In 1931, she was in her first small film named “Art and Mrs. Bottle.”  Then, in 1932 she finally broke into stardom when she took the lead role of an Amazon princess in “A Warrior’s Husband,” following that, she was a cast member in “A Bill of Divorcement.” This film was a hit and after agreeing to her salary demands, RKO signed Katharine to a contract, and with that, she went on to make five films between 1932 and 1934.  Her third movie was Morning Glory, in 1933; she won her first Academy Award. Also in 1933, she made her fourth film, Little Women; it was the most successful picture of its day.

However, stories were beginning to leak out of her nasty behavior off screen and refusing to play the Hollywood Game, Katharine always wore slacks and no makeup she never posed for any pictures or involved herself in any interviews.

She made many more films over the years up until 1994 where she did her last feature film, which was “Love Affair” and her last TV film “One Christmas.” As her health declined she retired from the public life in the mid 90’s. Sadly she passed at the age of 96, from natural causes, in her home in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.

Before becoming a star in American films, she had already been a leading actress in Swedish, French, German, Italian, and British films. Her first introduction to American audiences came with her starring role in the English remake of Intermezzo in 1939. In America, she brought to the screen a “Nordic freshness and vitality,” along with extreme beauty and intelligence, and, according to the St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, quickly became “the ideal of American womanhood” and one of Hollywood’s greatest leading actresses.

Her producer David O. Selznick, who called her “the most completely conscientious actress” he had ever worked with, gave her a seven-year acting contract, thereby assuring her continual stardom. A few of her other starring roles besides Casablanca included the films For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), Gaslight (1944), The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945), Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945), Notorious (1946), and Under Capricorn (1949), and the independent production, Joan of Arc (1948).

In 1950, after a decade of stardom in American films, she starred in the Italian film Stromboli and had a love affair with director Roberto Rossellini while they were both already married. The affair created a scandal that forced her to return to Europe until 1956, when she made a successful Hollywood comeback in Anastasia for which she won her second Academy Award as well as the forgiveness of her fans.

Charlton Heston is well-cast as Ben-Hur, a role that plays right to his strengths. The strained relations between Ben-Hur and Messala provide one set of themes for the story, as well as driving much of the action. Heston handles his end of it pretty well, although Stephen Boyd could have been a little less static in his portrayal of Messala. Jack Hawkins works very well as Quintus Arrius, and his scenes with Heston are used well in establishing some of the inner workings of Heston’s character. Hugh Griffith also has a couple of good scenes as Sheik Ilderim.

The chariot race and other action sequences usually get most of the attention, but there are also some worthwhile ideas in the story (which are really the focus of the original novel) that are developed well enough. There is also a very good silent movie version of “Ben-Hur” from 1925, which at times takes a different approach from this version, and which is well worth seeing in itself for those who like the story.

The Godfather featured some of the most famous actors of the time such as the famous Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, John Marley, Diane Keaton, Sterling Hayden, James Caan, Richard Conte, Richard Castellano, and Marlon Brando.  Some of these actors had not been previously known prior to their role in The Godfather, though this is the time when their careers really began to take off.  There were also two sequels to the movie, The Godfather II (1974) and The Godfather III (1990).

The 1972 classic movie, The Godfather, did receive many Academy Awards for Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Picture.  The movie was such a hit for its time and received enough awards that it was eventually inducted into the U.S. National Film Registry.  In addition to this, it ranked only 2^nd in all time for the greatest American history cinematic films.  The leader of the greatest movies was won by the movie Citizen Kane.

Clark Gable made it to Hollywood to pursue his career and met a woman names Josephine Dillon, which was to be his acting coach that would teach him everything that he needed to know in order to become successful in the acting business.  Josephine Dillon was some 17 years older than Gable, but they shared a lot of the same morals and principles and later ended up getting married to one another.

In 1930, Gable was finally signed by MGM, though only after many failed attempts to make it big.  He became the co-star in the 1931 film called “Dance, Fools, Dance.”  Later that year, he starred in another movie called “A Free Soul,” and this is where the public people really began to fall in love with Clark Gable.

Clark Gable was married 3 times and with each wife, he kept his acting career alive and well.  After his third wife died in a plane crash, Gable decided to join the U.S. Air Force which took him away from the big screen for about 3 years.  He was on missions in Europe.  When he returned, he never renewed his contracts for film making and freelanced his own work, which turned out to be unsuccessful in the end.  All of the sudden, he announced to the public that he was becoming a father though two months after the birth of his baby, he died from a heart attack.  We will always remember Clark Gable as one of the actors that pushed the big screed movies into the future.

