Who was nearly cast as Indiana Jones? Which star-to-be worked as a janitor? Movie-trivia obsessive James Inverne has the answers

Think you know your film facts?

Paul Newman's Public Apology

Paul Newman was so ashamed of his performance in the The Silver Chalice (1954) that he took out a large advert in Variety, the movie industry magazine, apologising for it.

Hollywood

The iconic Hollywood sign, made up of 50-foot-high letters perched near the tip of Beachwood Canyon's Mount Lee, is on the highest peak in Los Angeles. Built in 1923 by property developers to advertise their new sites, it originally read "Hollywoodland" and used to light up at night. A caretaker looked after the sign and lived in a cabin situated just behind one of the Ls. It was only in the 1940s when the film business mushroomed that the last four letters were removed.

In 1976, vandals changed the sign to read "HOLLYWEED", to applaud newly loosened marijuana laws. Then in 1978 it was altered to read "HOLY WOOD" when Pope John Paul II visited. During the Iran-Contra scandal it briefly became "OLLYWOOD", a reference to Oliver North, the official at the centre of the affair.

How To Make Fake Blood

There are various ways of making stage/screen blood, and different lighting and actors' complexions can require different shades. The best way is to experiment and find what works best. (For the shower scene in 1960's Psycho Alfred Hitchcock found that red didn't look red on black-and-white film, so he used Bosco chocolate syrup instead.) Here are a few recipes that may be worth trying - be careful, they may stain and may not be edible. Keep away from eyes and mouth.

1) Ingredients: 25g potassium thiocyanate, 5g ferric chloride, table salt. Add a few millilitres of water to two jugs. Add the potassium thiocyanate to one jug, the ferric chloride to the other. Then put a pinch of salt in each. Each fluid is clear, but when they touch, they will turn red. So you coat the body part to be cut with the contents of one jug, and the weapon doing the cutting with the other, and when they touch, you'll get red blood!

2) Ingredients: chocolate Angel Delight (powdered dessert mix - any similar mixture will probably work) with Chinese bright red food colouring. Add water and the food colouring to the Angel Delight, experimenting with different amounts of water for different thickness. If you add a little green dishwashing detergent it will help when washing the blood out of clothes - but don't add too much, or you'll find bubbles and lather everywhere.

Some Alfred Hitchcock Cameos

The Lodger (1926): Twice, once at a desk in a newsroom, and then in a crowd watching an arrest.

Easy Virtue (1927): He walks past a tennis court, stick in hand.

Murder (1930): He is seen walking past the murder-house.

The 39 Steps (1935): As Robert Donat and Lucie Mannheim escape the theatre, Hitchcock can be seen throwing away some rubbish.

Young and Innocent (1938): Outside the courthouse, holding a camera.

Foreign Correspondent (1940): After Joel McCrea leaves the hotel, Hitch is engrossed in a newspaper.

Mr and Mrs Smith (1941): He passes Robert Montgomery in the street.

Suspicion (1941): Popping a letter in the post.

Shadow of a Doubt (1943): Playing cards on a train to Santa Rosa.

Lifeboat (1944): Although the whole film is set on a lifeboat, Hitch manages to make an appearance, in a newspaper advert for the Reuco Obesity Slayer. (He's in both the "before" and "after" pictures!).

Spellbound (1945): Carrying a violin case as he leaves an elevator at the Empire hotel.

The Paradine Case (1947): Getting off a train at Cumberland station.

Rope (1948): His silhouette is seen on a neon sign.

Under Capricorn (1949): Twice - once wearing a coat and hat during a parade in the town square, the next time on the steps outside Government House with two other men.

Strangers on a Train (1951): Getting on a train, holding a double bass.

I Confess (1953): Walking past the top of a staircase immediately after the opening credits.

Dial M for Murder (1954): In a photograph in Grace Kelly's apartment (as part of a class reunion pic).

The Trouble With Harry (1955): Walking past a parked limousine.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956): Facing away from the camera, watching acrobats in the Moroccan marketplace.

Vertigo (1958): Walking along a street.

North by Northwest (1959): At the end of the opening credits, Hitchcock just misses his bus.

Psycho (1960): As Janet Leigh returns to her office, Hitchcock can be seen through the window, wearing a cowboy hat.

The Birds (1963): Walking out of a pet shop with two white terriers (actually Hitchcock's own dogs).

Torn Curtain (1966): Sitting in a hotel lobby holding a baby.

Topaz (1969): Being pushed in a wheelchair in an airport - until he gets up, shakes a man's hand and walks away!

Frenzy (1972): In a crowd, the only one not applauding the man speaking.

Family Plot (1976): Seen in silhouette through a door of the Registrar of Births and Deaths office. (Hitchcock himself died four years later.)

Some Unlikely but True Movie Titles

Zombies on Broadway (1945)

Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952)

The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies (1967)

Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feeling So Sad (1967)

Cottonpickin' Chickenpickers (1967)

Surf Nazis Must Die (1987)

Night of the Day of the Dawn of the Son of the Bride of the Return of the Terror (1991)

