Anthony Perkins was not on the set when the famous shower scene was filmed in Psycho. The director, Alfred Hitchcock, went into the shower to deal the fatal blow.
Peter Sellers produced a film at a cost of £6,000 starring Britt Ekland, Lord Snowdon and Princess Margaret ( as Queen Victoria) and presented it to the Queen on her thirty-ninth birthday in 1965.
- C. Fields once sold a story line which he had written on the back of an envelope for $25,000.
The first public appearance of a movie was at the ‘Koster and Bials’ Music Hall in New York on 23 April 1896.
The first animated film was Gertie the Dinosaur(1909), drawn by Winsor McCay.
Robert Mitchum could read and write by the age of three.
Warren Beatty was once a rat-catcher
Dirk Bogarde’s father was art correspondent for The Times.
In Emma Hamilton, a film set in 1804, Big Ben manages to strike, although it wasn’t built for another fifty years.
The first person to appear naked on the screen was Hedy Lamarr
The first film with a story was The Great Train Robberyin 1903.
The first full-length all-talkie film made in Great Britain was Blackmail (1929).
Burt Lancaster suffered from hydrophobia (how could this be when he starred in The Swimmer?, Ed. )
Marlene Dietrich had a passion for cleaning the houses of her friends.
In 1900 Maurice Chevalier made his professional debut, aged twelve, singing obscene songs to French café audiences of pimps and prostitutes.
In One Million Years BCall the girls wear false eyelashes
The part of ‘Alfie’ (1966) was turned down by Anthony Newley, James Booth and Laurence Harvey before Michael Caine accepted the role.
Leslie Howard was killed in 1943 at the age of fifty flying back to London after a secret wartime mission to Lisbon. Many believe that Howard had been used as a decoy to divert attention from Churchill, who was also flying that day.
Montgomery Clift was rejected by the army in the Second World War because he suffered from chronic diarrhoea.
‘The Oscar’ is so named, reputedly, because when the figure was made in 1927 a secretary said: ‘It reminds me of my Uncle Oscar.’
The combined cost of the highly successful Airplaneand Friday the Thirteenthwas less than the cost of the closing credit titles of the Star Trekmovie in 1979.
Three times more film stars die violent deaths than sports stars. Ten per cent of the top movie stars die tragically.
The word ‘Paris’ appears in more film titles than any other word except ‘love’.
Taken from David Brown, Star Billing (1985)
Other characters – leaving aside pornographic films – appeared naked before Hedy Lamarr did so in””Ecstasy. In “Intolerance” (1916) there is an orgy with naked models in a bath and in “The Penalty” (1920) staring Lon Chaney a naked artist’s model appears briefly.
The words “The” and “A” probably appear in more film titles than “Paris”. Who was counting?