795 thoughts on “Site Index”

1. EXTRACT FROM HOLLYWOOD DREAMLAND ON THE INTERNET
   TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2008
   Cary Grant in The Philadelphia Story (1940)

   I’ve changed my name. Why? Because C.K. Dexter Haven was one of Cary Grant’s greatest characters. You could say his performance was…Yar. Yar is defined in The Philadelphia Story as something—in the movie, a boat—that’s easy to handle and moves along smoothly. The same could be used to describe Cary Grant’s performance in the film.

   1940—there’s that year again– was stellar for Cary Grant. Grant starred in My Favorite Wife, His Girl Friday, and The Philadelphia Story. When approached for the role, Grant would demand– and get– top billing. Plus a $100,000 salary, which he donated to British War Relief.

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   1. I agree 1940 was a great year for Grant. The Philadelphia Story has become one of my favorite Grant movies…..the first time I saw it I was disappointed….amazing how time can change your thinking.

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2. Can you consider doing an overview of the films of Troy Donahue. Between 1959 to 1964 he was arguably the most popular male film star in the world. He was overworked in additional to making films (i.e. A Summer Place, Parrish, etc.) with two television series (i.e. Surfside Six and Hawaian Eye).
   He would later blame Jack Warner for blacklisting him in the film industry. Donahue would later develop alcohol and drug problems. He managed to get himself clean and made a comeback. However, his career never recovered from the setbacks. He was capable of excellent work, if given the opportunity.
   Thank you.

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   1. Hey Frank….I will add him to the request list….I need to add all of the recent requests that are on the comment area and put them on the above list….thanks for the suggestion.

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3. I have developed a guilty pleasure in Jason Statham movies. I’d hoped to find him included amongst your actors.
   Thoughts, if you please?
   Thank you. I thoroughly enjoy your site.

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   1. Hey Michael James…..I will be sure to add Statham to our request list…..we generally try and rotate between classic and current stars…..we have lots of classic suggestions but not many current suggestions….so you can expect a Statham page in the near future….thanks for the suggestion and the kind words about our website.

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4. I just want to mention I’m new to blogging and site-building and honestly liked you’re web blog. Probably I’m likely to bookmark your site . You definitely come with really good well written articles. Bless you for revealing your website page.

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ue3mfJZTNg

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   1. Thanks for the nice words Musical.ly/

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5. STEVE – My two posts this morning on the Davis page are for your particular attention as well. Comments on your Kim Novak video:l

   (1) Kim’s top box office career was all but confined to the 1950s but your Top 6 contains virtually every important film that she made in her heyday so I cannot fault the six that you selected except that I personally would have interchanged Pal Joey and Bell Book and Candle. Whilst Bruce has not yet done a page for Kim I have extracted from other actors’ Cogerson pages the critic/audience rating given to each of your Top 6, and I now list those figures below in order of merit with your own individual ranking positions and ratings in brackets

   1/Vertigo-91.7% [No 1] [9.30]
   2/Man with the Golden Arm-80.0% [[No 2] [7.40]
   3/Pal Joey-69.0% [No 6] [6.6]
   4/Bell Book and Candle-68.0 [No 4[ [6.92]
   5/Picnic-65.0 [No 3] [7.25]
   6/The Eddy Duchin Story-62.0 [No 5] [6.85]

   Bruce’s updated adjusted overall domestic gross for these 6 films is $1.15 billion averaging at approx $191 million per movie.

   (2) Your especially provocative black and white still from Jeanne Eagles illustrates why Kim was all the rage in her short heyday and why she was so attractive to Sammy Davis Jr whom she dated for a while.

   (3) I liked the posters for Picnic, Vertigo and the quite raunchy ones for The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders. Kim was married at the time to Englishman Richard Johnson who as your poster shows was her co-star in that one but the marriage lasted only 13 months.

   (4) I was pleased to see included in your selections [albeit neither positioned too high] Kim’s two minor early films Five Against the House and Pushover as those films and I go back a long way together – and indeed why not include the latter when its star was our now regular visitor to your site Fred MacMurray? Excellent spot-on profile of a very brief star career – 9.1/10

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   1. Hi Bob, thanks for the rating, review, trivia and ratings comparison, much appreciated. I too was surprised at the high rating for Bell Book and Candle, it just wasn’t a very good film. It’s probably worshipped by Novak fans but for the rest of us it was a waste of a good cast of actors.

