Behind the scenes of the silver screen
From War and Peace, to Mary Poppins, Associated Press photographers have been there throughout the decades to capture the glitz and sometimes not so glamourous life on movie sets across the globe.
Photographing everything from backstage chats, to props, equipment, and special effects, we take a look behind the scenes of Hollywood's Golden Age and beyond.
Film director Robert Siodmak, with a sign on his chair with the suggested pronunciation of his name, is pictured on the set of the film The Bride with actors Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner, in Hollywood, Oct. 23, 1948. (AP Photo/Frank Filan)
Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall are shown in a between-scenes huddle with director Herman Shumlin, left, on the set of the new film, Confidential Agent, which stars Bacall with Charles Boyer, July 18, 1945. (AP Photo)
Movie makeup man John O'Gorman uses a lipstick brush in preparing actress Ursula Andress for her starring role in Dr. No, on location in Jamaica, May 17, 1962. The heat and tropical atmosphere of Jamaica caused quite a problem for John O'Gorman and his staff. The make-up started to run so quickly that he had to be on guard every moment to touch up between shots. (AP Photo)
Comedian Jules Munshin tries helping Elizabeth Taylor with her hairnet during a visit to the studio commissary in Hollywood, Los Angeles in September 1949, where Elizabeth is working on the set of The Big Hangover. (AP Photo)
One reason you don’t see any movie technicians, actors, directors or others in this Hollywood scene is because there’s a loose lion running about on Nov. 23, 1951. He’s Pasha, and instead of being down on the set where he belongs, he’s galloping around the scaffolding. It took his trainers an hour to coax him down and return to acting in Androcles and the Lion. Meanwhile, production was at a standstill. (AP Photo/Ellis Bosworth)
A colony of 5,000 ants has been assembled by Delyn Hornaday for a sequence in Hollow Triumph. When it was necessary to film a close-up, studio make-up man applied pan make-up to one of the ants and got bit in the act. Here is Hornaday with a bowl-full of ants who are making their screen debut on Feb. 19, 1948 in Hollywood. (AP Photo/Don Brinn)
As Tommy Steele, former British recording artist turned movie song-and-dance, actor-star, watches; the makeup man puts finishing touches on the gator. This is between shootings on the set of The Happiest Millionaire, co-starring Fred MacMurray and Greer Garson, Sept. 2, 1966. (AP Photo/David F. Smith)
While waiting to go on the set of St. George and the Seven Curses, Jerry, a 5-year-old chimp, who has a part in the movie, plays chess with the producer's 11-year-old daughter Susan Gordon, Jan. 31, 1961. (AP Photo/Harold Filan)
Here is a section of the Columbia movie lot in San Fernando Valley, Calif., Aug. 19, 1949. What appears to be the beginning of a fleet is, foreground to background: a 100-ton, 70-foot section of an oil tanker; a full-size copy of a tuna clipper, named “Southern Cross”; and a freighter made of wood and wallboard, named “Island Princess.” The section of oil tanker in foreground is an exact copy of part of an 8,000-ton tanker, aboard which, off the Southern California coast, most of the story for a forthcoming movie, Cargo to Capetown, has been filmed. The studio prop was sequences and a fire scene. By cutting back from the prop ship to the real one, the illusion will be that all the action takes place aboard the ship at sea. (AP Photo/Frank Filan)
Till Gabbani, veteran cameraman is shown surfacing in a Hollywood Fox studio swimming pool in Los Angeles on Feb. 10, 1952, after being under water for more than an hour. Gabbani is filming the adventure drama Cry of the Swamp. The scene was made completely under water by use of an underwater camera called the Aquaflex. Gabbani also wears an oxygen mask and tubes on his back which makes the camera operator’s equipment weigh more than 250 pounds. He is shown here being assisted by Maynard Rugg of the camera department. (AP Photo/Ellis R. Bosworth)
The new movie wind machine, made from a navy surplus plane, sits on its specially built trailer outside the studio shops in Hollywood on July 25, 1948. Hank Vadare is in the pilot’s seat, which can be turned to face either the front or the back. The operator faces front when the machine is being taxied over the ground; back, when the brakes are set and the wind maker is working up a velocity which can reach 100 miles an hour. (AP Photo/Ellis R. Bosworth)
Two unidentified members of the prop department of a Hollywood studio check in small pieces used in dressing sets, Nov. 10, 1955. The more than 100,000 individual items include everything from salt and pepper shakers to elaborate candelabra and vases. (AP Photo)
