HOLLYWOOD BABYLON VERSES TRUTH I should have written the following when my book, The Purple Diaries, was first published. Nevertheless, for reason discussed below I am now finally getting around to it. Let’s begin with the following paragraph from the book’s acknowledgment section. “The idea of wiring the Purple Diaries was first […]
http://silverscreenoasis.com/oasis3/index.php This Interview is excerpted from an open Forum conducted by the Silver Screen Oasis Website from January 20 thru 22, 2017 and is posted here with special permission from The Silver Screen Oasis Administrators. JOSEPH EGAN DISCUSES THE PURPLE DIARIES In “The Purple Diaries Writer” Joseph […]
MARY ASTOR’S GOLDEN TEN Iconic director William Wellman enjoyed telling interviewers that of the 100 or so movies he made during his 30+ years as a director, they were all made for the money. He considered 80 junk, twenty pretty good and ten among the best films to ever […]
Louise Fletcher In the fall of 1975 ONE FLEW OVER THE COOKOOS’S NEST had just opened in New York. At that time no one had heard of Louise Fletcher. I found the woman I spoke with on that November afternoon in 1975 an attractive forty year old who bared little […]
PRODUCER FRED WEINTRAUP Fred Weintraup was promoting a documentary that VARIETY labeled the THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT of the animal world. In one clip it actually had a group of dogs singing, singing in the rain. Definitely an off-beat project but, if you know Weintraup it didn’t seem all that unusual considering the man […]
This is the second interview from the 1970s. At his peak, Richard Donner, director of Superman The Movie and the Lethal Weapon series, was one of Hollywood’s most commercially successful directors. His breakthrough film was The Omen and it was at the time of that film’s release that I interviewed him. I had seen The Omen […]
For the next few weeks I’m going to post some interviews I did in the 1970s. Today, the 70s are considered a revolutionary time for American Cinema during which time Hollywood films began to incorporate the style and substance of European films made the previous decade. It was also the time of the […]
THE MOON WAS VERY BLUE PART TWO In 1947 Preminger had taken over the direction of Forever Amber after Daryl Zanuck fired its director. As a book Amber was considered the most salacious novel of the period and Zanuck believed any film with that title would make a fortune. Even through the book had […]
THE MOON WAS VERY BLUE PART ONE As I mentioned in an earlier post, a number of years ago I wrote a proposal for a book about films whose production and or release were engulfed in scandal. Included was a sample chapter as well as 10 thumbnail descriptions of some of the films. I already posted […]
THE FILMS OF RADIO CITY MUSIC HALL Another book proposal that I wrote which didn’t go anywhere was THE FILMS OF RADIO CITY MUSIC HALL. Because Radio City Music Hall could rack up massive grosses it was the theatrical outlet preferred by the studios and for good reason. If a film […]
