Tall, handsome and debonair on the outside looking in, Gig Young was a talented and successful actor, who found much success on film, tv and stage, throughout the 40s,50s, and 60s. He worked for all the key studios, including Warner Brothers, MGM, and Columbia, and appeared in many classic movies, including The Three Musketeers with Gene Kelly, Lust for Gold with Ida Lapino and Glen Ford, and Teachers Pet with Doris Day and Clark Gable. The quality and variety of his work was such that he acquir...
Mar 13, 2024•1 hr 53 min
In the second of this 2 part series on Hollywood Red Heads, this episode tells the story of Maureen O Hara, one of the most beautiful, athletic, and talented film actresses that ever graced Hollywood film. Born to a well to do family in southern Ireland, and a fierce Irish and American patriot, Maureen speedily rose up the film ladder, appearing in melodramas, westerns, musicals and adventure movies, many of which are viewed as some of the greatest Hollywood films ever made. Dubbed the Queen of ...
Feb 09, 2024•1 hr 54 min•Season 21Ep. 20
Greer Garson was one of the most successful British actresses of the classic Hollywood studio era. She was attractive, intelligent, hard working and talented. She appeared in some of the best and most memorable Hollywood films ever made, including movies which inspired and strengthened the British and American War effort during World War II. But Ms Garson's road to success was not an easy one. Throughout her life and career, she battled mutiple health scares, anorexia, and troubled marriages, as...
Jan 09, 2024•1 hr 55 min•Ep. 20
Another mini episode by Mrs Classic Film Fan, who has been busy preparing her upcoming main episode on the late great Greer Garson. However, despite the efforts of the coronavirus to work her and her civil service colleagues to death, Mrs Classic Film Fan has discovered 2 great film books, that convey all sorts of interesting information, about the movie stars covered. Scott Eyman's comprehensive and fab 'Cary Grant: A Brilliant Disguise' more on which can be found via the following link https:/...
Dec 02, 2020•4 min
Another mini episode from Mrs Classic Film Fan, on some of the source material used to inform her last podcast, on the late great Jerry Lewis, Mrs CFF also mentions some very interesting podcasts that you might want to give a try, one of which includes a Mrs Classic Film Fan review of an old British film Classic which will be shown on the Talking Pictures satellite channel this month. If you want to know more have a listen to this mini-episode. Stay safe and as ever thanks for taking the time to...
Jun 07, 2020•8 min
Jerry Lewis was one of the most successful entertainers that ever lived. The only child of a showbiz family, his performing career, which kicked off barely beyond his toddler years on the burlesque circuit, quietly ended on the big screen, nearly 80 years later. By his teenage years he was a married man, soon to be part of one of the most successful double acts that graced stage, screen, tv and radio. Thereafter, he became a complete film performer, director and producer, whose success around th...
May 09, 2020•1 hr 52 min•Ep. 19
This mini CHMTC episode gives a quick update on the upcoming episode of CHMTC and the launch of my new history focused podcast, Is It Cos Im from Croydon2? Give it a try when you can. It can be accessed via Apple and Stitcher and the links below. http://isitcosimfromcroydon2.libsyn.com https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/simone-higgins/is-it-cos-im-from-croydon https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/isitcosimfromcroydon2s-podcast/id1463444277 Also, thanks for all the wonderful reviews received from ...
Jun 05, 2019•6 min
Tab Hunter was an unassuming, gentle and simple young man, whose stunning good looks and hard earned acting skills, bagged him Hollywood film stardom and a remarkable recording career, which enabled him to make some the best remembered films and music of the 1950's. Part of a generation of young movies stars, whose film careers, signalled the end of the Hollywood Studio system, in order to sustain his success and live as peaceful a life as fame allowed, Tab, along with several other young movie ...
Jan 30, 2019•1 hr 43 min
As promised this is brief episode about some of the sources I used to put the last 2 CHMTC episodes together. Also included in these notes are some of the links I mention via which you can access the sources metioned about these great stars. I have also found a great new podcast which can be accessed via Itunes and other avenues. You might want to give that a listen while you are waiting for the next CHMTC episode, which will be on the late, great and recently deceased Tab Hunter, who represente...
