This film I remember well although I always thought that it was in Colour which it isn’t.

Directed by Anthony Mann

Cast: James Stewart (Lin McAdam), Shelley Winters (Lola Manners), Dan Duryea (Waco Johnny Dean), Stephen McNally (Dutch Henry Brown), Millard Mitchell (High-Spade Frankie Wilson), Charles Drake (Steve Miller), John McIntire (Joe Lamont), Will Geer (Wyatt Earp), Jay C. Flippen (Sergeant Wilkes), Rock Hudson (Young Bull)

Winchester ’73 is the first of Anothony Mann’s pictures with James Stewart, The film was a big hit, and James Stewart’s deal was very good for him financially. After this others followed suit, which ultimately helped bring to an end the Studio system.

Anthony Mann and James Stewart would make four more Westerns together in one of Hollywood’s most significant director-star collaborations.

The prize rifle of (James Stewart) is stolen by (Stephen McNally), apprehended by a gun-trader (John McIntire), involved in a cavalry vs. Indian clash, and ends up in the hands of a man who struggles with cowardice (Charles Drake) before being taken by outlaw (Dan Duryea). Meanwhile Lin McAdam ( James Stewart) searches and chases to get the rifle back

Although “Winchester ’73” (1950) was shot Black and White, it’s an action-packed Western with a strong cast, which also includes Will Geer and Shelley Winters. Look out for Rock Hudson as the brave Young Bull and Tony Curtis as a cavalry trooper.

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Anthony Mann keeps us on edge throughout Winchester ’73.. 

For some reason I always thought that this film was in Technicolor but it was not. The later ones like ‘Where the River Bends’ certainly is I am happy to say

Where the River Bends 1952

Where the River Bends 1952

Julie Adams – then Julia Adams  – starred alongside   James Stewart in  Where The River Bends (1952), William Powell in The Treasure of Lost Canyon (1952), Rock Hudson in The Lawless Breed (1953) and Van Heflin in Wings of the Hawk (1953).

As a publicity stunt, Universal Studios once declared her legs “the most perfectly symmetrical in the world” and insured them for $125,000. And in “The Case of the Deadly Verdict,” a 1963 episode of Perry Mason, Adams’ character had the notable distinction of being one of the lawyer’s few clients to be found guilty.

Then the actress was offered the role that assured her a place in monster-movie history.

Featured in yesterday’s article, we now have more scenes from the film

The Creeping Flesh is a Tigon picture with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, directed by Freddie Francis.

It has been released on DVD some time ago in a Tr[ple Bill – However ‘The Creeping Flesh’ is the best one.

A scientist comes back from Papua New Guinea with some bones. They get wet and flesh forms around them again — with slimy, murderous result

The Creeping Flesh

The Creeping Flesh

The Creeping Flesh

The Creeping Flesh

This film was produced by a small company (World Film Services, started by John Heyman), but had major stars with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. This one isn’t as well-known as most

A knock at the door startles the elderly gentleman that is painting, and a young man walks in, and the old man tells him that he needs him to listen to what he has to say, because no one else will. Professor Emmanuel Hildern (Peter Cushing) begins to tell the young doctor a story about a time, three years ago, when he had just returned from New Guinea (flashback to three years earlier)…

At a sprawling estate, Professor Hildern returns to his home, and with the skeleton of a Neanderthal-type man. He’s greeted at the front door by his daughter, Penelope (Lorna Heilbron), and a colleague, Professor Waterlow (George Benson). Two men, one of them named Carter (Michael Ripper), then bring in a large box, and in it, is the skeleton. The two men pry it open, and Waterlow is stunned by the behemoth. Penelope was hoping to have breakfast with her father, but the excitement of the skeleton has him only thinking of its possibilities. She’s quite disappointed by this development. He eventually relents from his work, and joins her. She tells her father that she had to dismiss the help because they can’t afford them anymore. He assures her that things are going to change very soon because of this new discovery.

