70 Fun Facts About Old Hollywood

The Motion Picture Production Code of 1934–1968 is popularly named after which industry president?

Hays adopted the code in 1930 but it was only rigidly enforced from 1934, after pressure from the Catholic Legion of Decency.

What replaced the Production Code in 1968?

By then the code had barely been enforced for years, after films like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? won approval despite banned language.

Which administrator enforced Hollywood's Production Code from 1934 to 1954?

Breen's office read every script and could demand cuts before a film received its seal of approval.

What was Marilyn Monroe's birth name?

'Marilyn' was borrowed from Broadway star Marilyn Miller and 'Monroe' was her mother's maiden name.

Marilyn Monroe's nude photos were the centerfold and cover of which magazine's first issue in 1953?

The same year she starred in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire, the films that fixed her 'dumb blonde' image.

Which gossip columnist, Hedda Hopper's arch-rival, wrote America's first dedicated movie column in 1914?

At her peak she was read by 20 million people in 700 newspapers, and Hearst hired her partly because she had championed his mistress Marion Davies.

Which actor, often called the 'King of Hollywood', won his only Oscar for It Happened One Night (1934)?

A Warner Bros. executive had earlier passed on him, saying 'His ears are too big and he looks like an ape.'

Which screwball star, wife of the 'King of Hollywood', died in a 1942 plane crash after a war bond tour?

TWA Flight 3 hit Mount Potosi in Nevada; her final film, To Be or Not to Be, was released weeks later.

MGM sold Garbo's first talkie in 1930 with the tagline 'Garbo talks!' Which film was it?

Her career ended eleven years later with the poorly reviewed Two-Faced Woman, the last of her 28 features, after which she shunned publicity for life.

Which silent-screen 'Latin Lover' died in 1926 aged 31, drawing 100,000 to his Manhattan funeral?

He died of complications after surgery for appendicitis and ulcers, weeks after a Chicago Tribune editorial had questioned his masculinity.

Which star, born Frances Ethel Gumm, died of an accidental barbiturate overdose in 1969 at 47?

She had won a special Juvenile Academy Award and later earned nominations for A Star Is Born and Judgment at Nuremberg.

Elizabeth Taylor married which Cleopatra co-star in 1964, going on to make 11 films with him?

Their films together included Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and she later co-founded amfAR in 1985 as one of the first celebrity AIDS activists.

Cary Grant first toured the US at 16 with the Pender Troupe after training as what?

He never won a competitive Oscar despite two nominations, receiving an honorary award in 1970 instead.

Which 19-year-old ex-model debuted opposite Bogart in To Have and Have Not (1944) and married him a year later?

Bogart was 44; a Harper's Bazaar cover had caught the eye of director Howard Hawks's wife 'Slim' Keith, which got her the screen test.

Grace Kelly won her Best Actress Oscar for which 1954 film, playing Bing Crosby's long-suffering wife?

She got the part after a pregnant Jennifer Jones bowed out, and retired at 26 two years later to become Princess of Monaco.

Which fashion house made the 'Kelly bag' Princess Grace used in 1956 to shield her pregnancy?

The Sac à dépêches had existed since the 1930s, but the photos made it one of the most coveted bags in the world.

Which 1940s 'Love Goddess', star of Gilda, was born Margarita Carmen Cansino?

Her grandfather Antonio Cansino was a renowned classical Spanish dancer and gave her her first dance lesson.

Which Vienna-born film star co-invented a frequency-hopping torpedo guidance system with George Antheil?

The idea underlies modern spread-spectrum communications, though the military only used similar technology from 1962, after the patent expired.

Which silent comedian was acquitted after three trials over the 1921 death of Virginia Rappe?

The third jury took the unusual step of writing him a formal apology, but the scandal ended his stardom and helped bring on the Hays Code.

Which blacklisted Hollywood Ten member did Kirk Douglas publicly credit as Spartacus's screenwriter in 1960?

Otto Preminger had openly hired him for Exodus the same year, and 1960 is generally treated as the year the blacklist broke.

The 1947 Hollywood blacklist began after ten writers and directors refused to answer which body?

They were cited for contempt of Congress, and studio heads announced the blacklist the very next day at the Waldorf-Astoria.

How long did the very first Academy Awards ceremony, a private dinner in May 1929, last?

Tickets cost $5, 270 people attended, and the winners had been announced three months earlier.

Which swashbuckling silent star, the first screen Zorro, hosted the first Academy Awards?

He and his wife Mary Pickford ruled Hollywood society from their Pickfair estate.

Which salad was reportedly improvised from leftovers at the Hollywood Brown Derby for Sid Grauman?

