Classic Hollywood MTC Podcasts

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 Teac...

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 mov...

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. ...

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...

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...

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 r...

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/podca...

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 sustai...

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...

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...

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...

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  

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 epis...

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....

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...

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 ch...

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...

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 u...

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 st...

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 a...

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...

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 explor...

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 M...

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 e...

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...