The family had relocated to Los Angeles where Elizabeth’s mother’s own family had moved. Mr. Taylor followed to the U.S. not long after. Elizabeth’s first foray onto the big screen was when she was ten.  The movie was called “There’s one born every minute” in 1942.  Universal quickly dropped her contract after that film but she was soon picked up by MGM. Her first film with MGM was “Lassie Come Home” in 1943. In 1944, she played Velvet Brown in “National Velvet” the film became a huge success, grossing over $4 million. Elizabeth had a long term contact with MGM and was the company’s top child star.

Throughout the rest of the 40s and 50s she appeared in films with mostly good results. In 1955 she appeared in the hit “Giant” with James Dean.  In 1959, she appeared in “Suddenly, Last Summer” and was nominated for an Oscar; however, she lost to Simone Signoret for “Room at the Top.” In 1960 she received her first Oscar for her performance in “Butterfield 8” as Gloria Wandrous. She left MGM after her contract ran out but did projects for the studio later on down the road. In 1963, she starred in the movie “Cleopatra”, which was one of the most expensive productions at that time, as well as her salary; $1,000,000.00.

She won her second Oscar in 1966, in the movie “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”  Her films afterward didn’t approach the intensity of that one. In February 1997, Taylor was admitted to the hospital to remove a brain tumor. The operation was a success, and since then she has secured her role as one of the best leading actresses of all time.

Photo courtesy of Emage International/Art&Artifact and the Frank Worth Estate

Charlie Chaplin came to the United States in 1910, at the age of 21.  He was brought to New York, which was known to be a great place to start out for anyone trying to become a professional actor.  Two years later, in 1913, Chaplin signed his very first contract at Keystone and it was no time before he headed to Hollywood.  His first movie premiered in 1914, “Making a Living,” and went on to make over 35 movies total in that year alone.  His rise in popularity was like nothing that people had seen, though with parents of fame, it was nothing new to Charlie.

Charlie Chaplin grew to become one of the most popular and successful actors of all time.  The moment that really kicked off his long career was in 1921 when he starred in, and produced, his first full length film called “The Kid.”  From then on, most people all over the world knew Charlie Chaplin and loved his movies.  He had a great career and life, dying on December 25, 1977, in Vevey, Switzerland.  He had apparently died of natural causes in his sleep from old age.

The Sound of Music was filmed in Germany and Austria, as well as the 20^th Century Fox studio that is located in California.  The movie gained so much popularity that it was later award a total of 5 Academy Awards for Best Picture in the opening year of 1965.  The classic movie was considered by many to be the absolute best musical that was ever produced.  The cast, or the actors and actresses, of the classic musical films were also nominated for a Grammy in accordance to Album of the Year.

The Sound of Music was such a great hit that if you took the money that it made in sales and translated that into the inflation of 2010, the film made over $1 billion which made it third of all time behind only two others which were Gone with the Wind and Star Wars.  The film is still watched by many today and had been implemented into school systems to teach morals as well as the art of music to all students that study in schools.  The complete plot to the classic musical film would not only entertain people that were watching, but also teach other aspects of life other than music, such as love and peace, though it generally used the music to get the message across to each viewer.

Some old classic actors such as Clark Gable, Elizabeth Taylor, and Charlie Chaplin have really played great roles in entertainment that was not only great to watch when the movie came out, but is still worth watching today with their great acting skills and the heart and passion that they would put into these great classic movies.  The skills of these actors, plus more from the classic movie days, are still studied today by many actors that want to bring the passion with their skills into the more modern movies that we have today.  The skills that classic movie actors brought to their own career haven’t been able to be duplicated, though some are very close.

Classic movies are a great way to entertain your family, and in addition to this, you can really take yourself back into your early days of when you were a kid watching these movies with your families and enjoying life without any worries.  These were the great times of your life that you really cherished and classic movies were part of what made it so special.  Without movies, there would have been limited connection to the outside world; therefore, remembering these great classic movies is one of the best things to kick of the great evolution of technology in videos and films.

Casablanca had many aspects featured in the classic movie from romance, mystery, comedy, topical events, and intrigue.  Many film makers have tried numerous times to mimic the film of Casablanca but all have been unsuccessful and realizing that the combination of all of these things in one films would be extremely difficult to duplicate.  Many people even claim that the classic movie will NEVER be duplicated, no matter how many attempts there may be to do so by film makers in the world.

The movie was released in 1998 in the newer modeled digital format, which many people were ecstatic about with desire to see the classic all together.  It was released by MGM and many claim that the released version is not the highest quality, though it is light years ahead of VHS movies.  Many people were in hopes that the release would have been of a better quality, though were very happy to receive what they did at least.

The best films all started with the best scripts, and just like the best, Casablanca was a prior script that was acted out in a play, and then later transformed into a movie.  The script and screenplay wasn’t perfect, though that was to be expected in a live act.  The 1943 Casablanca was one of the old classics that will forever be remembered and adored by many people as well.