Ken Annakin in his Autobiography and Richard Todd in some of his later interviews were particularly unkind in their remarks about Joan Rice after she had been the leading lady in ‘The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men’ which as we all know Ken Annakin Directed and Richard Todd starred in.

They thought that she was a poor actress.

Walt Disney on the other hand was her admirer – he knew that she just looked the part and was determined that she would be IN. What he said went. He knew his audience so well – he knew that they would love her in the role – and we all did.

The film was a financial success worldwide

Next from Walt Disney came ‘The Sword and the Rose’ and then ‘Rob Roy The Highland Rogue’ – Ken Annakin directed the first one and Richard Todd starred in them both. They both had Glynis Johns in the lead who was well approved of by these two.

However neither film performed well at the Box Office – Rob Roy did OK in Britain but fared less well in the USA and other parts of the World.

So it seems that Ken Annakin and Richard Todd were pretty poor judges on actor’s abilities and their Box Office pulling power

Rob Roy was chosen for the Royal Film Premier that year – 1953. It was later reported that the Queen had not been particularly impressed by it – it is an opinion of mine that in the film the King was referred to by Rob Roy as ‘German Geordie’ – I have a feeling that the Queen would not have liked that

This was a good British Thriller that had a strong storyline and actors who were well up to the task of setting the ‘creepy’ scenes’ and making us all quite uneasy.

Natasha Parry, I always liked and thought how attractive she was

Crow Hollow is home to a somewhat eccentric family – and in that family is a Doctor who takes his newlywed bride to live there.The home is largely occupied by his Aunts ,an outwardly genial but really rather peculiar breed.One is a devoted spider collector ,having several large poisonous specimens around the house ,another busies herself with “good works”and one is a home maker with an obsessive interest in order and tidiness.

Soon the new bride begins to feel unwelcome -not surprising given she has a close encounter with a venomous spider and is fed poisoned drinks .It appears that for whatever reason, members of the family want rid of her and to see her replaced by a nubile young woman named Willow

It is very much a watchable B movie – I imagine that it would have gone out as a good supporting film on the cinema circuit

Back to the story – Dr. Armour Donald Houston, marries Ann and then barely shows her any attention at all and completely dismisses her concerns–and she has plenty! It’s obvious this is no match made in heaven. So why did the Doctor marry her and exactly what is going on in this weird mansion filled with his strange people?

Could someone really be attempting to kill her?

This is a pretty good mystery/suspense picture which is quite exciting and with a nice ending. Worth seeing with strong performances all around and a well written story.

I seem to have quite a regard for Lash Larue in many ways because he created a sort of brand from what was a small number of B films to such an extent that there were Lash Larue comics and other merchandise – all very popular at the time. With a better manager he could have really capitalised on this but I doubt that he ever did to any great extent. He was clever enough to see the potential of the bullwhip which made him stand out from the other cowboys of the time and helped him achieve a film career and made him well remembered

Directed by Ray Taylor
Starring Lash La Rue, Fuzzy St. John, Dan White, House Peters, Jr., Nancy Saunders

Outlaw Country (1949) is one of the later Lash pictures, and at 72 minutes, one of the longest. It features Lash La Rue’s long-lost twin brother, the Frontier Phantom — who turns up again the last Lash/Fuzzy film, The Frontier Phantom (1952).

The film was made for Western Adventure Productions, these had even lower budgets than the previous PRC pictures.

ABOVE – Lash Larue – Now here is someone who had the most famous and popular of all the ‘film themed’ comics for quite a few years. He invented a style and developed it in a range of films that did well at the Box Office and when these comics came out they proved to be one of the most successful ones – if not THE most successful.  They are still very collectable today.

I have just looked on ebay , and there are over 500 Lash Larue Comics on sale with prices up to £ 48 Pounds Sterling

Another Technicolor Western with great locations

This film was made a few years after Jeff Chandler played Cochise in Broken Arrow (1950), this time the Apache chief is played by John Hodiak. In Tucson, ranchers are being raided by the Apache and Comanches.

Major Tom Burke (Robert Stack) is sent to stop the violence and establish peace with Cochise.

While he’s there, Burke becomes romantically very interested in Consuelo de Cordova (Joy Page).

ABOVE – Towards the end of the film when I would imagine the location work had been done, this studio set and pretty poor painted backdrop was not really very good.

Cochise also wants peace, but the Comanches do not, which leads to trouble. Joy Page;s character is captured by the Apaches and held hostage, with Robert Stack working to free her as she and Kodiak fall in love.