Sep 17, 2018•5 min
Many film stars tell us that they are just ordinary people, who don't care about money, fame or possessions, but yet they go on living in their many luxury homes, riding in their fancy cars and accumulating tonnes of money, in their search for more and more acclaim and the rewards that go with it. Sterling Hayden, was a Hollywood movie star, who spoke his mind. He really liked being ordinary and really disliked being a Hollywood movie star. At first, troubled by his Hollywood fame, it eventually...
Sep 09, 2018•1 hr 31 min•Ep. 17
This is the first of a two part CHMTC episode, on the lives and careers of two of the most successful beefcake actors ever produced by Hollywood. The western icon, John Wayne and the blonde seafaring giant, Sterling Hayden. John Wayne was a promising college student, who through the fates became one of the most successful movie stars that ever graced a Hollywood movie. Tall, handsome and virile, Wayne's love for his country influenced his films, his career and his love-life. Most of all it led t...
Aug 08, 2018•1 hr 53 min•Ep. 16
Dear Listeners, An apology from Mrs Classic Film Fan for the long pause between CHMTC episodes and a foretaste of what is to come, in the way of new episodes, the first of which will be with you this week. All the best Mrs Classic Film Fan
Aug 07, 2018•54 sec
As promised, here is the second CHMTC mini-episode, in which Mrs Classic Film Fan provides more on the sources of her research into the lives and careers of the late great studio movie stars. As well as some interesting books on Stanley Baker and the making of the film Zulu, Mrs CFF spills the beans on the main sources of her info on the late, great Marlon Brando, featured in an earlier CHMTC episode, including the 1962 Saturday Evening Post article which ruined Brando's credibility for years. T...
Dec 29, 2017•5 min
Listen to CHMTCs last instalment of the series "the British Are Coming" about the life and career of the late, great Stanley Baker. Stanley Baker was born in the impoverished community driven coalmining region of Ferndale in Wales. Like his contemporary Richard Burton, he was discovered by a local school teacher, who cast him in school plays and encouraged him to develop a real career in acting. This he did with considerable success, becoming a powerful actor and producer in British and American...
Dec 22, 2017•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 14
As promised and in response to several requests this is a short CHMTC episode which will give some background on the material sourced by Mrs Classic Film Fan to inform most of the CHMTC episodes to date. If they are not there already all the books, websites and links referred to will be uploaded to the Classic Hollywood MTC Facebook page. That will include the website link which gives you direct access to the famous Day v Rosenthal judgment which told the long and ugly story of Doris Days 20+ ye...
Sep 29, 2017•5 min•Ep. 1
Stewart Granger was one of the most successful Movie stars in Hollywood in the 1940s and 50s. His looks, talent and athleticism attracted the powers that be in Hollywood, resulting in one of the best swashbuckling movies ever made absent Errol Flynn. His marriage to the talented and beautiful Jean Simmons who also found succcess in Hollywood made them a golden British couple. But Granger was a challenging personality, unable to completely understand or properly address the political, corporate a...
Sep 13, 2017•1 hr 36 min•Ep. 12
David Niven was the son of an upper class hero, with English and Scottish military heritage that stretched back to the Battle of Waterloo. Handsome, charming and witty he also had a strong touch of rebelliousness and ambition which would help and hinder his life and career in equal measure. One of the first of the British Hollywood movie stars to leave the safe haven of America at the start of World War II to fight for his country, Niven's life was littered with good fortune, fun and tragedy. Fo...
Jul 04, 2017•1 hr 38 min
This is the first of a series of podcasts called "the British Are Coming." The series will cover the lives and careers of 4 great British film stars who left their mark on British and American Films in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. Merle Oberon , David Niven , Stewart Granger and the late great Stanley Baker were and remain filmatic forces to be reckoned with. Talented, good looking, charming and unique they represented at least in terms of their public image the best of the British Empire. Forging ca...
