—Louis Bert Lindley, Jr. Roy Rogers—Leonard Slye Gene Autry—Gene Autry Tom Mix—Thomas Mix Hoot Gibson—Edmund Richard Gibson Allan “Rocky” Lane—Harold Albershart Will Rogers—William Penn Adair Rogers

Groucho Marx was suggested to MGM to play Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind, but only in jest.

Humphrey Bogart, Aldo Ray, and Peter Ustinov were the escapees from Devil’s Island in We’re No Angels (1955). Robert DeNiro and Sean Penn were the angels in the 1989 film of the same title.

The line about “make him an offer he can’t refuse” appears three times in The Godfather (1972): • “My father made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.” Michael (Al Pacino) tells Kay (Diane Keaton) about Vito’s (Marlon Brando’s) threats against a bandleader. • “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.” Vito tells Johnny … Read more

Hollywood art director Cedric Gibbons designed the Academy Award statuette. It was executed by sculptors George Stanley and Alex Smith. The statuette, then and now, is 13.5 inches tall and depicts a naked man holding a sword and standing on a reel of film.

Kevin Costner’s debut in a major film was a one-word part in Frances (1982).

The Harvey Girls were waitresses in restaurants at railroad stations throughout the newly developing West. They were played by Judy Garland, Angela Lansbury, and Cyd Charisse.

At the height of their careers as newspaper columnists in Hollywood’s Golden Age, Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons had together about seventy-five million readers.

“Texaco Star Theater” (NBC, 1948-56) was the top-rated TV program in 1950.

Gone With the Wind is longer, by one minute. It runs 220 minutes. Heaven’s Gate was originally shown at 219 minutes, but was later cut to 149 minutes.

During the Depression, dish houses were movie houses that offered dishes as inducement for attending the shows.

The coffee slogan was “If you can’t sleep at night, it isn’t the coffee, it’s the bunk.”

George Lucas’s last film as a director was Star Wars (1977).

The first movie pie fight was in 1913, for a Keystone Studio comedy. Mabel Normand tossed a workman’s lemon meringue pie at Ben Turpin to get him to laugh. He did; Mack Sennett saw it and the pie scene became a favorite bit in Keystone Kop comedies, and in many other comedies as well.

In the opening lines of Sunset Boulevard (1950), William Holden says, “Yes, this is Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, California. It’s about five o’clock in the morning. That’s the homicide squad, complete with detectives and newspapermen. A murder has been reported from one of those great big houses in the ten-thousand block.”

Steve Reeves was born in Glasgow, Montana, in 1926. The bodybuilding champion became famous in Italian mythological epics beginning with Hercules (aka Le Fatiche di Ercole) in 1957.

Caesar Enrico Bandello, played by Edward G. Robinson in the 1930 film Little Caesar.

Five Dirty Harry movies have been made: Dirty Harry (1971), Magnum Force (1973), The Enforcer (1976), Sudden Impact (1983), and The Dead Pool (1988).

There were 1,400 actresses who interviewed for the part of Scarlett O’Hara in Scarlett Letters. Four hundred were asked to do readings.

The New York Daily Inquirer was Kane’s first newspaper in Citizen Kane.

Drago (Dolph Lundgren) was the name of the Russian boxer in Rocky IV.

His father punished Alfred Hitchcock for a since-forgotten offense by sending him to the police station with a note. The chief of police read it and locked Hitchcock up for five to ten minutes, saying, “This is what we do to naughty boys.” Hitchcock was four or five years old at the time.

The name of the ship in Mister Roberts was the USS Reluctant.

Joel McCrea and Frances Dee were married for fifty-seven years, from 1933 to his death in 1990. They appeared together in films like Wells Fargo (1937) and Four Faces West (1948).

Sabotage (1936, UK; released in the U.S. as A Woman Alone). It was based on Joseph Conrad’s novel The Secret Agent. It is not to be confused with Hitchcock’s The Secret Agent, released earlier that year and based on Somerset Maugham’s novel Ashenden.

The renegade androids in Blade Runner (1982) were called Replicants. “Blade runners” were the people assigned to hunt them down.

Alfred Hitchcock’s first film with sound was Blackmail (1929). He actually filmed two versions, sound and silent. In the sound version, the German star Ann Ondra’s voice was supplied by English actress Joan Barry.

