You Must Remember This (Karina Longworth)

As part of the publicity campaign for his film Hell’s Angels, Howard Hughes made Jean Harlow a star, branding her “The Platinum Blonde.” But after Hell’s Angels, Hughes couldn’t figure out what to do with Harlow, so she ended up signing a contract with MGM, at the urging of Paul Bern, who became Harlow’s new impresario and husband. Despite the fact that Louis B. Mayer had dismissed her as a “floozy”, Harlow had five years of super stardom at MGM. But during that time, Bern died under mysterious circumstances — as did Harlow herself, in 1937, at the age of 26.  To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Erotic 80s began with a prologue about the short lived heyday of the X rating, pornography, and feminism. Erotic 90s begins with a prologue about the disastrous rollout of NC-17 –the X rating’s replacement – and the evolving state of both porn and feminism at the dawn of the 90s. Topics include David Lynch, Harvey Weinstein, “pro-porn” feminism, “the new morality,” video stores, Magic Johnson, date rape, and much more.  To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The first blockbuster about sex of the 90s, Pretty Woman both reinvigorated Richard Gere’s career, and turned Julia Roberts into the biggest female movie star of the era. We’ll dissect the gender politics of this fantasy about love between a streetwalker and a corporate villain, analyze its lasting appeal, and trace the wild rollercoaster ride of the first few years of Roberts’ movie stardom. Virtually unknown before 1989, within a year of Pretty Woman’s release Roberts was considered the most bankable woman in movies, a controversial icon of 90s womanhood and, eventually, a romantic antihero whose performances and personal life were put on a pedestal by a breathless media, only to be swiftly knocked down. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

An enigmatic sex symbol dating back to the 70s, Theresa Russell made a play for Hollywood stardom in the late 80s and early 90s, making a number of films about the sexual commodification and role playing. Ken Russell’s Whore was marketed as a gritty answer to Pretty Woman, showing the “truth” about Los Angeles street prostitution. In Impulse, a neo-noir romance in which Russell plays an undercover cop posing as a sex working in a hopelessly corrupt LAPD, Russell was directed by Sondra Locke, longtime girlfriend and co-star of Clint Eastwood. When Eastwood dumped Locke while she was directing the movie, she fought back, instigating a series of lawsuits that revealed that Eastwood and his studio had conspired against her. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One of the most controversial movies of the 1990s, Thelma & Louise pushed every hot button of the new decade: date rape, sexual harassment, the failure of the feminist movement to create real change for the working class, and how pissed off women were, or were not, entitled to be about all of the above. Though it made more noise as a media phenomenon than at the box office, Thelma & Louise made so many people so mad that it had the feeling of a turning point. We’ll talk about the anger the movie communicated, the anger it inspired, and debate its lasting legacy. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the five years after the release of Fatal Attraction, Hollywood scrambled to make one movie after another about homes and workplaces invaded and threatened by sexy outsiders. Today we’ll talk about five of these films: Presumed Innocent (1990), The Hand that Rocks the Cradle (1992), Single White Female (1992), Consenting Adults (1992) and The Temp (1993). To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One of the biggest hits of 1992, Basic Instinct was sold as Michael Douglas’s return to Fatal Attraction territory, but its success owed to an alchemy of three other creatives: a writer (Joe Eszterhas) who was driven to become the highest-paid scribe in movies; a director (Paul Verhoeven) who was determined to redefine the amount of sex considered acceptable in a Hollywood movie; and a female lead (Sharon Stone) who had waited a long time for her breakout role, and finally found it in a bisexual murderess with the sheen of a Hitchcock blonde. We’ll talk about all of that, detailing the extremely messy production that was protested by LGBT activists – and its screenwriter – virtually from beginning to end, and examine Basic Instinct as a collision of toxicity and commerce that was emblematic of just-pre-Clinton era.  To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the early 90s, one of the biggest scripted shows on TV was Murphy Brown, starring 40-something Candice Bergen as a product of the 60s whose high-powered career precluded marriage and family. When the character became a single mother, and was criticized for it by vice president Dan Quayle, a massive conversation about “family values” began that would change the culture – and, arguably, American politics. Off-screen, Bergen was married to French filmmaker Louis Malle. While his wife was in the middle of the “family values” maelstrom, Malle was making Damage, one of the most sexually intense films of the 90s, and one which used sexuality to explicitly critique the hypocrisy of politicians. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Culture in the 90s was obsessed with the sex lives of teenagers. This is a theme we will come back to several times throughout the season. In this episode, we’ll talk about Drew Barrymore, who became a massive star at age 7 in E.T., went to rehab at 13, became an emancipated minor at 15 and immediately started pushing buttons with naked photo shoots and her comeback role as a murderously seductive teen in Poison Ivy. With teenaged Drew scantily clas in magazines and on screen – and “Long Island Lolita” Amy Fisher making headlines for shooting her adult lover’s wife – the media was eager to exploit the precocious sexuality of other teen girls. But while she made her film debut in the Poison Ivy-esque The Crush, Alicia Silverstone vocally pushed back on being branded “the next Lolita”. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

While the MPAA’s confusing and hypocritical ratings decisions were leaving filmmakers flummoxed in the early 90s, cable TV was opening up new possibilities for erotic content. Today we will offer a brief history of sex on TV, and then focus on Red Shoe Diaries, the cheesy-but-charming late night softcore soap that was the brainchild of 9 ½ Weeks writers/producers Zalman King and Patricia Knop.  To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the early 90s, Madonna was the biggest pop star in the world, and she used – and in the minds of some, squandered – her star capital to launch a multi-media exploration of sexuality: the album Erotica and its companion book Sex, followed by her starring role in the much-maligned erotic thriller Body of Evidence. What was Madonna really trying to do in 1992-1993, how was it perceived and misunderstood at the time, and how does the blowback she experienced then relate to how she is being criticized today? To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Are men okay? Several films from 1993 answered that question with a resounding no. One of the highest grossing movies of its year, Adrian Lyne’s Indecent Proposal was misunderstood as a gimmick, and its insight into toxic masculinity and male sexual insecurity got lost in a media frenzy, much of it sparked by feminists. What had changed since Lyne’s Fatal Attraction, in Hollywood and in the culture? We’ll also talk about Proposal star Demi Moore as the controversial “diva” of the moment. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sharon Stone and Joe Eszterhas’s post-Basic Instinct reunion film was one of the most troubled productions of the 90s. A post-Hitchcock tale of sexual surveillance given a technological update for the 90s, after a long battle with the MPAA the sanitized, R-rated version of Sliver was rejected by critics and audiences, but the movie and the juicy gossip leaked from its production (which included a love pentagon involving both actress and screenwriter) only enhanced Sharon Stone’s aura as an old-school Hollywood star for a decade that didn’t know what to do with her. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The 90s were obsessed with what magazine writer Tad Friend would describe as “do me feminism” – and the attendant fear that men could be victims of female sexual aggression. Two films from 1994 married these anxieties to the still-lingering bugaboo of the 80s, the powerful career woman. But though the female stars of The Last Seduction and Disclosure (Linda Fiorentino and Demi Moore) were styled almost identically, the films had very different points of view on the panic over female power.  To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joe Eszterhas’s tenure as the hottest screenwriter in town ended with two notorious 1995 flops: the NC-17 rated Showgirls (directed, like Basic Instinct, by Paul Verhoeven) and Jade (produced, like Sliver, by Robert Evans), We’ll analyze why these films failed to connect with audiences in 1995, and, more importantly, why the media at the time seized on them as major embarrassments for the industry.  