Classic Stars – Then and Now
The search for Scarlett O’Hara was one of the most exhaustive casting hunts in Hollywood history. Producer David O. Selznick auditioned more than fourteen hundred actresses over two years before he found the woman he wanted. Vivien Leigh, a relatively unknown British actress, landed the role just weeks before filming began, in one of the … Read more
Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier were, for a generation, the most celebrated couple in British theater and film, a romance so intense it began as an affair while both were still married to other people. For twenty years, their marriage captivated the public. It also slowly, painfully wore down under pressures few outside their circle … Read more
Humphrey Bogart had already been married three times when he met Lauren Bacall on the set of To Have and Have Not in 1944. She was nineteen. He was forty-four, and married to someone else. Against every expectation, this was the marriage that finally lasted, holding until his death twelve years later. An Instant, Undeniable … Read more
Humphrey Bogart built a career playing tough, unflinching characters who faced danger without blinking. In 1956, he faced the most difficult role of his life off screen, a diagnosis of esophageal cancer that would claim him within a year. True to the persona he had built over decades, he kept working for as long as … Read more
Before Lauren Bacall was a movie star, she was a nineteen-year-old model whose magazine cover changed the entire course of her life. A chance photograph, spotted by exactly the right person, launched a career that would span more than six decades. The story of how she got that first break remains one of the more … Read more
Lauren Bacall was only nineteen years old, making her very first film, when nerves got the better of her on set. What began as an anxious coping habit became one of the most iconic screen looks in Hollywood history, and it was on that same set that she fell in love with a man twenty-five … Read more
By the time most children are starting school, Natalie Wood was already a working professional actress. She appeared in her first film at age four and had become a genuine Hollywood veteran before she turned nine. Unlike so many child stars who struggled to transition into adult careers, Wood managed a remarkably successful crossover, becoming … Read more
On November 29, 1981, Natalie Wood went missing from a yacht anchored off Catalina Island. Her body was found in the water hours later. More than four decades on, the exact circumstances of her death remain one of Hollywood’s most enduring mysteries. The case was reopened by investigators decades after her death, and questions about … Read more
In July 1985, Rock Hudson’s publicist confirmed what tabloids had been speculating about for weeks: the leading man had AIDS. He became the first major Hollywood star to be publicly identified with the disease, at a time when it was still widely misunderstood and deeply stigmatized. The announcement sent shockwaves through the country, forcing a … Read more
For decades, Rock Hudson was one of Hollywood’s most bankable leading men, cast opposite the era’s biggest actresses in one romantic role after another. Behind that carefully constructed image was a truth the studio system worked hard, and often ruthlessly, to keep hidden. Hudson was gay, at a time when the revelation could have ended … Read more