John Derek (12 August 1926 – 22 May 1998) was the son of silent era actors Lawson Harris and Dolores Johnson.

His mother was incredibly beautiful, turning heads wherever she went with her good looks. His own good looks were soon noticed, and he was groomed for a film career by both his agent David O Selznick and Henry Willson (who gave him the temporary stage name of Dare Harris).

He once become Shirley Temple’s “Studio Boyfriend”. Shirley Temple and Dare Harris (John Derek) ended up under contract to Twentieth Century Fox at the same time. This gave the studio the idea to “gently force” the two to date as a part of a publicity stunt. In 1944, Twentieth Century Fox even gave him small roles in two of Temple’s films (Since Went Away and I’ll Be Seeing You) to really get the public excited about the new couple.

Maybe this would have been the way his career was to go – however .*When he was filming A Double Life (1947) , he was approached by Humphrey Bogart who must have seen him around the studio

Bogart persuaded him to take the name of John Derek and then cast him as Nick “Pretty Boy” Romano, an unrepentant killer, in Knock on Any Door (1949), a drama directed by Nicholas Ray.

Recognising him as a talented newcomer, Bogart signed Derek to a seven-year contract with Columbia Pictures.

Columbia Pictures did eventually put John Derek into leading roles, but he didn’t care for the roles that he was given.

He was cast as Robin Hood in Rogues of Sherwood Forest (released in 1950). I seem to remember him for this more tyhanj anything. It was a good film.

Just after this he was cast as the swashbuckling captain Renato Dimorna in Mask of the Avengers (1951).

Rogues of Sherwood Forest 1950

The Rogues of Sherwood Forest is set in a post-King Richard England. With his brother dead, Prince John ( George MacReady ) – now in his 50s – takes control of the throne – he hasn’t lost any of his enthusiasm for bloodshed and tyranny.

Robin, Earl of Huntington, son of the famous Robin Hood, who has also since dies we learn, rallies up some of the Merrie Men including Little John, Friar Tuck and Will Scarlet and as his father had done he gathers a new band of outlaws to oppose Prince John. 

Alan Hale costars as Little John in his final film role ( and his third outing as the stout comrade ). The lovely Diana Lynn portrays Lady Marianne.

The Merrie Men consist of Billy House as Friar Tuck, Billy Bevan as Will Scarlet, and Lester Matthews in the role of Allen-a-Dale. 

Gordon Douglas directs the film which is in beautiful Technicolor It had some stunning cinematography ( by Charles Lawton Jr. ) and beautiful matte-painted backdrops. 

I am pretty sure that the picture below from the film is a Matte Shot – with the whole of the Right Hand side including the castle and the moat a Matte. Extremely well done though, to make a stunning and convincing scene

I like this film – The Rogues of Sherwood Forest which has a very good cast, and script.

It is not up to the standard of ‘The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men’ made here in England at Denham Film Studios in the summer of 1951 – released in 1952

This was a tragedy that would sadly put an end to the days of star-studded partying at the home of Tyrone Power. For years, a select few would meet at his house usually on a Sunday to drink and play games.

In this group were J. Watson Webb, Cesar Romero, Rex Harrison (shortly after his own scandal with the death of Carol Landis) Oleg Cassini, Gene Tierney and David Niven and his twenty-eight year old wife, Primula Rollo.

On the afternoon of May 21, 1946, the group had enjoyed a barbecue and during the evening some of them started playing a game of hide-and-seek known as “Sardines”.

Primmie, was opening doors in search of the hiders in this game

She had just moved to the USA from Britain, where she had been living with her husband David Niven and their two small sons

David Niven had made the film ‘A Matter of Life and Death’ in England and then looking to Hollywood, he renewed his association with Samuel Goldwyn. He had gone over to Hollywood and acquired an older rambling mansion The Pink House which was next door to Douglas Fairbanks. After Primmie and the boys joined him they all settled well into the California lifestyle with film star friends.

This party at Tyrone Power’s house, I have since read, was a welcoming one for Primmie

This was her first time playing Sardines and she was not familiar with the game or the layout of the house.

She opened a dark door that she assumed was a cupboard and rushed in – she plunged down a steep flight of concrete steps that led to the basement. She gashed her head and was knocked unconscious.

