There’s no business like show business. Tell me about it. My name is Grenade Curran and I’ve been in the movie, film, and television business since I was a child. In fact, that’s how I got my start and that’s how I got the chance to work with some of the greatest Hollywood screen legends of all time. When most people hear names like Clark Gable, Fred Astaire, and Walt Disney, they think of glitz, glamour, and hot spotlights. When I think of those names, I can remember having my hair tousled by Clark Gable when I was a child, working hard to impress Fred Astaire as a background dancer on Singin’ in the Rain, and giving Walt Disney my opinion on decor options for what would become Disneyland. To me, all of those Hollywood screen legends and industry powerhouses are more than the characters they played on screen or the movies they produced – they’re people who I knew, worked with, and grew to care about. That’s why I decided to write “In Character: My Life On and Off the Movie Set in Hollywood”. I wanted to write this book so I could share stories about some of the greatest Hollywood screen legends to ever live, as told from my perspective working on set or just visiting as old family friends. While my mother and father both worked for major Hollywood studios growing up, it was my mother who was largely responsible for helping me get my break in […]

There’s no denying the power of nostalgia. It can make us feel things and remember things that we haven’t felt or remembered in years. This is perhaps the greatest draw for the modern film buff who is still deeply in love with the Golden Age of Hollywood. Whether you were around to experience all of those wonderful movies for their original release or you’re just discovering them for the first time on the Internet, if you love the Golden Age of Hollywood and all of the names and faces that went with it, then you’re going to love my book, “In Character: My Life on the Movie Set in Old Hollywood”, based on my many decades in front and behind the camera. Acting has always been in my blood, and it was the work of my parents that got me the foot in the door I needed to build a successful career for myself. With a professional studio dancer and set decorator for a mother and a professional cameraman for a father, my childhood memories are full of time on Hollywood sets and studio lots. Maybe it’s because the film industry runs through my veins, or because I was surrounded by the glitz and glamour of Hollywood celebrity from a very young and impressionable age, but there is no other work I ever could have imagined doing than work in movies, film, and television. Being born at a time when the Golden Age of Hollywood was in its infancy, I […]

While at MGM growing up on the studio lot, on the sets, in offices, in the lunch room commissary, and backlots, basically wherever I would observe these people working, I quickly learned the term “A BIT OF BUSINESS.” This “Bit of Business”, when the camera was rolling, was the scratch of the nose, a touch of the head or neck, pushing the hat up and forward, taking the hat off and itching the head while holding the hat, wiping the forehead with the back of the hand, taking the right hand across the body and itching your left back shoulder, rolling up your shirt sleeves, pulling and adjusting your shirt in and out of your pants, a cough or clearing your throat, adjusting your glasses and frowning, pulling your mouth to the side, biting your lip, chewing on a piece of straw, the angle and positioning of your eyebrows, the movements and glances and most important the “direction of your eyes.” That would be your understanding and knowing the positioning and movement of the camera. Sometimes, you can see vestiges of the bit of business in old Hollywood memorabilia, which we offer on this website. That “Bit of Business” that the character actor did during the shooting of the scene could literally take that scene away and steal it from the star. I observed this many, many times to the annoyance of the lead actor. Sometimes, to the point of the actor halting the scene and demanding that the scene […]