To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Our first guest on Talking Pictures is writer director Nancy Meyers (Something’s Gotta Give, It’s Complicated, The Holiday). Recorded at her home, host Ben Mankiewicz talks with Meyers about casting Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton, getting script advice from Sunset Boulevard director Billy Wilder, and they discuss what it’s like to become famous for her interiors. Spoiler: it’s frustrating! Nancy Meyers also answers our Super 8 questionnaire and reveals which film had her running from the theater in absolute terror. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Song of the South’s most famous element is “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah,” a song written for the movie but reminiscent of a racist standard popularized in blackface minstrel shows of the 1830s. Today we’ll explore this song and the other ways in which minstrel imagery and tropes made their way into Song of the South and other animated and live action films of the first half of the 20th century. And, we'll talk about how all of this is related to Walt Disney's push to net Song of the South Oscars. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We’ll begin with a look at how Polly Platt’s legacy was appraised when she died in 2011. Then we’ll go back in time to tell Polly’s story from the start, beginning with her Revolutionary Road-esque childhood in Europe and America as the neglected daughter of two alcoholics; to her years studying scenic design in environments in which women weren’t welcome; the secret pregnancy that halted her formal education, and the early marriage that took her West and cemented her desire to tell stories through design. Throughout, we’ll talk about how Platt’s experiences, as the product of an American military family of the 1950s—and the daughter of a mother who had been forced to abandon a career for motherhood––shaped her view of gender roles and relations, and her idea of what it meant to be the wife of a important man. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you're enjoying You Must Remember This, you may also like Talking Pictures, a movie memories podcast. On this episode of Talking Pictures, you'll hear Ben Mankiewicz in conversation with Carol Burnett. Carol Burnett’s life has always spun around the movies. She tells Ben about her childhood spent in Hollywood movie theaters, the famous actor who helped her break into showbiz, and the movie parodies in her groundbreaking television variety show. In fact, at 91, Carol Burnett remembers more about movies than Ben! We cap it all off with a delightful Super 8 complete with seasonal gems. Plus, Carol and Ben discuss their Wordle stats…listen to find out who’s winning. Listen to Talking Pictures wherever you get your podcasts. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 1928, silent comedy star Buster Keaton made what he would later call “the worst mistake of my career”: against the advice of fellow silent comedy auteurs like Charlie Chaplin, he gave up his independent production shingle and signed a contract with MGM. A vaudevillian who got his start working with Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, by the late 1920s Keaton had established himself as a solo writer, director and star who was known for doing his own spectacular but reckless stunts. Keaton joined MGM with a promise from his friend Joe Schenck that nothing would change, only to find himself in his new situation demoted from artistic boss to employee of a corporation interested in protecting its investment above all. The lack of agency and ability to personally control the quality of his own work within the confines of Mayer’s studio drove Keaton to alcoholism, which further doomed his tenure at MGM. Keaton’s experience is perhaps the first major example of an indie filmmaker “selling out” to a big studio, only to be swallowed up by the system. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Song of the South’s most successful re-release came in 1972 at a time when Hollywood was dealing with race by making two very different kinds of movies: Blaxploitation films, which gave black audiences a chance to see black characters triumph against white authority figures; and movies like Dirty Harry, which were emblematic of a concurrent cultural and political shift away from the Civil Rights Movement and toward Reagan-style Republicanism. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You Must Remember This presents an exclusive first listen of the audio trailer for Mank, a David Fincher film about the screenwriter of Citizen Kane, coming to Netflix on December 4. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Gloria Grahame arrived in Hollywood in 1944, after Louis B. Mayer personally plucked her from the New York stage, and changed her name. But Grahame was the rare actress who Mayer didn’t know how to turn into a star. Finally in 1947, Mayer gave up on Grahame and sold her contract to RKO, where she flourished as a femme fatale in film noir. Grahame's career would be marred by her compulsive plastic surgery, her increasingly eccentric on-set behavior, and gossip about her love life, which included marriages to both director Nicholas Ray, and his son, Tony. This episode is brought to you by Harry's. Make every morning he shaves feel like a Holiday. Harry’s will give you $5 off your first order with code REMEMBER. Free shipping for the Holidays ends on December 10th, so act now. Harrys.com enter code REMEMBER. This episode is also brought to you by The Message, a new science fiction podcast from Panoply and GE Podcast Theater. Search for The Message in iTunes. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the aftermath of The Last Picture Show — and the collapse of her second marriage — Polly finds an unlikely ally, and a new job, in Orson Welles. Anxious to build on her career momentum (and become the first female film art director accepted into her union), Polly agrees to work on Peter’s next two films, What’s Up Doc and Paper Moon – two massive hits which make Peter one of the most famous directors of the decade. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Concerned that his movie about a former slave devoting his life to a white child’s emotional needs might be perceived as racist, Walt Disney hired known Communist Maurice Rapf to rewrite Song of the South. Rapf, the son of an MGM exec, was radicalized as a college student, and shortly after Song of the South was released, he was blacklisted. Today we’ll discuss Rapf’s life and career, and talk about how white leftists in Hollywood tried to subvert the industry’s racial status quo -- and how their mission to “make movies less bad” led to their own persecution.  This episode is sponsored by Parcast - Mythology (www.parcast.com/MYTHOLOGY). To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The first episode of You Must Remember This tells the story of actress Kim Novak -- a top box office draw of the late 1950s and the iconic star of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo -- and her painful struggles to assert herself from the mid-20th century through well into the 21st, in a Hollywood that repeatedly sent her the message that she was only valuable for the way she looked, while also insisting that she didn’t quite look good enough. Originally released in April 2014, this episode has been “lost” for almost as long due to copyright issues with its soundtrack. Today, in honor of the podcast’s ten year anniversary, we’re rereleasing this episode with new music, largely re-recorded voiceover, and just enough of the original episode intact so you can hear how far the show has come over the course of a decade. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this companion series to You Must Remember This, Karina Longworth will introduce eight stories about Hollywood’s intersection with the beauty industry. Told by writers and reporters known for their work at The New Yorker, the New York Times and other publications, Make Me Over will explore a range of topics, including Hollywood’s first weight loss surgery, the story of the star whose unique skills led to the development of waterproof mascara, black beauty in the 1990s and much more. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 1983, Vanessa Williams became the first black woman to win Miss America. In 1984, a few weeks from the end of her reign, she was forced to step down when she found out Penthouse was going to publish unauthorized nude images of her in their magazine. Williams went on to have a successful singing career and star in movies, but her career trajectory tells more than the story of a black beauty icon who overcame obstacles to make it in Hollywood. It's a story that echoes the legacies of racism, colorism, tokenism and misogynoir (the misogyny experienced specifically by black women) in 20th century Hollywood and how, as a result, black women — from Williams to Whitney Houston — have had to display exceptional talent to make the case that their images are worth circulating and celebrating as beautiful. This episode was written and performed by Cassie da Costa, an entertainment writer for The Daily Beast. She lives in Ojai, California. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

