DiscoverYou Must Remember This118: Bela vs. Boris (Bela & Boris Part 4)
118: Bela vs. Boris (Bela & Boris Part 4)

118: Bela vs. Boris (Bela & Boris Part 4)

Update: 2017-11-073
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Lugosi and Karloff, the two stars made by Universal’s monster movies, made eight films together. Today we’ll dive deep into some of these movies (including The Black Cat, The Raven, Son of Frankenstein and Val Lewton’s The Body Snatcher), and continue to explore how even when their careers brought them together, Karloff and Lugosi remained worlds apart. Featuring Patton Oswalt as Boris Karloff and Taran Killam as Bela Lugosi.





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145: Ramon Novarro (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 19)
Ramon Novarro was a Mexican actor and singer whose stardom at MGM in the 1920s and 30s was not impeded by his offscreen life as a gay man. In Hollywood Babylon, Anger focuses only on Novarro’s grisly murder in 1968 -- which outed Novarro to a public that had largely forgotten him--and needlessly embellishes a crime scene that was already pretty horrible. Today, in our final episode of Fact-Checking Hollywood Babylon, we will explore the life which Anger left out of Hollywood Babylon, and correct that book’s version of Novarro’s death.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

145: Ramon Novarro (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 19)

2019-01-2900:52:001

144: The Trials of Confidential Magazine: Maureen O'Hara (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 18)
In part two of our two-parter on the demise of the biggest and most pernicious tabloid of the 1950s, we’ll explore what happened after the magazine’s claim that redheaded star Maureen O’Hara was caught having sex at Grauman’s Chinese Theater. O’Hara positioned herself the “Joan of Arc” of Hollywood, single-handedly defending a cowardly industry against the existential threat posed by Confidential. As we’ll see, this is one story where the Kenneth Anger version is more credible than the version related by one of the subjects. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

144: The Trials of Confidential Magazine: Maureen O'Hara (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 18)

2019-01-2200:35:371

143: The Trials of Confidential Magazine: Dorothy Dandridge (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 17)
Over two episodes, we will explore Hollywood Babylon’s coverage of Confidential Magazine and the two celebrities who testified against the scandal rag in the 1957 trial that helped end what Anger rightfully refers to as its “reign of terror.” We’ll begin with Dorothy Dandridge, the first black actress to be nominated for a Best Actress Oscar. Dandridge’s testimony against Confidential reveals the publication’s racist agenda, as well as the double standards that governed her real private and public lives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

143: The Trials of Confidential Magazine: Dorothy Dandridge (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 17)

2019-01-1500:45:57

142: Bugsy Siegel (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 16)
Jewish gangster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel is frequently credited with corrupting Hollywood’s unions and “inventing” Las Vegas. Siegel did have movie star friends, but the true story of his involvement with the Flamingo casino is also the story of a much bigger movieland player: Hollywood Reporter founder/publisher/columnist Billy Wilkerson. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

142: Bugsy Siegel (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 16)

2019-01-0800:38:16

141: Marlene Dietrich, Claudette Colbert, and the “sewing circle” (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 15)
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141: Marlene Dietrich, Claudette Colbert, and the “sewing circle” (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 15)

2018-12-2500:44:02

140: Lupe Velez (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 14)
Mexican actress Lupe Velez was the victim of one of Anger’s cruelest invented stories. His fabrication of her manner of death lays bare a vicious racism in addition to Hollywood Babylon’s usual sexism. Today we will sort out the fact of Velez’s life from Anger’s fiction and consider the star of the Mexican Spitfire series as a comedienne ahead of her time.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

140: Lupe Velez (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 14)

2018-12-1800:48:49

139: Mary Astor's Diary (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 13)
In 1936, actress Mary Astor (who had not yet made her most famous film, The Maltese Falcon) and her husband went to court to fight for custody of their four year-old daughter. The trail made international news thanks to both sides’ use of Astor’s diary, in which she had recorded details of her affair with playwright George S. Kaufman. How much did Astor truly reveal in her diary, and what role did the scandal play in her life and career?Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

139: Mary Astor's Diary (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 13)