Instead of immediately taking her to the hospital, Tyrone Power suggested that everyone keep on playing, so as not to frighten her when she woke up – absolutely unbelievable in my book – she needed urgent attention. After half an hour, her husband David Niven and the doctor finally carried the unconscious Primmie out to a car and drove her to a hospital.

There, she was misdiagnosed with slight concussion. The following morning a clot to the brain was found – then followed an unsuccessful operation in an attempt to alleviate swelling – but she died on the operating table. She left two sons and a grief stricken husband who never fully recovered.

The death of Primula Niven was the beginning of the end of the golden years for Tyrone Power – and for David Niven

ABOVE – They had two sons, David Jr. and Jamie

After they were married there first home was a Thameside Cottage ABOVE

ABOVE – A Reporter looks down the flight of stairs where Primmie fell

David Niven, after this tragedy returned to Britain to play the title-role in Bonnie Prince Charlie. During the filming at the Studios he walked off the set to find a 28-year-old woman he had never seen before sitting in his reserved chair.

As he admitted later: ‘I had never seen anything so beautiful in my life — tall, slim, auburn hair, uptilted nose, lovely mouth and the most enormous grey eyes I had ever seen … I goggled. I had difficulty swallowing and I had champagne in my knees.’

The name of his uninvited guest was Hjördis Tersmeden, a divorced Swedish model.

That same day, Niven took her to a riverside pub. The next day, he took her to his London Club Buck’s for lunch.

She was ten years his junior and had never seen any of his films, but he was rapidly becoming, by his own admission, ‘quite besotted’.

One afternoon soon after they started dating, she was introduced to Niven’s young sons, David Jr, five, and Jamie, two. It was an awkward meeting.

Even David Niven had doubts, telling friends that he was ‘quite possibly making the greatest mistake of my life’. Those words were to prove horribly prophetic.

In a display of appalling judgement – and seemingly with no thoughts for his sons, they married six weeks later at South Kensington Register office, on January 14, 1948.

The new Mrs Niven had been born Hjördis Paulina Genberg in Sweden, and raised in the extreme north of that country at Kiruna, within the icy Arctic Circle.

At the end of the war, she had married an extremely rich yacht-owning Swedish businessman, Carl Tersmeden, but had divorced him after only 18 months

She may have been a successful model in Sweden, but she was completely unknown outside her home country. Her English was poor, and she soon discovered that marriage to a movie star did not provide her with the celebrity status she craved.

Hjordis always seemed resentful of her husband’s star status

I do remember David Niven coming on the Michael Parkinson Chat Show and giving a wonderful performance, regaling us with those stories of the Hollywood Golden Age.

A couple of years later, he again appeared on the same show and seemed to stumble over his words – he certainly was not the same. It was later explained that his hectic filming schedule had much to do with this but I dont think many people were fooled – he was a sick man.

We later learned that he had the onset of Motor Neurone disease – and that was the first time I had ever heard that term

His final appearance in Hollywood was hosting the 1981 American Film Institute tribute to Fred Astaire.

David Niven news: Niven with Hjordis

Back to his marriage to Hjordis – they maybe were happy in their early days but they certainly weren’t by 1970 when this happened :

By 1970, Hjördis was drinking heavily and seemed intent on undermining her husband. During an interview at London’s Connaught Hotel, she repeatedly interrupted and corrected his version of events, adding: ‘I’ve heard all these stories a thousand times and they bore me to death.’

David Niven, plainly furious, replied: ‘Then please go away and die, darling.’

In 1980, after 32 years of marriage, Niven said of Hjördis: ‘She isn’t good company and she can’t do anything. What she can do is make herself look very good and she can arrange flowers. But that’s all.’

As James Bond icon Roger Moore says in his 2008 book ‘My Word is My Bond’, he was not impressed with the way David’s wife was treating him.

Struggling with his condition, David told his wife Hjördis that he had managed to “swim two lengths” of their swimming pool.

Roger said he watched on as Hjördis snapped at her dying husband in “a cutting voice”.

She said sneeringly: ‘Aren’t we a clever boy.’

Two weeks later David Niven was dead

Roger observed: “She was a bitch to him. David was a dear, dear friend of mine who did nothing but try to please her. In return, Hjördis showed him nothing but disdain.”