At Polly’s urging, Peter decides to direct an adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s novel The Last Picture Show. Though credited only as the film’s “designer,” Polly is involved in every creative decision, including casting — and it’s with his pregnant-again wife’s enthusiasm that Bogdanovich casts 20-year-old model Cybill Shepherd as the film’s femme fatale. Though Polly believed she and Peter were “deliriously happy,” Bogdanovich and Shepherd fall in love on the set of the movie, and Polly has to make a decision: to save face and avoid personal humiliation by walking away from the production, or stay and fight for the creative baby that she feels ownership over. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the mid-to-late 80s, Polly Platt worked on a number of films that defined and reflected that decade’s ideas about female power. With an Oscar nomination under her belt, Polly starts trying in earnest to direct. She ends her career as a production designer with The Witches of Eastwick, a star-studded special-effects extravaganza. Inspired by Polly, Brooks creates the character played by Holly Hunter in Broadcast News, infusing the film with Polly’s single-minded professional determination. Riding high on having guided Brooks through two consecutive, blockbuster Oscar nominees, Polly becomes a production executive at Brooks's Gracie Films, where she produces Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything… To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Glamorous and shrewd, Sylvia of Hollywood became the movie industry’s first weight-loss guru during the end of the silent era. An immigrant of mysterious origin, she would cannily market herself to clients like Gloria Swanson, who she promised to ‘slenderize, refine, reduce and squeeze’ into shape. But her taste for gossip and publicity would become her downfall in the 1930s when she published a catty tell-all memoir about her star clients. This episode was written and performed by Christina Newland, an award-winning journalist on film, pop culture and boxing at Sight & Sound Magazine, Little White Lies, VICE, Hazlitt, The Ringer and others. She loves 70s Americana, boxing flicks, fashion and old Hollywood lore. She was born in New York and lives in Nottingham, England. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

At the age of 18, actress Molly O’Day’s career showed great promise — the only thing holding her back was a bit of pubescent pudge. When diets failed, she became the guinea pig of Hollywood's first highly-publicized weight loss surgery. This was in 1929, and the procedure was, as one fan magazine described it "dangerous... and all in vain." What lead Molly to such desperation? And what happened after the surgery to make her former lover, actor George Raft, declare it “ruined her health, her career and damn near killed her?" To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Excited for the new season? We can hardly wait to share the untold story of Polly Platt, the secret weapon behind some of the most highly acclaimed films of the 1970s, '80s and '90s. This audio journey will feature interviews and intimate details about her trailblazing legacy and heartbreaking private life, including excerpts from her own unpublished memoirs dealing with her creative collaborations and relationship with her second husband, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich. The new season premieres May 26. For now, please enjoy a taste of what's to come in this extended preview of episode 1. Actress Maggie Siff is featured as the voice of Polly Platt. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode was originally released on July 4, 2017. Listen to help prep for the next episode of our new season, The Old Man is Still Alive. Jean Seberg made her first two films, Saint Joan and Bonjour Tristesse, for director Otto Preminger, a tyrannical svengali character whose methods would traumatize Jean for the rest of her life and career. No wonder she rebelled against this bad dad figure by marrying a handsome French opportunist. Meanwhile, Jane Fonda moves to New York, joins the Actors Studio, takes up with her own hyper-controlling male partner, and tries to define herself as something other than Henry Fonda’s daughter. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 1941, Selznick signed a young actress named Phylis, who was then married to actor Robert Walker. Selznick renamed Phylis “Jennifer Jones,” and set to work turning her into a star, helping her to earn an Oscar for her first film under her new name. Selznick and Jones also began an affair, and Selznick’s romantic and professional obsession with Jones would result in the destruction of both of their marriages, as well as at least two movies transparently about Selznick’s passion for his star actress. But in a tragic echo of Selznick’s own film A Star is Born, as he threw his weight behind turning Jones into a star, Selznick himself lost his footing in Hollywood. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Start building your website today at Squarespace.com. Enter offer code REMEMBER at checkout to get 10% off! Squarespace — Build it Beautiful. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Polly Platt -- producer, writer and Oscar-nominated production designer -- lived an epic Hollywood life. And yet, if you know Platt’s name today, it’s probably because in 1970 her husband and creative collaborator Peter Bogdanovich had an affair with Cybill Shepherd while shooting the film that launched their careers, The Last Picture Show. But Platt was much more than a jilted wife: she was the secret, often invisible-to-the-public weapon behind some of the best films of the 1970s, '80s and '90s. Drawing on Platt’s unpublished memoir, as well as ample interviews and archival research, The Invisible Woman will tell Polly Platt’s incredible story from her perspective, for the first time. New episodes will begin releasing May 26. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A close look at the parallel lives of Margaux and Mariel Hemingway, sisters born with a world-famous last name that stood for both genius and self-destruction. Both rose to fame in the 1970s, Margaux as a supermodel and Mariel as an actress, and then both struggled with various demons. But while Margaux followed her grandfather's fate, Mariel confronted the family's dark legacy and reinvented herself as a mental health and wellness advocate. This episode was written and performed by Michael Schulman, a writer at The New Yorker and the author of "Her Again: Becoming Meryl Streep," a New York Times bestseller. His work has also appeared in Vanity Fair, the New York Times and other publications. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the 1940s, Louis B. Mayer was the highest paid man in America, one of the first celebrity CEOs and the figurehead of what for most Americans was the most glamorous industry on Earth. In 1951, Mayer was fired from the studio that bore his name. What happened -- to Mayer, and to Movies on the whole -- to hasten the end of the golden era of hollywood?  To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode was originally released on March 1, 2016. Listen to help prep for the next episode of our new season,The Old Man is Still Alive. In the late 1940s, as the country was moving to the right and there was pressure on Hollywood to do the same, Katharine Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart and John Huston all protested HUAC in ways that damaged their public personas and their ability to work in Hollywood. Hepburn’s outspokenness resulted in headlines branding her a "Red" and, allegedly, audiences stoning her films. Bogart and Huston were prominent members of the Committee For the First Amendment, a group of Hollywood stars who came to Washington to support the Hollywood Ten -- and lived to regret it. With their career futures uncertain, the trio collaborated on the most difficult film any of them would ever make, The African Queen. