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On Thursday 20 February 2025, Channel 5 broadcasts James May’s Great Explorers!

Sir Walter Raleigh Season 1 Episode 2 Episode Summary

The upcoming episode of “James May’s Great Explorers,” titled “Sir Walter Raleigh,” promises to delve into the fascinating life of one of history’s most intriguing figures. This episode will air on Channel 5 and is set to explore the many layers of Sir Walter Raleigh’s legacy.

James May will guide viewers through Raleigh’s remarkable journey, starting with his persuasive abilities that helped him navigate the complex world of Elizabethan politics. The episode will highlight how these skills played a crucial role in his rise to prominence. Viewers can expect to learn about Raleigh’s ambitious ventures into the New World, where he sought fortune and fame.

However, the episode will not shy away from the darker aspects of Raleigh’s explorations. May will reveal the consequences of these ventures,...

Joan Collins in 'The Bitch': Sex tale based on younger sister Jackie Collins' novel. Author Jackie Collins dead at 77: Surprisingly few film and TV adaptations of her bestselling novels Jackie Collins, best known for a series of bestsellers about the dysfunctional sex lives of the rich and famous and for being the younger sister of film and TV star Joan Collins, died of breast cancer on Sept. 19, '15, in Los Angeles. The London-born (Oct. 4, 1937) Collins was 77. Collins' tawdry, female-centered novels – much like those of Danielle Steel and Judith Krantz – were/are immensely popular. According to her website, they have sold more than 500 million copies in 40 countries. And if the increasingly tabloidy BBC is to be believed (nowadays, Wikipedia has become a key source, apparently), every single one of them – 32 in all – appeared on the New York Times' bestseller list. (Collins' own site claims that a mere 30 were included.) Sex...

Billy Wilder directed Sunset Blvd. with Gloria Swanson and William Holden. Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett movies Below is a list of movies on which Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder worked together as screenwriters, including efforts for which they did not receive screen credit. The Wilder-Brackett screenwriting partnership lasted from 1938 to 1949. During that time, they shared two Academy Awards for their work on The Lost Weekend (1945) and, with D.M. Marshman Jr., Sunset Blvd. (1950). More detailed information further below. Post-split years Billy Wilder would later join forces with screenwriter I.A.L. Diamond in movies such as the classic comedy Some Like It Hot (1959), the Best Picture Oscar winner The Apartment (1960), and One Two Three (1961), notable as James Cagney's last film (until a brief comeback in Milos Forman's Ragtime two decades later). Although some of these movies were quite well received, Wilder's later efforts – which also included The Seven Year Itch...

By Doug Oswald

“Fraulein” begins with a close-up shot of the spires of a Gothic cathedral, organ music playing on the soundtrack and air-raid sirens blaring as a statement appears on screen: “Cologne on the Rhine during the last weeks of World War II.” The scene moves down to street level as German civilians and soldiers run for bomb shelters as destruction rains down on them. An American prisoner of war makes his escape during the chaos and he stumbles upon the home of a college professor and his daughter.

Mel Ferrer plays the American Pow, Captain Foster MacLain. He meets the Fraulein of the movie, Erika Angermann, played by Dana Wynter. She helps him evade capture during a search of her father’s home. We learn about a fiancé she has not seen in over two years. She learns later from a letter that he has been wounded and is in a hospital.

People.com is reporting that actor Rod Taylor died Wednesday at the age of 84 of natural causes.

His daughter Felicia Taylor, a former CNN correspondent, confirmed the news Thursday.

“My dad loved his work. Being an actor was his passion – calling it an honorable art and something he couldn’t live without,” she said in a statement.

“He once said, ‘I am a poor student sitting at the feet of giants, yearning for their wisdom and begging for lessons that might one day make me a complete artist,” she continued, “ ‘so that if all goes well, I may one day sit beside them.”

Born on Jan 11, 1930 in Sydney, Australia, Rod Taylor is best remembered for his starring roles in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) and George Pal’s The Time Machine (1960). He also provided the voice of Pongo in Disney’s 101 Dalmatians (1961). Taylor also starred in TV’s “The Twilight Zone...

By Gary Salem and Michelle McCue

“What a costume designer does is a cross between magic and camouflage. We create the illusion of changing the actors into what they are not. We ask the public to believe that every time they see a performer on the screen he’s become a different person.”

– Edith Head

On Monday, Wamg attended the press preview for the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences groundbreaking multimedia exhibition Hollywood Costume in the historic Wilshire May Company building.

Taking five years to create, this exhibition is the kickoff for the whole Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.

Emphasizing how costumes are so important in creating characters, this one-of-a-kind exhibition comes with its own film score, enhanced with dazzling animations and screenplay excerpts.

Organized by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (V&A), and sponsored by Swarovski, this ticketed exhibition...

This fall the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will present the final showing of the groundbreaking multimedia exhibition Hollywood Costume in the historic Wilshire May Company building, the future location of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, at Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles. Organized by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (V&A), this ticketed exhibition explores the central role of costume design – from the glamorous to the very subtle – as an essential tool of cinematic storytelling.

The Academy is enhancing the V&A’s exhibition and will include more than 145 costumes from over 60 lenders. The Academy’s presentation will add more than 30 costumes to this landmark show, including Jared Leto’s costume from Dallas Buyers Club (Kurt and Burt, 2013) – a recent acquisition to the Academy’s collection – as well as costumes from such recent releases as The Hunger Games (Judianna Makovsky, 2012), Django Unchained (Sharen Davis,...