Speaking from his office at Sotheby’s in New York, David’s son Jamie said: ‘I always sensed a great deal of anger in her. She was angry with him, angry at his fame and success. It was jealousy, I think. She wanted to be someone in her own right, and not merely Mrs David Niven. And when she drank, that anger intensified.’

In an easlier article I read :-

“She told the boys to stop calling her Mummy,” Patricia Medina told Graham Lord. “She said ‘You have to call me Hjördis, you can’t call me Mummy.’ Jamie was so upset that he locked himself in his bedroom.”

“Hjördis was more of a companion rather than a mother,” Jamie told Sheridan Morley. “There were moments when we had a lot of fun together and other moments when it got very tricky. She didn’t act like a mother and she made it very clear that she never wanted to be our mother.”

I feel sad for those young boys

While we are still on the subject of jungle heroes – after my very last article, we now take a look at the ‘Bomba’ films made by Monogram Studios from 1949 onwards – with Johnny Sheffield

The series of films is based on the character created by Roy Rockwood – BELOW we can see what is said to be an original first edition of one of his ‘Bomba’ books

I am surprised that this First Edition BELOW carries quite a hefty price tag

After playing the role of Boy in eight Tarzan films, the now teen-aged Johnny Sheffield moved into the title role in a jungle series of his own. The first of this series …1949’s Bomba, the Jungle Boy.

Our story begins with the father / daughter photographers George (Onslow Stevens) and Patricia (Peggy Ann Garner) Harland on a safari in the jungles of Africa. George is anxious to get photos that no one has ever taken before. In fact, he’s quite impatient with their local guide, Andy Barnes (Charles Irwin) for not showing them anything exciting.

Pat, on the other hand, is excited to be taking it all in. However, one day as they head for the mysterious Great Rift, Pat and her guide are separated from the rest of the group.

They are set on by a hungry leopard and the guide is killed, but before the leopard can turn on Pat, out of the jungle, swinging on a vine comes Bomba who promptly fights off the animal.

At first, both Pat and Bomba, are a bit unsure of each other.

Bomba does have a grasp of English, so the two can at least converse.

Bomba takes Pat back to his little corner of the jungle where she builds herself a little hut to sleep in, dons her own leopard skin attire, and swims with Bomba in the river.

Meanwhile, her father is determined to track down the jungle boy and kill him for running off with his daughter.

Unfortunately, a swarm of locusts and a tribe of vicious lion worshipping hunters and other adventure for the two don’t help

The Bomba series was produced by Monogram Pictures, which was quite definitely a low budget studio.

The film was directed by Ford Beebe who had been a writer but who had turned successfully to directing mainly B films including these Bomba ones.

I have read that Johnny Sheffield admired the way he did his job – he said that he would read the story ( maybe even write it ) and then shoot the film in sequence straight from his memory. So he had very few re-takes – if any. Alfred Hitchcock admired the way he was able to bring his films in so economically.

One Comment I saw was this from someone who knew and had worked with Ford Beebe :-

He was the toughest man, physically, I have ever known . . . He wrote his own scripts, directed them and played the character lead in most of them. Then when he washed up for the day and the rest went home, he’d go in the cutting room and cut and title until 2 or 3 a.m., then go in the office and sleep on the floor ’til the janitor woke him up, go home, have breakfast and be back on the stage before the cast showed up. This was not something he did once in a while. It was the way he worked all the time.

He was certainly a big name in directing at a budget level – and I do feel that given the chance he could have done something really special. I think of William Witney and Byron Haskin who directed at what would be considered a ‘low level’ but when given the chance – and these two were – would meet the challenge and meet it well.

I think Ford Beebe would have done too.

Later titles in the Bomba series include ‘Lord of the Jungle’  Elephant Stampede and Killer Leopard.

The one film in the series that I know best – having seen it as a child is Bomba and The Hidden City’ which me and my brother loved. So exciting for us at that time – and filmed in the African Jungle – which it wasn’t but so what !!

Tarzan and his adventures have filled the Cinemas around the World for close on 100 years.