Almost-cast Alternatives In Famous Film Roles



Role Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark

Almost cast Tom Selleck

Actually cast Harrison Ford

Role Han Solo, Star Wars

Almost cast Christopher Walken

Actually cast Harrison Ford

Role Princess Leia, Star Wars

Almost cast Sissy Spacek*

Actually cast Carrie Fisher

Role Vito Corleone, The Godfather

Almost cast Frank Sinatra, Laurence Olivier, Anthony Quinn

Actually cast Marlon Brando

Role Michael Corleone, The Godfather

Almost cast James Caan+, Robert Redford

Actually cast Al Pacino

Role TE Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia

Almost cast Albert Finney

Actually cast Peter O'Toole

Role Deckard, Blade Runner

Almost cast Dustin Hoffman

Actually cast Harrison Ford

Role Velma Kelly, Chicago

Almost cast Madonna

Actually cast Catherine Zeta-Jones

Role Rocky, Rocky

Almost cast Ryan O'Neal

Actually cast Sylvester Stallone

Role The Terminator, The Terminator

Almost cast OJ Simpson, Lance Henriksen

Actually cast Arnold Schwarzenegger

Role James Bond, The Living Daylights

Almost cast Pierce Brosnan

Actually cast Timothy Dalton

* Spacek was cast as Leia, while Carrie Fisher had landed Brian De Palma's Carrie. Fisher refused to do nude scenes and so swapped roles with Spacek.

+ Caan ended up playing Sonny Corleone, Michael's brother.

Graduating

In Mike Nichols's film The Graduate (1967), there is one shot where Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman) holds Mrs Robinson's breast. She ignores him, rubbing at a spot on her clothes. He turns and bangs his head against the wall. The breast-touching was Hoffman's spur-of-the-moment idea and he was laughing so much he banged his head against the wall, convinced the shot would be cut. It stayed in.

Movie Mistakes

The Shining - At a climactic moment, Wendy (Shelley Duvall) hits Jack (Jack Nicholson) with a baseball bat. But perhaps it's not the best weapon. Close observers will note that the bat bends.

The Shawshank Redemption - Andy wears a suit belonging to the warden. And despite the fact that the inmate (Tim Robbins) is much taller than Warden Norton (Bob Gunton), the clothes fit.

The Empire Strikes Back - This well-loved movie is chock-a-block with mistakes. Two examples: when Luke (Mark Hamill) has his hand cut off, you can see the knuckles of the "absent" hand holding the "stump" under his shirt. And Han Solo (Harrison Ford) is mysteriously frozen in a different shirt to the one he was wearing (he's later unfrozen with the first shirt on in Return of the Jedi).

Ben-Hur - Judah (Charlton Heston) takes the ladle full of water from Jesus and then in the next shot takes it again. Another miracle - during the chariot race, one rider is wearing a watch.

The Longest Screen Kiss

In the 1941 film You're in the Army Now, Regis Toomey and Jane Wyman found that military life was not quite as restrictive as may have been thought when they locked lips for three minutes and five seconds, officially the longest screen kiss ever.

Bit-part Superstars

Richard Dreyfuss had two lines in The Graduate (1967).

Sophia Loren was a crowd-scenes extra in Quo Vadis (1951).

Keira Knightley played one of Natalie Portman's hand-maidens in Star Wars, Episode One: The Phantom Menace (1999).

Samuel L Jackson was a would-be robber of a fast-food restaurant, but he was swiftly beaten by Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall in Coming to America (1988).

Cuba Gooding Jr got a haircut in the barber's shop in Coming to America.

Tim Robbins replaces Maverick's best friend Goose in Top Gun (1986) - a tiny role, but he gets to ride in Tom Cruise's jet!

Danny Aiello plays the much-talked-about (but only seen for a fleeting few moments before being shot) Tony Rosato in The Godfather, Part II (1974).

Pierce Brosnan played "First Irishman" in English gangster thriller The Long Good Friday (1980). It's a sinister, if super-small role.

The World's Priciest Piece of Film

The most expensive reel of film ever is the famous footage, shot by Abraham Zapruder, of President Kennedy's assassination on November 22 1963. Zapruder, who was a bystander to the killing, happened to capture the shooting on his camera. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, an arbitration panel ordered the US government to pay $615,384 per second of film to Zapruder's heirs for giving the film to the National Archives. The complete film, which lasts for 26 seconds, is valued at $16m.

What The Stars Did First

Sean Connery - posed nude for art classes; also polished coffins.

Harrison Ford - carpenter.

Wesley Snipes - parked cars at Columbia University.

Whoopi Goldberg - worked in a funeral home (applying make-up to corpses); also a bricklayer.

Steve Buscemi - drove an ice-cream van, also a firefighter.

Madonna - worked at Dunkin' Donuts.

Charlie Chaplin - janitor.

Arnold Schwarzenegger - ran a body-building mail-order company.

Pierce Brosnan - circus fire-eater.

Al Pacino - cinema usher.

Go Native

Often, major movies undergo some adjustments for local audiences' sensibilities. The 1973 martial-arts classic Enter the Dragon was trimmed by the British censors in 1979 to delete a fight that involves nunchakas, leaving the scene following, where Bruce Lee sits with the weapons suddenly dangling around his neck, unexplained.

For the German TV version of Die Hard (1988), the German terrorists Hans and Karl have been renamed, as the distinctly American-sounding Jack and Charlie.

The 2001 Ben Affleck starrer Pearl Harbor had certain changes for Japanese versions. A scene where Japanese women are seen in kimonos while Doolittle raids Tokyo was cut, and whereas Alec Baldwin as Doolittle originally said, "Kill as many of those bastards as possible," Japanese audiences heard him say, "I myself would choose a tasty target."

Cinematic Overkill

The longest film ever made is The Longest Most Meaningless Movie in the World, a British underground movie produced by Anthony Scott in association with the Swiss Film Centre, London. Directed by Vincent Patouillard and premiered at the Cinématheque de Paris in October 1970, it lasts exactly 48 hours.

· Inverne's Stage and Screen Trivia by James Inverne is published by arcane.