Royal Lowe, left, Hollywood special effects man, at the firing board ready to set off charges that will enflame a scale model of a Los Angeles street, in a take for the new movie The War of the Worlds, May 14, 1952. The wires from each charge are all centered to this board and Lowe fires each charge, or group of charges, in rotation as required for the scene. Lowe's assistant is unidentified. (AP Photo/Ellis R. Bosworth)
In the back of the multi-million dollar productions which set Hollywood apart as the movie capital of the world are the technicians who perform near-miracles in bringing realism to the screen. The specialists in this field make the impossible look easy. Dick Webb, special effects man at one of the Hollywood studios on Sept. 19, 1948, shows how he fashions spider webs for the movies. A secret combination of rubber cement fed into an electric fan is all that’s to it. (AP Photo)
The American film star Oliver Hardy gets set to blow out the candle of a cake presented to him on his 58th birthday in a movie studio in Billancourt, near Paris, Jan. 18, 1951. His partner Stan Laurel holds a potted plant given to Hardy. Virginia Jones Hardy, wife of the comedian, is at right. The famed American comedy team are making a movie entitled Atoll K in the Billancourt studio. (AP Photo)
Decked out in 19th century Russian regalia, film stars Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda relax to their individual tastes on the set of War And Peace, in Rome, Italy on Sept. 7, 1955. Miss Hepburn scans a magazine while Fonda grabs 40 winks. The celluloid version of the Tolstoi novel is reportedly a five million dollar production. (AP Photo/Mario Torrisi)
This is an elaborate set, built at a cost of about $350,000 to give an exact replica of a shot in Paris where the scenes in the movie Irma La Duce are being shot in Hollywood, Los Angeles at the Goldwyn Studios on Nov. 2, 1962. It took more than three months for the studio technicians to build the set. Even the most minute details of this section of the city are reproduced on this set, including paintings, etc. Jack Lemmon in foreground, crossing the street. He stars with Shirley MacLaine in the movie. (AP Photo/Don Brinn)
Dick Van Dyke, left, is airborne during a dance with co-star Julie Andrews, right, for the new Hollywood musical Mary Poppins, June 25, 1963. (AP Photo/Don Brinn)
Actress Julie Andrews dances with the chimney sweeps in the chimney-sweep dance number during filming of Mary Poppins on a movie set representing London rooftops at the Disney Studios in Hollywood, Ca., Aug. 16, 1963. (AP Photo)
British actress Elizabeth Taylor is ready for the most spectacular scenes in the 20th Century-Fox’s filming of Cleopatra in Rome’s Cinecitta Studio, Italy on May 8, 1962. More than 6,000 extras are in the scene depicting Cleopatra’s triumphal entry into Ancient Rome. On her head is an ornamented head-gear studded with hard stones and which reaches her shoulders. The entire head-gear weighs about six kilos. (AP Photo/Girolamo di Majo)
Actor Roddy McDowall gets his wig adjusted by an unidentified makeup artist on the set of Planet of the Apes in this August 1967 photo. (AP Photo)
The Beatles, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney and John Lennon, have their hair combed by stylists on the set of their first movie production, A Hard Day's Night, at Twickenham Film Studios in Middlesex, outside London, England, on March 12, 1964. The hair stylists, who have parts in the film, are, from left, Patti Boyd, 19, Tina Williams, 17, Pru Bury, 22, and Susan Whitman, 17. (AP Photo)
Director Alfred Hitchcock explains some movie-making secrets to Princess Margaret on the set of Torn Curtain at Universal Studios in Hollywood on Nov. 8, 1965 as the princess gestures while asking a question. (AP Photo)
Film actress Sophia Loren gets assistance in blowing out candles on her birthday cake as studio workers applaud in the background, Sept. 20, 1963. A cake, which has 29 candles, is presented to Sophia during a break in filming Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, in a Rome studio. Helping Miss Loren with the cake are her co-star Marcello Mastroianni, left, and her director, Vittorio De Sica, right. (AP Photo/Jim Pringle)
New York mayor John V. Lindsay talks with actor Dustin Hoffman during a visit on set of Who Is Harry Kellerman And Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? being filmed at the General Motors Building, 5th Avenue and 58th Street, July 27, 1970. (AP Photo/John Lent)
Actor Al Pacino, center, is seen on the set of the motion picture production Author, Author, at Washington Square in New York, on Oct. 20, 1981. (AP Photo/David Handschuh)
Pop star Madonna has her hair done on the location set of the movie Slammer (later renamed Who's That Girl), near the Trump Tower in New York City, Nov. 1986. Hairdresser is unidentified. (AP Photo)