Johnny Weissmuller took on the role in 1932 with ‘Tarzan and His Mate’ which proved very successful and was quickly followed by many more over the next decade or more. Johnny seemed to fit the part so well and perfected Tarzan’s call

Tarzan – BELOW In a publicity shot, here Johnny is with Maureen O Sullivan ( Jane) and Johnny Sheffield as ‘Boy’ in ‘Tarzan Finds a Som’

BELOW A much later Tarzan – this time Gordon Scott who took on the role in the late fifties and made the first Tarzan Film in colour

Here he is with Vera Miles who later became his wife

Tarzan BELOW – Gordon Scott this time with Betta St John

Tarzan BELOW Johnny Weissmuller

Tarzan – Lex Barker took over the role in 1949 with ‘Tarzan’s Magic Fountain’ – in my book one of the best story-lines that Tarzan in films ever had.

Lex Barker (as Tarzan) and beautiful Brenda Joyce (as Jane) are given an old cigarette case -“Cheeta” the chimp finds while frolicking with a mate. It belong to famous pilot Evelyn Ankers (as Gloria James), who disappeared in a 1928 plane crash. Evelyn Ankers survived the crash and took up residence in a “Shangri-la” known to only a few, Tarzan being one of them.

Tarzan needs to find her because she has information that would help clear a man unjustly accused of murder…

However the fact that she hasn’t aged while living in “The Blue Valley” for 20 years – very much in the Lost Horizon style – proves very interesting to people who could exploit the ‘youth secret’

This was the last appearance of Brenda Joyce as Tarzan’s “Jane.

Albert Dekker and Charles Drake make fine villains.

Around the same time as Lex Barker took on the role. ‘Boy’Johnny Sheffield starred as Bomba in a series of jungle films. These did not have big budgets but were quite successful, mainly as supporting films on a programme.

BELOW Tarzan again with Johnny and Maureen O Sullivan BELOW

Tarzan

ABOVE – Lex Barker as Tarzan in Colour. I am surprised that we haven’t had a Colorised release of one of the Tarzan films – I later discover that some are now available

I also wish that Lex Barker’s Tarzan had been given the big budget treatment of MGM as I do believe that he could have been a really special Tarzan – he remains my favourite in the role I think, just ahead of Johnny

ABOVE – The home of Maureen O Sullivan and her husband John Farrow in Bel Air.

John Farrow, was an Oscar-winning film director from Australia, and Irish-born actress Maureen O’Sullivan, is most often remembered as Jane in six “Tarzan” films between 1932 and 1942 and six of the very best.

Her earnings from those films must have helped her and her husband buy this beautiful house

 RICHARD GREENE – (August 25, 1918 – June 1, 1985)

Born Richard Marius Joseph Greene – English film and television actor.

A matinée idol who appeared in more than 40 films, he was perhaps best known for the lead role in the long-running British TV series The Adventures of Robin Hood, which ran for 143 episodes from 1955 to 1959.

Early life –
Richard Greene of Irish and Scottish ancestry, and was born in Plymouth. He was raised Roman Catholic, attending Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School (Kensington, London), which he left at 18.

His aunt was actress Evie Greene.

His father, Richard Abraham Greene and his mother, Kathleen Gerrard, were both actors with the Plymouth Repertory Theatre. He was the grandson of Richard Bentley Greene and a descendant of four generations of actors.

It has been stated elsewhere that he was the grandson of the inventor William Friese-Greene, (credited by some as the inventor of cinematography) but this was found to be wrong.

He had been married to Patricia Medina and a few years before this, they had both travelled to Hollywood to appear in films – actually she fared better than he did

The Above is an earlier Picture from February 1949 – Richard Greene and his wife Patricia Medina pack before flying to the USA.

In Hollywood she appeared with Alan Ladd in ‘Botany Bay’ another one of my favourites and I am pretty sure she shared star billing in this.

She travelled backwards and forwards between Hollywood and England and in fact she appeared in this one also with Alan Ladd – ‘The Black Knight’ made at Pinewood Studios

Richard Greene and Patricia Medina were divorced in 1951 – much later in 1959 he married his second wife Beatrice Summers and they had a daughter

He retained an interest in horse racing all his life, and was also a keen and accomplished golfer. He had, in his Hollywood days, been a good friend of David Niven and Errol Flynn

He died at his home in Norfolk in 1985, according to his daughter Patricia. She said he had never fully recovered after being injured in a fall in 1982.

