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Is is quite lovely, beautiful, and talented, although mainly in musical fare.

Still alive and kicking, Mitzi Gaynor was one of the darlings of American cinema in the 1950s. Her parents separate while she was still very young, and after her father remarried, she became the stepsister to future anti-war activist Donald W. Duncan. When she was eleven, she moved with her...

You're right. But it was based on a 1932 novel, which had been originally filmed in 1933 as a dramedy instead of a musical. I must've confused the novel with Broadway, or I might have just --- wrongfully --- assumed that STATE FAIR originated as a stage musical.

Jeanne Crain had a show business career than spanned over forty years. She was a contract star for 20th Century-Fox in the forties and fifties, and was also well-renowned for her ice skating abilities. Crain was around seventeen when she was crowned Miss Pan-Pacific at the Pan-Pacific...

I'm almost positive it was SHOW BOAT from 1951. Deanna Durbin was offered a number of pictures after retiring in 1948, but she turned them all down flat. She was done with show business. Interestingly, Dorothy Dandridge, who was mentioned earlier in this discussion, heavily lobbied to play...

There was another movie that I've heard her tied to, but the name is escaping me.

With so much hoopla made over Shirley Temple and Judy Garland, oftentimes Deanna Durbin gets lost in the shuffle. She and Garland made their debut together in EVERY SUNDAY (1936), a musical short primarily viewed as an "audition" for both young hopefuls for Universal Pictures. Durbin eventually...

Look at how beautiful they are. Wonderfully attractive, and forever frozen in that era of glamorous, unattainable stars that are forever gone.

And just a tidbit, Marilyn Monroe was the key to the door that opened me up to a world of classic film, television, and stars. She continues to hold a place in my heart, and GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES, SOME LIKE IT HOT, and THE MISFITS remain some of my favorite classic films.

Well, she was not the celebrity Elizabeth Taylor was, either. "Liz and Dick", as Taylor and her fling and eventual husband Richard Burton was called, were probably this biggest stars of the 1960s and not solely for their films. They were major celebrities and their films were such hits that the...

I have seen pieces of THE EMPEROR'S CANDLESTICKS on TCM, but I don't think I've ever seen a movies of hers in its entirety. I know other classic movie buffs that do not find her appealing, and it's honestly pushed me away from diving headfirst into her work. Strangely, though, I'd love to own...

Two-time Oscar winner Luise Rainer has all but faded into oblivion. She had been recruited by MGM in 1935 from her native Germany as a possible successor to Greta Garbo. "They felt I had similar possibilities [to Garbo]," said Rainer later in life, and she was given the star build up. Right away...

Yes, I recall those ladies being in the top ten, but that was after Sandra Dee and Doris Day's heyday at the box office. Dee and Day had both hit the skids career-wise by the late sixties. Dee was making films like DOCTOR, YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING (1967) and Day movies like CAPRICE (1967), both...

Jean Peters was well-known throughout the 1950s for refusing to be turned into a sex symbol. She preferred playing series, less glamorous roles than many of her contemporaries. She was a contract player for 20th Century-Fox from 1947 to 1955. Peters left college in the late 1940s to pursue her...

She was more popular than many "adult" leading ladies of her time. The only lady more popular than Sandra Dee in the early 1960s was Doris Day, who was number one at the box office in 1960 and again from 1962 to 1964. There were a few years, I believe, where Sandra Dee and Doris Day were the...

Yesterday at work an older co-worker of mine mentioned the movie A SUMMER PLACE after hearing a song on our work radio that reminded her of that film. She asked me had I ever heard of it because she knows I like watching old movies. Naturally, I had seen A SUMMER PLACE before on Turner Classic...

She really ended up being like a girl-next-door-type version of Marilyn. I really enjoy THE LIEUTENANT WORE SKIRTS, which just happens to be one of my favorite comedies from the mid-1950s. Sheree's beautiful in it, and it proves how well she could've done had she gotten better directors...

There were many ladies in the 1950s that were presented in the image of Marilyn Monroe, one of cinema's most recognizable figures. Sheree North was one of the first ones. After Marilyn starting refusing roles she found inferior by 20th Century-Fox, the studio hired Sheree as a cheaper and less...

Dorothy Dandridge was one of the first mainstream black cinematic stars. She was beautiful, multi-talented, and horrendously underappreciated in today's film climate. She started as a singer in a trio called the Dandridge Sisters, a group consisting of Dorothy, her sister Vivian, and their...

The CAPTURED ON FILM documentary is like over $100 on Amazon. Might have to do some digging to find a cheaper copy. Only the trailer is available on YouTube. There was a 1985 TV movie called THE HEARST AND DAVIES AFFAIR about the love affair between William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies...

Hearst found her most attractive in period costumes, therefore he ushered her into a lot of period pictures. Davies was apparently better suited to comedy, however.

Since we've already touched on her, I figured that we might as well just go ahead and talk about her. Marion Davies was a popular film star of the 1920s and 1930s. She got her start as a musical comedy star on Broadway before embarking on a romance with newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst...

My memory is all so fuzzy. I need to study up some more.

Okay, I knew I had some of the information wrong in my memory. I've only heard just a little about Mabel Normand and her scandals. So, Marion Davies was the one that got tangled up with William Randolph Hearst? They were allegedly the inspiration behind CITIZEN KANE.

Anna May Wong was the first truly great Chinese-American star of American cinema. She splashed onto the map with THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1924), before smoothly making a transition to sound. One of her most famous pictures was SHANGHAI EXPRESS (1932), the stylish Josef von Sternberg film that she...

Wasn't she also the woman involved in some scandal with Fatty Arbuckle and William Randolph Hearst? I don't know any specifics, but it's one of those old-fashioned Hollywood scandals that the press ate up.

I am an avid fan of classic Hollywood. It seems the more devout I become as a movie buff, the older the movies get. And that's because I'm always finding older and older movies that I love more than anything coming out today. I'm particularly fond of those early 1930s movie stars, those men and...