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Mel Brooks' classic film Young Frankenstein had a lot more going on behind the scenes than producers let on. From Gene Wilder's difficult filming with Cloris Leachman to the controversial gag that almost stopped filming, making the comedy classic was no joke.

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40 Secrets From Young Frankenstein That Comedy Fans Will Simply Love

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James Stewart explains his love of the four-legged co-star he rode for 22 years...​


The horse [Pie] was amazing. I rode him for 22 years. I never was able to buy him because he was owned by a little girl by the name of Stevie Myers, who is the daughter of an old wrangler who used to wrangle horses for Tom Mix and W.S. Hart. He retired and he gave this horse to her. He [Pie, the horse] was a sort of a maverick. He hurt a couple of people. I saw [Pie] when I started making Westerns. Audie Murphy rode him a couple of times. He nearly killed Glenn Ford, ran right into a tree… But I liked this darned little horse. He was a little bit small, a little quarter horse and Arabian. I got to know him like a friend. I actually believed that he understood about making pictures. I ran at a full gallop, straight towards the camera, pulled him up and then did a lot of dialogue and he stood absolutely still. He never moved. He knew when the camera would start rolling and when they did the slates. He knew that because his ears came up.
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Petrine Day Mitchum … Robert Mitchum’s daughter, horse enthusiast and the author of “Hollywood Hoofbeats” … explains further.

James Stewart rode Pie in 17 westerns. … And they just became so attuned to each other that in one film, "The Far Country," Stewart had developed such a rapport with him that he was able to get the horse to do something at liberty all by himself when the trainer was not around. They were on this location. The trainer wasn't on the set. And the horse needed to walk from one end of a street to another with no ropes on him or anything, and Stewart just went up to him, he said he whispered in his ear and told him what he needed him to do. And the horse did it. And everyone on the set was absolutely amazed, and Stewart just said, that was Pie. That's what he did. So he absolutely had an incredible bond with the horse.
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Beyond the work Pie did with Stewart, on film he was also ridden by Kirk Douglas, Audie Murphy, Glenn Ford. And, more than likely, a number of other actors. There is no exact count of the number of films in which the little quarter horse appeared.

My unsolicited comment: Despite all this show-stealing, the little horse never received a cut of the pie.
 
On this date in 1994, "The Shawshank Redemption" was released.

Stephen King sold the rights to his novella "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" for only $5000, out of his friendship with Frank Darabont. They had become friends when Darabont adapted a short story of King's called "The Woman in the Room" for "The Woman in the Room" (1984) (King has a policy stating that any aspiring filmmaker can adapt his short stories for a buck) and King was thoroughly impressed. They maintained a pen-pal relationship and didn't actually meet until Darabont optioned "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption."

King never cashed his $5,000 check for rights to the film. Several years after the movie came out, King got the check framed, and mailed it back to Frank Darabont with a note inscribed, "In case you ever need bail money. Love, Steve." King has considered this to be one of his favorite film adaptations based on his own work.

The full title of the King novella was not used because there was a perception in Hollywood that the film was actually going to be a biopic of Rita Hayworth. Indeed, Darabont even received solicitations of audition requests from several actresses and supermodels and their agents about playing the lead.

This was Morgan Freeman's first time narrating a movie, thus by his own admission jumpstarting that element of his career which raised his popularity even further. Unusually, the narration was recorded before filming began and was then played on set to dictate the rhythm of each scene. Freeman recorded the guide track in an Iowa recording studio in only forty minutes. However, there was a minor hiss to the track, which sound engineers in Los Angeles were unable to eradicate. Consequently, it had to be re-recorded in a proper studio; this time it took three weeks.

In April 2018, while a guest on NPR's "It's Been a Minute with Sam Sanders," Tim Robbins talked about how often strangers tell him they love this movie: "I'm proud of that film, really proud of that film....I've talked to Morgan about this. It's a pretty special...it's unlike other films that people talk to you about. It's very important to people, in a deep way. And it's beyond just liking the film. It's more profound than that. I've had people tell me that it's shifted the way they think, that it brought them out of a depression, that it made them understand a deeper truth about themselves. That's a pretty cool thing to be involved in, and when people are telling you, pretty much on a daily basis, 'you're in my favorite movie of all time,' that's a pretty cool bucket list thing to check off....you know, I don't have to do that now in my life."

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Michael Caine walking with his mother in London, circa 1960’s.

He said this about her: “I'm not sure she ever quite understood what I did. And she certainly never understood how much I earned. She asked me once, how much do you earn for a film? And I said, 'A million pounds' 'Oh' she said, How much is that? She had no way of computing that sort of money, so I said, it means you don't have to do anything mum, work for anything, or want for anything ever, ever again. So no taking crafty cleaning jobs to be with your mates or I'll get into trouble with the papers.”