“He still had quite a fan club and was receiving letters requesting signed pictures,”

He had been a big star in Hollywood before the War appearing in more than 40 films, including “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” “Forever Amber” and “My Lucky Star” but like so many careers at that time, it was damaged by those years away – he came back and made quite a few films but they were never that successful until be hit the jackpot as Robin Hood – a part he seemed born to play – he fitted the role so well.

That went ‘big’ in England and America and was the first Television series made in England to take the USA by storm which it un-doubtedly did..

Richard Greene was born in Plymouth, the son of an actor and actress. He joined a repertory company in his teens and at 20 was discovered by producers at 20th Century Fox studios, who described his looks as combining the features of Tyrone Power and Robert Taylor.

Richard Greene in great form as Robin Hood

Richard Greene in great form as Robin Hood tis time with his trusty bow and arrow

ABOVE and BELOW : The famous quarter staff fight with Little John – Not that well done here really I thought but looks better in colour

As anyone reading the articles I post on this site will know, I am a real fan of this type of Poster. These Double Bills were often when a re-run of the films came round – I suppose we were getting a real bonus – I always thought that was true !

These are good examples BELOW – but cheating a little, as they are not all from the Fifties as everyone will know

I watched quite a lot of ‘She’ a few weeks ago and liked it

Double Bill

ABOVE – ‘Scars of Dracula’ was one of the later ones from Hammer and I do know ‘The Horror of Frankenstein’ was from 1970 and had the very last film appearance of Joan Rice who played the part of the wife of Dennis Price. Both of these actors had seen better days career-wise. Dennis Price had been a very big star of the late forties and early fifties and was a very fine actor. His key role in ‘Kind Hearts and Coronets’ was nothing shore of brilliant. He had the misfortune to pick – or was given – some pretty poor films after that.

ABOVE – Both films from 1957 = both American films and released together in the USA on this Double Bill. Beverley Garland was in ‘Not of this Earth’ – I remember her for one of the Bomba films. Coincidentally on this programme in ‘Attack of the Crab Monsters’ the leading man was Richard Garland.

Reading more about him he and Beverley were married in 1951 but divorced in 1953 but they both continued their acting careers and were in films paired together here

ABOVE – Not really a Double Bill but I really like ‘The Maze’ apparently filmed originally in 3D

ABOVE – Oliver Reed in an early film

and BELOW :A Very good Double Bill here. These two films were very well made and anyone seeing them on the same bill would get plenty for their money

Double Bill

ABOVE – ‘The Evil of Frankenstein’ with an unusual and very interesting film ‘Nightmare’ – a good storyline :-

NIGHTMARE

When was an eleven year-old child, Janet witnessed her insane mother stabbing her father to death on their bed. Six years later, Janet (Jennie Linden) is a wealthy teenager outcast in a boarding school afflicted by dreadful nightmares and fearing to have inherited her mother´s insanity.

After a series of nightmares, her teacher Mary Lewis (Brenda Bruce) brings Janet home and she is welcomed by the family chauffeur John (George A. Cooper), by his wife and housekeeper Mrs. Gibbs (Irene Richmond) and by the beautiful nurse Grace Maddox (Moira Redmond), who was hired as a companion by her guardian Henry Baxter (David Knight).

However Janet continues to have nightmares with a woman (Clytie Jessop) with a scar on her face and wearing a white shroud wandering in the house and stabbed on her parents´ bed. After trying to commit suicide, two doctors and Henry summon Janet to the living room to decide whether she should go to an asylum.

When Henry brings his wife to the room, Janet sees the woman with scar and stabs her to death. She is sent to an institution and soon a diabolical plot is disclosed.

“Nightmare” is an underrated and unknown thriller by Hammer, with a great story of greed and insanity.

Jennie Linden was a late replacement for Julie Christie who had a better film offer.

ABOVE – Not so much a ‘Double Bill’ but What a Line-up

Actor JAMES STEWART explains his love of the Horse his co-star he rode for 22 years in a number of Westerns.

“The horse [Pie] was amazing. I rode him for 22 years. I never was able to buy him because he was owned by a little girl by the name of Stevie Myers, who is the daughter of an old wrangler who used to wrangle horses for Tom Mix and W.S. Hart. He retired and he gave this horse to her. He [Pie, the horse] was a sort of a maverick. He hurt a couple of people. I saw [Pie] when I started making Westerns.