Penelope believes that her mother died a few years ago, but in reality, she was committed to an insane asylum, run by her uncle, and Professor Hildern’s brother, Dr. James Hildern (Christopher Lee). Professor Hildern receives a letter that his wife died in the asylum, so he departs to see what happened. James tells his brother that she died while he was away, and that he’ll apparently be stopping the financial help he was giving him to help his research. It’s quite an awkward moment, and Emmanuel leaves feeling unsettled, and almost betrayed.

Back at the house, Emmanuel reprimands Penelope for going into her mother’s room. He has forbidden her from even mentioning her name. He then retreats to his laboratory, and inspects the skeleton further.

He gets some water and begins to clean the skeleton, but within seconds finds out that the skeleton reacts to water in such a way that’s astounding. Wherever water touches the skeleton, flesh begins to appear. One finger completely regenerates, and Professor Hildern quickly cuts it off. Over at the asylum, Dr. Hildern and his associates are conducting Frankenstein-like experiments on the patients, and we see what true horror is.

One of the patients attacks him, and grabs the keys, but the doctor pulls out a pistol and shoots him dead. One of the patients actually manages to escape, and now the police are helping with the search.

Professor Hildern begins to read up on the folklore of the native people of New Guinea, and then understands that this skeleton is the personification of evil, and the water will restore it to life. Waterlow is befuddled by all of this, and Hildern begins to talk of playing God, and wiping evil off the face of the Earth. He then looks at the blood from the finger he cut off of the skeleton under a microscope, and then compares it to his own. Next, he mixes the two together and discovers that he could stop “evil” from spreading by an inoculation.

Meanwhile, Penelope has stolen her fathers keys, and heads into her mother’s bedroom (a place she’s been strictly forbidden to enter). She rummages through her mother’s things for a while, but then discovers a newspaper article that tells of her mother’s mental illness.

Back in the lab, the two doctors are experimenting on monkey with the blood of the skeleton. It’s getting late, so the two men pack it in for the night. The blood under the microscope however is yielding results contradictory to what Professor Hildern originally saw when he tested it. He then heads upstairs and sees that someone is in his wife’s room. He freaks out about it, and then he and Penelope get into an argument. He begins to have a flashback of when his wife was still alive and was a “dancer” who went insane

The next morning, Professor Hildern decides to use his new serum on his daughter, suspecting that her mother’s mental disorder may be hereditary. We then check in on the escaped patient from the insane asylum, as he’s wandered into a local pub. He thrashes most of the male customers, and then makes his way out.

The next day, Waterlow calls to Hildern and both men see that the serum has driven the monkey mad. Hildern runs upstairs to see Penelope, but she’s already gone. We see her, as she travels through the seedy parts of London, but so is the escaped patient.

Hildern is making his way there as well, but it’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack. A young man sees Penelope at the bar and starts buying her drinks. Eventually, they go upstairs, – the man tries to force himself on her, but finds out how sharp her nails are after she rips part of his face off!

She then heads downstairs, and begins to dance around for the crowd. One sailor gets so aroused that he grabs her. She grabs a bottle, breaks off the top, and slashes the guy’s throat!  They chase her out of the pub, and through the streets. She goes into a warehouse and bars the door.

As the police and crowd are trying to break the door down, Penelope runs into the escaped patient, Lenny. As the police search the place, Lenny tries to help her escape. They go to the top of the building, but there’s no escape. Lenny looks over the edge and the people below see him. Penelope goes completely off her rocker, and grabs a plank of wood, and cracks Lenny over the head, and it sends him plummeting to the ground to his death. A few seconds later, the police surround and capture Penelope.

Of course, she’s labelled insane, and taken to her uncle’s asylum. He sees a sample of her blood, and sees the foreign agent that was introduced by her father.

Uncle James realises he has his brother cornered, and once he sees the skeleton, he forces his brother into an alliance. Emmanuel doesn’t want to do it, but he has no choice.

For a horror film, this one is more suspense than anything until the end.

