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Did you know that a dog almost won the first ever Academy Award for Best Actor? In September 1918, following a victory in the Battle of Saint-Mihiel, an American aerial gunner named Lee Duncan was sent to the small French village of Flirey to ascertain whether it would make a suitable flying field for his unit, the 135th Aero Squadron of the U.S. Army Air Service. There, he found a severely damaged kennel which had once supplied the Imperial German Army with German Shepherd dogs. The only dogs left alive in the kennel were a starving mother with a litter of five newborn puppies. Duncan rescued the dogs and brought them back to his unit. When the puppies were weaned, he gave the mother to an officer, three of the litter to other officers and kept two for himself. He named them Nénette and Rin Tin Tin, after the little woolen puppets that French children gave to Allied soldiers as lucky charms. LEFT: Lee Duncan and Rin Tin Tin after World War I. MIDDLE: Rin Tin Tin c. 1925. RIGHT: Lee D...

In the late 1950s, the Hollywood film industry decided that it was essential for Doris Day to change her screen image if she was to survive as a top star. By 1959, she had not only dropped from the top box-office personalities, but her last five films had not been as profitable as previous ones. She had been the girl-next-door for too many years and now, at 35 years old, she needed to catch up with her moviegoing public, who had grown more sophisticated with the passing of decades. When producer Ross Hunter sent Doris a script for a new project called Pillow Talk (1959), she was instantly attracted to its humour and cleverness. However, being genuinely unaware of her potential as a sex symbol, she had difficulty visualizing herself as a chic interior decorator, the lead female character in the film. Fortunately, Hunter's argument that she had «one of the wildest asses in Hollywood» convinced Doris that she was not just an old-fashioned girl and she gladly took the job. There w...

I came across this quiz on Buzzfeed the other day called « Which Classic Hollywood Actor Is Your Dream Guy » and I thought I'd share it with you. I got Cary Grant. I took three other similar quizzes afterwards and I got Cary Grant again in two of them. I guess Cary Grant really is my dream guy.     If you decide to take the quiz, let me know who you got. I love to know these kinds of things. 

This week on «Film Friday» I want to tell you about my favourite Alfred Hitchcock film. It is also the first Hitchcock film I ever saw, and the first time I saw James Stewart in colour. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Rear Window (1954) follows L.B. «Jeff» Jeffries (James Stewart), a professional photographer confined to his Greenwich Village apartment after breaking his leg while on a job assignment. During a summer heat wave, Jeff passes the time by watching his neighbours from his apartment rear window. He observes a skilled dancer he nicknames «Miss Torso» (Georgine Darcy), a single middle-aged woman he calls «Miss Lonelyhearts» (Judith Evelyn), a couple of lecherous newlyweds (Rand Harper and Havis Davenport), a lonely middle-aged songwriter (Ross Bagdasarian), a female sculptor with a hearing aid (Jesslyn Fax), and Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr), a travelling jewellery salesman with a bedridden wife.   James Stewart, Grace Kelly and Thelma Ritter in Rear Window . One evening, a...

Did you know that besides being an actress and one of the most beautiful women in the world, Hedy Lamarr was also an expert mathematician and inventor? Hedy Lamarr was born in 1914 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, to a wealthy Jewish family. It was her mother, Gertrud, a pianist, who introduced her to the wonders of the stage. Hedy recalled, «One day, mother promised me a nice present if I were good. The present was a visit, my first, to the theatre. I saw a stage play for the first time. I was thrilled and speechless. I don't remember the play, its title of anything about it. But I never forgot the general impression. School held but one interest from then on. I took part in school plays and festivals. My first big part came in Hansel and Gretel .» The first film she saw that had the same effect on her was Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927), released when she was thirteen. Although it received mixed critical reviews upon release, Metropolis is now considered one of the greatest and ...