- Sam Regan
 
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Joan Fontaine and her sister, Olivia de Havilland, are the only set of siblings to have won lead acting Academy Awards. Olivia was the first to become an actress; when Fontaine tried to follow her lead, their mother, who allegedly favored Olivia, refused to let Joan use the family name. Subsequently, Fontaine had to invent a name, taking first Joan Burfield, and later Joan Fontaine. Biographer Charles Higham records that the sisters had an uneasy relationship from early childhood, when Olivia would rip up the clothes Joan had to wear as hand-me-downs, forcing Joan to sew them back together. A large part of the friction between the sisters allegedly stemmed from Fontaine's belief that Olivia was their mother's favorite child.

De Havilland and Fontaine were both nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1942. Fontaine won for her role in Alfred Hitchcock's "Suspicion" over de Havilland's performance in "Hold Back the Dawn." Higham states that Fontaine "felt guilty about winning given her lack of obsessive career drive..." Higham has described the events of the awards ceremony, stating that as Fontaine stepped forward to collect her award, she pointedly rejected de Havilland's attempts at congratulating her and that de Havilland was both offended and embarrassed by her behavior.

Fontaine, however, tells a different story in her autobiography, explaining that she was paralyzed with surprise when she won the Academy Award, and that de Havilland insisted she get up to accept it. "Olivia took the situation very graciously," Fontaine wrote. "I was appalled that I'd won over my sister." Several years later, however, de Havilland apparently remembered what she perceived as a slight and exacted her own revenge by brushing past Fontaine, who was waiting with her hand extended, because de Havilland allegedly took offense at a comment Fontaine had made about de Havilland's husband.

Contrary to press reports, the sisters continued their relationship after the 1940s. After Fontaine's separation from her husband in 1952, de Havilland came to her apartment in New York often, and at least once they spent Christmas together there, in 1961. They were photographed laughing together at a party for Marlene Dietrich in 1967. Fontaine also went to visit de Havilland in Paris in 1969.

The sisters reportedly did not completely stop speaking to each other until 1975, after their mother's funeral. Both sisters largely refused to comment publicly about their relationship. In a 1978 interview, however, Fontaine said of the sibling rivalry, "I married first, won the Oscar before Olivia did, and if I die first, she'll undoubtedly be livid because I beat her to it!"

The following year, in a 1979 interview, Fontaine claimed the reason her sister and she stopped speaking to each other was that de Havilland wanted their mother (who was suffering from cancer) to be treated surgically at the advanced age of 88, which Fontaine apparently did not think was a good idea. Fontaine claimed that after their mother died, de Havilland did not bother to try to find where Fontaine could be reached (Fontaine was on tour in a play). Instead, de Havilland sent a telegram, which did not arrive until two weeks later at Fontaine's next stop.

According to Fontaine, de Havilland did not invite her to a memorial service for their mother. De Havilland claims she informed Fontaine, but Fontaine brushed her off, claiming she was too busy to attend. Higham records that Fontaine had an estranged relationship with her own daughters, as well, possibly because she discovered that they were secretly maintaining a relationship with de Havilland.

Happy Birthday, Joan Fontaine!
~ Michael Sposato, Turner Classic Movies Fan Site
 
axolotl said:
View attachment 10580

Joan Fontaine and her sister, Olivia de Havilland, are the only set of siblings to have won lead acting Academy Awards. Olivia was the first to become an actress; when Fontaine tried to follow her lead, their mother, who allegedly favored Olivia, refused to let Joan use the family name. Subsequently, Fontaine had to invent a name, taking first Joan Burfield, and later Joan Fontaine. Biographer Charles Higham records that the sisters had an uneasy relationship from early childhood, when Olivia would rip up the clothes Joan had to wear as hand-me-downs, forcing Joan to sew them back together. A large part of the friction between the sisters allegedly stemmed from Fontaine's belief that Olivia was their mother's favorite child.

De Havilland and Fontaine were both nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1942. Fontaine won for her role in Alfred Hitchcock's "Suspicion" over de Havilland's performance in "Hold Back the Dawn." Higham states that Fontaine "felt guilty about winning given her lack of obsessive career drive..." Higham has described the events of the awards ceremony, stating that as Fontaine stepped forward to collect her award, she pointedly rejected de Havilland's attempts at congratulating her and that de Havilland was both offended and embarrassed by her behavior.

