Jo is our host this week for Fun Monday. She asks of us:
I want to know about your first ‘celebrity’ crush. You know, the one you fancied from that band, or that film, or who read the news, or who won Gold at the Olympics. Did you have their pictures on your wall or in your locker? Did you dress like them, style or colour your hair like them, follow them, meet them, marry them? (It could happen.) Photos of THEM would be good, photos of YOU at the time you liked them would be even better. Also, if you have time, I’d like to know whether they had any influence over your life, the person you became, or if they were just an embarrassing blip you would kind of rather forget about.
Golly, this week’s theme is just so easy. In fact, I find myself remembering this man still today. What a hottie back in ‘his day and age’. And a bit of an ‘unknown’ in my country [USA] too, for that matter. Let me put it this way, his name was never [that I know of, I could be wrong] ever found at the top of the marquee!! But when I first laid eyes on him on the ‘big screen’………I was in love! Of course, mind you, I was VERY young. And even back then, in my youth as it is still today with me, I see a certain wonderfulness of older men. [back when I was nine years old, I used to make a real effort to walk past the boys' fraternities just to see the great 'guys'!! Wow, be still my heart!!!] I had a crush on a 21 year old, and he flirted with me all the time. Yep, his name was Tom. And he had a red corvette!! Oh lordy….this is just tearing me apart! Wow.
Okay, where was I? Oh ya, celebrity crush. The film was “Ben Hur”. [this ages me doesn't it? LOL] Altho the ‘big’ celebrity was the great Charlton Heston, I couldn’t see myself liking him at all. He always looked so grumpy in his movies! A real grouch of a man in the roles he played!! But boy howdy the guy that played opposite him…Messala, oh so yummy. That deep cleft in his chin….the dark hair, the rich loving Irish eyes of his. And his armour! Believe me when I say that this not-yet-teenager had found her man!! Hormones were really rushing through my bloodstream way back then. I could just picture me and this guy defeating me with submission – him and his whip……oh my, now wait a minute….again -where was I?
Stephen Boyd. Yep, he was of Irish heritage. Can’t beat that with a stick now, can you? LOL
Born William “Billy” Millar July 4th, 1931 at White House by Belfast, Northern Ireland. Mother was Martha Boyd, father a Canadian truck driver James Alexander Millar who worked for Fleming’s on Tomb Street in Belfast. Billy was one of nine children. By 1956 he signed a 7-year contract with 20th Century Fox. This assignment lead to his first role in a motion picture as the Irish spy in the movie “The Man Who Never Was”, offered to him by the legendary Alexander Korda. William Wyler was so impressed with Boyd’s performance in The Man Who Never Was that he asked Fox to lend him out and cast him for the now famous role of Messala in the 1959 remake of the epic film opposite Charlton Heston, Ben Hur. He was honored for his work by receiving a Golden Globe award but was surprisingly by-passed on Oscar night. Still under contract with the major movie studio, Stephen Boyd waited around to play the role of Marc Anthony in Cleopatra opposite Elizabeth Taylor. Miss Taylor however became so seriously ill that the production was delayed for months, which caused Boyd and other actors to withdraw from the film and move on to other projects. Stephen Boyd died of a massive heart attack while playing golf at the Porter Valley country club, one of his favorite past-times. He is buried at Oakwood Memorial Park in Tarzana, California. It was a terrible and shocking loss just as he seemed to be making a comeback with his last roles in the American series Hawaii Five-O and the English movie “The Squeeze”.
How did he influence me? I guess first off my love of movies ever since that one time back in the 50′s!! I could go and see all the men I wanted, good looking, and have a dreamscape. I also found myself reading a lot from that point on….I would get my hands on everything about HIM and Ben Hur. The Bible even came into my life after that point. Interests in Jewish Slavery, Roman history, etc. Not to mention my love affair with reading about Shakespeare’s characters also. [1964 Hamlet starring Richard Burton...AND the new version with Mel Gibson], I confess to watching still, Julius Ceasar with Marlon Brando, up to the new Romeo and Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio! I also, later on in life, became infatuated with English [as in England] History…and more so, MORE Shakespeare, thanks to this movie and other epic movies of that day and age, I chose all my elective classes in school that had any background with English History and Literature. I fell in love all over again, Julius Ceasar, Cleopatra, Marc Anthony, Pontius Pilate, just to name a few. So, I guess I have Stephen Boyd and Ben Hur to thank!!! Oh, and I married an older man. He too had dark hair, and huge deep dimples!! Not to mention he was Irish, with ancestors hailing from Belfast!!
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On Yahoo News Sunday April 6th: LOS ANGELES – Charlton Heston, who won the 1959 best actor Oscar as the chariot-racing “Ben-Hur” and portrayed Moses, Michelangelo, El Cid and other heroic figures in movie epics of the ’50s and ’60s, has died. He was 84.
The title pages show the editor, and the cities in which it’s published, New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago – along with a lithograph of the Stratford Church. [The book is filled with several wonderful lithographic works!]
The copyright page shows that this particular issue/publication company Harper & Brothers has two dates, 1890 and 1898. Also on this page is a listing of other English Classics such as The Merchant of Venic, Richard III, Henry VIII and Anthony and Cleopatra among several others. [follows with a 39 page introduction of the tragic Shakespearean play]
The page to the left shows ‘DRAMATIS PERSONÆ’ Latin for the cast of characters. The right side, the right handed page shows you a lithograph and Act I -
My last photo shows the page just before the “notes” section of the book. The lithograph of the Stratford Portrait of Shakespeare himself.