Peter Cushing and Christoher Lee are their normal selves.

Peter Cushing is torn between morality and his love of science.

Christopher Lee is a villain in this one.

Lovely actress Lorna Heilbron did give some good moments before and after her insanity took hold.

Also in the cast are Hammer stalwarts, Michael Ripper and Duncan Lamont (Evil of Frankenstein- 1964 and Frankenstein Created Woman– 1967).

This film is well worth viewing, if for no other reason than it was one of the last films that Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee did together, and it holds up very well indeed

This film comes a little after the Fifties but it does seem to be in the Hammer style of that era.

The film satrs Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee and the very lovely Lorne Heilbron.

The story goes – In the late 19th century, scientist Emmanuel Hildern (Peter Cushing) returns home to London with a prehistoric skeleton that he acquired in Papua New Guinea. While cleaning the skeleton, he learns that water triggers a horrific reaction – reanimation. He slices off the finger, now covered in flesh, and preserves it for later experiments.

While having breakfast with his daughter, Penelope (the lovely Lorna Heilbron), Emmanuel reads a letter informing him of his wife’s death.

Penelope has no idea that her mother has been in an insane asylum since she was a little girl. Fearful that his wife’s mental illness may be hereditary, Emmanuel has sheltered his daughter at their estate with only the servants to keep her company. She’s not allowed outside, except for short walks within the gated premises.

Emmanuel travels to the institution where his wife died. He meets up with his half-brother, James (Christopher Lee), who happens to be the insane asylum’s director and a competing scientist. Emmanuel was always the favorite of the two siblings, the one destined to achieve greatness, so it’s with great pleasure that James tells him that he is in the running for the prestigious Richter Award. In addition, he will no longer fund Emmanuel’s transcontinental trips.

The climax is truly a frightening one full of suspense. Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing are great but it’s the beautiful Heilbron who steals the show. I want to watch more films she stars in.

We seem to be on a run of mysterious strangers – here is another one. The mysterious stranger this time is Conrad Veidt who takes up residence in a non too pleasant area of London in a boarding house whose residents are a mixture of sad, lonely and poor people.

Terrorised by an evil landlord, the inhabitants of a shabby London boarding house exist precariously on the edge of disaster and despair. But when a new, rather strange lodger (Conrad Veidt) arrives, things seem to mysteriously take a turn for the better.

Rene Ray plays one such resident and she really takes to the stranger whose quiet dignity and strength inspires her to survive in those tough times with his spiritual air

Conrad Veidt is impressive in this role.

This is a really interesting film, based on a Victorian play by Jerome K. Jerome.

Its director, Viertel, had left Germany for England, where he made several films. The Stranger is played by Conrad Veidt, famous for his roles in Dr. Caligari, and Casablanca.

It is an allegory of the struggle between good and evil. I especially enjoyed the performances of Conrad Veidt and Mary Clare, and Rene Ray 

This one of Conrad Veidt’s best portrayals, which says a lot, especially if you consider the parts he played particularly in The Thief of Bagdad, The Spy in Black and Casablanca.

This was a favourite film of my Dad’s – and it is certainly one of mine

Conrad Veidt gives a superlative performance as the Stranger who works to redeem the varied collection of inhabitants of the run-down boarding house 

The cast is all good – Sara Allgood as Mrs de Hooley. Rene Ray is appealing as the maid ‘Stasia, a rehabilitated juvenile delinquent, who is mistreated by Mrs Sharpe (Mary Clare), the owner of the house.

Shooting was planned for six weeks at Gainsborough Studios, Shepherd’s Bush, London, using a limited number of sets, and with just the single scene of the seaside visit to Margate shot outside the studio.

The film was released on 15 December 1935.