It’s a short picture, running just 70 minutes, with more talk than action — and Castle’s direction seems uncharacteristically stiff.

The picture’s greatest asset is certainly its cast. John Hodiak is quite good as Cochise, making the usual stilted Indian-speaking-white-man’s-tongue dialogue work. It’s his film really. Robert Stack is a stoic hero here, a bit like his Elliott Ness on The Untouchables. Joy Page is lovely. She and Robert Stack had been paired earlier in  Bullfighter And The Lady (1951). 

The cast and crew spent a lot of time at Vasquez Rocks, about an hour from the Columbia lot

They also shot some scenes at the Corrigan Ranch. Director Of Photography Henry Freulich captures it all in gorgeous Technicolor.

Katzman’s cost-cutting is painfully obvious, the history is questionable, the ending is too abrupt and Castle doesn’t seem to have found much inspiration in the script he was handed. However it is a film that, all in all, I really like.

The film really comes to life the final reel in which Cochise is sentenced to suffer three tortures – scalded by hot steam, then sliced with knife blades, and finally burned by fire.

Robert Stack makes takes the role as the hero and plays it well

The Colour photography just has to be good and it is in Technicolor – just about as good as it gets !!

The year before this, I well remember ‘Battle at Apache Pass’ with Jeff Chandler again as Cochise as he was in ‘Broken Arrow’

That was a good film.

Both of these were in Technicolor and Widescreen

Doris Day stars in this film and injects her usual happy and lively personality into it. For me she virtually carries the film even though she is surrounded by first rate, well known actors such as Ethel Barrymore and the excellent Gig Young

Of course, Frank Sinatra also starred but to me gave a particularly down-beat performance – maybe that was the character he was playing but it made the romance with him implausible to my way of thinking

Just look ABOVE Doris Day so bright and appealing – Frank Sinatra dour

Doris Day with her family ABOVE

ABOVE – Doris Day with Gig Young – he seemed much more lively

Doris Day and her family

ABOVE – Frank Sinatra lights yet another cigarette – he did way too much of that I thought

ABOVE – Ethel Barrymore keeps a watchful eye on her three girls including Doris Day as she shows of her engagement ring from Gig Young – that didn’t last long !!

Doris Day with Frank in the seedy little flat they rented

Doris Day – Christmas at home with the family

Doris Day – ( ABOVE with Frank Sinatra) made quite a few films with Gig Young in the fifties including ‘Tunnel of Love’ , ‘Teachers Pet’ and this one ‘Young at Heart’.

I remember Gig Young coming over to England much later – in fact in 1967 – making a great horror film we probably all remember ‘The Shuttered Room’ Excellent and very scary

I can’t say that I know much about this actress who had a long life although she does seem to have been around a great deal in the Forties and Fifties particularly in Westerns

Barbra Fuller
(July 31, 1921 – May 15, 2024)

Actress Barbra Fuller has died recently at the great age of 102.

Republic put her under contract in 1949 and put her in pictures like The Savage Horde (above, with Bob Steele), Rock Island Trail (1950) and Lonely Heart Bandits (all 1950). The Savage Horde, starring William Elliott, is excellent.

She was on the radio soap opera One Man’s Family from 1945 till 1959 and spent the late 50s working in TV quite a bit (Perry Mason, My Three Sons, etc.). She was in a 1953 episode of Adventures Of Superman.

Hers was one of the best known voices on the airwaves. By the age of 18, Barbra Deane Fuller had been featured in 25 radio serials and had by her own count portrayed more than 1000 different characters. Though having earlier aspired to become a maths teacher, she went into show biz instead and made her first radio broadcast at 11 years of age. Two years later, she was playing more ingénues in Chicago soap operas than any other teenager. Barbra was a regular performer on The Theater of Famous Radio Players, described by an authority on the subject as “a repertory company of radio’s best professional actors.” Her most popular roles included Claudia in One Man’s Family (a role she went on to play for 14 years) and Barbara Calkins in Scattergood Baines for the Mutual Broadcasting System. In 1942, she moved to New York, where she set up base for two and a half years.

Barbra’s father died when she was three. Raised by her mother, she went to school in Chicago and was said to have had a passion for reading non-fiction and travel books. Early in her career as a radio actress she would earn $12.50 per broadcast.

As her popularity grew, she changed the spelling of her first name from ‘Barbara’ to ‘Barbra’ “as an attention-getter”.

