Back to Golden Days

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...

In honour of Tony Curtis's 91th birthday, which is today, this week on «Film Friday» I bring you the film that gave him the only Academy Award nomination of his career. Directed by Stanley Kramer, The Defiant Ones (1958) begins when a truck transporting chain gang convicts crashes on a rainswept Southern road and two prisoners escape: Noah Cullen (Sidney Poitier), a black man who reacts violently to racial insults; and John «Joker» Jackson (Tony Curtis), Southern white bigot. Despite their mutual loathing, they are forced to cooperate, as they are chained together. Meanwhile, Sheriff Max Muller (Theodore Bikel), a humane lawman, is pressured by the governor to organize a posse to capture the escapees. He also must contend with an agressive state police captain, Frank Gibbons (Charles McGraw), and a deputy, Solly (King Donovan), who values his bloodhounds more than the lives of the convicts.   Arriving at a small company town, Joker and Cullen are captured by its residents, who f...