Category: Interesting Stories

Three years after terrifying cinema audience with Psycho, in 1963 Alfred Hitchcock returned with The Birds and terrified audiences all over again. The movie (the third of Hitchcock’s films to be based on a tale by English author Daphne du Maurier) tells the story of a small town on the California coast whose population suddenly […]

Trained at the prestigious RADA acting school in London, Joan Collins made her Hollywood debut aged just 20, in 1955’s lavish drama The Virgin Queen. The movie—which gave the little-known star top billing alongside Bette Davis and Richard Todd—thrust Collins into the spotlight. After signing a seven-year contract with 20th Century Fox, she soon became […]

Starring Brigitte Bardot, The Truth—or “La Verité”, to use its original French title—was a cinematic tour de force. Telling the story of a small-town Frenchwoman who moves to Paris, becomes embroiled in a steamy love affair, and ends up accused of the murder of her lover, the movie was given an X rating when it […]

1960’s Psycho is arguably Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest film—and is certainly one of his scariest. Its place in cinema history did not come easy, however, as the movie’s production proved problematic from day one. Here are some stories from the set of one of cinema’s best-loved—and most feared—horrors. CASH UP-FRONT Not many people know that Psycho […]

Charles Laughton’s humiliating case of mistaken identity aside, here are some more tales from the set of 1960’s Spartacus. “I’M DIRECTING!” Spartacus was directed by the legendary Stanley Kubrick, but despite being one of his most famous and well-received movies, Kubrick almost missed out on the director’s chair. Long before shooting began, when the film […]

Born at the very end of the 19th century, the English actor Charles Laughton was one of the most acclaimed character actors of the Hollywood Golden Age, winning the 1934 Best Actor Oscar for his lead role in The Private Life of Henry VIII. Despite a commanding presence on screen, however, Laughton was privately an […]

1959’s Ben-Hur is an epic movie in almost every way. At the time of its production, it demanded the biggest budget in movie history (over $15 million), the biggest set (including a 300-acre replica of ancient Jerusalem), and more extras than ever before (over 10,000 were hired for the film). Here are some more extraordinary […]

It’s part of Hollywood folklore: a beautiful young woman discovered sipping a soft drink at a malt shop in Los Angeles, signed to a Hollywood movie contract just days later. That woman was Lana Turner, one of the biggest stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, whose string of movies with MGM studios in the 1940s and […]

There have been countless Hollywood feuds over the years, often caused by clashing egos or personalities being cast alongside one another in the same picture. One famous feud, however, is sadder—as it came at the end of a long and otherwise perfectly happy friendship. Debbie Reynolds and Elizabeth Taylor were both born in 1932, both […]

Forty years before James Cameron’s Titanic, the doomed liner’s tragic sinking was brought to life in 1958’s A Night to Remember. The production was chiefly a British affair, mostly filmed on location at Pinewood Studios outside London (now the famous home of the James Bond movies) and starred acclaimed English stage actor Kenneth More as […]