2018-12-1100:54:28

138: Mae West (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 12)
Mae West was the biggest new star in Hollywood in 1933, thanks to two hit films she co-wrote and starred in as a sexually implicit, wisecracking broad who romanced a young Cary Grant. In Hollywood Babylon, Anger credits West’s abrupt decline in movies to a coordinated conspiracy organized by William Randolph Hearst and carried out by the Hays Office. Today we’ll explore West’s background, her history of pushing the censors past the limits of legality, and the truth of her lightning-fast rise in Hollywood and somewhat slower descent back to earth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

138: Mae West (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 12)

2018-12-0400:55:361

137: Gina Lollobrigida (The Seduced, Episode 6)
This Italian pin-up, along with Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot, was emblematic of a brand of post-war European sexuality that America happily imported. But the Hollywood career of  “La Lollo” was delayed, thanks to Howard Hughes, whose obsession with Lollobrigida led him to keep her virtually imprisoned in a Los Angeles hotel and sign her to a contract that essentially made it impossible for her to work for any other U.S. producer.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

137: Gina Lollobrigida (The Seduced, Episode 6)

2018-11-2000:41:40

136: Yvonne De Carlo
The future Lily Munster became a star when producer Walter Wanger cast her in Salome, Where She Danced (1945). A curvaceous brunette in her early 20s, De Carlo fit the mold of Howard Hughes’ mid-century girlfriends to a T. But that relationship would be brief, and De Carlo would go on to distinguish herself in movies, television, and as a star of the original production of Stephen Sondheim’s Follies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

136: Yvonne De Carlo

2018-11-1300:43:331

135: Linda Darnell (The Seduced, Episode 4)
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135: Linda Darnell (The Seduced, Episode 4)

2018-11-0600:45:19

134: Ann Dvorak (The Seduced, Episode 3)
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134: Ann Dvorak (The Seduced, Episode 3)

2018-10-3000:47:51

133: The Bacchanal of 1920s Hollywood, via Frederica Sagor Maas (The Seduced Episode 2)
Seduction begins at an MGM sponsored orgy at the Ambassador Hotel, as told through the eyes of one of the attendees, a young female screenwriter named Frederica Sagor. Sagor would go on to pen one of the frankest memoirs of 1920s Hollywood, revealing the systematic sexual exploitation of women in the film industry by men like Marshall Neilan--one of Howard Hughes’ early mentors. Frederica’s story also details how tough it was for a woman to hold on to power behind the scenes in the film industry as Hollywood evolved. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

133: The Bacchanal of 1920s Hollywood, via Frederica Sagor Maas (The Seduced Episode 2)

2018-10-2300:38:321

132: Rupert Hughes's Women (The Seduced, Episode 1)
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132: Rupert Hughes's Women (The Seduced, Episode 1)

2018-10-1600:47:35

131: Clara Bow (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 11)
We’ll close this half of our Hollywood Babylon season with one of that book’s most famously distorted stories: the tale of “It” Girl Clara Bow’s supposed nymphomania and alleged “tackling” of the entire USC football team. The real story of Clara Bow’s life and career is a much richer tale, involving changing sexual mores, and the change in the audience’s tastes that overlapped with the end of the silent era. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

131: Clara Bow (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 11)

2018-09-1101:01:091

130: Rudolph Valentino (Fake News: Fact-Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 10)
Rudolph Valentino was Hollywood’s first “latin lover.” His shocking death at the age of 31 was attributed to side effects from an appendectomy, but Hollywood Babylon forwards theories that Valentino may have actually been poisoned, or killed by the husband of a lover, and/or secretly gay and recently divorced from his second secretly lesbian wife. What was the real story of Valentino’s marriages, and what really led to his untimely demise?Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

130: Rudolph Valentino (Fake News: Fact-Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 10)

2018-09-0400:57:071

129: Thomas Ince and the Hearst "Coverup" (Fake News: Fact-Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 9)
Thomas Ince was one of early Hollywood’s most pioneering producers—in fact, some credit him for popularizing “producer” as a job title and for codifying what it meant to do the job, as well as helping to develop the Western as a genre. But today, if Ince is remembered at all, it’s for his death aboard a yacht owned by William Randolph Hearst, amidst a star-studded party attended by Chaplin, writer Elinor Glyn, and actress/Hearst’s mistress Marion Davies. For decades, rumors have swirled that Ince was felled not by “acute indigestion,” as Hearst’s papers claimed, but by “a bullet hole in [his] head,” as Kenneth Anger put it. Who was Ince, what really happened on that yacht, and why have fictionalizations of his death (spread by Anger and others) flourished for so long?Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