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The director of It’s a Wonderful Life, who won five Oscars in the 1930s for films that embodied the pre-World War II notion of American exceptionalism, was pushed into semi-retirement by the early 50s by changes in tastes and political priorities. Capra was brought back to the Hollywood director’s chair by Frank Sinatra in the 1960s, but Capra quickly became embittered by an industry that he felt had left him behind, and in 1971 published an autobiography airing grievances about an industry that he believed was “stooping to cheap salacious pornography in a crazy bastardization of a great art to compete for the 'patronage' of deviates and masturbators.” To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the mid-1930s, Fritz Lang fled Hitler and left a successful film career in Germany behind to come to America. After a 20 year career in Hollywood, Lang went back to a much-changed Germany to make two films that he had first developed in the 1920s, set in India but largely cast with non-Indian performers in brownface. Even Lang’s collaborators were concerned that these films, The Tiger of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb, were politically incorrect and out-of-date. How did the director behind some of the most influential films ever made end up here, and how can we understand his late movies – and his appearance as himself in Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt – as the culmination of all that came before? To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode was originally released on June 3, 2020. Listen to help prep for the next episode of our new season, The Old Man is Still Alive. After the death of her first husband and creative partner, Polly moves to New York, where she swiftly meets and falls in love with Peter Bogdanovich. Together Polly and Peter build a life around the obsessive consumption of Hollywood movies, with Polly acting as Peter’s Jill-of-all-trades support system as he first ingratiates himself with the previous two generations of Hollywood auteurs as a critic/historian, and then makes his way into making his own films. Together, Polly and Peter write and produce Targets, Bogdanovich’s first credited feature, and also collaborate on a documentary about the great director John Ford. By the time Polly gives birth to their first daughter, she believes she and Peter are an indivisible, equal creative partnership — regardless of how credit is distributed in Hollywood. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Born in the 19th century, his career forged in the silent era, John Ford helped to invent the genre of the Western and still holds the record for the most Best Director Oscar wins of all time. Though he made films in all genres, and sometimes even tackled the same historical territory from different angles in different films, Ford had by the 1960s become synonymous with depictions of American history that honored maverick white men, while often villainizing, distorting or erasing Native Americans. In this episode, we will talk about the influence of Ford’s last masterpiece, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and will look at Ford’s last two films, which to some extent feel like “mea culpas” for the offenses of his earlier career: the revisionist Western Cheyenne Autumn, and the female-centric adventure film 7 Women. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode was originally released on September 9, 2014. Listen to help prep for the next episode of our new season, The Old Man is Still Alive. Humphrey Bogart is perhaps the most enduring icon of grown-up masculine cool to come out of Hollywood’s first century. But much of what we think of when we think of Bogart — the persona of the tough guy with the secret soft heart, his pairing on-screen and off with Lauren Bacall — coalesced late in Bogart’s life. Today we take a look at how Humphrey Bogart became Bogey, tracing his journey from blue blood beginnings through years of undistinguished work and outright failure (both in the movies and in love), to his emergence in the early 1940s as a symbol of wartime perseverance who could make sacrifice seem sexy. Finally, we’ll look at what it took to get him to take the leap into a fourth marriage that seemed to saved his life … until the world’s most glamorous stoic was faced with cancer. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the 1960s, many American directors saw their fortunes turn after they notched massive hits. In the case of Howard Hawks – a director who had thrived in virtually every Hollywood genre since the late silent era– the undisputed masterpiece of Rio Bravo gave way to four poorly-received efforts, each of which bared the marks of a dying studio system, if they weren’t compromised by the literal dying off of the previous generation of stars. In the middle of this run, Hawks made Red Line 7000, a car racing drama which was at once familiar and personal to Hawks, and also totally foreign in that it was a movie set in the 1960s, infused with ‘60s sexual politics, and built around future New Hollywood star James Caan.  To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode was originally released on December 1, 2015. Listen to help prep for the next episode of our new season, The Old Man is Still Alive. Lana Turner, the legendary "Sweater Girl" was one of MGM’s prized contract players, the epitome of the mid-century sex goddess on-screen and an unlucky-in-love single mom off-screen who would burn through seven husbands and countless affairs. After nearly twenty years as a star not known for her acting prowess, Turner's career suddenly got interesting in the late 1950s, when the hits The Bad and the Beautiful, Peyton Place and Imitation of Life sparked a reappraisal of her talents. In the middle of this renaissance, Turner became embroiled in one of Hollywood history’s most shocking scandals: the murder of Turner’s boyfriend Johnny Stompanato at the hand of her 14 year-old daughter, Cheryl Crane. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Vincente Minnelli was the ultimate creature of the studio system, spending twenty years working for MGM and perfecting a distinct brand of big-budget, beautifully designed, often musical entertainment, from Meet Me in St. Louis to An American in Paris, The Bad and the Beautiful to Gigi. Minnelli’s late period begins with two films he made toward the end of his run at MGM, his proto-psychedelic remake of Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962) and Two Weeks in Another Town, which painted such a caustic picture of moviemaking decadence that MGM forcibly recut it. Knocked off his game, with both his faculties and his power waning, Minnelli made a trilogy of films about reincarnation and rebirth, one of which starred his famous daughter, Liza. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When Polly begins her own on-set affair, the double standard of what men can get away with in Hollywood versus what was expected for women would push her to a breaking point. With collaborating with her ex-husband no longer an option, Platt starts attempting to rebuild her career, designing classics such as A Star is Born and Bad News Bears, while also navigating predatory men in power in post-sexual revolution Hollywood. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode was originally released on April 11, 2017. Listen to help prep for the next episode of our new season, The Old Man is Still Alive. The quintessential “Hitchcock blonde,” Grace Kelly had an apparently charmed life. Her movies were mostly hits, her performances were largely well-reviewed, and she won an Oscar against stiff competition. Then she literally married a prince. Was it all as perfect as it seemed? Today we’ll explore Kelly’s public and private life (and the rumors that the two things were very different), her working relationship with Hitchcock, her Oscar-winning performance in The Country Girl, the royal marriage that took her away from Hollywood and Kelly’s very specific spin on blonde sexuality. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hitch’s most iconic decade – a decade of Technicolor grandeur and peril inflicted on famous blondes – came to an end in 1964 with Marnie, a critical and box office flop which wounded Hitchcock’s ego and left him unsure how to move forward in a changing world. His subsequent four final films – Torn Curtain, Topaz, Frenzy, Family Plot – are the result of his efforts to mix up his formula for an era in which he felt ripped off by James Bond and mourned the decline of the Golden Age stars. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Long an antagonist to Hollywood’s norms (not to mention its actresses), Preminger began the 1960s by directing a massive blockbuster (Exodus) and earning his second Oscar nomination (for directing The Cardinal). But towards the end of the decade, with 1967’s Hurry, Sundown, he began a run of six films which attempted to respond to changing times, all of which flopped. We’ll focus primarily on two of these: the much-maligned Skidoo, an indictment of both hippies and the true American establishment which Preminger prepared for by dropping acid with Timothy Leary; and the unfairly forgotten Such Good Friends, the rare sex comedy of the era to understand the extent to which the sexual revolution did little to liberate women from the expectations of men. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode was originally released on October 28, 2014. Listen to help prep for the next episode of our new season, The Old Man is Still Alive. Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift were best friends and co-stars in three films. The first, A Place in the Sun, is an undisputed classic which captures both stars at the peak of their talents and physical beauty. The shoot of the second, Raintree County, was interrupted by a horrible car accident in which Clift’s face was disfigured. This episode tracks Taylor’s relationship with the troubled Clift, from their first, studio-setup date through his untimely death — the result of what some have called “Hollywood’s slowest suicide.” To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As a cameraman during World War II, George Stevens shot footage of the liberation of Dachau that showed the world the horrors of the Holocaust – and scarred Stevens himself for life. Pre-war, he had been a director of frothy comedies; post-war, he committed himself to making epic films about “moral disasters.” This yielded a number of masterpieces – A Place in the Sun, Giant, Shane – but by the mid-60s, though more in demand than ever as a director, Stevens felt he lost touch with the audience. He only released one film in the 1960s, The Greatest Story Ever Told – an epic about Jesus, and an epic flop – and then, in an attempt to come full circle to his comedy roots, concluded his career with The Only Game in Town (1970), an awkward mashup of old and new featuring the two biggest transitional stars of the day, Warren Beatty and Elizabeth Taylor. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In Glitter & Might, a new series exploring the intersection of show business and politics, bestselling author Shawn Levy unpacks the story of Lew Wasserman, the shadowy legend who lorded over Hollywood for half a century. He was a feared deal-maker, credited with breaking the impasse that ended the 1960 actors’ and writers’ strike. Wasserman oversaw seismic innovations in the entertainment business, but none as impressive as the way he connected it to Washington. Every president from Kennedy to Clinton took his calls. And he was as comfortable dealing with gangsters as with politicians. Through original research and interviews with Wasserman's associates and the journalists who observed him, we learn how this mystery man definitively ruled many worlds. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After Irving Thalberg’s death in 1936, Louis B. Mayer doubled down on "family entertainment" at MGM. To support this new wave of content, Mayer started signing younger and younger performers to groom into stars — training them in song and dance, creating a schoolhouse on the MGM lot to comply with state educational requirements, and keeping the kids chaperoned by publicists day and night. This episode will cover the differing experiences of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland -- best friends and screen partners who grew up together within MGM’s stable of child stars. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode was originally released on December 14, 2021. Listen to help prep for the next episode of our new season, The Old Man is Still Alive. In the mid-1960s, 47 year-old Dean Martin proves he's still got it by knocking the Beatles off the top of the pop charts, and by launching his long-running TV show, which brought a version of his nightclub act into America’s living rooms every week. But his middle-aged drunk schtick sours as the decade of hippies and Vietnam wears on. Sammy Davis Jr has his own challenges, living up to the expectations of a new generation of activists--and he only makes matters worse by embracing Richard Nixon. After disastrously dabbling with Motown, Sammy records “The Candy Man” -- a silly novelty single that he hated, but which ended up saving his career. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hollywood’s 1960s began with Billy Wilder winning three Oscars for The Apartment. But Wilder’s biggest success would also prove to be his last film to be afforded such respectability, as Wilder largely abandoned the type of material that the Academy embraced, and veered gleefully into disreputability. Of the 9 films Wilder made in the 20 years after The Apartment, in this episode we’ll pay special attention to three that were engaged with the rapidly changing culture – in Hollywood and beyond: One, Two, Three (1961); Avanti (1972); and Fedora (1978). To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode was originally released on January 6, 2015. Listen to help prep for the next episode of our new season, The Old Man is Still Alive. This is the story of how Bette Davis evolved from a wannabe starlet who was constantly told she was too ugly for movies, to the most powerful woman in Hollywood, by playing heroines that had never been seen on screen before — to borrow a term from Davis herself, sympathetic “bitches.” After Pearl Harbor, the tenacious Bette became the figurehead of the Hollywood Canteen, a nightclub for servicemen staffed by stars, which was the locus of the industry’s most visible support of the troops on the home front. The Hollywood Canteen was a catalyst for propaganda in more ways than one, aims Hollywood furthered by telling the story of the Hollywood Canteen in a movie called, um, Hollywood Canteen, starring Davis, John Garfield, Barbara Stanwyck, Peter Lorre and other celebrities as “themselves.” The movie and most press accounts of the Canteen portray it as a miraculous force for good in the world, which it probably was, but that narrative leaves out a lot, including illicit affairs, a murder, and an FBI investigation whose findings would have an impact on the blacklist of the following decade To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For over 40 years, William Wyler was one of Hollywood’s most dependable classicists, culminating in 1968 with the ultimate New Hollywood-era throwback to Old Hollywood, Funny Girl. Then, for his final film in 1970, Wyler uncharacteristically directed a searing indictment of contemporary race relations, called The Liberation of LB Jones. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

At the beginning of the 90s, lesbians were a punchline for a male-gaze-oriented media, an easy target for expressing the anxiety that women might not need men after all. By the middle of the decade, women-loving-women had become the heroes of a number of neo-noir crime films, but the culture at large still rejected lesbianism when not intended to arouse men. While The Matrix has widely been reappraised as a trans allegory after the transitions of its directors the Wachowski sisters, their previous feature Bound was transparently queer, but its reception was complicated by the media’s perception of its makers. Bound was released just a few months after the burial of an extremely similar film called Wild Side. Barely seen on its initial release amidst studio recutting and the suicide of its director, today Wild Side plays as a heartbreaking and troubling example of what could have been for its star Anne Heche, who would soon after become one-half of the most famous lesbian couple in Hollywood – and suffer the career consequences.  To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One of the only high-profile NC-17 releases post-Showgirls, David Cronenberg’s Crash was the kind of dark adult art film that the rating was supposedly created to support. We’ll talk about how Crash fits into Cronenberg’s filmography, why it was controversial when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1996 and when it was released in the US in 1997, how it played into the UK general election of 1997, how it functioned as an early warning against charismatic billionaires, and how it embodied a post-Prozac and pre-Viagara moment. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Henry Hathaway started directing in the early 1930s and though he made movies of all genres, he was particularly associated with Westerns. This allowed him to ride out the 1960s making pretty much the same kinds of movies with the same stars (Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum) that he had been working with for decades. But shortly after the massive success of Hathaway’s True Grit in 1969 – for which John Wayne won his only Oscar – the director felt he was being put out to pasture by a changing industry. His last film would be Hangup (also known as Super Dude) a work-for-hire that he claimed he took only as a favor to the producer, and which was dismissed at the time as a sop to the Blaxploitation trend - not least by Hathaway himself. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One of the most notorious – and least seen – erotic narrative films of the 90s, Boxing Helena was the misbegotten passion project of Jennifer Lynch, daughter of David Lynch. Four years after Boxing Helena, the elder Lynch released one of his most controversial films, Lost Highway, which tackles similar themes as Boxing Helena, including male sexual fragility and the “Madonna-Whore” complex. Today we’ll talk about how Boxing Helena became bigger as a punchline than a movie, and we’ll trace David Lynch’s career as a provocateur to try to explain why his excavation of the dark, sexual core of Americana was celebrated when he made Blue Velvet, and pilloried a dozen years later when he made Lost Highway. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the previous decade, Adrian Lyne had made two movies (Fatal Attraction and Indecent Proposal) that had grossed over $100 million in the US alone. With carte blanche to do whatever he wanted, he made an adaptation of the Nabokov novel about a 40-year-old pedophile’s obsession with his adolescent step-daughter – and no distributor wanted to release it. In a decade rife with the commodification and sexualization of young teens (see our previous episode on Drew Barrymore), what lines did Lyne’s Lolita cross? To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Song of the South co-stars Hattie McDaniel, the first black performer to win an Oscar (for her supporting role as “Mammy” in Gone with the Wind). By the time Song of the South was released, McDaniel was the subject of much criticism in the black community for propagating outdated stereotypes in her roles. But McDaniel actually began her career subverting those same stereotypes, first in black minstrel shows and then in Hollywood movies. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

