The advertising tag "four years in the making" is usually so much press-agent puffery. In the case of the 1926 silent version of Ben Hur, it was the unvarnished truth--and the filmmakers had the scars to prove it. The story behind the film is now part of Hollywood folklore: the cast and production crew changes (star George Walsh summarily dumped ...
When Paramount bought the rights to the delightful James M. Barrie story, every actress in Hollywood wanted the role of Peter Pan, made famous on the stage by Maude Adams. Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, and even Gloria Swanson thought they were perfect for the role, but Barrie's own choice was Betty Bronson, a virtual unknown. The story is familiar ...
Popular film lore has it that The Jazz Singer was the film that established the talkie as the pre-eminent film medium in 1927. But it was Al Jolson's follow-up film, The Singing Fool that actually introduced the sound film to the general film-going population of the United States and it was the popularity of The Singing Fool that paved the way for ...
The prolific Jack Natteford wrote this unusual Gene Autry Western -- or, to be accurate, "Eastern" -- which reportedly suffered cuts after censors found it too violent. Gene, as usual, plays Gene Autry, this time the son of a Georgian cattleman (Charles Middleton) waging a war against the areas "turpentiners," harvesters of pine tree sap. Disowned ...
Jack Benny wasn't even 39 yet when he starred in the maudlin backstage drama The Medicine Man. Benny plays Dr. John Harvey, the worldly and none-too-honest title character, who while passing through a small town falls in love with winsome Mamie Goltz (Betty Bronson), the victim of what one observer described as the most abusive father in movie ...
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