The first Brown Derby, on Wilshire Boulevard in 1926, was built in the shape of a derby hat; the Hollywood branch was where the stars ate.

In which Sunset Boulevard hotel, opened in 1929, did John Belushi die in Bungalow 3?

Its model was the Château d'Amboise, where Leonardo da Vinci is buried.

The stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame are made of brass and which coral-pink material?

The first permanent stars were laid in 1960, and there are now more than 2,800 along Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street.

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers co-starred in how many Hollywood musicals?

They included Top Hat, Swing Time and Shall We Dance; Astaire was born Frederick Austerlitz in Omaha and danced professionally for 76 years.

Child star Shirley Temple later served as United States ambassador to Ghana and to which other country?

She was also the first female US Chief of Protocol, a long way from the 56 blonde curls that made her a box-office champion in the 1930s.

Allied aircrews in World War II named their yellow inflatable life vests after which curvaceous star?

She had chosen ten days in jail over a fine in 1927 for her Broadway play 'Sex', purely for the publicity.

Besides Rebel Without a Cause and East of Eden, which was James Dean's third major film?

He remains the only actor to receive two posthumous Best Actor nominations, for East of Eden and Giant.

Which studio boss was the first American to earn a million-dollar salary and the highest-paid man in the US from 1937?

He co-founded MGM in 1924, helped found the Academy in 1927, and was forced out as vice-president in 1951 when profits slid.

Which MGM producer, 'The Boy Wonder', died at 37 in 1936 and gave his name to an Academy award?

He produced some 400 films in twelve years, married star Norma Shearer, and inspired the hero of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon.

Which aviation tycoon produced Hell's Angels and Scarface and bought the RKO studio in 1948?

RKO struggled under him and stopped making films in 1957; his 1943 western The Outlaw spent years fighting censors over Jane Russell's costumes.

Which 'Platinum Blonde' star of the 1930s died at 26 of kidney failure while filming Saratoga?

She was born Harlean Carpenter in Kansas City and only learned her real first name at age five.

Errol Flynn, star of Captain Blood and Robin Hood, was born on which island?

His father was Tasmania's first biology professor; Flynn's Robin Hood was later named the 18th-greatest hero in American film.

Canine superstar Rin Tin Tin was rescued as a puppy from a World War I battlefield in which country?

Soldier Lee Duncan nicknamed him 'Rinty', and the dog's hugely profitable films helped keep the young Warner Bros. studio afloat.

Which choreographer arranged chorus girls into kaleidoscopic overhead patterns in 1930s musicals?

He cared less about his dancers' skill than their ability to form shapes, and pioneered the 'parade of faces' close-up in Eddie Cantor musicals.

The lion mascot later inherited by MGM was chosen in 1916 as a tribute to the mascot of which university?

Publicist Howard Dietz picked it for Goldwyn Pictures, along with the motto Ars Gratia Artis, 'art for art's sake'.

What does MGM's Latin motto 'Ars Gratia Artis', displayed above the lion, mean?

The words 'Trade' and 'Mark' flank the film-strip ring around Leo in the famous logo.

Which star, known as 'America's Sweetheart', became Hollywood's first millionaire by 1916?

Born Gladys Smith in Toronto, she won the second-ever Best Actress Oscar for her first talkie, Coquette, and was one of the Academy's 36 founders.

'The inmates are taking over the asylum' greeted four stars founding which company in 1919?

The founders wanted control of their own profits and art, and got advice from a former Treasury Secretary who was President Wilson's son-in-law.

After an FBI investigation, Charlie Chaplin left the United States in 1952 and settled in which country?

He did not return until 1972, when he collected an honorary Oscar and a twelve-minute standing ovation.

Which 1940 film was Charlie Chaplin's first with spoken dialogue?

He had stubbornly made City Lights and Modern Times without dialogue years after sound arrived; his first talkie satirised Hitler.

Which silent comedian's deadpan expression earned him the nickname 'The Great Stone Face'?

Orson Welles called his 1926 film The General 'the greatest comedy ever made... and perhaps the greatest film ever made'.

Which actress co-founded the wartime Hollywood Canteen with John Garfield?

Admission was simply a uniform; the club on Cahuenga Boulevard ran from October 1942 until November 1945.

At which Sunset Boulevard establishment was Lana Turner really discovered, buying a Coke?

She was skipping a typing class at Hollywood High across the street, and her discoverer was Hollywood Reporter publisher William Wilkerson, not a director.

In 1958, Lana Turner's gangster lover Johnny Stompanato was stabbed to death in her home by whom?

Cheryl Crane was 14; the killing was ruled justifiable homicide, and the courtroom drama became one of the era's biggest scandals.

