(548) Sam Neill's real name is Nigel Neill.
(549) Just a few months after Charlie Chaplin's death, two robbers stole his coffin from a Swiss cemetery and asked for a $600,000 ransom demand. The graverobbers were swiftly captured.
(550) Bette Davis once famously joked that Joan Crawford had slept with every star on the MGM lot except Lassie.
(551) When the 1940s Marx Brothers comeback film A Night in Casablanca was announced, Warner Brothers tried to bully the movie into changing its name and threatened legal action. They felt that the title was too similar (and presumably too disrespectful) to their movie Casablanca. Groucho Marx wrote a letter to Warner Brothers in which he said it was ridiculous for the studio to try and claim ownership over a town's name. He also pointed out that the Marx Brothers were an act before Warner Brothers existed and suggested that maybe he should take legal action to stop Warners using the term 'Brothers' in their name!
(552) Shirley Temple said that when she was a teen actress, the comedian George Jessel made an unsolicited sexual advance.
(553) The singer and actor Mario Lanza was an Old Hollywood star who buckled under the studio pressure to stay thin. According to legend he underwent a dangerous procedure called twilight sleep in which he stayed under heavy sedation and was fed intravenously. This caused him to have a heart attack.
(554) The little boy named Billy who features in the prologue to George Romero's Creepshow is played by Stephen King's son Joe.
(555) 1930 saw the release of a Howard Hughes aviation epic called Hell's Angels. This film was very dangerous to make and four people were killed during the production.
(556) Joan Collins said that when she was a young actress she frequently had to fend off the lecherous and unwanted sexual advances of studio figures and actors.
(557) John Wayne was the not most politically correct of stars and a long way removed from modern liberal Hollywood. Comments he made in a 1971 Playboy interview about race relations have not aged very well at all and were pretty conservative - even for the era in which they were said. "With a lot of blacks, there's quite a bit of resentment along with their dissent," said Wayne, "and possibly rightfully so. But we can't all of a sudden get down on our knees and turn everything over to the leadership of the blacks. I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility."
(558) The tabloid scandal mag Confidential reported in an article that Errol Flynn had a large mirror on the ceiling of one of the bedrooms where it was possible to spy on the bed below from the attic. Flynn took legal action against Confidential but later admitted in his autobiography that the ceiling mirror story was in fact true.
(559) Sissy Spacek was 29 when she played the title high school student in Carrie.
(560) Helen Mirren's real name is Helen Lydia Mironoff.
(561) Rock Hudson's real name was Leroy Harold Scherer.
(562) Jean Harlow's real name was Harlean Carpentier.
(563) John Carpenter's Halloween was shot during the summer. They had to put paper leaves on the ground to make it seem like Autumn.
(564) Bruce Willis was born Walter Bruce Willis.
(565) Legend has it that when Tom Jones recorded the theme song for Thunderball he held the last note for so long he passed out in the studio!
(566) The set for the town in Gremlins was also used for Twin Pines in Back to the Future.
(567) Stephen King was frequently drunk and stoned when he directed the film Maximum Overdrive in the eighties. This was an adaption of one of King's stories and about trucks and cars coming to life and trying to run down people. Anyone who has ever watched some of this film will probably not be surprised to learn that King was a bit out of it at the time!
(568) Jack Palance's real name was Walter Palanuik.
(569) Michael Billington, who was waiting in the wings to take over as James Bond in For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy if negotiations with Roger Moore broke down, later said that when he saw Roger dressed as a circus clown in Octopussy he was rather relieved he hadn't become 007.
(570) Gunnar Hansen couldn't see clearly when he was wearing the Leatherface mask in Texas Chainsaw Massacre and nearly knocked himself out a few times.
(571) Jane Seymour turned down the role of Solitare in Live and Let Die twice before relenting and taking the part. Seymour said she had no particular ambition to be in a Bond film but took the part in the end because she had run out of money and wanted to buy a new coat!
(572) Winona Ryder's godfather was the counter-culture icon Timothy Leary.
(573) Edward G. Robinson's real name was Emmanuel Goldenberg.
(574) Cary Grant was from Bristol in England.
(575) Vin Diesel's real name is Mark Sinclair.
