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.

Long before the Pierce name became synonymous with funeral homes and cemeteries throughout Southern California, there was James Washington Pierce, a New York farmer and blacksmith who came west late in life and lived just long enough to see his sons establish what would become one of Los Angeles’s great undertaking dynasties. Today he rests quietly at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, his modest grave giving little indication that his descendants would play an important role in the way generations of Angelenos were laid to rest.

For ten years after Harry Houdini died, his widow waited for the impossible. Beatrice “Bess” Houdini did not mean that figuratively. She quite literally waited for a message from the dead. Few stories from old Hollywood combine love, loss, show business and the supernatural as perfectly as hers. After Houdini died in 1926, Bess held onto the hope that the man who had escaped from handcuffs, prison cells, straitjackets and locked trunks might somehow accomplish one final feat: escaping death itself.

Less than a year before the Manson Family murders shocked Los Angeles on Cielo Drive, another brutal celebrity crime involving two brothers unfolded on the opposite side of the Hollywood Hills. On October 30, 1968, silent-screen idol Ramon Novarro was murdered in his Laurel Canyon home, decades after Hollywood had moved on from the era of stardom he once personified. In the 1920s, Novarro had been one of MGM’s most popular romantic leads, celebrated for his beauty, charm, and versatility in roles ranging from princes and soldiers to swashbucklers and lovers, most famously as Judah Ben-Hur. Yet in the years that followed, the violence of his death too often overshadowed the remarkable career and life that had come before it.

Sir Patrick Stewart, the eminent British actor whose magnificent voice, Shakespearean background and instantly recognizable persona made Captain Jean-Luc Picard one of the most iconic characters in the history of television, passed away on October 28, 2026, at his home in Los Angeles. He was 86. His spokesperson Kelly Bush Novak confirmed that he died as a result of a period of illness which included Alzheimer's and Lewy body dementia (neither of which had previously been made public). His wife Sunny Ozell was with him at the time of his death, surrounded by family and friends. For so many fans of Star Trek, the passing of Sir Patrick Stewart is the passing of something much more than just an actor. It is the loss of a friend you've known for a very long time.

Elke Sommer, the German-born actress known for her beauty, European style, and playful humor, was one of Hollywood's most popular international stars in the 1960s. She died on October 28, 2026, at her home in Bel Air, California, at age 85. Her family and longtime friends said she died of heart failure after a long period of declining health, just three months after her husband, Wolf Walther, passed away. She was just days away from her 86th birthday on November 5.

Even before Hollywood developed its present-day obsession with haunted hotels, ghost tours, and paranormal television, one of America's most famous houses was already known for things that occurred at night. Pickfair, the country house in Beverly Hills belonging to Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, was intended to show off Hollywood at its most glamorous. Presidents, princes, writers, actors and members of royalty all passed through its rooms. Among the famous visitors who were entertained there were Albert Einstein, Charlie Chaplin, George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Amelia Earhart and members of European royal families. Pickfair was at one time said to be the second most well-known private residence in America after the White House.

Warner Bros. has spent nearly a century manufacturing ghosts. They have drifted through Gothic mansions, crept along shadowed corridors, rattled doors, whispered from darkened rooms, and terrified generations of moviegoers. Most disappeared the moment a director called “Cut.” But according to a persistent strain of studio folklore, not every ghost on the Warner Bros. lot was created for the cameras. Some, employees have quietly suggested over the years, may never have left.

Wow! Sometimes a movie completely surprises me. I went into the theater expecting one thing and left not sure what I had just seen. You Can See Everything, the new documentary from Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, is one of those rare films. I barely knew anything about it, except that critics loved it and there was already Oscar buzz. I hadn’t even heard of Elizabeth Holmes, the main subject, or the scandal that landed her in prison. In hindsight, not knowing much was probably the best way to see it.

Susan Saint James, the Emmy Award-winning actress known for her lively spirit, warm smile, and unique charm, died on October 26, 2026, after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She was eighty. A representative confirmed her passing, and her family remembered her for her generosity and warmth that reached far beyond television. For over twenty years, Saint James was a familiar face in American homes. She became a star in The Name of the Game, entertained viewers with Rock Hudson in McMillan & Wife, and later found new success with Jane Curtin in Kate & Allie.