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I’ve always had a soft spot for Rosalind Russell. Watch her in most anything, and you sense she’s different from all the glamorous female stars of the day. She was a beautiful lady who did not trade on her looks but instead her brain, talent and spirit.

In the years after the smashing success of Mike Nichols’s “The Graduate” (1967), Anne Bancroft came to believe that her portrayal of Mrs. Robinson, the bored middle-aged wife and mother who seduces newly minted college grad Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman), overshadowed the rest of her career.

Today, the name Jennifer Jones is largely lost to history, but in her prime, this raven-haired beauty was one of Hollywood’s most bankable female stars. And her personal story may be more dramatic than any of her movies.

As most of you know, I spend my life being picky about movies. There are just a few actors I’ll watch in almost anything. Jean Gabin makes that very short list. Some reading this may have forgotten him, or never even heard of him. His heyday, after all, was nearly eighty years ago, and he’s been gone for over forty. Yet in his prime, no one could touch him.

It always irked Gene Kelly that dancing was considered an effeminate activity for men. When his mother first enrolled him and his brother in dance classes when Gene was still a boy, he had to endure taunts from his classmates which he promptly settled with his fists.

It was Hollywood in early 1950, and legendary director Billy Wilder had a big problem. In two weeks, shooting would start on his next film, “Sunset Boulevard,” and his mercurial young star, Montgomery Clift, had just backed out of playing the lead.

Joel McCrea was always clear-eyed about his place in the Hollywood firmament. He once said that he got offered the comedies that Cary Grant passed on, and the Westerns Gary Cooper rejected.

Today there are certainly bigger stars in Hollywood than Bill Murray, but few if any command the cult-like devotion and fascination that he does from his fans.

The first day of shooting in late 1939, female star Rosalind Russell showed up on the set of Howard Hawks’s “His Girl Friday” feeling determined, but somewhat on edge. There were reasons beyond the uncertain prospect of starting something new.