Vivien Leigh, twice a Best Actress winner, was born in which country?

She was born in Darjeeling in 1913 and later styled Lady Olivier during her marriage to Laurence Olivier.

What was Joan Crawford's birth name, before a fan-magazine contest picked her stage name?

The first choice was 'Joan Arden', dropped when another actress turned out to have prior claim; she hated 'Crawford' because it sounded like 'crawfish'.

After marrying its president Alfred Steele in 1955, Joan Crawford promoted which company?

Her adopted daughter Christina's memoir Mommie Dearest later turned wire hangers into a punchline.

Frank Sinatra's career revival began with a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for which 1953 film?

He played Private Maggio, and the same year began recording with arranger Nelson Riddle at Capitol.

Which real silent-era star played faded silent star Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard (1950)?

Her butler was played by Erich von Stroheim, who had actually directed her in the unfinished Queen Kelly two decades earlier.

Which fan magazine, founded in Chicago in 1911, created the first significant annual movie award in 1921?

Its Gold Medal predated the Oscars by eight years, and it also ran the beauty advice of 'Sylvia of Hollywood', arguably the first celebrity fitness guru.

Which scandal magazine, launched by Robert Harrison in 1952 as 'The Lid Is Off!', terrorised the studios?

Its first issue sold 250,000 copies; the studios eventually fought back with a 1957 criminal libel trial.

In which year were the last four letters removed from the "HOLLYWOODLAND" sign?

The 1923 original was a real-estate advert lit by some 4,000 bulbs; the whole thing was rebuilt in steel in 1978.

In 1932, 24-year-old actress Peg Entwistle died by jumping from which letter of the Hollywoodland sign?

She climbed a workman's ladder to the top; the tragedy made her a lasting symbol of Hollywood's broken dreams.

'Straight out of Central Casting' refers to a company founded in Los Angeles in 1925 to supply what?

Before it existed, hopefuls hung around studio gates and were routinely exploited while looking for background work.

The unsolved 1922 murder of which director of 59 silent films helped trigger the era's Hollywood moral panic?

The press descended on stars Mabel Normand and Mary Miles Minter, and the fabricated coverage helped push the studios toward self-censorship.

Which silent star, 'the screen's most perfect lover', died in a sanatorium in 1923 fighting morphine addiction?

He had been prescribed the drug to keep filming after an injury, at a time when rehabilitation programmes did not exist.

Ingrid Bergman's affair with which Italian director, revealed around Stromboli (1950), kept her in Europe for years?

She was even denounced on the floor of the US Senate, but returned to win a second Oscar for Anastasia in 1956.

James Stewart retired from the Air Force Reserve in 1968 holding which rank?

He won his Oscar for The Philadelphia Story just before enlisting, and came home to make It's a Wonderful Life, a flop that became a classic.

Sidney Poitier became the first Black performer to win the Best Actor Oscar for which 1963 film?

He had already been the first African American nominated in the category, for The Defiant Ones in 1958.

Which of these studios was one of the 'Little Three' rather than the Big Five of the studio system?

The Big Five owned their own theatre chains; Columbia, Universal and United Artists did not, which is what made them 'major-minors'.

Which comedienne, nicknamed the 'Ice Cream Blonde', died mysteriously in 1935 at 29?

She had appeared in around 120 films with the likes of Laurel and Hardy and ran her own Sidewalk Cafe on the Pacific Coast Highway.

Why was Hattie McDaniel unable to attend the 1939 Atlanta premiere of Gone with the Wind?

Clark Gable threatened to boycott in protest, but she talked him into going; at the Oscars she was seated at a segregated side table.

How much did Katharine Hepburn pay to buy out her RKO contract in 1938?

Her family wealth let her walk away from the studio system; she then bought the rights to The Philadelphia Story and sold them to MGM on condition she starred.

Which silent star is officially credited with starting the Chinese Theatre footprint tradition?

Sid Grauman himself later claimed he walked into the cement by accident; 'Mr. Footprint' Jean Klossner ran the ceremonies until 1957.

Which star's real birthday, December 25, did Warner Bros. publicists reportedly move to January 23?

The studio supposedly felt a man born on Christmas Day could not seem as villainous as he did on screen; he celebrated on the 25th regardless.

For which 1952 circus drama did Cecil B. DeMille receive his first Best Director nomination?

It won Best Picture; his 1956 Ten Commandments remake became his final film and is the eighth highest-grossing ever adjusted for inflation.

Which Warner Bros. star lost a 1936 London court fight to escape her studio contract?

She had signed with a British producer while on 'vacation'; Justice Branson ruled for the studio that October, and she went home to Jezebel and stardom.