May 27, 2017•1 hr 25 min
Marlon Brando was a legend in his own lifetime. At the peak of his film career in the 1950s he created a series of film performances including the character Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront that not only defined him as an actor, but defined an era marked by the rise of the Stanislavsky and method schools of acting. By the end of the 1950s Brando was at the top of his game, loved by actors, the studios and the public a like. His films minting millions of dollars. This all changed with the making...
Apr 08, 2017•1 hr 11 min
Tony Curtis was one of the biggest film stars of the 1950s. Born in poverty and saddled with less than positive memories of his childhood, his good looks got him a lucrative Hollywood contract and the pick of Hollywood's most beautiful actresses, including Marilyn Monroe and Janet Leigh. His talent gave him the will and determination to sustain a long career, which totalled over 100 Film and TV appearances and a successful second career as a respected master painter. But despite his ever present...
Feb 20, 2017•54 min
For those who want to know what fed the rise of the 2016 OscarsSoWhite scandal listen to this podcast about the life and career of the late great Hattie McDaniel. This podcast, the first 2017 Classic Hollywood MTC episode and the 7th of all the Classic Hollywood MTC episodes, will seek to explain the talent, the struggle, the unimaginable success and the ever present controversy that surrounds Ms McDaniel. As Mammy the forthright maid of Scarlett O'Hara Ms McDaniel earned her place in Hollywood ...
Jan 03, 2017•1 hr 8 min
Unless you have been living under a tadpole you will know that one of the last surviving Hollywood movie stars Kirk Douglas has just reached his 100th birthday and that the celebrations have been glorious. Douglas seemed to specialise in anti-hero figures long before it became fashionable to do so. Ace in the Hole, the Bad and the Beautiful and the Detective showed that he was not afraid to explore people who were very damaged, but also very skilled at spreading huge swathes of that damage to ot...
Dec 17, 2016•12 min
At 100 years of age Olivia De Havilland is one of the last great movie stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood. At the peak of her film career she appeared in some of the best films ever made, including Captain Blood, Robin Hood, They Died with their Boots On and the Charge of the Light Brigade with the devilishly handsome Errol Flynn and Gone with the Wind with Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh and Hattie McDaniel. Not just a pretty face and risking her hard earned career she fought and won one of the mos...
Oct 18, 2016•32 min
Sammy Davis Junior was one of the greatest light entertainers America ever produced. Singer, dancer, actor and impersonator he could do anything that the entertainment world could throw at him to the highest standard. During a show business career of 60 years he experienced unimaginable success on the night club circuits of New York and La Vegas, having done the rounds of Vaudeville during his early years. He made many notable Film, TV and Broadway appearances, reaching the peek of his fame as a...
Sep 09, 2016•1 hr 18 min
In the 1950s Doris Day was one of the most famous women in the world. Unfairly remembered as the actress who played professional virgins, Doris's talent was such that she was able to tackle a broad range of movie roles, including classic appearances in Calamity Jane, the Man Who Knew To Much and Pillow Talk. By the early 1960s with the coming of the Beatles and flower power her stardom was on the wane. Wanting to go out on top Doris was looking forward to a peaceful retirement. But instead her h...
Jul 24, 2016•31 min
In the 1950's Jeff Chandler was one of the biggest film stars created by Universal Studios. His good looks, tanned complexion, melodic voice and silver hair made him the perfect hero for a wide variety of Universal adventure movies, including one of his most famous parts the Native American chief Cochise in Broken Arrow, a film which captured the heart of America. A civil rights advocate, supporter of the state of Israel and ladies man, despite his active career and success Jeff is one of the le...
Jul 23, 2016•34 min
This is the first of a series of podcasts (delivered by Mrs Tom Cruise the nick name given by family and friends to Simone Higgins) on Hollywood stars and other ad hoc Classic Hollywood subjects which emerged during the peak of the big film studio era of the 1930s, 40s and 50s. The first subject is the late, great and tragic Dorothy Dandridge. For a short period in the 1950s Dorothy Dandridge an Africa-American singer, dancer and actress sometimes referred to as the 'Black Marilyn Monroe' reache...
Jul 22, 2016•54 min
