Watching really old films and then looking up the actors/actresses

....to see if they're still around today. Do you do this? I sure do. Just now, watching "Attack of the Puppet People" (1958) on my DVR and noticing the good-looking blonde June Kenney, I looked her up...yep, still around today but hasn't been in anything since the 60's. Anyway, thank goodness for IMDB, Wikipedia, etc. it makes watching these old films more interesting to watch, and to see not only if they're still alive but what else they did after the film you're watching, and in some rare cases, you find they are still in the biz.

 

Besides that, it's also interesting to notice vintage advertising and check out those company's historical path as well.

 

IMDb had a message board that was invaluable for finding info on related films /thespians. Now tragically no longer available.

 

I like to look them up & see what TV shows & movies they were in. Many times it creates a nudge for watching something you were planning to eventually.

 

That's kind of part of what Filmfax magazine was built on, they'd find them and interview them.

 

Metropolis, good film, C-3po got his looks from Maria....

 

I'm a movie buff. I look up actors and actresses, especially those I'm not familiar with.

This

 

Glad that 1958 is really old for a film. It would be too depressing if you had said 1988.

There is an enduring mystery about a prominent cast member of Umbrellas of Cherbourg from 1964. Ellen Farner played Madeleine ,whom the male lead Guy ends up marrying. Anyway Ellen Farner just disappeared a few years after the film and no one appears to know what happened to her.

 

I do that also although "really old" to me is 20s - 40s The other night I screened W C Fields' It's A Gift from 1934 and literally the next day the news broke that the actress who played his daughter had passed at 100. I had no idea that anyone from that film was still alive in 2017.

Like Bill said above IMDb often nudges me to seek out other films. Regarding the message boards, yes, there was a lot of garbage posted there, but there was also lots of good stuff that made for fun reading and learning. There has to be more to the story than what they publically said.

 

I do believe the message board will come back( for those that are interested).

 

Sometimes when I look something up on Wikipedia about an old actor/actress, I end up reading a lot more than I intended to: I'll read about whoever I looked up, and then I'll usually end up clicking on one of the highlighted (linked) names and reading about that person, and so on...

 

As I say to my wife; "We're watching ghosts."

You know when you're watching a really old movie and you realize that everyone in the frame, including the baby is dead now? Yeah...

The golden age of Hollywood really was though. People were so much more stylish and glamorous. Even the bums back then tucked their shirt in. Unlike today, people didn't leave the house in sweats and a t-shirt.

I especially love the women of the 20's, 30's and 40's.

Actually, I'm also pretty mad about the ladies of the 50's, 60's and 70's as well!

 

I do it a lot. Sometimes you get very interesting things. On the tv series "77 Sunset Strip" the secretary is played by a French woman named Jacqueline Beer. In 1991 she married adventurer Thor Heyerdahl (of Kon Tiki fame).

 

I do this all the time and with old tv shows too. For a while I was looking up what became of notable people who appeared on Groucho's You Bet Your Life. There was s young female contestant once who said she was a helicopter traffic reporter. This was quite rare in the 50's especially for a woman. Out of curiosity I looked up her name and found out she was later killed in a helicopter crash. Sad.

 

I do this all the time. Especially when watching old films on TCM.
I figure that most are dead but am curious about their careers. It's interesting sometimes to see how some big name stars did early on.

 

Yup, after watching an old film new to me I check IMDb to see if I've seen those actors in something else, read the trivia , check the wiki, and check if ebert reviewed it.

 

Sometimes I'll look up the age of an actor playing an "old guy", so I can be amazed at how much younger he was then than I am now!

 

with directv they have a "cast and crew" under the info section so i can just check it out while watching. the other day the original King Kong was on and i was curious about Fay Wray. didn't realize that she lived to be 96 yrs old!

 

Correction - The show was What's My Line (not You Bet Your Life). The reporter's name was Marie McDonald (died 1966).

 

Caught that movie last week and did the same search.

 

About a decade back I saw a couple of Walt Disney's "Alice" shorts from the mid-'20s and looked up the kid who played the title role to find out when she died. Much to my surprise, she was still alive and kicking at 88. The actress was one Virginia Davis, who'd retired from showbiz over 60 years earlier. She died a couple of years later in 2009, at the ripe old age of 90.

 

I had to laugh at this because to me 1958 isn't really that old, compared to a lot of what I watch! But if you're watching silent films or films from the '30s it's still fun (though often disheartening) to look everyone up, it's just far less likely you'll encounter anybody still alive!

 

All the time, if I'm taken with an actor's performance, or the beauty of an actress. Just a fraction of why I say the word "bored" has never been in my vocabulary, esp. since the dawn of the internet. Before that, I was reaching for my latest copy of the Videohound.

 

Many years ago I was watching the Marx Brother's "Cocoanuts" (I think, from memory) and I was taken by an actress in a very small part in it named Rochelle Hudson. I never forgot the name, and recently I dvr'd a movie from 1934 called "Batchelor Bait" in which she starred. I was once again taken by how cute she was! So I started to search out information about her. Too bad she passed away back in 1972! And yet here I am with this big crush on her and she's no longer even alive!

 

That is true although it is surprising that more than expected came close to the century mark. Very few actresses and actors remain in the business for their whole life obviously so like athletes they drift off to do other things big and small..