This is Director Viertel’s second British film after Little Friend (1934). He made just one more film, Rhodes of Africa (1936 )

The Passing of the Third Floor Back is directed by Berthold Viertel, runs 90 minutes, is made by Gaumont British Picture Corporation, is released by Gaumont British Distributors (UK) and Gaumont British Picture Corporation of America (US), is written by Michael Hogan and Alma Reville, based on a play and short story by Jerome K Jerome, is shot in black and white by Curt Courant, is produced by Ivor Montagu, and is scored by Hubert Bath and Louis Levy.

Rene Ray starred in the London stage production, playing the central role nearly 450 times In 1951–52 before reprising her performance in the film version. Born Irene Lilian Creese, and becoming by marriage Irene Lilian Brodrick, Countess of Midleton, she signed her name Rène not René.

I have heard this one as a Radio play which is available and seena Television version from 1982. It is a play I like.

This J B Priestley play is, in a way, not unlike ‘An Inspector Calls’ where a mysterious stranger comes into the lives of people staying at a small holiday cottage in Yorkshire.

Herbert Lom plays the stranger Dr Gortler who it seems has been sent on a mission to meet these people and influence the rest of their lives in a very dramatic way. There is a man, Walter Ormund and his wife Janet, who are unhappy in their lives , and another single man, Oliver Farrant, a teacher, who is travelling alone and it seems. pretty much alone in life.

ABOVE – Herbert Lom excellent as Dr Gortler

Dr Gortler has been sent to this cottage knowing that he will meet the three and also knowing the scenario – an unhappy marriage of two very decent people and a young man who is on his own.

The young man and Janet Ormund seem not to like one another and in fact do their very best to avoid meeting or being in the same room. This scene below is when Janet asks the teacher why he does not like her as he moves to leave the room. Gradually he opens up and says that, far from not liking her, he is actually drawn to her very forcefully and has been from the first time they met.

She admits that she feels – and has felt – the same and they rush to embrace.

They know that they must be together.

However they are worried about Walter and what he might do

Dr Gortler knows that in the scenario he has Walter would kill himself and leave the two lovers torn by guilt and struggling but he also is sure that he can change this.

ABOVE – Sam Shipley’s daughter Sally Pratt – who seeing what is happening is very concerned for her son who attends Walter Ormund’s school and she fears what would happen if the school closed due to this

ABOVE – Sam Shipley played by Leslie Sands

ABOVE Dr Gortler talks with Walter Ormund for some time and Walter decides not to stand in the way of the two lovers saying that his wife deserves the happiness he always wanted for her – and that there will be no scandal

Walter chats to the owner of the cottage and realises just how content he is. Played of course by Leslie Sands who we all well remember as ‘Cluff’ in the TV series.

Anthony Valentine is excellent as Walter Ormund. We probably remember him best for ‘Colditz’ but he was in so many productions in film and mainly Television.

Looking him up I see that he actually married in 1982 the year that he payed in this drama

In the last two weeks, I have watch the 2015 version of An Inspector Calls and this one had David Thewliss as the Inspector – and then yesterday my wife and I settled down to the 1954 version with Alistair Sim in the role.

The 2015 BBC production was very good as was the casting but I did think that David Thewliss’ acting was just a bit on the wooden side and this was a key role. The rest of the cast though we’re very good indeed.

On the other hand, Alistair Sim was wonderful in the earlier version

RE Guy Hamilton’s film version of J. B. Priestley’s An Inspector Calls 1954 film is based on the 1945 stage play and is a mostly faithful adaptation. Gut Hamilton did a splendid job focusing on the family drama as it unfolds, although we, the audience – and the Birling family – don’t initially have any idea what is coming. It is 1912 and the wealthy and upper class Birling family are having a family celebration when the mysterious Inspector Poole arrives out of the blue to tell them the news of a young woman named Eva Smith (played by the lovely Jane Wenham) who has apparently died from poison that day in the infirmary. Alastair Sim, known mostly for comic roles and for his definitive Scrooge, plays Inspector Poole who, like someone peeling a banana, each time he carefully questions a member of the family, takes off a layer and draws them individually into revealing their involvement with the dead girl. As is soon revealed, the patriarch and matriarch of the Birlings (played by Arthur Young and Olga Lindo), their daughter Sheila (Eileen Moore), their alcoholic and rebellious son Bryan Forbes, qnd Sheila’s fiance played by Gerald Croft (Brian Worth), all had dealings with the young woman prior to her death. As the film goes on, Inspector Poole carefully and deliberately persuades each participant to tell his or her story about Eva. Eva has in her life been forced to use different names, so some of the family don’t at first respond to the name Eva Smith, but when another name is given – Daisy Renton, by the Inspector, there is a visible jolt for Gerald Croft – who instantly realises that he has been involved with her. What a story this is – first rate There is, on tour in the UK at the moment, a theatrical version which we had planned to see but events took over and we failed to make it

