Hollywood History

Realistic Training for ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (Photoplay Magazine, 1931)

Prior to reading this PHOTOPLAY article we were convinced that Oliver Stone’s Vietnam war film, PLATOON (1986) was the first production of it’s kind to actually take the effort to school all cast and extras as to the horrors of war; however it seems that this unique distinction goes to All Quiet on the Western Front.


In this interview the seven leading cast members discuss how the making of that movie disturbed each of them in profound ways:

We went into that picture a group of average wise-cracking fellows. We didn’t come out that way…


A small notice has been added that announced that the movie had been banned in Austria.

A 1929 review of the book can be read here

Realistic Training for ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (Photoplay Magazine, 1931) Read More »

Realistic Training for ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (Photoplay Magazine, 1931)

Prior to reading this PHOTOPLAY article we were convinced that Oliver Stone’s Vietnam war film, PLATOON (1986) was the first production of it’s kind to actually take the effort to school all cast and extras as to the horrors of war; however it seems that this unique distinction goes to All Quiet on the Western Front.


In this interview the seven leading cast members discuss how the making of that movie disturbed each of them in profound ways:

We went into that picture a group of average wise-cracking fellows. We didn’t come out that way…


A small notice has been added that announced that the movie had been banned in Austria.

A 1929 review of the book can be read here

Realistic Training for ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (Photoplay Magazine, 1931) Read More »

Martha Vickers (Pic Magazine, 1945)

Perhaps one of the first magazine articles about the beautiful actress Martha Vickers (1925 – 1971) who is best remembered by fans for her performance as the fabulously slutty Carmen Sternwood in the 1946 film The Big Sleep.


This article tells the tale of her early days in 1940s Los Angeles and her work as a photographer’s model, which turned more than a few of the crowned heads of Hollywood.

Martha Vickers (Pic Magazine, 1945) Read More »

Martha Vickers (Pic Magazine, 1945)

Perhaps one of the first magazine articles about the beautiful actress Martha Vickers (1925 – 1971) who is best remembered by fans for her performance as the fabulously slutty Carmen Sternwood in the 1946 film The Big Sleep.


This article tells the tale of her early days in 1940s Los Angeles and her work as a photographer’s model, which turned more than a few of the crowned heads of Hollywood.

Martha Vickers (Pic Magazine, 1945) Read More »

Thoughts on the American Films of 1941 (Direction Magazine, 1941)

Here is a film review from DIRECTION MAGAZINE that discussed many of the forthcoming movies of 1941 and how they so rarely depict American culture in an accurate light:

In bringing back the usual revelations from a trip through the Middle West, I want to repeat the oft-declared amazement that American films… reflect the barest minimum of the American scene in these United States. The rare attempts of the Grapes of Wrath and Primrose Path to seek and show new dramatic settings, are the exceptions that prove the rule of formula.
Many of the American films of 1941 are listed herein and the article can be printed.

Thoughts on the American Films of 1941 (Direction Magazine, 1941) Read More »

Charlie Chaplin and His Imposters (Motion Picture Magazine, 1916)

With the popularity of Charlie Chaplin (1889 – 1977) came a large number of artificial, bootlegged Charlie Chaplin movies and a host of fraudulent ‘Charlies’. All the fake Chaplins were clad the same and all answered to the same name yet all had different biographies and were not terribly funny in the slightest degree. Chaplin No. 1 did not care for this one bit and did not hold back while talking to this correspondent from Motion Picture Magazine.

Charlie Chaplin and His Imposters (Motion Picture Magazine, 1916) Read More »

‘Hollywood Hangout” (The American Magazine, 1942)

Schwab’s Pharmacy was like many other well-heeled American pharmacies of the Forties – it filled prescriptions, sold cigars, served three squares a day at their counter and cracked-wise with the clientele. What made it different was that many of the customers were among the most glam movie stars of the time. Located on Sunset Boulevard, west of Hollywood, in an area known as Sherman:

It’s the one place in Hollywood where screen biggies like Robert Taylor, Gene Tierney and Marlene Dietrich drop in and out all day and make themselves at home.

‘Hollywood Hangout” (The American Magazine, 1942) Read More »

Rita Hayworth (Rob Wagner’s Script, 1946, American Magazine, 1942)

A 1946 article from Script, a semi-chic Beverly Hills magazine (it went belly-up in 1949), explaining just how it came to pass that a sweet, little Brooklyn girl named Margarita Carmen Cansino became Rita Hayworth (1918 – 1987):

Then came reincarnation. Rita discarded her Spanish name, gave away her dancing costumes, did something to her hairline, stuck a y into her mother’s family name (Joseph Haworth, same family, toured with Edwin Booth) and so on to the big time and ‘Cover Girl’ and ‘Tonight and Every Night’.

So the girl with a Spanish father and an Anglo-Saxon mother becomes the typical American girl to thousands of American soldiers abroad, and that, too, is as it should be.


Click here to read articles about Marilyn Monroe.

Rita Hayworth (Rob Wagner’s Script, 1946, American Magazine, 1942) Read More »