Audie Murphy rode him a couple of times. He nearly killed Glenn Ford, ran right into a tree But I liked this darned little horse. He was a little bit small. I got to know him like a friend. I actually believed that he understood about making pictures. I ran at a full gallop, straight towards the camera, pulled him up and then did a lot of dialogue and he stood absolutely still. He never moved. He knew when the camera would start rolling and I always knew that because his ears would come up.

Robert Mitchum’s daughter, a horse enthusiast and the author of “Hollywood Hoofbeats” told this story:-

“James Stewart rode Pie in 17 westerns. They became so attuned to each other that in one film, “The Far Country,” Stewart had developed such a rapport with him that he was able to get the horse to do something even when the trainer was not around.

They were on this location. The trainer wasn’t on the set and the horse needed to walk from one end of a street to another with no ropes on him or anything. James Stewart just went up to him, whispered in his ear and told him what he needed him to do – and the horse did it.

Everyone on the set was absolutely amazed, and James Stewart just said, that was Pie. That’s what he did.

He had an incredible bond with the horse.

“Beyond the work Pie did with James Stewart, on film he was also ridden by Kirk Douglas, Audie Murphy, Glenn Ford and more than likely, a number of other actors.

There is no exact count of the number of films in which this little quarter horse appeared.

James Stewart refers above to the horse having nearly killed Glenn Ford when they ran into a tree. I am pretty sure that would be when, in ‘The Man from the Alamo’, Glenn suffered three broken ribs and production was held up for three weeks until he recovered

Alfred Hitchcock’s film Saboteur is one of my favourites – certainly of all the films he directed I think that I enjoy this one the most of all.

It had a wonderful climax at the top of the Statue of Liberty which was brilliantly done and on first seeing the film, I could barely dare to look at the screen

It’s a Hitchcock film I like as it takes us on a roller coaster ride across the USA and back to New York Harbour – as this final scene sequence shows when the hero Robert Cummings and villain Fry played by Norman Lloyd climb out onto the torch of the Statue of Liberty. In this sequence  how varied the shots are. We don’t just get a shot of the statue followed by close-ups of the action, we get this complex series of Matte shots – see below

Maybe this is why I find myself drawn to the sequence – in that it is so unusual and original with shots cut in from every angle.

Saboteur

BELOW:

I had not realised how the Statue of Liberty had been made or even the date but this gives us something of an insight – it was coming across these pictures that made me immediately think of ‘Saboteur’

A rare look at the statue as it was being built before getting carefully shipped and pieced together on it’s pedestal. Picture it is stated is from in 1884

This photo was taken in 1885 – very rare photograph

Possibly the most bizarre film gimmick involved film screenings enhanced with specific smells. “AromaRama” made its big-screen debut in 1959 with Carlo Lizzani’s “Behind the Great Wall,” using the cinema’s air conditioning system to disperse scents through the auditorium.

ABOVE: producer Mike Todd, Jr. and inventor Hans Lube display the “Smell-O-Vision” “Scent of Mystery” perfume apparatus

Only a few weeks later, producer Mike Todd, Jr.’s “Smell-O-Vision” premiered with the film “Scent of Mystery.” Todd’s system relied on a network of pipes connected to vents beneath the seats that would release perfumes at specific points during a screening. Both gimmicks were spectacular critical and popular flops, as audiences found they merely distracted from the viewing experience.

One contributor on a Film Site commented :

I was at the premiere in Hollywood (1960) –

Didn’t know what to expect .. but the pipe tobacco and peach smells (among SEVERAL more) were astounding! Each time you smelled the perfume… you KNEW something bad was going to happen! ..…

I don’t know how they did it, maybe a hose or fan mounted on the seat in front of you, but when the scene changed, the smell did too !!

If I remember correctly, the program LISTED all the smells you would encounter during the film

ABOVE: A poster for “Scent of Mystery ”

One interesting comment from someone around at the time :-

“I’ve never even heard of anyone trying to re-create this. The problem is, how do you get the smells out once they’re in the cinema.