George Cukor had always experimented within his relatively broad lane, often finding nuanced ways to explore women’s lives, including their sex lives, under the constraints of the Production Code. But after winning the best Director Oscar for Best Picture-winner My Fair Lady in 1964, Cukor’s career slowed down considerably, and as the 60s turned into the 70s and both gender roles and the movies went through massive changes, Cukor was still making the same kinds of things he would have made at the peak of the studio system, regarding which he adopted an extremely defensive stance. Then, suddenly, in 1981, with Rich and Famous, Cukor caught up with the sexual revolution – a decade too late. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If Adrian Lyne’s Lolita became a case study of what Hollywood and America didn’t want to acknowledge about its sexualization of young girls, as the 90s came to a close the culture was full of “acceptable” depictions of teens in heat. Two hit films from 1998 and 1999, Wild Things and Cruel Intentions, adapted classic templates of adult sexual manipulation to turn teen girls into femme fatales (probably not coincidentally, both featured actresses, Neve Campbell and Sarah Michelle Gellar, who were famous for playing high school students on TV). Also no coincidence: these films entered the culture simultaneous to the debut of 17 year-old Britney Spears, whose videos and persona centered her status as “not a girl, not yet a woman.” To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode was originally released on December 22, 2015. Listen to help prep for the next episode of our new season, The Old Man is Still Alive. In the 1940s, Louis B. Mayer was the highest paid man in America, one of the first celebrity CEOs and the figurehead of what for most Americans was the most glamorous industry on Earth. In 1951, Mayer was fired from the studio that bore his name. What happened -- to Mayer, and to movies on the whole -- to hasten the end of the golden era of Hollywood? To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

At the peak of their careers, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman left Hollywood for two years to collaborate with legendary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick on an erotic drama that the media speculated would pull back the curtain on maybe the most fascinating famous couple in the world. Though the meta element can’t be ignored, what Eyes Wide Shut actually ended up being is much more interesting. It’s a culmination of every theme and trope we’ve discussed across Erotic 80s and 90s, and the last film of the twentieth century headlined by American superstars to question the moral rot of the rich and powerful. In part 1 of the Eyes Wide Shut story, we’ll analyze the film and the media frenzy over the mystery of its making. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In part 2 of the Eyes Wide Shut story, the movie is finally unveiled, and critics are divided on its quality, and the use of digital effects to evade an NC-17 rating. Where could Hollywood eroticism go from here? We’ll wrap up the Erotic 90s story with some thoughts on Richard Gere’s two-decade journey from American Gigolo to becoming PEOPLE Magazine’s 1999 “Sexiest Man Alive,” and other ways in which time and politics combined to make that which was once transgressive harmlessly mainstream. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How does an artist once perceived to be ahead of his time fall behind the times? The choreographer/director of Golden Age classics like Singin’ the Rain and Funny Face left Hollywood for all the 60s and the first half of the 70s, perfecting a certain brand of sophisticated comedy/romance abroad with films like Charade, Bedazzled and Two for the Road. His rough Hollywood re-entry was marked by exercises in nostalgia for eras gone by (Lucky Lady, a movie about Prohibition Era gangsters starring Burt Reynolds and Liza Minnelli; the 1930s spoof Movie Movie) and attempts to give audiences of the 80s what it was assumed they wanted (the sci-fi debacle Saturn 3, the sex comedy Blame it on Rio). To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode was originally released on March 3, 2015. Listen to help prep for the next episode of our new season, The Old Man is Still Alive. She was the raven-haired beauty whose lily-white persona was forged by her supporting roles in Gone With the Wind and several Errol Flynn swashbucklers. He was the real-life swashbuckler, the heroic lover/drinker/fighter whose directorial debut The Maltese Falcon, was an enormous success. They met when Huston directed de Havilland in his second film, In This Our Life, and began an affair which would continue, on and off, through the decade, as he joined the Army and made several controversial documentaries exposing dark aspects of the war experience, and as she waged a war of her own, taking Warner Brothers to court to challenge the indentured servitude of the star contract system. De Havilland’s lawsuit went all the way to the California Supreme Court, and had massive implications on the future of labor in Hollywood and beyond.  To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Both Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper worked for papers created by charismatic barons whose publications were nakedly corrupt, totally biased -- and absolutely mainstream. Once we get a feel for this media climate, we’ll trace Louella’s early years of struggle and reinvention on the road to her pioneering bylines, and, finally, her role in canonizing The Birth of a Nation -- the most viciously racist Hollywood blockbuster of all time. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This series began with the story of a director who wrote his autobiography to secure his place in history after his career had gone down the drain. It ends with the story of a man who wrote his autobiography as a “dead man walking”...and then continued to make movies for another half a decade, until the literal last breath left his body. Hollywood’s original “nepo baby” director, John Huston was never a conventional studio system stalwart, and in some respects he was able to go with the flow of changing times a lot better than some of his contemporaries. In part one of our two-part season finale we’ll talk about his flight from Hollywood to Ireland, literally playing God, Huston’s long fallow period in the late 60s, Anjelica Huston’s misbegotten film debut, Huston’s reinvention in the New Hollywood era and the health crisis that almost ended it all. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 1935, Merle Oberon became the first biracial actress to be nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, an incredible achievement in then-segregated Hollywood -- except that nobody in Hollywood knew Oberon was biracial. Born in Bombay into abject poverty in 1911, Oberon's fate seemed sealed in her racist colonial society. But a series of events, lies, men and an obsession with controlling her own image -- even if it meant bleaching her own skin -- changed Oberon's path forever. This episode was written and performed by Halley Bondy, a writer and journalist whose work has appeared on NBC, The Outline, Eater NY, Paste Magazine, Scary Mommy, Bustle, Vice and more. She's an author of five young adult books plus a handful of plays and is a writer / producer for the podcast "Masters of Scale." She lives in Brooklyn with husband / cheerleader Tim and her amazing toddler Robin. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Polly Platt’s unfinished memoir ends abruptly in 1995. What were the remaining 16 years of her life like? Using interviews with those who knew her, we’ll explore how her career in Hollywood came to an end, and the tragic circumstances of her death. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The legendary "Sweater Girl" was one of MGM’s prized contract players, the epitome of the mid-century sex goddess on-screen and an unlucky-in-love single mom off-screen who would burn through seven husbands and countless affairs. After nearly twenty years as a star not known for her acting prowess, Turner's career suddenly got interesting in the late 1950s, when the hits The Bad and the Beautiful, Peyton Place and Imitation of Life sparked a reappraisal of her talents. In the middle of this renaissance, Turner became embroiled in one of Hollywood history’s most shocking scandals: the murder of Turner’s boyfriend Johnny Stompanato at the hand of her 14 year-old daughter, Cheryl Crane. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