In development since 2007 and nurtured for at least 20 years by curator Deborah Nadoolman Landis since her days as president of the Costume Designers’ Guild (Cdg), the exhibition ‘Hollywood Costume’ finally opens at the V&A museum. This is the costume exhibition to end all costume exhibitions; everything from Judy Garland’s gingham pinafore and ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz, to Keira Knightley’s burgundy silk gown from Anna Karenina, to Robert De Niro’s ‘King Kong Company’ jacket, check shirt, jeans and even boots from Taxi Driver. Hollywood Costume is a rush; an awe-inspiring journey through the meaning and history of contemporary, period and mo-cap costume design utilising projections, interviews, lectures from A-list actors, installations and even a specially commissioned score.

So what to expect when you finally beat the queues and stroll in the front doors? We shall not give too much away because surprise is part of the enjoyment,...

Chris Hemsworth, Huntsman: Snow White and the Huntsman Charlize Theron is possessed by the Bette Davis of The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (and The Virgin Queen) in this Snow White and the Huntsman clip. (Please scroll down.) Chris Hemsworth is the Huntsman who is brave (or stupid or crazy) enough to dare think he has the option not to do what his queen is telling him to. The "she" referred to in the Snow White and the Huntsman clip is, needless to say, Snow White (Kristen Stewart). According to a cool-looking talking mirror, Snow White is destined to surpass the Queen in sheer fairness. The Queen, none too happy, wants Snow to melt away. Snow, however, turns out to be as resilient as she’s white. Directed by Rupert Sanders, Snow White and the Huntsman opens June 1. In addition to Charlize Theron (to be seen in Ridley Scott...

Your weekly fix of great movies made before you were born that you should check out before you die. All this month, Old Ass Movies will be celebrating the 103rd anniversary of Bette Davis‘s birthday. The iconic film star acted in far too many movies to care to count, but it seems as though she’s been reduced to a pair of eyes in popular culture. She’s the subject of a 80s pop tune, not the star that she should be recognized for being, and that needs fixing. This is our last week of exploration, and even though we’re not ending on the last film in Davis’s career (or even her last iconic role), we’re ending on the last time a character matches the actress. She would go on to such triumphs as Whatever Happened to Baby Jane and Hush…, Hush Sweet Charlotte and Return to Witch Mountain (seriously), but Bette Davis playing...

Henry Koster's 1955 drama gives Bette Davis the chance to lustily reprise her role as Gloriana, although not to the glory of anybody else. If only Dynasty-era Joan Collins could have timewarped back

Director: Henry Koster

Entertainment grade: B–

History grade: D+

Sir Walter Raleigh was a soldier, an investor in the colonisation of North America, an explorer of South America, and a sometime favourite of Elizabeth I of England.

Ambition

Walter Raleigh (Richard Todd) is drinking ale in a tavern full of lusty strumpets when the Earl of Leicester gets his carriage stuck in the mud outside. Following a brief, irrelevant swordfight, Raleigh hauls him out and is rewarded with an introduction to the Queen. "I've long had a dream," says Raleigh, "to sail to the new world in ships of my own design." In reality, Raleigh had been on the fringes of the court for many years.

British actor Richard Todd was noted for his roles in several Walt Disney adventure films in the early 1950s, starring in 1952’s The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men, The Sword and the Rose (1953), and Rob Roy, the Highland Rogue (1953).

He was born Richard Palethorpe-Todd in Dublin, Ireland, on June 11, 1919. He trained as an actor and began his career on stage in 1936. He appeared in small roles in several films later in the decade before the outbreak of World War II. Todd served in the British Army during the war. He rose to the rank of Captain by 1944 and participated in the D-Day landings with the British 6th Airborne Division. He returned to the stage and screen after the war.

He earned an Academy Award nomination for his role in the 1949 film The Hasty Heart, and starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s Stage Fright (1950) with Jane Wyman and Marlene Dietrich.

Actor best known for his role in the classic second world war film The Dam Busters

Richard Todd, who has died of cancer aged 90, will be best remembered for the films in which he played a wide assortment of clean-cut British heroes. His most famous performance was as Wing Commander Guy Gibson in The Dam Busters (1955), although he also played Robin Hood and Sir Walter Raleigh.

As dour and stiff upper-lipped as any of the characters he portrayed in his highly successful film career in the 1940s and 1950s, he was one of the first members of the Parachute Regiment to jump on D-day – a real-life role he later echoed, albeit at a higher rank, in The Longest Day (1962), the reconstruction of the invasion of Normandy 17 years after the event (another actor posed as Todd himself).

As Gibson, Todd starred as the leader of the daring airborne mission in May...

The actor who played wing commander Guy Gibson in The Dam Busters, and was first choice to play James Bond, has died

The actor Richard Todd, best known for his role in the classic war film The Dam Busters, has died at the age of 90.

His spokeswoman said Todd, who had been suffering from cancer, died last night.

She said in a statement: "He had been suffering from cancer, an illness that he bore with his habitual courage and dignity. His family were with him throughout."

Richard Andrew Palethorpe Todd was born in Dublin on 11 June 1919, the son of a British officer. He grew up in Devon and attended Shrewsbury public school.

His interest in the theatre led him to small roles in stage productions in England and Scotland. In 1939 he was a co-founder of the Dundee Repertory Theatre.

After the war he gained fame in the London stage version of The Hasty Heart,...