That was how I met Mrs. Thatcher, Michael said. It must have been 1976, just before she was elected leader of the Conservative Party. Michael had just given a speech: I went up to look at it, and ther...
So how could Walter Brennan possibly dominate Gary Cooper? It would be virtually unheard of in Hollywood to reverse the natural order of things and have a character actor outshine the star. Who would...
Sam Goldwyn had a long-standing business partnership with Twentieth Century-Fox, the studio making Tobacco Road. As a contract player, Walter had to do what he was told. The system usually suited him....
Michael was astonished to see Reagan reading his speech off of the teleprompter. I’d never seen it before. Everybody does it now. But it’s an outrageous thing. It absolutely destroys the idea that the...
June 7: Norma Jeane leaves the Los Angeles Orphans Home to live with Grace and her husband, Doc Goddard, at 6707 Odessa Avenue in Van Nuys. Norma Jeane hears on the radio that Jean Harlow has died. A...
January 19: Marilyn and Arthur fly from Jamaica to New York.
January 19: Joe DiMaggio and photographer Sam Shaw help Marilyn move into the Gladstone Hotel on East 52nd Street near Park Avenue.
January 18: Filming of Let’s Make Love resumes. Stern (Germany) shows Marilyn, all in black, during a number from Let’s Make Love.
January 17: Epoca (Italy) publishes John Florea’s cover shot of Marilyn leaning out of the back seat of a car, dressed in her dancehall girl outfit from River of No Return.
January 16: Time publishes Winner, an account of how Marilyn got the best of Fox in contract negotiations.
January 15: Columnist Bob Thomas publicizes Marilyn’s doubts about the Something’s Got to Give script.
It was the time Tony Benn and Denis Healey were competing for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party. I was pretty leftwing, so was Jill Tweedie and there was this huge feeling that Tony Benn was t...
In a memo dated April 22, 1942, concerning a script conference about Maryland, Darryl Zanuck rejected the idea of making a radical change in Brennan’s screen persona. Brennan simply could not be prese...
If Sam Goldwyn read the reviews of Dakota, he might have taken some satisfaction in Walter Brennan’s critical drubbing. Walter had decided not to renew his contract with the producer. The actor, mimic...
I noticed that he wasn’t looking at me while we talked. After we finished the take, I asked him where he’d been looking. Your ear, he replied. Why? I asked in surprise. Because that way more of my fac...
February 19: Marilyn visits Joe DiMaggio in Fort Lauderdale.
February 14: Marilyn and Miller send Steffi Sidney (Sidney Skolsky’s daughter) a wedding present: a sterling silver cigarette box with the inscription For this wonderful day—affectionately, Marilyn an...
February 13: Marilyn attends the premiere of Franco Zeffirelli’s production of Romeo and Juliet at Manhattan’s City Center. She attends a party afterward organized by Lee Strasberg. Marilyn arrives ho...
February 10: The press quotes Wilder’s vow never to do a film with Marilyn again. Marilyn and Miller attend a performance of Macbeth at the New York Metropolitan Opera. She is photographed autographin...
February 10: In a four-hour afternoon shoot, Rizzo captures Marilyn in close-up and in various positions on a lounger and at the edge of her Brentwood home pool. He later said she seemed immensely sad...