The name of director Howard Hawks’s musical remake of his own film Ball of Fire (1941) was A Song Is Born (1948).
Who played the leads in each film?
Ball of Fire, Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck;
A Song Is Born, Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo.
The exterior set of Fort Knox in the climax of Goldfinger (1964), built at Pinewood Studios in England, was accurate down to the driveway. The interior, however, was completely invented, since the filmmakers were not allowed to explore inside. Production designer Ken Adam dreamed up a set full of tubular chrome and gold piled forty…
Longfellow Deeds (Gary Cooper) in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) was portrayed in newspapers as “Cinderella Man”. The newspaper reporter writing about (and falling in love with) him was Babe Bennett (Jean Arthur).
Ramon Novarro played Judah Ben-Hur in the 1926 version of Ben-Hur, with Francis X. Bushman as his friend-turned-enemy Messala. Fred Niblo directed. Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd, respectively, took the roles in the 1959 remake. William Wyler directed.
The Wings of Eagles was based on World War I aviator Frank “Spig” Wead, who after a debilitating accident, became a screenwriter. The screenplays he wrote included Air Mail (1932), The Citadel (1938), and They Were Expendable (1945).
New Orleans’ streets are threatened with panic in Panic in the Streets (1950). The city is threatened by a deadly plague which may be carried by a pair of murderers.
It was a stand-in who stabbed Janet Leigh in Psycho (1960), a young woman wearing a wig, not Anthony Perkins.