Many years later in 1981 John Waters did revive the scented film with “Polyester,” this time with “Odorama” whihc was supposed to have improved the original idea by giving audience members scratch-and-sniff cards numbered by scene. That seems even more bizarre to me

APRIL FOOLS DAY in England

Smell-O-Vision was a way to add smell to television — so said the BBC in a 1965 April Fool’s Day report. The broadcaster pranked television audiences in England by claiming that they’d perfected Smell-O-Vision — and as ridiculous as this sounds it had been done a few years before

Like Percepto! before it, Smell-O-Vision was a short lived concept that never took off and it remains one of the strangest cinematic gimmicks that’s ever been dreamed up.

“Percepto!”. A $1,000 life insurance policy against “Death by Fright” for Macabre (1958) and sent a skeleton out  above the audiences’ heads in the Cinema  in House on Haunted Hill (1959).

PERCEPTO: “SCREAM FOR YOUR LIVES!”

“Percepto!” was a gimmick where William Castle attached electrical “buzzers” to the underside of some seats in cinemas where The Tingler was screened.

Glenn Ford (1 May 1916 – 30 August 2006)

Glenn Ford made his film debut in the 1939 drama Heaven With a Barbed Wire Fence. It is a wonder that, after this, Glenn continued with his career. The film’s director, Ricardo Cortez, bullied Ford the whole time. The harassment culminated in a mortifying incident where Cortez dressed Ford down in front of the whole crew, telling him that he was a bad actor and that he wished he’d never hired him.

Glenn Ford neither forgave nor forgot the incident.

Glenn Ford later met actress Eleanor Powell when he went on a cross-country 12-city tour to sell war bonds for Army and Navy Relief as the United States entered World War II. He soon proposed to her and they married in 1943. Their son named Peter Ford (later become singer and actor) was born on February 5, 1945. The couple appeared together in the 1950s film Have Faith in Our Children and eventually divorced in 1959.

According to Ford’s son, he had a decades long love affair with his famous co-star Rita Hayworth, that began during the filming of Gilda in 1945.

He has appeared in five films with Rita Hayworth: Affair in Trinidad (1952), The Lady in Question (1940), The Loves of Carmen (1948), The Money Trap (1965) and Gilda (1946).

He had intended to portray Hondo Lane in Hondo (1953), but backed out when John Farrow was chosen to direct. Ford and Farrow did not get on – while making Plunder of the Sun (1953), causing Ford to lose interest in the role. The role was subsequently portrayed by John Wayne.

One bit of useless information – He is credited with being the fastest “gun” in Hollywood westerns, able to draw and fire in 0.4 seconds, he was faster than James Arness (Matt Dillon of “Gunsmoke” (1955)) and John Wayne. Well he did star in the excellent ‘The Fastest Gun Aiive’

Despite his illustrious career in films that spanned more than 50 years, he was never nominated for an Oscar.

Glenn Ford – The Man from the Alamo

Directed by Budd Boetticher

Cast: Glenn Ford (John Stroud), Julie Adams (Beth Anders), Chill Wills (John Gage), Hugh O’Brian (Lt. Lamar), Victor Jory (Jess Wade), Neville Brand (Dawes), John Day (Cavish), Myra Marsh (Ma Anders), Jeanne Cooper (Kate Lamar), Mark Cavell (Carlos), Edward Norris (Mapes), Guy Williams (Sergeant)

__________

Budd Boetticher made some terrific pictures and  The Man From The Alamo (1953) is one of the best. It’s a film filled with action — from the attack on the Alamo to a number of fist fights to the climactic wagon train scenes. It’s all handled perfectly.

The actual filming seemed to be plagued by injuries, it’s easy to see why. I think I have read that Glenn Ford broke three ribs and the filming was halted for three weeks or so

John Stroud (Glenn Ford) is the one man who left the Alamo after Travis wrongly labelled him as a coward.

Stroud sees the chance to help other families make their way to safety as a way to clear his name — and get his revenge on Wade (Victor Jory), the leader of a band of mercenaries

Glenn Ford does a good job here as a man who’s lost everything, even his good name.

Victor Jory is Wade, the soldier responsible for the death of Ford’s family. Jory proves to be a great baddie – he’s at his absolute best in this film

Julie Adams is so beautiful in Russell Metty’s Technicolor — she was perfect for Universal International’s bright, colourful Westerns of the 50s.

The Technicolor here is incredible.