Well, I was brought up watching those sprawling Biblical Epics of the eerly to mid fifties – from ‘Samson and Delilah’ to ‘Ben Hur’ and later ‘Barabbas’ so going to see Gladiator 2 at the Lobethal Cinema in South Australia in January, I was pretty well prepared – but was this to be something New – maybe a New angle.

The way CHI is used these days – maybe over-used – we are certainly able to see things on a mega scale with fearsome animals fighting people in the arena and spectacular sea battles and invasions

However in terms of storyline and plot Gladiator 2 certainly borrowed from these older films – a deranged Caesar – similar but not in the same league as Peter Ustinov in ‘Quo Vadis’, classic fights in the arena, and so on.

A few new things were added – a Centurion riding a gigantic Rhino against the hapless victims and a ‘flooded’ arena with sharks – that certainly stretched believability but it was so well done.

Ridley Scott directed and at his age, he would well remember these ‘big’ films of the fifties – so I am quite sure that he was influenced by them

ABOVE – Gladiator 2

ABOVE – A sadistic and cruel Jack Palance in Barabbas.

Clearly deranged and totally mad, Peter Ustinov in ‘Quo Vadis’ seen here with Patricia Laffan who plays malicious Empress Poppaea, sardonic and disdainful in her delivery, at times running close to overshadowing even the great Peter Ustinov in his most famous role as Nero

Yes I see many similarities in the plot of Gladiator 2 to these classics. I have to say I didn’t enjoy it anything like as much – maybe I am just much older and not viewing through youthful eyes.

Her Life Story – or as of 7 August 1954 when he Picture Show article was published and I will go into this in a later article.

Meantime an interesting interview that she did

She was a great friend of Grace Kelly throughout her life -and here is a quite an interesting article that I came across

My friend, Grace Kelly – Rita Gam remembers an Old Hollywood icon

A good friend and bridesmaid talks about the Grace Kelly she knew – a smart and fearless businesswoman and “not a fashionista”

A style icon who favoured old sweaters, the Hollywood star-turned-princess was full of paradoxes, friend and fellow actress Rita Gam tells Nick Miller.

“They used to have stories. Today we don’t have stories as good as that,” says Rita Gam, 84-year-old star from Hollywood’s golden age, sitting upright and respectable in her New York apartment as she remembers past roles. “Even though some of them were B pictures they were terrific – nice stories, interesting.”

But I’m not there to hear that story. I’m there to talk to Gam about her close friend, Grace Kelly. We’re inside a 100-year-old block in midtown, with an ornate facade, a concierge and that old New York attitude, in an apartment decorated with movie posters from Hollywood’s prime.

I show her a book, Grace Kelly: Style Icon, published to accompany an exhibition curated by London’s V&A museum and soon to open in Bendigo.

“Oh, this is very Grace,” she says of the cover, from a 1955 Cosmopolitan shoot at the height of Kelly’s movie career.

But when she flicks through the pages, her eyes are drawn to a casual Kelly on the streets of Manhattan, the Empire State Building over her shoulder, her clothes smart but demure.

“That’s what she wore a lot,” Gam says. “Skirts and shirts. She was not much of a ‘lunch girl’, who would go to lunch and dress up.”

