11 Shockingggg Facts About Old Hollywood Stars That Are Just So Freaking Fascinating

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Big surface amusement is known to pique our fascination, but the existent entreaty of Old Hollywood begins disconnected camera with the lives of the actors and crew. Here are immoderate unusual facts astir the era's stars that deed similar a bully crippled twist:

1. Jimmy Stewart snuck an alleged Yeti finger from Nepal done customs by hiding it successful Gloria Stewart’s lingerie case. In 1957, an oilman fittingly named Tom Slick led a failed ngo done the mountains of Nepal successful hunt of the Abominable Snowman. After an injury, Swift hired a brace of brothers, Peter and Bryan Byrne, to proceed his hunt for the elusive creature. Peter stumbled upon shocking grounds portion exploring the Everest portion astatine the Pangboche Monastery. The monks showed Peter the remains of a Yeti skull and hand. He negotiated with them and convinced the monks to fto him acquisition a azygous digit from the cryptid’s claw. Here’s wherever Jimmy comes in…

Peter carried that digit each the mode crossed Nepal’s borderline into India, wherever helium convened with Jimmy Stewart and Gloria Stewart successful Calcutta for the hand-off (literally). Jimmy sandwiched the Yeti digit heavy wrong Gloria’s lingerie case. They successfully smuggled the digit from India to the United Kingdom, wherever it was aboriginal debunked arsenic a lucifer for quality DNA. Real slick.

2. Vivien Leigh spoke her matrimony with Laurence Olivier into existence (which would person been cleanable if the 2 didn’t already person spouses). It was 1936, and Leigh was connected the cusp of stardom and the borderline of divorce. Her signifier show arsenic Henriette successful The Mask of Virtue was each the buzz. Leigh’s rising popularity from the play was the catalyst for galore things, including a jealous matrimony dynamic with her archetypal husband, Herbert Leigh Holman, who grew to detest her theatrical pursuits, a slew of movie offers that would motorboat her into the limelight, and a passionate matter with Olivier, who would inhabit a spot successful the assemblage astatine 1 of her performances.

Olivier (also married) sang her praises aft the show, and Leigh became utterly infatuated. She turned to her adjacent confidante and famously remarked, “That’s the antheral I’m going to marry.” Four years later, Leigh’s prophecy came existent erstwhile she said, “I do.” There’s yet different lawsuit for feminine intuition.

3. Speaking of premonitions, Natalie Wood’s tragic and unsolved death was allegedly predicted by a luck teller. Before she was adjacent born, Wood’s destiny for stardom was forecasted…along with her cursed fate. Her mother, Maria, sought retired a psychic who revealed two inevitable truths. One, her secondborn kid would beryllium “known passim the world,” and two, “Beware of acheronian water.”

This ominous prophecy would haunt Wood for her full life, opening with trauma arsenic a kid prima connected the acceptable of The Green Promise. Due to a method malfunction, a span buckled beneath her feet. Wood broke her near wrist earlier falling into the h2o below. “Keep the cameras rolling,” manager William D. Russell exclaimed arsenic a 10-year-old Wood fought to support her caput supra water. Her parent refused to fto doctors dainty her injury, which is wherefore Wood covered up the lingering bump connected her wrist with bracelets, gloves, and sleeves.

The lawsuit of Wood’s decease is unfastened and unsolved. Her assemblage was recovered connected November 29, 1981, disconnected the seashore of Catalina Island adjacent Blue Cavern Point. She was floating facedown successful her nightgown, a reddish coat, and a brace of bluish socks. Her origin of decease is listed (after amendments) arsenic “drowning and different undetermined factors.” What happened that nighttime connected her hubby Robert Wagner’s yacht, Splendour, is arsenic murky arsenic the waters themselves.

After an evening of dense drinking astatine Doug’s Harbor Reef, Wood, Wagner, and Christopher Walken (Wood’s co-star successful Brainstorm) got backmost connected the boat. Wagner went to cheque connected Wood aft she turned successful for the nighttime and recovered that she was gone, on with Prince Valliant. No, that wasn’t the sanction of immoderate royal she escaped with; it was the rubric for the inflatable dinghy that belonged to the yacht.

It’s been 44 years since her death, and the question inactive remains: What motivated idiosyncratic truthful acrophobic of acheronian waters to travel consecutive into them?

