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Ginger Rogers at the beach with her pet dog (1936) Clara Bow in front of her Malibu beachfront home (c. 1926)   Bette Davis at a beach in Southern California (c. 1932)   Cary Grant and Randolph Scott at their home in Santa Monica (1935)   Natalie Wood and Hugh O'Brien at the Thalians Beach Ball in Malibu (July 15, 1956)   Ava Gardner at the beach (c. 1945)   Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman at the pool (c. 1940)   Joan Crawford and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. at Catalina Beach (May 20, 1929)  

The Golden Age of Hollywood was all about the glitz and glamour. Movie stars were fashion icons, western heroes, brooding outsiders, average Joes, and femme fatales. Some had careers that spanned decades, others were short-lived in their success, and most of them were no strangers to scandal. In such crazy times as these, there are bound to exist some wild facts about the stars and films that made Old Hollywood legendary. I've rounded up 10 of them. In all honesty, they're not really «wild» facts; they're more like random, useless tidbits. 1. When Clark Gable appeared without an undershirt in It Happened One Night (1934), women across the nation stopped buying the garment for their husbands. This caused a depression in undershirts in the United States in the 1930s. In 1957, Gable said, «I didn't know what I was doing to the undershirt people. That was just the way I lived. I hadn't worn an undershirt since I'd started school. They made me feel hemmed in and...

Ginger Rogers sunbathing in 1936 (Side note: I LOVE her shoes!) Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart with their son, Steven (early 1950s) Ava Gardner in Phillip Island, Australia during the making of On the Beach (1959) Rita Hayworth and Robert Mitchum in Trinidad and Tobago during the filming of Fire Down Below (1957) Natalie Wood and Steve Rowland at the Thalians Beach Ball in Malibu (July 1956) Henry Fonda at the Atlantic Beach Club (1936) Joan Crawford and Douglas Fairbanks at Catalina Beach in 1929 Diane Ellis and Carole Lombard at the beach in 1929 Rock Hudson at the pool (1950s) Audrey Hepburn in Monaco during the making of Monte Carlo Baby (1951) Jane Wyman and Ronald Reagan in their pool (1940) Randolph Scott and Cary Grant poolside at their Santa Monica beach house (1935) I hope you are having an amazing summer! 

Throughout this month, I've decided to do a series of Oscar-related articles in anticipation to tonight's 89th Academy Awards ceremony, which I am going to see live on television. Yesterday, I presented you my top 15 favourite Best Actor-winning performances , so today I thought I would do the same, but for Best Actress winners instead. As I have said before, please bear in mind that this is my own personal opinion, which of course is limited to the films I have seen so far.     15. Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce (1945)   Mildred Pierce (Joan Crawford): I was always in the kitchen. I felt as though I'd been born in a kitchen and lived there all my life, except for the few hours it took to get married.     14. Joan Fontaine in Suspicion (1941) Lina McLaidlaw Aysgarth (Joan Fontaine): I must go now or I'll be late to luncheon. Anyway, if my father saw me come in both late and beautiful, he might have a stroke.   13. Elizabeth Taylor in Who's Afraid of...

In honour of Jane Wyman's 100th birthday, which was yesterday, this week on «Film Friday» — the first of 2017 — I thought I would bring you the film that gave her the Academy Award for Best Actress, the only Oscar of her career. I saw this film for the first time yesterday and already it has become one of my all-time favorites. Directed by Jean Negulesco, Johnny Belinda (1948) tells the story of Belinda McDonald (Jane Wyman), a deaf-mute young woman who leads a sad, lonely existence in a fishing and farming community on a small island in Nova Scotia. She lives with her father, Black (Charles Bickford), and her aunt, Aggie (Agnes Moorehead), who call her «Dummy» and resent her because her mother died giving birth to her. Belinda is befriended by the new local physician, Dr. Robert Richardson (Lew Ayres), who recognizes her intelligence and teaches her sign language. When Black learns that he can communicate with his daughter, a bond develops between them.   LEFT: Agnes Moorehead, J...