Barbra Fuller was married to Lash La Rue for a very short time – Lash was non too successful where marriage was concerned – I think he married 7 times but I have seen reports of ‘at least ten marriages’

They married in Yuma, Arizona on 23 February 1951 and divorced on 2 June 1952

William Whitney

William Witney
(May 15, 1915 – March 17, 2002)

William Witney was a genius, and his contribution the cinema has been and is greatly under-appreciated.

William Witney directed about 27 of the Roy Rogers films and lived close by him in the San Fernando Valley

William Witney belonged to a Hollywood which has long since disappeared. During the 1930s and 40s, he turned out dozens of B westerns and cliff-hanger serials.

In the 1950s and 60s, he was active in directing TV series, most of them westerns.

From 1935 to 1956, Witney’s workplace was Republic Pictures, where he practised the philosophy of “make ’em fast and make ’em cheap”. Witney directed more than 60 features, impossible for even the most prolific of directors today. In his autobiography, In A Door, Into A Fight, Out A Door, Into A Chase (1996), he said he was never satisfied with the stilted way movie fights were shot, and he is credited as the first director to choreograph screen fights.

ABOVE: Producer Eddie White, Roy Rogers, Director William Witney.

This is what William Witney had to say when discussing the Roy Rogers films he made :-

“Our producer, the greatest guy, Eddie White… was from New York. He didn’t know which end of a horse was which, but he had good taste. And they brought me along and put me with him. I’d been a horseman all my life. I’m a jumping horse rider, and I love horses. So, we made a very excellent team, the two of us. We became the best of friends.

ABOVE – Bells Of Coronado, 1950

Director William Witney (L) wearing hat, walks backwards as he directs Dale Evans and Roy Rogers during filming of Republic’s 1950s production of BELLS OF CORONADO.

William Witney’s Autobiography ABOVE

The Roy Rogers films that were directed by William Witney were of a much higher quality than the previous ones

Shooting location scenes ABOVE and BELOW

ABOVE Roy Rogers chatting in the Film Studio ABOVE

Willian Witney adds :- Republic was a small studio. I was under contract there for 28 years, and this studio, everybody used to say, was the hardest studio to work at in the world, but our crews were excellent. They had people in there that were just brilliant…

We’ve got a casting office, and they read the script and they make suggestions. You also have a book of actors, and you know actors after all these years. You got through the book and you say, ‘See if you can get him, I wanna interview him.’ And you’d interview these people to look at them. You knew their ability, most of them, because you’d worked with them before.

William Witney actually made his acting debut in 1933 ‘Fighting with Kit Carson’ in an uncredited role – or roles more accurately as he played a settler an Indian and a Trooper. In his Autobiography he said that working on this film – which was a serial when on BBC TV in the early fifties – that the actors and crew worked from dawn to dusk in demanding conditions. Much of the filming was at the Iverson Ranch which he said was awash with Rattlesnakes – I had never heard that before.

In England on the BBC in 1952, I am pretty sure it was called ‘Kit Carson and the Mystery Riders’

Just got back from a lovely weekend in Woodhall Spa that beautiful village in rural Lincolnshire with it’s strong links to the RAF and 617 Squadron The Dam Busters.

It does have a unique and very appealing cinema. The Kinema In The Woods.

The choice of films here is also very cleverly managed – we have of course all the New Releases but also special one-off showings

Inside the foyer we are treated to memorabilia from the film world

One-off showings as mentioned such as ‘Jaws’ folowed by a midnight swim in the Open Air pool close by – obviously a summer attraction.

Then of all things they showed a 1925 Buster Keaton silent film with piano

The Dam Busters is shown at least once every year plus films like ‘The Titfield Thunderbolt’

The cinema is based in the Lincolnshire town of Woodhall Spa, sitting between Lincoln and Boston, being about a 30/35 minute drive from both

The Kinema has three screens, and each of them is quite different

Rounding off the screen is one of the famous organs, located right at the front of the screen.

Considering that Kinema is just a three-screen cinema, they do actually show a wide variety of films.

Random Events from very big and heavy book I bought in Australia last January and had it shipped back home – I have picked out some of the film related articles from the fifties

ABOVE – The Grand Opening of his Never Never Land childrens and adults park on July 17, 1955 in Anaheim 22 miles outside of Los Angeles which cost a whopping 17 million dollars.