      It is odd that Bruce hasn’t done a page on Novak yet, for a few years she was the hot new kid on the block. Her iconic role(s) has to be in Vertigo and looking at the stats you’ve kindly provided it’s way ahead of her other films in ratings. I doubt it’s her biggest box office though, Vertigo wasn’t a big hit and Hitchcock blamed this on James Stewart for ‘looking too old’.

      Looking at the stats in your post, Pal Joey would have been last there too. I wasn’t impressed with that film either, not one of Frankie’s best. I haven’t seen Eddy Duchin or Picnic.

      I had to smile when I came across a poster with Freddie Mac again, are there any actresses he hasn’t worked with? 🙂

      Cheers.

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      1. A link to my Kim Novak video.

         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al9Dq2Aeb6U

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      2. 1 Here are Bruce’s adjusted grosses for each of the 16 Novak movies for which I’ve been able to find stats in the Cogerson pages. I have rounded Bruce’s figures to the nearest million dollars in each case and all of the pages from which they have been extracted have now been adjusted though I think he might still be doing some further adjustments to James Garner’s page and she was Kim’s co-star in Boys’ Night Out. Kim didn’t make many films beyond the 20 you’ve listed and I think the only good grosser missing from the following table is Jeanne Eagles in 1957 for which you provided that voluptuous still However Wikipedia gives it a rental of $3.1 million which should convert to an adjusted gross of $110-125 million but maybe if Bruce reads this post he will find time to give us a more precise estimated gross for that movie.

         1/Picnic-$295 million
         2/The Eddie Duchin Story-233
         3/Pal Joey-203
         4/Man with the Golden Arm-189
         5/Vertigo-129
         6/Strangers When we Meet-102
         7/Bell Book and Candle-100
         8The Notorious Landlady-85
         9/Boys’ Night Out-85
         10/Phfft-82
         11/Pushover-66 – the Fred MacMurray movie
         12/Middle of the Night-59
         13/The Mirror Crack’d-42
         14/Kiss Me Stupid-41
         15/The White Buffalo-16
         16/Just a Gigolo-4
         Overall estimated adjusted gross for the 16 films $1,73 billion average $108.2 million

         2 If Hitch thought that Jimmy who was then only 50 was “too old” in Vertigo I wonder what he thought of Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea in their mid fifties romancing virtual ‘child brides’ and being addressed by all and sundry as “young man”.

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         1. Thank you Bob, nice work collecting all the grosses, you’re a valuable asset to Bruce’s site.

            Vertigo didn’t do too badly, $129m domestic adjusted is pretty much what the Clint Eastwood film Sully did this year and that was considered a hit for Clint.

            Picnic was very successful and now I’m even more curious to see that movie. I guess the title was putting me off watchng it in my younger days “come of it I’m not watching a 2 hour picnic I don’t care who’s in it.” ,”but Steve, Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas are in it”, “okay… what time does it start?”.

            I saw The White Buffalo at the cinema, it was a bit of a stinker, if you look carefully you can see the motorised contraption pushing the huge fake galloping buffalo along. I would watch any movie with Charles Bronson’s name on it back in the 70s and generally ignore movies starring Paul Newman, Robert Redford and Warren Beatty (The Towering Inferno was the BIG exception).

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            1. 1 From Stalag 17 in 1953 until World of Suzie Wong in 1960 Bill Holden had a heyday that most actors presumably dream about starting off with the Oscar and continuing with critical and commercial hit after hit, being the darling of Quigley and earning a fortune especially from Bridge on the River Kwai and The Horse Soldiers with his pal the Duke. Picnic in 1955 was obviously near the start of this wonderful period and a film that starred a Golden Holden and the new bombshell on the block was a guaranteed massive commercial success.

               2 Some observers have felt that at 37 Holden was too old to be teamed with the 22 year old Kim but apparently that was deliberate strategy on the part of Columbia who were intent upon building her into a star and felt that for that she needed the best experience possibly so ensured that she was cast alongside ‘fatherly’ figures such as Holden, Fred MacMurray and Sinatra.

            2. Interesting conversation between you two. My thoughts: 1. I should probably do a Novak page. 2. Very cool that those box office numbers are scattered around our website. 3. I got a kick out of reading those numbers…..makes me happy that all that information is out there just waiting to be found by anybody.

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