1982 saw the release of three hit high school-set comedies about sex: Porky’s, The Last American Virgin and Fast Times at Ridgemont High. The only one to survive as a classic, Fast Times turned Phoebe Cates – who also appeared in the Blue Lagoon rip-off Paradise the same year – into a frozen-in-time icon of adolescent sexuality. Today we’ll talk about this sudden explosion of teen sex on movie screens, and compare Cates’s public persona and attitude to on-screen sexuality to that of Blue Lagoon star Brooke Shields. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

While the music video was still in its infancy as a cultural phenomenon, two films were released that were accused of aping the “MTV aesthetic”: Adrian Lyne’s Flashdance, and Risky Business, which turned Tom Cruise into a major star. Today we’ll talk about what the “MTV aesthetic” was and why it was considered a big deal for movies to be influenced about it, and we’ll examine how both of these movies treated sex work and race within the context of 80s social mores and Reagan capitalism. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In a time of bombastic blockbusters (and Reagan’s re-election), two auteurs defy the norms by releases violent films about sexual obsession, sparking a controversial mini-trend which one critic dubs “Vioporn.” Kathleen Turner, then also starring in a family-friendly blockbuster, plays a sex worker with a double life in Ken Russell’s Crimes of Passion. Brian DePalma, the most talked-about director of the moment, takes his tribute/critique of Hitchcock to the next level by casting Melanie Griffith – daughter of Hitchcock blonde Tippi Hedren – as a porn star in Body Double. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Just as the AIDS-related death of Rock Hudson was finally forcing straight people – and Hollywood – to acknowledge that epidemic, a film was released that transposed the new climate of sexual fear into a murder mystery. The sleeper hit of 1985, Jagged Edge turned Glenn Close from a respected actress into a star, and established the brand of screenwriter Joe Eszterhas, who would later write Basic Instinct and Showgirls. Almost a decade after radical feminists began to call for a crackdown on violent sexual imagery, Jagged Edge tried to have its cake and eat it, too: infusing its sex and violence – and its depiction of a career woman – with a fundamentally conservative point of view. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Billed as the hottest Hollywood film since Last Tango, 9 ½ Weeks was considered to have missed the mark by everyone who made it – including director Adrian Lyne, stars Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger, producer/writer Zalman King and his wife, writer Patricia Knop. Today we’ll talk about why this intoxicating and troubling film is worth a second look, how to square away the arguably feminist finished product from a production process that robbed Basinger of agency, and we’ll explore the film Rourke and King re-teamed on as a re-do, Wild Orchid. We’ll also talk about Rourke’s “bad boy” persona, and his problematic relationship with his second wife and co-star, supermodel Carre Otis. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The erotic thriller goes commercially mainstream with Fatal Attraction, a film which starts a national conversation about whether or not women can “have it all” – “it all” meaning both careers and marriage. Is Fatal Attraction an indictment of working women as “witches” and a call to roll back women’s rights, or a snapshot of extreme toxic masculinity? Plus: Dirty Dancing. Is it evil? To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The 1988 baseball blockbuster Bull Durham confirms Kevin Costner as the ultimate squeaky-clean, all-American heartthrob, building on a sexual persona sparked the year before with the neonoir No Way Out. Today we’ll talk about why Costner was the quintessential safe hunk for the 80s, his alchemic chemistry with co-star Sean Young in No Way Out, and her subsequent rocky road through Hollywood misogyny. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

American independent film is launched into the mainstream by Steven Soderbergh’s sex, lies and videotape, starring James Spader as an impotent man who gets off on filming women talking about sex. Videotape also plays a role in a Spader film released almost simultaneously, Bad Influence, in which he plays a meek yuppie at the mercy of alpha male Rob Lowe – who was trying to rehabilitate his career after a tape leaked shot by the actor and documenting his real-life threesomes — one with a 16 year-old girl. We close the first half of this season talking about Lowe, Spader and how camcorder mediation of sex changed pop culture forever. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This season, we explore the most controversial film in the history of Disney Animation. With the launch of Disney Plus, the company's entire library could be made available for streaming. The one film promised to remain locked away is "Song of the South," the 1946 animation/live-action hybrid set on a post-Civil War plantation.  What is "Song of the South?" Why did Disney make it even amidst protests? And why have they held the actual film from release for the past thirty-plus years, while finding other ways to profit off of it? Join us, won’t you? As we uncover this hidden film in the Disney vault. New episodes of “You Must Remember This” will be released every Tuesday. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the new Hollywood satire from the Coen Brothers, Josh Brolin plays a studio "fixer" named Eddie Mannix. The real Eddie Mannix was a New Jersey-born reputed gangster who rose through the ranks at MGM to become the studio's general manager. His position required ensuring that the darker, more scandalous actions of MGM’s biggest names were kept hidden from the public and press at large. While devoting his career to protecting the personal lives of MGM’s employees, Mannix had his own colorful personal life: a chronic adulterer with a history of domestic violence, he married his mistress Toni, who went on to have an open, Mannix-endorsed affair with Superman star George Reeves, whose death under mysterious circumstances hung a cloud over Mannix's legacy. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After the death of her first husband and creative partner, Polly moves to New York, where she swiftly meets and falls in love with Peter Bogdanovich. Together Polly and Peter build a life around the obsessive consumption of Hollywood movies, with Polly acting as Peter’s Jill-of-all-trades support system as he first ingratiates himself with the previous two generations of Hollywood auteurs as a critic/historian, and then makes his way into making his own films. Together, Polly and Peter write and produce Targets, Bogdanovich’s first credited feature, and also collaborate on a documentary about the great director John Ford. By the time Polly gives birth to their first daughter, she believes she and Peter are an indivisible, equal creative partnership — regardless of how credit is distributed in Hollywood. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Esther Williams single-handedly helped popularize the pastime of swimming — first as the star swimmer of the San Francisco production of Billy Rose's Aquacade, and then as the star of Hollywood films like Bathing Beauties and Million Dollar Mermaid. Williams’s stardom — and the necessity to maintain her image as a grinning glamour girl, even while submerged underwater — led to the creation of several waterproof products and swimwear innovations, from waterproof foundation and eyeliner to bathing cap couture. Despite two decades of sustained celebrity and brand power, Williams eventually struggled to maintain the pristine bathing beauty facade. She lost her MGM contract in the 1960s and had to pay millions to the studio in damages. On her way down, she slapped her name on swimming pools and exercise videos, stumbled through four unhappy marriages and started to experiment with LSD for her depression. Drawing on previously untapped resources, Rachel Syme will tell the story of Williams' rise and fall, and the innovations in aqua-beauty she inspired, while also analyzing why we want to be waterproof, why we want to be so invulnerable to the elements and why putting swimming on-screen led to pressures for women to look put-together, even when sopping wet. This episode was written and performed by Rachel Syme, a writer, reporter and cultural critic living in New York City. She writes a regular column for The New Yorker on fashion and beauty. She is also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, GQ, Vanity Fair and Esquire. She often writes about the complex intersection between fame, glamour, beauty and feminism. