Category: Interesting Stories

It’s not much of a holiday movie, but Warner Bros. released the classic horror The Exorcist on December 26, 1973. Based on a novel by author William Peter Blatty (which is said to be based on the real-life exorcism of a young boy in Missouri in 1949), the movie told the story of a young […]

Based on Mario Puzo’s 1969 novel, Francis Ford Coppola’s three Godfather films were released in 1972, 1974, and 1990. Together they won numerous Oscars, netted more than half a billion dollars at the box office, and have since inspired countless imitations and parodies. Here are some facts and stories from the set of one of […]

Martial arts star Bruce Lee was born in San Francisco in 1940, but spent much of his childhood in Hong Kong and made his movie debut there while still a baby—alongside his father, Lee Hoi-chuen, who was a famous opera star in China. Bruce Lee secured his first lead role while still a child too, […]

Having won an Academy Award for his performance in Billy Wilder’s The Fortune Cookie, by the late 1960s comedy actor Walter Matthau was riding high. He had just signed on to a big new picture—the hotly anticipated film adaptation of Broadway musical Hello, Dolly! —when unexpectedly, he came up against a problem. Or rather, he […]

Although Hollywood gossip likes to focus more on the catty rivalries between its leading ladies than it does its leading men, there have been more than a few times in the history of the movies when male co-stars have clashed and fallen out. And few Hollywood A-list men clashed more than Steve McQueen and James […]

1965’s The Sound of Music opens with a long sweeping shot, flying over endless green Alpine meadows and mountaintops, with the sun shining and the lakes in the distance glistening. As the music swells to a crescendo, the camera finally fixed on our lead character, Maria von Trapp, who effortlessly segues into the enormous opening […]

When she won the Best Actress Oscar for her title role in Mary Poppins in 1964, Julie Andrews could scarcely believe it. In a 2019 interview, she explained that her shock win—for what was her debut movie role—hit her “like a bulldozer,” and sent her “into therapy and analysis” for some time afterward. But Andrews […]

Few Hollywood feuds compare to that between renowned Oscar-winners Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. But as legendary as their rivalry has become, incredibly the pair only made one movie together: 1962’s Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Here are some stories from on and off set of one of cinema’s cattiest movies. BROAD CASTING When it […]

As well as sweeping the boards at the Oscars, 1962’s Lawrence of Arabia also made an overnight star of its leading actor, Peter O’Toole. O’Toole is one of cinema’s biggest stars, nominated for a record eight Academy Awards (though sadly, never winning one) in a career spanning five decades. But O’Toole was also a notorious […]

After nabbing seven Oscars for his Second World War epic The Bridge on the River Kwai in 1957, director David Lean was keen to embark on another large-scale movie. In 1960, he abandoned plans to direct a comprehensive biography of Mahatma Gandhi (a movie that would eventually be made by Richard Attenborough) and instead began […]