14 pint-sized film stars

I was watching Sadie Thompson (1928) a couple of nights ago and it struck me how petite Gloria Swanson was. I'm not particularly tall (5'6 - same height as Deborah, aw yeah!) but often I feel like such a clumsy giant around dainty 5-footers. Anyway, I thought it would be fun to make a post about some pint-size actresses from back in the day.

Gloria Swanson

The larger than life actress measured in at around 5 feet (some sources say 4'11, some say 5'2, but apparently her bus pass listed her as 5 feet.).

Elizabeth Taylor

One of the biggest film star's the world has ever known, violet-eyed Elizabeth was fairly tiny at 5'2.

Debbie Reynolds

Dainty Debbie (what can I say? I love alliteration!) measures in at 5'2.

Carole Lombard

Carole Lombard, the Queen of screwball comedy, was around 5'2.

Jean Harlow

I always think of Jean as being quite tall but in fact she was only 5'2.

Natalie Wood

A talented child actress, Natalie Wood blossomed into a gorgeous young woman measuring in at 5'2.

Louise Brooks

Louise is another person I always think of as being quite tall, but she was in fact rather petite at 5'2.

Bette Davis

Measuring in at 5'3, what Bette lacked in height she made up for with her formidable screen presence.

Miriam Hopkins

This little firecracker of an actress measured in at 5'2.

Norma Shearer

At only 5'1, Norma Shearer was one of the tiniest film stars - but because of her bold screen presence, you'd never know.

Mary Pickford

Teeny tiny Mary Pickford was only 5'½.

Leslie Caron

Actress and dancer Leslie measures in at 5'1½.

Jane Powell 

Jane's slim figure and height of 5'½ make her one of the most petite ladies on the list. 

Judy Garland

Last but not least is Judy Garland measuring in at around 4'11, the tiniest of them all.

Thanks for reading! :)

My 10 Favourite...

...I don't feel inclined to tell you just yet.

Hah!

Sorry about that...

Today I intended to step up to the challenge and do the "Name Your 10 (or 20, if you're like me and can't just pick 10...) Favourite Actors/Actresses" post that I've seen on almost all of the classic film blogs I follow. But I didn't realise how late it had become, and so I've decided to postpone it! So, instead of that, I'm going to share with you my favourite songs from musicals. This won't include songs from musicals any later than 1971 (a.k.a. Fiddler on the Roof ♥ ) because...I said so.

And now, in no particular order, I give you my favourite 10...

Soooongs From the Muuuuusicals!

Do You Love Me? - Fiddler On the Roof

This is possibly my favourite from any musical. It's so simple, but it's so poignant. There's nothing remotely showy, extravagant or show bizzy about it...it comes straight from the heart, and makes me have a tear in my eye every time! Watch Tevye's cute 'little boy' embarrassed moment when Golde says "I suppose I do!" after he asks her if she loves him at 1:50 - I promise you will "Awww!"

Shall We Dance? - The King and I

Ok, this just had to be in here. I first 'saw' The King and I when I was couple of weeks old, and I like to say I've loved it ever since (; It wasn't actually the film, but it was a dress rehearsal of a stage production that my brother was in. It's the first film I remember watching, but I must have seen it before because I remember saying to my Mum "Is this the film with the pretty lady in?"!! See, I loved Deborah even then! But anyway, I'm getting side tracked. I love all of the songs in The King and I, but this song combined with the amazing chemistry between Yul and Deborah just makes it SO immense! When I was little, I used to dance around in circles outside singing the song and pretending to be Anna (I used a jacked as the King...). It's kind of a fantasy of mine to buy that dress (hands off!! You know who you are!! ;D ) and recreate the whole setting of the song. Minus Yul Brynner, because, much as I love him, he sometimes scares me...and I wouldn't want that in my fantasy dance. But anyway, back on track: Just watch it! They literally sizzle...

Oh, and muchos gracias to the lovely Marni Nixon for lending her beautiful voice! But really, Deborah wasn't as bad as Audrey Hepburn, or, I hasten to add, Natalie Wood. (I must add that I do love the aforementioned ladies a lot, and really don't care that they couldn't really sing...)

Good Morning - Singin' In the Rain

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU2zoQ8gV-s&feature=related

(it won't let me embed it, and I it won't let me upload it myself, so...I'm sorry!)

Ok, who doesn't love this? Every time I watch it I want to get up and dance (and have been known to do so several times...). A few years ago I used to start every day with this song. It's an amazing motivator! Also, Debbie's outfit is the cutest thing ever! And Donald O'Connor is such a darling ♥ This is what musicals are all about. It's like...the perfect musical, and this song is the perfect song for the perfect musical! :D <>

America - West Side Story

Aside from Rita Moreno who is hilarious, beautiful and just generally amazing, this is a wonderful, wonderful song! It's another one that makes me want to get up and dance. For me, it's the song that makes me like West Side Story, rather than just hating it...which I really would if it didn't have this, Rita Moreno, Natalie Wood and George Chakiris in it.