Fontaine, however, tells a different story in her autobiography, explaining that she was paralyzed with surprise when she won the Academy Award, and that de Havilland insisted she get up to accept it. "Olivia took the situation very graciously," Fontaine wrote. "I was appalled that I'd won over my sister." Several years later, however, de Havilland apparently remembered what she perceived as a slight and exacted her own revenge by brushing past Fontaine, who was waiting with her hand extended, because de Havilland allegedly took offense at a comment Fontaine had made about de Havilland's husband.

Contrary to press reports, the sisters continued their relationship after the 1940s. After Fontaine's separation from her husband in 1952, de Havilland came to her apartment in New York often, and at least once they spent Christmas together there, in 1961. They were photographed laughing together at a party for Marlene Dietrich in 1967. Fontaine also went to visit de Havilland in Paris in 1969.

The sisters reportedly did not completely stop speaking to each other until 1975, after their mother's funeral. Both sisters largely refused to comment publicly about their relationship. In a 1978 interview, however, Fontaine said of the sibling rivalry, "I married first, won the Oscar before Olivia did, and if I die first, she'll undoubtedly be livid because I beat her to it!"

The following year, in a 1979 interview, Fontaine claimed the reason her sister and she stopped speaking to each other was that de Havilland wanted their mother (who was suffering from cancer) to be treated surgically at the advanced age of 88, which Fontaine apparently did not think was a good idea. Fontaine claimed that after their mother died, de Havilland did not bother to try to find where Fontaine could be reached (Fontaine was on tour in a play). Instead, de Havilland sent a telegram, which did not arrive until two weeks later at Fontaine's next stop.

According to Fontaine, de Havilland did not invite her to a memorial service for their mother. De Havilland claims she informed Fontaine, but Fontaine brushed her off, claiming she was too busy to attend. Higham records that Fontaine had an estranged relationship with her own daughters, as well, possibly because she discovered that they were secretly maintaining a relationship with de Havilland.

Happy Birthday, Joan Fontaine!
~ Michael Sposato, Turner Classic Movies Fan Site
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Humans suck.
 
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Trivia of Red Skelton (18 July 1913 - 17 September 1997)

*Claimed his middle name was really "Red" and that he had made up the middle name Bernard, from the name of a local store, Bernard Clothiers, to satisfy a schoolteacher who would not believe his middle name was "Red". His full name was Richard Red Skelton.

*Skelton's early interest in becoming an entertainer stemmed from an incident that took place in Vincennes around 1923, when a stranger, supposedly the comedian Ed Wynn, approached Skelton, who was the newsboy selling papers outside a Vincennes theater. When the man asked Skelton what events were going on in town, Skelton suggested he see the new show in town. The man purchased every paper Skelton had, providing enough money for the boy to purchase a ticket for himself. The stranger turned out to be one of the show's stars, who later took the boy backstage to introduce him to the other performers. The experience prompted Skelton, who had already shown comedic tendencies, to pursue a career as a performer.

*Made his film debut in 1938 alongside Ginger Rogers and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in Having Wonderful Time.Skelton is credited as Richard (Red) Skelton. It includes the iconic “Doughnut Dunkers” routine that he developed with his wife, Edna.Skelton's part in this film was originally much larger. Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. wrote in his memoir, "...the big bosses at the studio were unable to appreciate Skelton's broad, slapstick style and cut his part down to the barest minimum needed to hold the slender plot together."

*Starred as Wally "The Fox" Benton in three films : Whistling in The Dark (1941), Whistling in The Dixie (1942), and Whistling in Brooklyn (1943).
*He was a prolific writer of music. By the time of his death, he had composed over 8,000 songs and symphonies. Some of his music was sold to Muzak ( a company that specialized in providing background music to stores and other businesses).

*Skelton began producing artwork in 1943, but kept his works private for many years. His art dealer said he believed that Skelton made more money on his paintings than from his television work. At the time of his death, Skelton had produced over 1,000 oil paintings of clowns. When asked why his artwork focused on clowns, he said at first, "I don't know why it's always clowns." He continued after thinking a moment by saying "No, that's not true—I do know why. I just don't feel like thinking about it ..."

*In 1960, he purchased the old Charles Chaplin Studios on La Brea Avenue, where he produced his weekly television shows (Red Skelton Show). He established Red-Eo-Tape (Red-Tape) Video Productions. His three RCA TK-41 camera mobile units became the first live color production company in Hollywood.

*A bridge was opened in 1963 and named after him "Red Skelton Memorial Bridge" , that spans the Wabash River separating Indiana and Illinois on US 50, just outside Skelton's hometown of Vincennes, Indiana.

~ From Hollywood Stars and Movies 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s
 
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