 After years of planning, Walt Disney’s very first theme park Disneyland opened its gates at 2:30 pm on Sunday July 17, 1955 in Anaheim, California. Television crews, Art Linkletter, Ronald Reagan, Bob Cummings, the Mouseketeers, Thurl Ravenscroft, California Governor Goodwin J. Knight and over 28,000 guests witnessed the opening of Walt’s dream.

Broadcast on ABC at 4:30PM, it was the biggest live telecast to date. 

Actor Ronald Reagan (who would later become president of the United States) introduced 53-year-old Walt Disney – “And now, Walt Disney will  step forward to read the dedication of Disneyland.” Walt then opened his 160-acre park : 

ABOVE – January 23 rd 1956 – The death of Alexander Korda – film giant that built Denham Film Studios.

ABOVE Arthur Miller – in a non too flattering pose – with his wife Marilyn Monroe who looks lovely as always. I think this was taken when they came to England for Marilyn to make ‘The Prince and the Showgirl’ with the pompous Laurence Olivier who had nowhere near the screen presence of Marilyn much to his annoyance. I have a feeling that had another actor taken the male lead, that this would have been a much more successful film.

He was the Director on this film

On July 19, 1956 Marilyn joined Olivier and the rest of the cast at Pinewood Studios for a read-through of the script. It did not go well.

Introducing her to the others, Olivier explained it would take her a while to get used to the way they all worked because her acting technique was so vastly different.

Shocked by what she considered his snobbish attitude, Marilyn was immediately on edge. This didn’t bode well.

However as always, she turned out very well in the finished film – he didn’t fare so well in my opinion.

New Releases 1952 – I have been flicking through a Picturegoer Magazine of August 1952 and picked out these pages featuring the films on release or imminent release.

The Sound Barrier is a film that is quite well known and has been on Television many times over the years. It stars Ann Todd, Nigel Patrick and Ralph Richardson

Doris Day just reaching the top of her career- and what a career it was is here to be seen in ‘Ill See You in My Dreams‘

At the time of the release of ‘Something Money can’t Buy’ Patricia Roc and Anthony Steel had been in a very close romantic relationship – in fact Patricia gave birth to a son by Anthony Steel during 1952.

The son called Michael Roc Thomas –   was child born of the union between the famous British film stars Patricia Roc and Anthony Steel. He was Patricia Roc’s only child

Born in Paris, Michael was barely nine months old when his mother took him to Rome, where an Italian nanny cared for him.

Years later after studying at Stowe, Buckinghamshire, he became a fashion photographer working in Cape Town, London and Madrid.

A few years earlier Patricia Roc had gone to Hollywood and starred in ‘Canyon Passage’with Ronald Reagan who fell in love with her
Pat, as she liked to be called by everyone, from tea-boy to fellow actors and Directors, was a big star and a huge box-office attraction.

Movie mogul J Arthur Rank described her as “the archetypal British beauty, the goddess of the Odeons”.

On August 19, 1945, two days after completing her work on The Wicked Lady, Patricia Roc was Hollywood bound.

Her first and only production in America was Canyon Passage, which cost $2.3million and was a great hit.

She certainly seemed able to attract the opposite sex

‘Untamed Frontier’ with Joseph Cotten and Shelley Winters was a Technicolor Western – the reviewer above says that normally counting sheep is a way of falling to sleep but seeing this film with cattle stampedes he thought it would have a similar effect.

However a much less ambitious film was ‘Thief of Damascus’ again in bright Technicolor – a film that gives us fun and doesn’t take itself too seriously – and one of it’s stars is none other than Paul Henreid

Back to Patricia Roc – she was in the very first episode of The Saint

I am copying BELOW an earlier article I wrote on this episode of the Sainy entitled:

‘The Talented Husband’ is the first episode of the iconic ‘Saint’ television series, based on the novels by Leslie Charteris and starring Roger Moore

The first couple of series were shot in crisp black and white with Roger Moore Moore playing Simon Templar

In this the very first episode, we have an unusual to-camera introduction by the Saint himself before we get into the story of an invalid wife at the mercy of her husband’s sinister and devious plotting. There are twists and turns from the very beginning and Roger Moore doesn’t really appear much at all until the final 20 minutes, but along the way he is helped by the lovely Shirley Eaton playing an Insurance Investigator.

Derek Farr is extremely good value as the twitchy husband, who at first seems to be very caring towards his wife Patricia Roc. Gradually though, we see what he is up to

ABOVE – A shot outside Cookham Railway Station

This first episode of ‘The Saint’ had two top line actors of the forties and fifties, namely Derek Farr and Patricia Roc.