The Trolley Song - Meet Me In St. Louis

Come on, it's Judy Garland, do I need a reason?

Sister Suffragette - Mary Poppins

Glynis Johns singing is just the best thing ever. Her voice is so colourful and shrill, but in a way that doesn't seem shrill at all. I know I make no sense, but I do tend to get all gushy when I'm talking about dear Glynis. I adore Julie Andrews in this film, but I adore Glynis very much too! She's HILARIOUS, with a a humongous capital H! I loved her when I was little ♥ Several people have randomly told me that I remind them of "the crazy mum from Mary Poppins". I don't think that's necessarily a good thing, but it's kind of funny! So yes, this song never fails to cheer me up! :D

Some Enchanted Evening - South Pacific

I've chosen the video with the vocals by Ezio Pinza because no one sings it like him. His vocals give me shivers up and down my spine - I want my future husband to sing that to me some day (; It's gorgeous and oh so romantic...♥

I Remember It Well - Gigi

"Ah, yes...I remember it well!" Good old Maurice! Also, the fantastic Hermione Gingold ♥ They compliment each other so perfectly! It's one of my favourite songs from the whole film :D They're both so very, very cute and darling! (:

Wonderful, Wonderful Day - Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJdY9OnQNI4

(another one I can't embed...)

Despite Seven Brides for Seven Brothers being rather sexist, I still love it! And I love this song. A lot. I used to hate it, and hate Jane Powell's voice, but it's really grown on me. I love Jane Powell now, and this song is just so happy and sunny and...it makes me smile :D And...all those lovely mountains that aren't at all painted, and the lovely birds that fly past at exactly the right moment!! Oh, it's all good! (;

Do-Re-Mi - The Sound of Music

(It's really rubbish quality, sorry! It's the only one I could find of the actual film scene...)

Who doesn't know and love this song!? I've been in love with The Sound of Music and all of the songs ever since I was tiny. Julie Andrews was another of my idols, and I used to sit in my room trying to sing like her for hours on end! Also, in 2008, I was lucky enough to see the Lord's production of it in the London Palladium. It was the most incredible experience. When the Mother Abbess sang Climb Ev'ry Mountain I cried my eyes out! Anyway, this song just makes me hugely happy (yes, today I'm in the mood for happy songs...yesterday it might have been all of my favourite depressing songs...) and makes me want to hop on a plane to Salzburg, run around the mountain tops singing and dancing....and then jump in a lake and getting severely reprimanded by Christopher Plummer. :D But hey, as long as I get to meet Julie A. and Eleanor Parker...

So, there you have it. My 10 Favourite Songs From Musicals. Yep, in a months time several of them will have changed, but who cares!?

I hope you enjoyed, and I'd love to know what your favourite songs from musicals are! (:

A presto!!

Photos For (hopefully!!) Autographs!

EEP! I am sooooooooo excited!! Really, really, really!!!! I just bought 12 photos in a BOGOF offer on Movie Market, and I'm so hyped! I decided to treat myself, because I just got some money and, also, I've been wanting to buy some photos to send for autographs for a loooong time. So, I finally bought them! YAY! Anyone who isn't so insane as I am would probably say that I went a bit OTT, which is why I'm not saying how much I spent (also, I don't like talking about money...it makes me uncomfortable...). I will say how much I saved with the offer though. I saved, wait for it....wait for it...*drum roll*...nearly £25!! The postage was also incredibly cheap, and they have so many gorgeous photos, posters etc. etc. that I could have spent all day browsing! I advise you to get over there straight away! (:

(Only the 10x8" photos are BOGOF, but it is really good value in my opinion. Oh, and it's for a limited time only, so just go on and check it out and see if there's anything that catches your fancy! (;)

I'll show you the photos I bought, in the order that I hope to send them! I had to switch and swap some photos several times after reading that Maureen O'Hara only signs one photo (so, if you're intending writing to her, don't include more than one photo!), after finding out that no one has had a "success" with Zsa Zsa Gabor for a long time (she is in her 90s though...it's understandable that she wouldn't want to be hassled with fan mail), and after also discovering that no one seems to have received anything back from Deanna Durbin for a while. I probably will write to Deanna and Zsa Zsa sometime, but for the moment I've decided to get the letters off to the others. Eventually, I whittled down my overflowing 'basket', and chose my final photos. For the actresses I wanted to send more than one photo too, I wanted at least one photo with a good view of her face, because autographs on photos like that seem more personal! (Well, to me anyway...)

