The shoulder pads, as if she’d mugged a linebacker. The thick eyebrows, which resembled two comatose caterpillars. The damning charges, in a memoir and a movie, accusing her of being an abusive mother, obsessed with wire hangers. Joan Crawford may have died 50 years ago, but her legend lives on in the minds of classic film fans. In the 1920s, she emerged from a Dickensian childhood to become a Charleston-dancing flapper. In the 1930s, she was one of MGM’s top female stars, sh

Humphrey Bogart told Orson Welles that he was shooting “the worst picture I’ve ever been in.” Ingrid Bergman pleaded with director...

If you don’t know his name, I bet you know his movies. Director Michael Curtiz was more “journeyman” than “auteur,” but his cinematic...