Friday 31 October 2008

Your an Amazing Blogger Award

Thursday 23 October 2008

Judy Garland-Over the Rainbow

Katharine Hepburn

Katharine Hepburn (1907-2003), American actor, winner of four Academy Awards for best actress, noted for her unique combination of timeless beauty, wit, and fiery passion. Hepburn had a rich stage and screen career that lasted more than 60 years.
Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Hepburn became fascinated with acting at an early age. She appeared in student productions at Bryn Mawr College and pursued a professional stage career after graduating. She scored a notable success on Broadway in 1932 in The Warrior's Husband and was offered a motion-picture contract from the RKO studio.
Hepburn demanded $1,500 a week, considered an outrageous sum for a young actor at the time, but the studio agreed. She made her screen debut in the hit A Bill of Divorcement (1932), won her first Academy Award for best actress for Morning Glory (1933), and also appeared in the box-office smash Little Women (1933).
Other prominent Hepburn roles included Alice Adams (1935), Sylvia Scarlett (1935), Stage Door (1937), Holiday (1938), Bringing Up Baby (1938), The Philadelphia Story (1940, after appearing in the stage version and buying the film rights), Woman of the Year (1942), State of the Union (1948), Adam's Rib (1949), The African Queen (1951), Pat and Mike (1952), Summertime (1955), and The Rainmaker (1956). She appeared in a number of these films (such as Woman of the Year, Adam’s Rib, and Pat and Mike) with leading man Spencer Tracy, who became her longtime companion.
Hepburn received some of her biggest accolades after the age of 50, earning an Academy Award nomination for the screen version of the Eugene O’Neill play Long Day's Journey into Night (1962), and winning back-to-back Oscars for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) and The Lion in Winter (1968, shared with American actor Barbra Streisand).
Later films included The Trojan Women (1972), Rooster Cogburn (1975), and On Golden Pond (1981), for which she won her fourth Academy Award. Her final film role came in Love Affair (1994). Hepburn's autobiography, Me: Stories of My Life, was published in 1991 and became a bestseller.

Tuesday 21 October 2008

Clark Gable

William Clark Gable was born on February 1, 1901 in Cadiz, Ohio. Later that year his mother died, and his father sent him to live with his maternal aunt and uncle in Pennsylvania, where he stayed until he was two.
His father then returned to take him back to Cadiz. When Clark was 16 he dropped out of school and worked at many odd jobs before joining a traveling theater company. After working as an extra in various movies, he was offered a small part in the The Painted Desert (1931) in 1931.
From this point, his acting career flourished, and in 1934 he won an Academy Award for his performance in Frank Capra's classic It Happened One Night (1934).The next year saw a starring role in The Call of the Wild (1935) with Loretta Young, with whom he had an affair (resulting in the birth of a daughter, Judy Lewis). Divorced in 1939, he later that same year starred in Gone with the Wind (1939).
In March 1939 Clark married Carole Lombard, but tragedy struck in January 1942 when the plane in which Carole and her mother were flying crashed into Table Rock Mountain, Nevada, killing them both.Clark then volunteered to be drafted and served in Europe for several years. After the war he continued with his film career and married Silvia Ashley, the widow of Douglas Fairbanks, in 1949. Unfortunately this marriage was short-lived and they divorced in 1952.
In July 1955 he married a former sweetheart, Kathleen Williams Spreckles (a.k.a. Kay Williams) and became stepfather to her two children, Joan and Adolph ("Bunker") Spreckels III.
On November 16, 1959, Gable became a grandfather when Judy Lewis, his daughter with Loretta Young, gave birth to a daughter, Maria. In 1960, Gable's wife Kay discovered that she was expecting their first child. In early November 1960, he had just completed filming The Misfits (1961), when he suffered a heart attack, and died later that month.
Gable was buried shortly afterwards in the shrine that he had built for Carole Lombard and her mother when they died. In March 1961, Kay Gable gave birth to a boy whom she named John Clark Gable after his father.

Monday 20 October 2008

Shirley Temple "On the Good Ship Lollipop

"On The Good Ship Lollipop"~Trailer

I know I did a mini biography on Shirley Temple but just wanted to share this clip with you all!

Saturday 18 October 2008

Joan Crawford

Joan Crawford was a bubbly ingenue of silent films during the "flapper era" of the late 1920s.
As her bubbly years passed she reinvented herself as a more glamorous Hollywood star of the 1930s and 40s, winning an Oscar for her role as a housewife-turned-businesswoman in Mildred Pierce (1945). Despite these successes Crawford is often remembered for an even later persona -- a severe and neurotic former beauty in heavy makeup -- based on the horror and suspense films she made in the 1960s.
Among those films was the hit Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962), in which she appeared with her real-life rival Bette Davis. Crawford's reputation was tarnished by Mommie Dearest, a 1978 biography by her adopted daughter Christina, which described Crawford as a harshly abusive alcoholic.
(Christina's allegations of being beaten with a wire coat hanger gained particular fame.) The book was made into a 1981 movie starring Faye Dunaway as Crawford.
Crawford's first husband was actor Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.... Her fourth husband was Alfred Steele, chairman of the board of soft drink maker Pepsi Cola; after Steele's 1959 death, Crawford herself served on the Pepsi board... Crawford was directed by a young Steven Spielberg in a 1969 episode of the TV series Night Gallery.

Saturday 11 October 2008

Gene Kelly

Screen legend Gene Kelly is best known for dancing through movie musicals of the 1940s and '50s, especially An American in Paris (1951) and Singin' in the Rain (1952).
He got his start on Broadway in the late 1930s, first as a dancer, then as a choreographer and actor. His star turn in My Pal Joey led to a Hollywood contract, and he first appeared in 1942's For Me and My Gal (opposite Judy Garland. Over the next decade he became a major star, thanks especially to musicals: Anchors Aweigh (1945, famous for his scene dancing with Jerry, the cartoon mouse from Tom and Jerry); Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949); and three movies he made with director Stanley Donen, On the Town (1949), Singin' in the Rain (1952) and It's Always Fair Weather (1955). Buoyant and athletic, Kelly became the screen's most famous dancer since Fred Astaire.
An ambitious perfectionist who produced, choreographed, acted and directed, Kelly won a special Oscar in 1951. Although his career after the mid-1950s fizzled and he never made much of a mark as a dramatic actor, Kelly's place in cinema history is secure because of the innovations he brought to choreography.