(First, the 12 10x8" photos)

Olivia de Havilland

Maureen O'Hara

(Movie Matters don't have many photos of Maureen *sob* but there was such a gorgeous photo of her, however it wasn't a particularly appropriate for an autograph, so, as I can only send her one, I decided on this - which is still stunning.)

Eleanor Parker

(I'm not sure why I chose the last one...it just really stood out to me, and I would love to have it autographed! Oh, and it's a still from the 1966 film The Oscar if you're wondering...)

Lauren Bacall

(Gah! There were so many fabulous photos of Lauren that I spent aaages picking them. The first one I adore...like, really adore. And the last photo is just stunning. Wasn't she just glorious?)

Debbie Reynolds

(As with Lauren, there were lots of lovely photos of Debbie to choose from. I'm not sure if I'll send the first one, but I really love it! She looks so happy, and it makes me feel happy! ♥ The second is one of my all time favourite photos of Debbie, so to have it autographed would be a.m.a.z.i.n.g.!)

Gina Lollabrigida

(I really adore this photo of Gina! There were several others I really wanted to get, but they were either really dark or too cluttered so, I went for this one!)

Celeste Holm

(I didn't really have much choice in the matter of a photo of Celeste as this was the only photo they had of her. It's not my favourite, but it's not the worst they could have had, so I'm happy!)

Joan Fontaine

(Joan, Joan, Joan. How happy I would be to get a 'Sister Set' of autographs! There were only two photos I liked of Joan on the website, and the other was a bit to 'facey', so I picked this!)

(Next, the 4 6x4" photos I just couldn't resist...)

Olivia de Havilland

(I just love this one...)

Lauren Bacall

(I wanted a photo of her that was a bit closer to her face, and I just fell in love with this ♥ )

Debbie Reynolds

(Ok, this one is just so adorable. The moment I saw it I wanted to buy it, but I'd already decided on the other two photos, so I was like "Musn't buy...musn't buy...". But Debbie made me. It's all her fault, honestly ('; )

Gina Lollabrigida

(This isn't my favourite photo of Gina, but as I said before, a lot of the other photos weren't appropriate for [hopefully] autographs. However, I do still love this photo. Let's face it, Gina always looks beautiful! )

I'm not sure which I will send, and which I won't. I might send some of them two, and others just the one. I don't know. But whatever I do, I will keep you all updated with the writing and sending of the letters to the above lovely ladies, and of course I will [excitedly] inform you if I receive any of the photos back signed!!

I hope you've enjoyed this post, and it's not been too hyper and overwhelmingly mad! I'm feeling a lot better than I have for a couple of weeks, so that's another reason I'm excited too! Although, we are cancelling out holiday in France that was set to be a week yesterday, but hopefully the gîte owners will be dears and let us push it back to the middle of August! I really hope they do as I've been looking forward to the holiday since we booked in January! In hindsight, it was silly of us to book then because of my ridiculous health, but we learnt the hard way! Ah well. If we do go, it will be lovely! All summer dresses, sun hats and sunglasses. And pastries. Lots of them.

Anyway, that's enough of a ramble from me! Congrats if you got to the end! (;

A presto!

My Unsent Letters to the Stars

Hello all! I'm pretty out of it today due to not getting a wink of sleep last night (however, I did manage to snatch 2/3 hours around midday, so I'm not as out of it as I could be!), so don't be too hard on me if I don't make any sense at all! :)

Debbie Reynolds makes me smile. Always. She's one of the sweetest darlings ever to live ♥ I decided to write to her a few years ago, but never got around to sending the letter because I was confused as to how you send SASEs to someone who lives in another country. (Something I'm still not entirely sure about. I'm sure I read somewhere that it can be done, but I can't for the life of me remember how. So, I'd be very grateful if you knew!) Anyway, I was just looking at the letter I wrote. It's so...adoring and gushy. Half of it is completely irrelevant. For example (with unaltered grammar, punctuation and spelling)...

If someone who had never seen a musical before asked me to recommend one to watch as a starter, I would probably say "Singin' In the Rain", "Me and My Girl", "Guys and Dolls", "The King and I" and "Wicked".

I wasn't sucking up to her with Singin' In the Rain!! Honest!!

There is also a part in which I inform Debbie how much I wish my life was a musical...

It would be so wonderful if I could burst into song on the street without people looking at me weirdly! It would be even better if they would all start singing and dancing behind me!

Yes, it would be fun, but I'm pretty sure Debbie Reynolds couldn't care less!

I also told her that if she did reply (ouch!)...

...I will treasure it [the reply] for all eternity.

There was also the "first draft" of the letter, which, I presume I thought was too short and snappy - so I rewrote it to include the flowery randoms you see above.

The next one I found was the letter I wrote to the lovely Jean Simmons...