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When Spencer Tracy signed with MGM, he was a character actor better known for his problem drinking (and very public extramarital affair with Loretta Young) than for his movie hits. But the studio made him a star, and by the time Katharine Hepburn was looking for a male star who could play a prototypical American male opposite her very idiosyncratic persona, Tracy was the obvious choice. Tracy and Hepburn became one of the most legendary Hollywood couples of the century, on-screen and off, and their partnership helped to canonize both as important stars. But their personal relationship was complicated by his drinking and his relationships with other women -- including his wife. This episode is brought to you by Audible.com, with over 180,000 audio books and spoken word products. For a 30 day free trial and a free audiobook of your choice, go to audible.com/remember. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Start building your website today at Squarespace.com. Use offer code REMEMBER at check out to get 10% off. Squarespace. Build it beautiful. Mysteries of the Ancient World #12, Soldiers of the 20th Century provided by freesoundtrackmusic.com To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The rare silent star who made a relatively smooth transition to sound films, William “Billy” Haines was one of the top box office stars of the late 1920s-early 1930s. Beginning in 1926, Haines started living with Jimmie Shields, and the two men became one of the most popular couples on the Hollywood social scene, facing little if any homophobia among the industry’s elite. But as times changed and the heat from the censors began to get hotter, MGM began to put pressure on Haines to pretend to be someone he wasn’t. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Elizabeth Taylor grew up on the MGM lot, spending 18 years as what she referred to as “MGM chattel.” The last four years of that 18 year sentence were arguably the most interesting. From 1956-1960, she made a run of really interesting films including Giant, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Butterfield 8, and she met the “love of her life”, Mike Todd, and turned him into her third husband. When Todd died a year later Liz sought comfort in the arms of Todd’s friend - and Debbie Reynolds’ husband — Eddie Fisher. Taylor capped off the decade by almost dying, winning her first Oscar, and breaking free from MGM to become the highest paid actress up to that time. This episode is brought to you by Harry's. Make every morning he shaves feel like a Holiday. Harry’s will give you $5 off your first order with code REMEMBER. Free shipping for the Holidays ends on December 10th, so act now. Harrys.com enter code REMEMBER. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A new season of You Must Remember This is just over a month away, but to tide you over, have a listen to a special presentation: an episode of Nate DiMeo's wonderful podcast "The Memory Palace." This episode, titled "AKA Leo," tells the story of the lion that became iconically associated with MGM. If you like what you hear, check out Nate's fabulous new book, The Memory Palace: True Short Stories of the Past, out now! To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rising romantic lead John Gilbert signed with MGM in 1924 and the next year he starred in King Vidor’s The Big Parade, the studio’s biggest hit of the silent era. That same year, Louis B. Mayer brought his new discovery to Hollywood: an enigmatic Swedish actress named Greta Garbo. Garbo and Gilbert starred together in the romantic melodrama Flesh and the Devil, and began a relationship in real-life, which was eagerly exploited by the still-fledgling Hollywood publicity machine. Gilbert’s career suffered from his contentious relationship with Mayer, and his increasing alcoholism, while Garbo’s star continued to rise. In 1933, Garbo made it a condition of her MGM contract extension that the studio cast Gilbert as her love interest in Queen Christina. Within three years, Gilbert was dead. Within ten years, Garbo’s career had taken a turn, too. This episode was sponsored by Audible.com, with over 180,000 audio books and spoken word audio products. For a 30-day trial and FREE audiobook of your choice, go to audible.com/remember. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode was originally released on March 21, 2017. Listen to help prep for the next episode of our new season, The Old Man is Still Alive. How did a star whose persona seemed to be all about childlike joy and eternally vibrant sexuality die, single and childless, at the age of 36? In fact, the circumstances of Marilyn Monroe’s death are confusing and disputed. In this episode we will explore the last five years of her life, including the demise of her relationship with Arthur Miller, the troubled making of The Misfits, and Marilyn’s aborted final film, and try to sort out the various facts and conspiracy theories surrounding her death. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A preview of the new season of You Must Remember This, which covers the late careers of Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Vincente Minnelli and ten other directors who began their careers in the silent or early sound eras, and were still making movies in the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s, in spite of the challenges posed by massive cultural changes and their advanced age. In this mini-episode we’ll discuss the parallels between this history and today, from the tech industry takeover of Hollywood to the late work of Coppola and Scorsese; the interview with George Cukor that inspired the title of this season; the Orson Welles-Peter Bogdanovich-Quentin Tarantino connection that informs the way we think about “old man” movies, and much more. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 1930, after putting in time at MGM and RKO, Paramount executive David O. Selznick married Irene Mayer, the daughter of L.B. Mayer. Irene’s father would soon thereafter bring Selznick to MGM to fill in for an ailing Irving Thalberg, but MGM was too small for Selznick’s dreams. He started his own independent studio, through which he created the original A Star is Born, the only Hitchcock movie to win Best Picture, and the biggest hit in the history of Hollywood, Gone with the Wind. This episode is brought to you by MUBI. To try MUBI for free for an entire month, go to mubi.com/rememberthis. This episode is also brought to you by Casper mattresses. Get $50 toward any mattress purchase by visiting www.casper.com/remember and using promo code REMEMBER. Terms and Conditions Apply. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 1933, the biggest female star in American movies wasn’t a sex symbol like Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow or Marlene Dietrich. It was Marie Dressler — homely, overweight and over 60 years old. The public loved nothing better than to see their Marie play a drunk or a dowager and steal every scene from the glamour girls less than half her age. Dressler had been down and out for most of the 1920s. That she became a star at age 60 was an achievement that told Depression-battered audiences it was never too late. Today we take a look at the life of Marie Dressler; from Broadway, to the picket lines, to the breadline and to the Oscar podium, she proved that in some cases, Hollywood stardom can be more than skin-deep. This episode was written and performed by Farran Smith Nehme, who has written about film and film history for the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, the New York Times, Film Comment, Sight & Sound, Criterion and at her blog, Self-Styled Siren. Her novel, Missing Reels, was published in 2014. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Polly’s third marriage falls apart, and she enters more than one destructive affair. During these tumultuous times, Polly establishes a new collaboration with a male writer-director, James L. Brooks, and together the two turn another Larry McMurtry novel into a classic film: Terms of Endearment. Once again, while working on this film about a combative mother-daughter relationship, Polly finds that art and life are intertwined. Polly’s own story starts showing up in other people’s movies, including Irreconcilable Differences -- starring Ryan O’Neal as a version of Peter Bogdanovich. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Disney Plus is launching with the stated intention of streaming the entire Disney library... except for "Song of the South," a 1946 animation/live-action hybrid film set on a post-Civil War plantation. It was theatrically re-released as recently as 1986, and served as the basis for the ride Splash Mountain, but has never been available in the US on home video. What is "Song of the South?" Why did Disney make it and why have they held the actual film from release, while finding other ways to profit off of it? To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices