D.W. Griffith (1875-1948), a pioneering Hollywood film director, is credited with using the first close-up, the long shot, the fade-out, and other film techniques in his 1915 groundbreaking and highly racist film The Birth of a Nation (a.k.a. The Clansman), a film that portrayed the Ku Klux Klan in a positive way.
Errol Flynn loved the phrase "In like Flynn" (derived about himself and his famed womanising) so much that he wanted to call his autobiography "In like Me" He was advised against it as he was facing suspected rape charges at the time. His ghost written autobiography was eventually titled "My Wicked, Wicked Ways" (Thanks Rich for this little gem)
In the 1969 musical Paint Your Wagon, star Clint Eastwood sang “I Talk to the Trees, But They
Don’t Listen to Me.” Eastwood says the experience prompted him to start producing and directing his own movies.
David O. Selznick was fined $5,000 for the line “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn” in Gone with the Wind (1939). The Catholic Legion of Decency gave the movie a B rating, citing that the film was “morally objectionable in part for all.”
In the 1985 horror film Day of the Dead, zombies are actually feasting on turkey legs that were barbecued in a special way to look like human flesh.
The original title for Ghostbusters (1984) was “Ghost Smashers.”
After a difficult battle with censors, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966) was the first movie released with the stipulation that no one under age 18 would be allowed in the theater.
In Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963), live trained birds were thrown at actress Tippi Hedren (1930-). For part of the sequence, some birds were tied to her with nylon threads so they wouldn’t fly away. Shooting would stop every few minutes so blood could be painted on her skin and her clothing could be torn.
In The Exorcist (1973), Regan (Linda Blair) turns her head almost completely around to face backward. A life-like dummy with a swivel neck performed the famous scene. The sound of her neck turning was made by twisting an old leather wallet around a microphone.
It took 15 crew members to operate each of the three full-scale (25-foot) mechanical sharks, nicknamed Bruce after Spielbergs lawyer, used in Jaws (1975).
A real bridge with a real train crossing it was blown up for the 1957 The Bridge on the River Kwai.
Girl-next-door actress Doris Day rejected the role of Mrs. Robinson, the middle-aged sexpot with a penchant for younger men in The Graduate (1967).
Adolph Hitler put studio head Jack Warner on his “extinction list” because of his film Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939).
Planet Vulcan in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) is actually Yellowstone National Park.
There were 124 midgets hired to play munchkins in The Wizard of Oz (1939). One midget fell into a studio toilet and was trapped there until somebody finally found him.
The largest cast of living creatures in a Hollywood film were the 22 million bees employed by Irwin Allen in The Swarm (1978).
The largest number of fatalities ever in a production of a film occurred during the shooting of the 1931 film Viking. Twenty-seven people died, including the director and cinematographer, when a ship they were shooting from exploded in the ice off the coast of Newfoundland.
The scene in which Judy Garland sings “Over the Rainbow” in The Wizard of Oz (1939) was almost cut from the movie. Assistant producer Arthur Freed is credited with convincing MGM exec Louis B. Mayer to keep the scene.
Albert Einstein's face inspired the artistic designer of the Star Wars character, Yoda.
According to moviebodycounts.com (which counts only onscreen killings, not characters killed in planet explosions), the movies with the largest body counts are The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003) 836, Kingdom of Heaven (2005) 619, 300 (2007) 600, Troy (2004) 572, and The Last Samurai (2003) 558.
The Muppet Movie (1979) was cut by New Zealand Censors on grounds of gratuitous violence. Sweden banned E.T.E.T. (1982) for children under 11 because it claimed the film showed parents being hostile to their children.
During the “chest bursting” scene in Alien (1986), director Ridley Scott had the actors unexpectedly showered with actual entrails bought from a nearby butcher shop so that their screams of horror would be real.
Some of the dinosaur sounds in Jurassic Park were created from tortoises mating
In the 2014 film, Godzilla, the famous monster is only seen for 8 minutes.
Samuel L Jackson has uttered “motherfucker” 171 times in 27 different movies.
Sean Bean and Bela Lugosi have died in a higher percentage of film and TV projects than any other living actor, with 0.32 deaths per film. Mickey Rourke and John Hurt are close behind, at 0.31 deaths per film.
Mickey Mouse's ears are always turned to the front, no matter which direction his head is pointing.
Tom Cruise's real name is Thomas Mapother.
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