Best Picture—Wings (1927) (Best “Production”) Best Actor—Emil Jannings in The Last Command (1927) and The Way of All Flesh (1927) Best Actress—Janet Gaynor in Seventh Heaven (1927), Street Angel (1927), and Sunrise (1927) Best Director—Frank Borzage for Seventh Heaven (1927)

Rebecca Welles’s father was Orson Welles; Princess Yasmin Aga Khan’s father was Prince Aly Khan.

Born Thelma McQueen in 1911, in Tampa, Florida, she got her nickname Butterfly McQueen when she danced as a young woman in the Butterfly Ballet in a theatrical production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She is best known for playing the weepy slave Prissy in Gone With the Wind (1939).

Jack Hawkins played Pharaoh in Land of the Pharaohs (1955).

Anthony Hopkins supplied the voice of Laurence Olivier in the restored bath scene in Spartacus (1960, restored 1991).

The 1929 Western In Old Arizona, for which Warner Baxter won the Best Actor Oscar, was billed as “the first 100% all-talking drama filmed outdoors”.

Movie acting in silent movies was well-paying, even then. For example, in 1913, when Mary Pickford was starting out, she made $500 per week. In 1916, after she had become “America’s Sweetheart,” she commanded $10,000 per week, plus bonuses.

In 1940, when producer Sam Katzman brought some of the kids to Monogram Pictures. The kids (who eventually included Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Bobby Jordan, Billy Halop, and others) had started out as the “Dead End Kids” in Dead End (1937, Samuel Goldwyn). They had gone on to work for Warner Brothers and Universal. Their … Read more

Raymond Massey played Abraham Lincoln twice. In Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940) and in How the West Was Won (1962).

Lisa Kirk sang for Rosalind Russell in Gypsy (1962).

Yes. There was no double when Paul Newman rode the bicycle himself in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969).

Edith Bunker died after “All in the Family” (CBS, 1971-79) had become “Archie Bunker’s Place” (CBS, 1979-83). The 1980-81 season opened with Archie grieving over her death, which was not portrayed directly.

Character actor Norman Lloyd, falls from the Statue of Liberty in the climax of Saboteur (1942).

Quaid’s (Arnold Schwarzenegger) wife Lori (Sharon Stone), upon killing her said, “Consider that a divorce” in Total Recall (1990).

Dorothy Parker collaborated on several screenplays, including A Star Is Born (1937), The Little Foxes (1941), Saboteur (1942), and The Fan (1949).

Composer, Rod McKuen sang the hit song “Jean” over the credits of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969). But the single that reached Billboard magazine’s “Hot 100 Chart” in 1969 was sung by folk singer Oliver.

Sylvester Stallone appeared in eight movies before Rocky (1976): A Party at Kitty and Stud’s (The Italian Stallion) (1970); Bananas (1971); The Lords of Flatbush (1973); Capone (1973); The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975); Death Race 2000 (1975); Farewell My Lovely (1975); Carquake (1975).

Charlton Heston’s number as a galley slave in Ben-Hur was forty-one.

Montgomery Clift was to play Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard, the young screenwriter eventually played by William Holden.

Robbo, the character “inspired” by Robin Hood, was played by Frank Sinatra. Among the hoods were Dean Martin as Little John and Sammy Davis, Jr., as Will.

Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner had the lead parts in The King and I (1956). Brynner won an Oscar.

Woody Allen claimed is the only cultural advantage offered by Los Angeles is that you can make a right turn on a red light.

Dracula (1930) was advertised as “the strangest love story of our time”.

Lately, about five years is how often a new Stanley Kubrick movie is released. In Kubrick’s early period, from Fear and Desire (1953) to Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), an average of 1.8 years passed between release of Kubrick’s films. From Dr. Strangelove to Full Metal … Read more

The name of Dr. No’s island in the movie was Crab Key.

Mildred Pierce was a waitress who bought an eatery that she built into a chain of restaurants.

Princess Leia Organa’s (Carrie Fisher’s) home planet in Star Wars (1977) was Alderaan.

Marlon Brando was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1924.

George Jessel turned down the lead for The Jazz Singer (1927).

David Wayne took the role of the child murderer in the 1951 remake of M (directed by Joseph Losey).

The last line of Little Caesar (1930) was “Mother of Mercy, is this the end of Rico?”