Crouch End
Introduced Granny to the literary gem that is 84 Charing Cross Road, the twenty year correspondence between Manhattan bibliophile Helene Hanff and London bookseller Frank Doel. Remembering that the Doels lived in my beloved Crouch End!
Posts
Caldwell and Plummer
For some reason, I keep thinking that Christopher Plummer and Zoe Caldwell were married. They were not. They played Antony and Cleopatra in Ontario in 1967. Caldwell also directed Plummer as Macbeth opposite Glenda Jackson and as Iago opposite James Earl Jones as Othello.
Phonies
If you love J.D. Salinger so much that you want to make a movie about him, then you didn't understand him at all.
The Rosenbergs & Billie Holiday
After the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, their sons Michael and Robert were adopted by Abel and Anne Meeropol. Abel wrote the song Strange Fruit.
Goodbye Girl
I knew that the character Elliott Garfield in the movie The Goodbye Girl was inspired by Dustin Hoffman. What I did not know was that before Richard Dreyfuss was cast, the role was to be played by Robert DeNiro! After a few table readings, though, it was recast, because then director Mike Nichols thought that, while DeNiro was funny, he was the wrong kind of funny. The outrageous production of Richard III in the film was based on Michael Moriarty's performance of the role.
Actor Charles Bickford
Days of Wine and Roses A Big Hand for the Little Lady The Song of Bernadette And many others... He was was acquitted of the attempted murder of a trolley driver who ran over his dog. Bickford was nine years old.
Whistler & Astaire
In the Fred Astaire/Leslie Caron musical Daddy Long Legs, the Astaire character shows a portrait of his grandfather 'painted by James Abbott McNeill Whistler.' The producers took Whistler's Arrangement in Grey and Black, no. 2; Portrait of Thomas Carlyle, flipped it, and put Astaire's face over Carlyle's.