This is Grace Kelly: Style Icon (it says so on the cover). Adored by the public, sought-after by designers. Still the touchstone reference for the Oscars red carpet; the woman who bridged the golden age of movies and the modern era – the first modern celebrity, a Princess Diana-come-January Jones.

But talking to Gam, a more complex version of Kelly emerges. “She was not a fashionista in any way,” Gam insists. “You’ve got to separate what was created by the studio system, which was a make-believe image of a goddess.”

The Kelly that Gam knew exploited, then transcended – but never embodied – the public role that the Hollywood machine decreed for the leading ladies it owned.

Her life was a dance between image and reality, PR confections and real-life fairytales. Yes, she did marry a prince; but their first meeting was a contrived magazine publicity stunt. Yes, she was a fashion icon, but her private dress sense was conservative and her palace closets were packed with old sweaters.

Kelly and Gam met in New York in the early ’50s as hard-working young TV actors and models. Pittsburgh-born Gam was married to a young director, Sidney Lumet, and Grace was the daughter of a well-to-do Philadelphia family, determined to make her own life in the performing arts, and succeeding at it.

They met on the sound stage of a show called Danger. “She was playing some villainess or other – she was very cute,” Gam recalls. “We were introduced by Sidney.”

It was not a movie-star moment. “She was a very nice girl – she could have been a kindergarten teacher. She had scrubbed clean, sympathetic looks. It’s just when the camera hit her she became absolute magic.”

Gam and Kelly signed with MGM and became close friends when Gam moved to Los Angeles a year or so later. She had been put up at the Beverly Hills Hotel. “I was very uncomfortable [there],” she says. “I was a woman alone, and if I sat in the lobby I would get hit on, and I was lonely. I would be calling New York and Sidney all of the time.”

At the suggestion of her agent, she called Kelly, who was on the cusp of fame as Rear Window, her second movie with Alfred Hitchcock, was finishing filming. Kelly was lonely too, having left behind in New York her on-and-off paramour, European designer Oleg Cassini.

“I called Grace and she said, ‘Oh come for tea today’, which I did. She was living with Prudy Wise, her secretary, a girl from the south. It was just a one-bedroom Hollywood apartment in the Hollywood flats. I don’t know, we were just having tea and she said, ‘Well, why don’t you move in with us? Three is as good as two is as good as one.'”

“So we did, I moved into her flat and it was rather fun, it was like we were sorority girls.”

In those days, Hollywood was “a party town” and “pretty wide open”, Gam says, in suggestive but decorous tones. “We would get hit on by industry wolves.”

“I remember once, Grace had a little gold Chevrolet, a couple of years older than was current, and [an acquaintance] said, ‘Oh we’ll send a car for you’. His name was Charlie Feldman, he was a big agent, and I said, ‘Grace they’re going to send a car for us’. I was on the telephone, and she said: ‘No, tell them we’ll drive ourselves.’ I said: ‘Oh, OK.’

“Well of course she was smart, we were in control of our destiny. We left that ‘party’ of four – two gentlemen, Charlie and his South American friend – and drove safely home down the Hollywood hills. [Kelly] was really much more wise than I was.”

It’s a recurring theme as Gam remembers Kelly – a smart girl becoming a smart businesswoman who saw through the Hollywood machine and was fearless about imposing her own demands on it – in fashion as much as anything else.

“Basically, she was suburban in her tastes,” Gam remembers. “[Even as a princess] she had closets full of old tweed skirts, and many many blouses that had long since seen their day, and tonnes of sweaters that were well-washed and well-worn.

“She didn’t have any particular style sense, I don’t think. I think she addressed that as an actress. She didn’t read a lot about fashion. [She relied on] not friends but professionals.”

Kelly befriended and relied on the studios’ top designers. But she kept one eye on the result. In her first leading role (Dial M for Murder), even as she was learning how to act on film, she overruled Hitchcock on a costume decision, telling him that if her character got up in the middle of the night to answer the phone, she wouldn’t bother putting a big velvet robe over her nightgown. She also had a fight with the make-up man who she thought was putting too much rouge on her. “After that, I had his confidence as far as wardrobe was concerned, and he gave me a very great deal of liberty in what I wore in his next two pictures,” Kelly said.