(576) The story in Rocky V of Rocky's protege Tommy Gunn (Tommy Morrison) being stolen by a flamboyant and ruthless boxing promoter is based on Don King stealing Mike Tyson from his manager Bill Cayton and trainer Kevin Rooney. It is somewhat ironic then then Tommy Morrison was actually promoted by Don King at the end of his own boxing career.
(577) Tilda Swinton turned down the part of Professor Trelawney in Harry Potter. Swinton said she didn't like Harry Potter because it (in her view) romanticised boarding-schools.
(578) Believe it or not, George Lazenby first came on the radar of the James Bond producers when Cubby Broccoli noticed him in his hairdressers.
(579) Wes Craven named Freddy Krueger after a bully who tormented him as a child.
(580) Enter the Dragon was the only American financed film that Bruce Lee ever made.
(581) Geoffrey Holder, who plays Baron Samedi in Live and Let Die, had a fear of snakes. Making this snake festooned movie was no picnic for him.
(582) Jamie Foxx's real name is Eric Marlon Bishop.
(583) Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles is a 2001 comedy film directed by Simon Wincer. This preposterously belated sequel is the third in the Crocodile Dundee series (the previous was 1988's Crocodile Dundee II). These films revolve around Mick "Crocodile" Dundee - a crocodile hunter from the Australian outback. The original Crocodile Dundee became a sleeper hit thanks mostly to the easygoing likeable charm of Paul Hogan. That film (released in 1986) was a box-office smash and essentially a remake of Tarzan in New York as Hogan's naive bushman grapples with a trip to the big city. The lacklustre Crocodle Dundee II seemed to suggest that there wasn't much mileage left in the character but still made a sizeable profit. By the time that Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles came around no one cared about Crocodile Dundee anymore. The film bombed and the reviews were abysmal (just 11% on Rotten Tomatoes).
(584) Chris Evans turned down the part of Captain America three times before he finally relented. Evans was reluctant to play a superhero again because he played The Human Torch in those (ho-hum) Fantastic Four movies.
(585) The real name of Tom Cruise is Thomas Cruise Mapother.
(586) Curse of the Pink Panther was another of Blake Ewards' pointless attempts to keep the Pink Panther series going despite the death of Peter Sellers. In Trail of the Pink Panther, Edwards had utilised unused footage of the late star but this time Edwards essentially replaces Clouseau with an inept American detective named Clifton Sleigh and played by Ted Wass. Roger Moore was a friend and neighbour to Blake Edwards in Switzerland and agreed to appear in the film for a cameo although - as he pointed out in his memoir - it was rather embarrassing when Sellers' widows personally expressed their dissatisfaction to him at Edwards trying to continue the series after the death of their former husband. They thought it was in rather bad taste.
(587) Blake Edwards had wanted to cast Dudley Moore or Rowan Atkinson as the new inept detective in Curse of the Pink Panther but Dudley Moore declined the part and the studio would not approve Atkinson because he was only famous in Britain (though Atkinson would later become world famous for playing Mr Bean). Wass later became best known as Mayim Bialik's dad on the teen sitcom Blossom.
(588) The first screenplay for what became Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal was written by Frank Darabont and titled Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods. Darabont's script featured elements that ended up in the final story but also had major differences. There was no 'Mutt' character and Darabont conceived a dogfight with biplanes that was jettisoned. Most feel that Darabont's script was better than the one they eventually ended up with. Darabont was furious when George Lucas vetoed his script. "It was a tremendous disappointment and a waste of a year," Darabont later told MTV. "I spent a year of very determined effort on something I was very excited about, working very closely with Steven Spielberg and coming up with a result that I, and he, felt was terrific. He wanted to direct it as his next movie, and then suddenly the whole thing goes down in flames because George Lucas doesn't like the script." A despairing Darabont confronted Lucas directly. "I told him he was crazy. I said, 'You have a fantastic script. I think you're insane, George.' You can say things like that to George, and he doesn't even blink. He's one of the most stubborn men I know."
(589) Matthew Modine turned down the lead role in Top Gun because he thought the film glorified war and the military.
(590) Michael Caine's real name is Maurice Micklewhite.
(591) 2004's...
