Hollywood has a habit of erasing its own history. A house where a silent film star once lived becomes an apartment building. A studio disappears beneath a shopping center. Even surviving buildings lose their stories as generations pass and neighborhoods change. Before long, nobody remembers who lived there or why the place mattered. E. J. Fleming understood that better than most. For decades, he collected the addresses of the people and places that made Hollywood what it was, from legendary stars and notorious scandals to forgotten character actors, technicians, and ordinary people who worked in the motion-picture industry. His Movieland Directory became an invaluable resource for researchers who believe Hollywood history isn't confined to studio archives. Much of it still exists on the streets where these people lived.

Long before James Dean became the archetypal image of the restless young man in Hollywood, a young woman in Indiana saw something special in her son and she nurtured it. She encouraged him to dance, to play the violin, to make up stories and to be himself in any way he wanted to. Her name was Mildred Marie Wilson Dean, and she never lived to see her son become a movie star, but her influence was with him all his life.

Stacy Keach (the gravel-voiced, very commanding actor) died on November 10, 2026, at his home in Magdalenka, Poland. He was 85. His wife Malgosia Tomassi Keach confirmed that he had been suffering from a long-term illness involving a serious heart condition and heart failure. His death marks the end of a remarkable career of over sixt years in which he was able to move so easily between the classical theatre and the more popular forms of entertainment and was widely regarded as one of the most intelligent and accomplished actors of his generation.

On the morning of November 11, 1922 (four years to the day after the armistice had ended the fighting of the First World War) a rather solemn gathering took place on the grounds of Hollywood High School. Students, teachers, veterans and members of the community were all there for a ceremony which was very simple in its nature and extremely meaningful. A tree was to be planted in memory of the local men who had died in the war, a living memorial to be there for the future. The original tree is apparently gone now but the bronze plaque which was there on that November morning of 1922 is still there, a quiet reminder of a very obscure piece of Hollywood history.

Donnie Dunagan, the former child actor who provided the voice of the young deer in Walt Disney's classic Bambi (1942) and went on to have a very distinguished career as a US Marine, died on November 4, 2026, at the age of 92. Cause of death was lung cancer (according to film historian Tom Weaver). His life was a remarkable one, taking him from the soundstages of Hollywood (where he shared them with Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi) to the battlefields of Vietnam where the gentle voice of Disney's most famous fawn was a closely held secret.

Some films seem to get better with age, and The Women (1939) is definitely one of them. It's got some of the best dialogue ever written, absolutely spectacular costumes and a brilliant collection of characters (scheming, gossiping and at times quite likeable) which has made it a film that classic film fans have just loved for nearly ninety years. As actress and film historian Illeana Douglas shows in her new book Jungle Red! The Making of MGM's The Women the business end of the film was sometimes just as good as the film itself.

In a profession where friendships can fade as quickly as applause, the bond between Sir Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellen stood out. For more than fifty years, their lives crossed paths on stage, on film sets, and in a truly remarkable friendship. They laughed, teased, hugged in public, sometimes kissed for the cameras, and never worried about what others thought. Though they were two of the United Kingdom's most respected actors, together they could act like mischievous schoolboys.

How many readers remember Tiny Naylor’s Drive-In? Motorists coming up to the northwest corner of Sunset and La Brea used to have one of Hollywood's most unique sights. There was a vast winged roof under which cars would gather around a restaurant that was brilliantly lit. Carhops in uniform would come out and serve you your meal. You could eat in your car, movie stars would come in and have their meal in their car, the teens would drive past hoping to see a celebrity and the hungry night owls would know they could have a meal at any time of the night. That was Tiny Naylor's Restaurant and Drive-In at 7101 Sunset Boulevard. It was one of the landmarks of Hollywood, as much a part of the Hollywood scene as the studios, the theatres and the nightclubs.

There was something about James Stewart that was always reassuring. No matter what he was playing, whether it was the idealistic Jefferson Smith, the desperately in love George Bailey or one of Hitchcock's rather troubled leading men, you knew you were in the hands of a man of genuine integrity. He was a decorated WWII veteran, and his war experience had a massive impact on his life. This weekend there's a new film which looks at that other side of one of Hollywood's most treasured stars.

October 6, 2026, saw another major event in Hollywood's long and often messy history as Paramount Skydance completed its $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. The new entity will be called Skydance and will be run by David Ellison (son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison). For the investors it's a golden opportunity to build a very serious competitor in an industry that's increasingly being run by streaming and tech companies. For us folk who are genuinely interested in the history of Hollywood though, it's a bit of a worry. The future of Paramount and Warner Bros. (the two studios that essentially created the motion picture industry) is now very much in doubt.

Hollywood is absolutely masterful at filming its own history while the places where that history took place disappear. Mansions get torn down; larger developments replace apartment buildings and the streets themselves are pretty much unrecognizable. Yet at 1851 North Ivar Avenue, looking out over Franklin Avenue, one of Hollywood's most distinctive residential properties has survived for nearly one hundred years. Chateau Alto Nido with its red tile roof, pale stucco walls, arched openings and wrought iron balconies is a very real physical manifestation of the astonishing transformation of the area during the early days of the talking picture.

Some films tell a story. Others are attempts to bring an entire world back to life, to give voice to people whose lives and loves were buried by history. La Bola Negra (The Black Ball) is the remarkable new Spanish drama from the Javis (Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi) and it's one of the latter. It's a three-generation film and it's an ambitious, visually magnificent piece of work which looks at illicit love, political repression and the secrets that families carry with them long after the people who made them are all gone. It's just over 160 minutes in length and at times it genuinely feels like it's going to buckle under its own ambitions. There's something quite touching about a film which is quite so determined to remember what history has tried to bury.