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Growing up in the early ‘60s, I had a huge crush on Donna Reed. I know I wasn’t alone. In those pre-feminist days, she seemed to my young, impressionable eyes like the perfect wife and mother. Yes, she was beautiful, but there was much more to her than that. She projected an inner calm and wisdom. You sensed strength and principle beyond her dazzling smile. She was no pushover. You loved her, but you also respected her. You didn’t mess with Donna Reed.

Over the decades, our biggest stars and their agents have been forced to navigate yet another fascinating and frustrating aspect of the movie business: which parts to choose.

These pictures remind us of her special radiance, a distinctive, fresh-faced beauty lit from within that required only the bare minimum of make-up.  Impossibly versatile, she could project strength and vulnerability, warmth and remoteness, sexuality and poise.  At a womanly 5’10”, she always made one hell of an entrance, and you always regretted her exits.

In 1956, Grace Kelly ascended from Hollywood royalty to the real thing. Henceforth, she’d be called Her Serene Highness, Princess Grace Of Monaco. Her story was right out of a fairy tale, only without the “happily ever after” part.

I vividly recall seeing Robert Redford on the streets of New York City at the height of his stardom in the early seventies, moving quickly but unfettered by security. I called to him once from across the street (what did I have to lose?). He looked over, waved at me and said: “Hello!” My week was made.

If any movie star was larger than life, it was Burt Lancaster. This athletic, vibrant man with the thousand-watt smile bequeathed to us a stellar body of work that, like the actor himself, simply cannot be ignored. A look at the trajectory of his career also reveals a savvy businessman whose mind was as strong and agile as his physique.

Best remembered as Federico Fellini’s male protagonist and muse in the early sixties, Marcello Mastroianni was so much more than your standard issue leading man.

For someone who is not remembered today as a star, Robert Ryan did an awful lot of first-rate films. And always his presence helped make them that way. He was, quite simply, a superb screen actor.

Westerns seem like an endangered species these days. With the studios depending more and more on international distribution and formula entertainment that can cross all those borders, the verdict is that the Western just doesn’t travel well.