Category: Interesting Stories

Hollywood movies often bring together unlikely combinations of co-stars (often with equally mixed results). But few movie pairings have ever been as unlikely as 1957’s The Prince and the Showgirl. Telling the story of a Balkan prince regent who falls for an actress and dancer while on a visit to England, the movie paired British […]

It’s one of the funniest, fiercest, and most famous photographs in all Hollywood history: Two Hollywood sirens, Sophia Loren and Jayne Mansfield, sat at a table at a Paramount Pictures party in 1957—with Loren throwing the shadiest side-eye imaginable at the busty blonde sat beside her. (If you’ve never seen the picture before, type it […]

The 1950s were the heyday of the Rat Pack, the famous group of Hollywood entertainers whose members included the likes of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop, among countless others. The Rat Pack went on to become one of the era’s most bankable groups of stars and established a […]

After a career slump in the early 1950s, by 1955 Frank Sinatra was back on the top of his game. Plus, at the same time, a raft of new stars—all trained in the new school of Method Acting—were beginning to make their mark in Hollywood too, led by future two-time Oscar-winner Marlon Brando. The two […]

The 1950s were a true golden age for Alfred Hitchcock. He started the decade with Strangers on a Train and Dial M for Murder, and ended it with Vertigo, North by Northwest, and eventually Psycho. And right in the middle, in 1954, he made Rear Window—a classic, typically claustrophobic Hitchcock type thriller; about an incapacitated […]

1953’s racy historical romance From Here To Eternity was one of the decade’s biggest box office draws. Telling the stories of three soldiers based in Hawaii in the build-up to the Pearl Harbor attack, the movie opened to rave reviews and went on to win eight of the record 13 Academy Awards for which it […]

You might never have seen Marni Nixon on screen, but you’ll undoubtedly know her work even without realizing it. A trained operatic soprano, Nixon made her Hollywood debut in 1947—not on the silver screen, but at the Hollywood Bowl in a performance of the composer Carl Orff’s opera Carmina Burana. That extraordinary classical experience brought […]

1952’s Singin’ in the Rain established Debbie Reynolds as a Hollywood icon and gave us some of the most memorable song and dance routines in movie history. Although only a modest hit at the time, it went on to be nominated for two Oscars and remains one of Hollywood’s most popular and fondly remembered musicals. […]

One of the greatest power couples of the Hollywood Golden Age was Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. The pair met on the set of the 1944 romance To Have and Have Not. Bacall was just 19 at the time, and Bogart—26 years her senior—was currently married to his third wife. Nonetheless, the couple quickly became […]

Nominated for a record 14 Oscars, All About Eve was one of the most acclaimed movies of the 1950s. The movie tells the story of the uncomfortable relationship that develops between fading Hollywood star Margo Channing (played by Bette Davis) and ambitious young fan Eve Harrington (played by Anne Baxter), who slowly maneuvers her way […]