Patricia Roc, whose last screen appearance this was, had in 1945 gone over to Hollywood briefly and made a Western ‘Canyon Passage’ – a successful Technicolor film – and during her visit she met and had a romance with Ronald Reagan who fell in love with her and wanted them to marry.

Back in London, where she was now one of Britain’s top ten box-office stars, the lovers were ­reunited at the Royal Command Film ­Performance at the Odeon, Leicester Square, in November 1948, at which Patricia Roc and Ronald Reagan both appeared on stage.

‘Ronnie seemed heartbroken and bitterly hurt,’ said Patricia. ‘His wife had told him: “You’re a bore! Get out! I want a divorce.” He was so damaged that often he was drinking and not able to perform sexually. He spent a lot of time at my London flat in Hallam Street, and ­repeatedly asked me to marry him.’

Reagan presented Patricia Roc with ‘the most beautiful ruby ring’. British sex symbol Christine Norden, who also appeared at the Royal Film Performance, heard Roc announce: ‘I love rubies, they are so hot, just like sex.’

But Patricia Roc by then had become engaged to the French lighting cameraman, André Thomas, who was to become her second husband in 1949, and with whom she set up home in Paris.

Reagan, divorced and again disappointed in love, began a brief affair with Patricia Neal, his co-star in the British film The Hasty Heart. In 1952, the year in which he married actress Nancy Davis, Patricia Roc co-starred with the Rank Organisation’s ‘Mr Beefcake’, Anthony Steel, in the film Something Money Can’t Buy.

Succumbing to what she described as Anthony Steel’s ‘animal magnetism’ — ‘I’m afraid he was very, very good in bed’ — they began an affair which resulted in the birth of a son, Michael. Her husband André, although knowing the child could not be his, accepted paternity, but suffered a massive stroke in 1956, and died at the age of 45.

Patricia was very good in ‘The Talented Husband’ and it was thought that , after this, her film and TV career would kick back into gear, but alas this did not happen for whatever reason. Although she was excellent, she spent most of the time being ill in bed – maybe that didn’t endear her to film producers – I just don’t know. It does seem strange

Once dubbed the world’s most beautiful woman, Hollywood major film star and legendary inventor Hedy Lamarr spent her last years in her home in Florida keeping herself very much to herself.

She had turned her back it seems on the Hollywood glitz – and maybe she realised that her time in the world of films was over.

Despite being one of the most important inventors of the 20th century, she lived her last days in solitude, far from the Hollywood glare, in a three-bedroom home in Casselberry, 20 minutes outside Orlando.

She has been described as a recluse during her last years but maybe she just wanted to live her life away from the inevitable glare of publicity.

Hedy Lamarr died at the age of 85 in January, 2000, never having been fully recognised for her invention that helped change the world.

Hedy Lamarr, born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, was a Hollywood film star, and more importantly, an inventor. In 1981, she retired to Miami Beach, Florida and later spent her final years in central Florida.

At the age of 28, Hedy Lamarr designed and patented a radio controlled, frequency hopping system called the Secret Communication System that was intended to keep U.S. Naval torpedoes from being detected by German naval fleets. Lamarr donated the patent to the U.S. Naval war effort, and although the Navy didn’t employ it during WWII, it proved to be invaluable during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Over the course of the next six decades, her groundbreaking invention went on to serve as the foundation for a multitude of communication technologies, including fax machines, top-secret military and diplomatic communications, GPS, internet, Wi-Fi, satellite communication systems, and wireless communication, spawning significant advances in cyber security.

Despite having never been formally educated in math or science, Hedy Lamarr paved the way for advancements in communication technologies that will continue to be used worldwide for years to come.

In 1997, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) was the first to publicly acknowledge Hedy Lamarr for her invention by presenting her with the EFF Pioneer Award. She later went on to be the first woman to receive the BULBIE Gnass Spirit of Achievement Bronze Award, and in 2014 she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Her home in Casselberry, 20 minutes outside Orlando

The Florida home is a far cry from the Hollywood mansion Lamarr once lived in at 2707 Benedict C

• 
• Hedy Lamarr is credited in a total of 35 films, but the actress was reportedly bored of the roles she was given that were often light on lines and focused on her looks

Hedy Lamarr had three children

The 2017 documentary film Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr story re-told the story of the film star’s incredible life.