If style means anything, it’s not what you wear, it’s how you wear it. “The subtlety of Grace’s sexuality – her elegant sexiness – appealed to me,” Hitchcock told his biographer. “Grace conveyed much more sex than the average movie sexpot. With Grace you had to find it out, you had to discover it. Everybody wants a new leading lady but there aren’t many of them around. There are a lot of leading women, but not enough leading ladies.”

Of their first meeting, Cassini later wrote: “I saw her only in profile. I saw the utter perfection of her nose, the long elegant neck, the silky diaphanous blonde hair. She wore a black velvet two-piece, very demure, with a full skirt and a little white Peter Pan collar.”

The Hollywood system marketed her as the antithesis of Marilyn Monroe, whom Fox had recently discovered, feeding magazines lines that drew Grace as the all-American dream, a fine but approachable noblewoman who men wanted but women would also want to be: respectable, white-gloved, fine-bred and pretty. When Marilyn Monroe was asked what she wore to bed she replied “Chanel No 5.” When Grace was asked, she replied: “I think it’s nobody’s business what I wear to bed.” Article after article punned on her first name.

Grace found it all amusing. But she told her biographer that this “respectable” image of Hollywood felt unreal, when the reality too often was “full of men and women whose lives were confused and full of pain. To outsiders it looked like a glamorous life, but really it was not.” After her Academy Award for best actress (tellingly, for her role in The Country Girl, in which she played “a woman who had been married 10 years and lost interest in clothes, herself, everything”) she turned down most of the roles she was offered. The pressure and grind of Hollywood left her exhausted and disillusioned.

But she was also setting the mould for the modern movie star, taking control of her own PR from the studio. For Photoplay magazine she invited a photographer to take unprecedented candid shots of her and her sister on holiday in the Caribbean, in casual clothes and away from the studio’s platoon of retouchers. The photographer Howell Conant wrote: “You trusted Grace’s beauty, you knew it wasn’t built from clothes and make-up … [it was] natural, unpretentious.”

And then came her prince. Paris Match magazine set up a photo shoot of her with Prince Rainier of Monaco, as a promotion for its Cannes coverage. Gam recalls that the dress Kelly wore for the occasion she considers her biggest fashion faux pas. “She would make jokes about it.”

Months later, Rainier arrived in New York. “She called me, and she said, ‘Come up for drinks on Thursday, I want you meet my prince.’ I thought she meant her newest boyfriend and indeed it was her prince,” Gam remembers. “When I first met him … I wasn’t blown over – you know, it wasn’t Clark Gable, he was just a nice guy. He wasn’t handsome, he was short and dumpy – [but] he was fun, he was well-educated, he had a good, funny British sense of humour, and he was intelligent, so I mean, what’s not to like?”

with Prince Rainier at their first meeting

“She was romantic, she would go with somebody for a long time and she was looking for the perfect person. And she fell in love with Rainier and that was that. She just allowed the romance of the times to sweep her away.”

This was the ultimate fairytale – the lavish royal wedding, the palace life in Monaco, dressed by designers.

And then there was the reality. More than 1600 reporters and photographers (more than covered World War II) turned the wedding into a mob scene. “After the honeymoon she [and] Rainier slept for two days. It was exhausting and it took [them] a long time to recover from it,” Gam, who was a bridesmaid, remembers.

“She didn’t have a clue [what she was in for],” says Gam of what followed for Kelly. The royal family forbade her from making any more films, which devastated Kelly. But Kelly was resourceful, playing the new role of princess in the same way as she had approached her movie career.

She switched from Hollywood’s designers to the cream of the European fashion houses, and took to the kind of roles that princesses perform – benefits and balls, and patron of the arts.