It would have been a lovely letter - if it had been written to Deborah Kerr. One paragraph in and I obviously couldn't contain my love of Deborah. Now, I know that Jean and Deborah were really great friends, and that they were really close and all that jazz, but still, a fan letter that raves about another actress? I think not. I presume the idea behind it was that because Jean had been close to Deborah, she would reply to me because she was happy to find that Deborah's memory lived on!

I am probably the biggest fan of Miss Deborah Kerr ever! I watched her biography recently and saw you on it saying what good friends you were with her, so I decided to write to you and tell you that I love and admire her more and more every day!

...and so on and so forth.

I am soooo glad that I never sent that letter! If I had, I am sure I would have regretted it for the rest of my life, and probably would never have been able to look at Jean's face again.

I closed the letter with...

It has been an immense pleasure to write to you and I sincerely hope that I have not bored you.

Yeah, right. If I was she, I would have probably torn it into tiny pieces and then burnt the photo of myself that the website I got her address off told me to include.

But I'm not Jean. Jean was too gracious and kind to do anything like that. She might even have replied. Oh how I wish I was more like her!

I am quite sad that I never got the chance to send her a letter. That's why I'm trying to get myself psyched up to start writing my all important letters to Celeste Holm, Vera Lynn, Lauren Bacall, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Oliva De Havilland etc. etc.

Actually, I have a bone to pick with dear Olivia. Mhm.

I sent her a letter in 2008, and never got a reply. I was fine with that though, because the website I got the address from said that she probably wouldn't be replying to any letters until she'd finished her autobiog. So, I took a chance writing to her, and it didn't pay off. Fair enough. However, the other day, whilst rechecking the address, I found out that she was replying to people's letters at the same time I sent mine! *blubs* Olivia doesn't love me!! My world is shattered right now. I don't know what I did to deserve this, but it must have been something bad!! What did I write in the letter that was so horrific? Why doesn't she love me? *sobs*

Or maybe the letter just went astray. Yes, I prefer to take that view. That is why I have decided to send her another letter, in the hope that we can be reconciled. If she doesn't reply to this one, I'll probably never watch anything with her in again. LOL jk. I would never do that. ♥ Long live Olivia!!

Well, that's all folks! I hope it wasn't too much of a rambling mess. If it was, I'm truly sorry.

A presto!!

Short and Sweet

My dear Deborah at the piano...

Greer Garson with some immensely adorable dogs! This is possibly the cutest photo I have ever seen!


Magda, Eva and Zsa Zsa Gabor (:

How amazing is Greta's hair in this? I want!

Could Ava be more gorgeous and sweet?

I'm not sure why I'm posting a photo of Joan Crawford, to be quite honest!

Because Debbie makes me smile.

Barbara Stanwyck - just because!

Ingrid's smile was so...infectious! Lots of people's laughs are infectious, but you have to have an extra special smile for it to be infectious!

Deborah and Audrey - Two of my favourite people! What photo could be more perfect! I'd love to know what Audrey was saying to Deborah though (;

This man needs no reason (:

My Favourite "What's My Line?" Clips

Well, as once again I didn't get to sleep 'til 7 A.M, I decided to make an easygoing (for me) post. (:

I remember watching all of the What's My Line? clips I could find on youtube 3/4 years ago - and I just rediscovered them all yesterday. I think I find them even funnier now than I did back then, possibly because I know all of the 'mystery guests' unlike previously. Anyway, without further ado, I give you my favourite clips...

Deborah Kerr (1953) - She is so sweet and charming in this! I just want to hug her! (':

Greer Garson (1953/54 and 1958) - I have come to the conclusion in the past few days that Greer's voice is probably my favourite voice of all time. It's so rich and smooth - and I've spent far too many hours trying to speak like her the last couple of years!

(I love how she just babbles on all the time!)

Roz Russell (1952) - As usual, Roz is hilarious. The faces she pulls crack me up every time...

Bette Davis (1962) - Purely for the fact that you can't disguise her amazing, unique voice. Although she did have laryngitis...but still, her voice is so unique, anyone would recognize it!

Debbie Reynolds (1954) - I just love this one! She's so funny!

Elizabeth Taylor (1954)

Zsa Zsa Gabor (1959) - It's so cute how she never speaks when answering...and then at the end when she says "The questions you asked me!!" (:

Rosemary Clooney (1955) - Even if you don't watch the rest of it, watch 1:07 - 1:10. That laugh. Amazing. She's such a charming lady -my favourite Clooney! (:

Lucille Ball (1950-something and 1960-something - I think!) - Obviously, being Lucille...these are both wonderful and hilarious!

Mickey Rooney (1961) - he looks like he's having so much fun that it's infectious!

I hope you enjoy them as much as I do! (: Comment and tell me which is your favourite! (: I can't help thinking how deadly boring it would be if you got any of today's actors/actresses (excluding a few...like Meryl Streep!) to go on a show like this!

A presto!