129: Thomas Ince and the Hearst "Coverup" (Fake News: Fact-Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 9)

2018-08-2800:43:111

128: Peggy Hopkins Joyce and Charlie Chaplin (Fake News: Fact-Checking Hollywood Babylon, Episode 8)
The Kim Kardashian of her day, Peggy Hopkins Joyce was famous for being rich and famous—and for her marriages and involvements with rich and famous men, including Charlie Chaplin. Did Peggy really ask Chaplin on their first date if he was “hung like a horse?” We’ll investigate this and other claims made about the affair in Hollywood Babylon, and chart how the dalliance with Hopkins Joyce inspired Chaplin’s first dramatic film A Woman of Paris, and explain how a woman of the 1910s-1920s could come from nothing and become internationally famous before ever arriving in Hollywood. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

128: Peggy Hopkins Joyce and Charlie Chaplin (Fake News: Fact-Checking Hollywood Babylon, Episode 8)

2018-08-2101:02:08

127: Will Hays and "Pre-Code" Hollywood (Fake News: Fact-Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 7)
Who was Will Hays, and how did he come to put his name on the censorship “Code” that would shape the content of movies more than any other single force from the early 1930s into the 1960s? How much power did Hays really have in 1920s Hollywood, how corrupt was he, and why did it take a decade before the Hays Code was fully enforced?Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

127: Will Hays and "Pre-Code" Hollywood (Fake News: Fact-Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 7)

2018-08-1400:50:541

126: Wallace Reid (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 6)
According to Hollywood Babylon, actor Wallace Reid—a morphine addict who died in an asylum at the age of 31—was the first sacrificial lamb of the post-scandal era, and Reid’s wife, a former teen star named Dorothy Davenport, was the ultimate opportunistic hypocrite. What made Reid’s case different from the other scandals around this time? Was Davenport the black widow that Anger suggests, or should she be remembered as a pioneering female writer, producer and director? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

126: Wallace Reid (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 6)

2018-08-0700:59:132

125: Mabel Normand (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 5)
A frequent co-star of Roscoe Arbuckle’s, Mabel Normand was the definitive female screen comedienne of her generation. But it wasn’t her association with Arbuckle that brought Normand’s career to an abrupt close and her life to an early end. Today we’ll interrogate Hollywood Babylon’s claim that Normand was a cocaine addict, explore Normand’s involvement in various scandals which did more damage than drugs, and talk about the disease that led to her early death.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

125: Mabel Normand (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 5)

2018-07-3100:46:312

124: William Desmond Taylor (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 4)
The killing of director William Desmond Taylor was the third in a trifecta of scandals which, over the course of about a year and a half, painted such a sordid a picture of the movie colony as a hotbed of sin that the industry was forced to fundamentally change its way of conducting business. Anger’s telling implies that Taylor’s murder may have been a consequence of the affairs he supposedly conducted simultaneously with several women, including both a starlet and her mother, or related to the fact that Taylor was living under an assumed identity and employing his own brother as his butler. Today we’ll sort out fact from fiction in the Taylor case, and demonstrate how the media frenzy surrounding it had wide-ranging consequences despite the fact that no one was ever arrested for the crime.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

124: William Desmond Taylor (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 4)

2018-07-2400:44:291

123: Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and Virginia Rappe (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 3)
At a boozy party over Labor Day weekend 1921, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, silent Hollywood’s superstar plus-size comedian, followed sometime actress Virginia Rappe into a hotel room. They were alone together for only a few minutes, but in that time, Rappe fell ill, and died several days later from her sickness. Arbuckle was tried for murder, and accused of rape in the newspapers. The story of the definitive sex-and-death scandal in early Hollywood history, which left a woman dead and effectively killed off a star comedian’s career, has been plagued with misinformation and distortions for nearly 100 years. Today we’ll closely examine Anger’s text to demonstrate how he implies both Arbuckle and Rappe’s guilt, and we’ll also use more recent scholarship on the case to try to suss out what really happened in that hotel room, and how the facts were distorted throughout Arbuckle’s three trials. This episode includes graphic descriptions of sexual violence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

