355 The Hollywood Greats

First  viewed  :  Uncertain

This  documentary  series  on  Hollywood's  finest  movie  stars  written  and  narrated  by  affable  Film...  host  Barry  Norman  was  first  broadcast  in  1977. There  were  four  series  in  total   usually  comprising  five  50  minute  profiles  of  individual  idols  although  one  of  the  programmes  in  the  third  series  was  about  Hollywood  itself  and  there  were  only  four  programmes  in  the  final  series  in  1983. The  main  qualification  for  featuring  in  the  series  appeared  to  be  being  dead*  - fairly  recently  in  the  case  of  Charlie  Chaplin  and  Joan  Crawford - which  allowed  surviving  associates  to  talk  more  frankly  about  their  foibles. As  many  of  the  subjects  succumbed  to  personal  demons  and  died  before  their  time  the  series  had  an  inescapably  melancholic  tone.

I  wasn't  terribly  interested  in  old  films  so  this  was  of  more  interest  to  my  sister  and  mother  than  me  but  I  saw  some  of  it. The  first  one  I  remember  was  on  Judy  Garland  ( above )  which  was  part  of  the  second  series  broadcast  in  August  1978.

Norman's  last  series  was  in  1983. I  didn't  see  any  of  Jonathan  Ross's  subsequent  series  ( 1999 - 2006 ).

* Zeppo  Marx  was  still  alive  at  the  time  the  programme  on  the  Marx  Brothers  was  broadcast  but  as  you'd  expect  didn't  feature  much  in  the  script.