“I don’t think Grace changed from the minute I met her to the day she died,” Gam says. “She had an extraordinary PR sense and she had a strong sense of who she was and what she wanted to say. She allowed herself to be used by the talented fashion people of the time. And she enjoyed it. [But] I certainly don’t think of clothes [when I think of her]. I think of friendship, I think of a loyal good friend, and somebody with a lovely voice and lovely face.”

“You know, I see her very clearly, even though it’s 35-odd years since she’s gone.” (Kelly died in a car crash in 1982.) “She had a very strong presence … Everyone should have a friend like that.”

Grace Kelly encapsulated the latter part of Hollywood’s golden age. At least, that’s the legend, that’s what people say. “And well they should,” says Gam. After all, it’s a good story.

Margaret Rutherford with her husband in real life Stringer Davis

In ”Murder at the Gallop” (1963), ”Miss Marple” and ”Mr. Stringer” join forces to solve the mystery of Mrs. McGinty’s blackmail.

Miss Marple suspects the blackmail is tied to a ”1951 theatrical production” by the ”Cosgood Company” and identifies the ”Lord Chamberlain’s office” in London as the key to uncovering details about the play.

She sends Mr. Stringer to investigate its history, showcasing their resourceful teamwork. Together, they edge closer to exposing the blackmailer and solving the case.

Away from film land there was a very dark side to Margaret Rutherford’s early life: Her grandfather, the Rev Julius Benn, was murdered by his son William – Margaret’s father – who was then imprisoned in a mental diseases institution. Her mother changed the family name to Rutherford, before committing suicide herself. Margaret struggled all her life to overcome the weight of these horrors, which she tried to keep out of the media – not entirely successfully. She was brought up by an Aunt Bessie in Wimbledon, where there is a blue plaque to celebrate that detail. Two in fact, the other at Wimbledon High School, where she excelled at music, drama and elocution. On the school’s recommendation, Bessie funded acting lessons. Margaret was known at the school as shy Peggy Rutherford.

Tony Benn, who was a cousin, spoke of her as a genial companion and produced a photo for a BBC documentary of the two of them sitting in deck chairs on a beach. He said she was exactly the same on screen and off.

I did go to see Tony Benn when he toured in his one-man show – and asked him what was probably the only non-political question about Margaret Rutherford. He says that Yes – she was a dear old Aunt who he visited often in his growing up years

I never need much of excuse to feature Joan Rice

The pictures BELOW are taken from a very short promotional film shown over Christmas on Talking Pictures.

It was called ‘The Postman’ and featured David Tomlinson as a postman delivering letters and introducing very short clips of stars such as Phyllis Calvert, Harry Fowler, Joan Rice and others at Christmas 1952 wishing us cinema-goers Best Wishes for the New Year.

And what a year 1952 had been for Joan Rice.

The wonderful ‘The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men’ had been released here in March of that year – and in June she was offered the female lead opposite Burt Lancaster in ‘His Majesty O’Keefe’ to be filmed in Fiji later in the year.

She got engaged and then flew out to Fiji – returning in November of 1952. She then broke off her engagement and met David Green in late December and married him in February 1953.

The past two years for Joan Rice had been meteoric.

One thing that does please me – after Robin Hood she got this major part and travelled round the world to film it and the film – ‘His Majesty O Keefe’ – was ‘big’ and well known and very well received.

Richard Todd was particularly scathing in his comments about Joan Rice and her acting abilities in ‘Robin Hood’ – but he got his come uppance – his next film after ‘Robin Hood’ was ’24 Hours in a Woman’s Life’ and he even missed the Robin Hood premiere to be on location on that film.

It was a dud – whereas Joan Rice in ‘His Majesty O Keefe again hit the jackpot as it did so well on a World scale.

From

I am so sorry not to have posted many articles in December – in truth I have been unwell and lacked the zest that normally helps me along with this. When you are fully well, almost anything is possible but even one degree under removes the energy and the interest.

I hope to be back OK soon