4. For immoderate actors, the amusement indispensable spell connected forever. Did you cognize that Bela Lugosi was buried successful a replica of his Count Dracula cape? While galore person speculated that Lugosi was laid to remainder successful his archetypal costume, helium made arrangements for the authentic cape to beryllium near with his son. After dying of a bosom onslaught successful 1956, Lugosi was buried astatine Holy Cross Cemetery wearing Dracula’s iconic ringing and cape (the replica). The cape from the movie is present housed astatine the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, wherever Lugosi’s bequest lives connected successful perpetuity, conscionable similar the vampire whom helium erstwhile portrayed.

5. Marlon Brando spoke to the dead. Brando and his friend-turned-contemporary, Wally Cox, were inseparably (and adjacent a small possessively) close. Cox died abruptly from a bosom onslaught astatine 48 successful his Bel Air home. Shortly after, stars among the likes of Twiggy, Vincent Price, and Ernest Borgnine flocked to his residence for the wake. Instead of mourning amongst the celebrity-clad coterie, Brando snuck into Cox’s aftermath done a model and retired to the country wherever helium died. When asked astir it, Brando remarked, “Wally was my friend. Nobody else’s.”

It was Brando’s work to prime up his ashes from the mortuary and dispersed them, but Brando conscionable couldn’t fto them go. Instead, helium kept the ashes close. He stored Cox’s remains successful a furniture astatine his house, regularly taking them retired for drives and having conversations with them.

In an interrogation with Time Magazine, Brando confessed, “I can't archer you however overmuch I miss and emotion that man. I person Wally's ashes successful my house. I speech to him each the time." After Brando's decease successful 2004, the brace was yet reunited. Bonded some successful beingness and death, Brando’s ashes were released alongside Cox’s successful Death Valley, California. Here’s to hoping they’re keeping the speech going mode retired successful the desert.

6. Hedy Lamarr developed a “frequency-hopping” exertion during World War II, which led to the invention of your modern faves: WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS. In her 1966 Autobiography, Ecstasy and Me: My Life arsenic a Woman, Lamarr wrote, “The unfortunate happening is, I americium ever mode up of time.” Outside of her enactment successful film, Lamarr was a superb inventor. She created solutions for mundane problems and planetary challenges alike. At a Hollywood meal enactment successful 1940, Lamarr met an experimental composer named George Antheil. Their inventive narration would forge the instauration of our modern world.

Lamarr and Antheil unearthed their thought for “frequency-hopping” implicit a brainstorming league connected the seat of a piano. One idiosyncratic would commencement playing a opus connected the keys, and the different would effort to synchronize their playing with them, oregon lucifer their frequency. The brace developed this thought to construe betwixt the vigor frequencies of ships and torpedoes during World War II.

The US Navy initially rejected the thought and buried the patent successful a classified folder, wherever it would aboriginal resurface during the Cold War. In the 1960s, frequency-hopping was utilized to forestall Soviet signals from intercepting American ships during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Their invention broke into the mainstream successful the 1970s, erstwhile car phones were popularized, giving users a mode to pass implicit specialized vigor frequencies. This created the blueprint for the cellphone networks that we usage today.

Despite being misunderstood astatine first, Lamarr and Antheil created thing that paved the mode for the future, and, successful galore ways, ensured we’d inactive person one. One accidental brushwood successful Hollywood led to the commencement of a full caller era.

7. Marilyn Monroe besides played a pivotal relation successful the improvement of exertion during World War II by gathering drones. Called by her commencement sanction backmost then, an 18-year-old Norma Jeane Dougherty got a occupation investigating parachutes astatine Radioplane. Radioplane developed remote-controlled craft exertion that helped the US Army sharpen its purpose astatine targets. Dougherty was photographed astatine Radioplane showing disconnected a propeller by Private David Conover.

Conover was sent connected a ngo by Captain Ronald Reagan (yes, the aboriginal president) of the Army’s First Motion Picture Unit to photograph women moving successful warfare technology. This aboriginal representation of Dougherty, who soon thereafter became Monroe, was conscionable 1 of the galore pictures taken of her that mesmerized the zeitgeist.

8. While immoderate prayed for fame, others (like Dolores Hart) near Hollywood down for a beatified caller life. The twelvemonth was 1963, and a 24-year-old Dolores Hart was a rising superstar who’d shared the surface with Montgomery Cliff, Warren Beatty, and Elvis Presley. She was film’s fixation; adjacent her wedding formal was made by the Oscar-winning costume designer, Edith Head. Hart was acceptable to wed her semipermanent partner, Don Robinson, but she ne'er made it to the altar. Instead, she took a full different acceptable of vows and devoted her beingness to serving Christ arsenic a cloistered nun astatine the Abbey of Regina Laudis successful Bethlehem, Connecticut.

Mother Dolores built a theatre astatine the abbey truthful that radical could research the intersections of religion and show art. She revealed, "I ne'er felt I was walking distant from Hollywood. I felt I was walking into thing much significant, and by that, I took Hollywood with me."

9. Elvis Presley used footwear polish to dye his people blonde hair.Before solidifying his estimation arsenic the “King of Rock and Roll,” Presley lathered up his pompadour with footwear polish due to the fact that his household couldn’t spend hairsbreadth dye. Certain of his aesthetic from the jump, Presley kept his hairsbreadth achromatic and wore eyeliner to bring retired his piercing bluish eyes. He learned astir cosmetics from The Rat Race star, Tony Curtis.

Presley’s beardown consciousness of benignant and earthy endowment catapulted him done the stratosphere. With wealth successful his pouch to spare, Presley ditched the footwear polish and went connected to colour his hairsbreadth with a gluttonous premix of not one, but 2 antithetic container dyes (Miss Clairol 51D and Black Velvet/Mink Brown by Paramount).

10. Shoe polish wasn’t the lone chemic cover-up successful Old Hollywood. Buddy Ebsen and Jack Haley had terrible wellness complications from the aluminum constitution utilized connected acceptable for The Wizard of Oz. Ebsen was the archetypal of 2 actors to represent the iridescently iconic Tin Man. To execute his metallic glow, constitution artists would baste Ebsen’s look successful achromatic clown constitution and particulate pulverized aluminum particles onto his skin. Production rolled connected for 10 days until suddenly, Ebsen could nary longer breathe.

In a enactment to a reporter, Ebsen shared, “I wondered if I was dying. No 1 seemed to cognize what was incorrect oregon what the result was going to be. Tests revealed that my lungs were coated with the aluminum particulate with which they'd been powdering my face.” Anticipating a agelong recovery, MGM gave Ebsen’s relation to Jack Haley. The constitution section figured that this time, they’d effort an aluminum paste alternatively of a pulverization connected their actor.

The paste gave Haley an agonizing oculus infection, causing him to miss 4 days of filming. After healing, they reapplied the overgarment of toxins and dropped close backmost onto the Yellow Brick Road to decorativeness retired the project. The unspoken secrets of Hollywood are truly close beneath the surface…you conscionable mightiness request to scrape disconnected a furniture of metallic to get to them.

11. Here’s different illustration of the movie manufacture exploiting actors for a large shot: Tippi Hedren was attacked by unrecorded birds for 5 days consecutive portion filming for Hitchcock’s The Birds. While the country lone took up astir a infinitesimal of the last film’s tally time, the chamber showdown betwixt Hedren’s character, Melanie, and the horrific birds was changeable for 5 consecutive days. Hitchcock gave Hedren his connection that the birds successful question would beryllium mechanical. On the greeting of the chamber shoot, Hedren was alerted that she’d beryllium pelted with unrecorded birds instead.

Handlers chucked ravens, pigeons, and doves astatine her. On the 5th time of filming, unrecorded birds who’d been trained to peck Hedren were fastened to her costume with elastic. As they pecked her, the unit continued to propulsion a frenzy of stressed and frightened animals successful her direction.

In Tippi: A Memoir, she recounts, “Hitchcock yelled, ‘Cut.’ The birds were untied from me, and I conscionable sat determination connected the floor, incapable to move, and began sobbing from sheer exhaustion. Minutes passed earlier I looked up to observe that everyone had conscionable near maine determination successful the mediate of that vast, soundless soundstage, wholly spent, empty, and alone.”

In galore cases, the astir unsettling aspects of classical fearfulness movies happened erstwhile the cameras weren’t rolling.

Have you heard of immoderate aged Hollywood secrets yourself? Let maine cognize successful the comments oregon the anonymous signifier below!

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