123: Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and Virginia Rappe (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 3)

2018-07-1701:10:151

122: Olive Thomas (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 2)
The first Hollywood scandal to attract international attention was the death-by-poison of Olive Thomas, the twenty-five-year old star of au courant Hollywood hit The Flapper. According to Hollywood Babylon, Thomas’s death was the suicide of a woman desperate over her failure to score dope for her junkie husband. What’s the real story—and what role was played by Jack Pickford, Olive’s husband and the brother of the actress then considered “America’s Sweetheart”?Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

122: Olive Thomas (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 2)

2018-07-1000:49:131

121: D.W. Griffith, the Gish Sisters and the origin of "Hollywood Babylon" (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 1)
This season will interrogate Kenneth Anger’s controversial and influential gossip collection, Hollywood Babylon. Is this cult classic a needed subversive attack on Hollywood’s false idols, or a dangerous work of “fake news”? In our first episode, we’ll look at how D.W. Griffith’s follow-up to his racist smash The Birth of a Nation gave Anger the structuring image of his gossip bible, helping to set the ironic tone of the book. But what of Anger’s accusations that Griffith was a known pedophile, and that his stars, sisters Dorothy and Lillian Gish, were incestuous?Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

121: D.W. Griffith, the Gish Sisters and the origin of "Hollywood Babylon" (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 1)

2018-07-0300:52:404

120: Boris and Roger Corman (Bela & Boris Part 6)
Where Bela Lugosi lived his last decade in sad obscurity, Boris Karloff worked until the very end of his life, even as his body began to fall apart. Some of that work was for Roger Corman, the extremely prolific independent genre film producer whose movies helped to define the generation gap in the 1960s, while serving as a training ground for the next generation of auteurs. Karloff’s and Corman’s finest collaboration, Peter Bogdanovich’s directorial debut Targets, would serve as a bridge between cinematica eras, paying tribute to Karloff and his long career while depicting events that were shockingly of-the-moment--and still relevant today. Featuring Rian Johnson as Roger Corman and Patton Oswalt as Boris Karloff.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

120: Boris and Roger Corman (Bela & Boris Part 6)

2017-11-2100:48:1314

119: Bela and Ed Wood (Bela & Boris Part 5)
Forgotten by Hollywood, struggling with morphine addiction and a dependency on alcohol, at the end of his life Bela Lugosi was welcomed into a rag tag bunch of micro-budget movie-making freaks led by Edward D. Wood Jr,, who would later become known as the worst filmmaker of all time. Through their collaborations on movies like Glen or Glenda? and Bride of the Monster, did Ed Wood help Bela, exploit him, or a little of both? Featuring Taran Killam as Bela Lugosi and Noah Segan as Ed Wood.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

119: Bela and Ed Wood (Bela & Boris Part 5)

2017-11-1400:43:433

118: Bela vs. Boris (Bela & Boris Part 4)
Lugosi and Karloff, the two stars made by Universal’s monster movies, made eight films together. Today we’ll dive deep into some of these movies (including The Black Cat, The Raven, Son of Frankenstein and Val Lewton’s The Body Snatcher), and continue to explore how even when their careers brought them together, Karloff and Lugosi remained worlds apart. Featuring Patton Oswalt as Boris Karloff and Taran Killam as Bela Lugosi.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

118: Bela vs. Boris (Bela & Boris Part 4)

2017-11-0700:55:563

117: Boris and the Monsters (Bela & Boris Part 3)
After twenty years as a journeyman actor/laborer, Boris Karloff became an instant superstar as the Monster in Frankenstein (1931). Today we’ll explore how Karloff, unlike Lugosi, managed to maintain a steady stardom throughout the decades, returning to the monster that made him without feeling trapped by the character. Featuring Patton Oswalt as Boris Karloff.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

117: Boris and the Monsters (Bela & Boris Part 3)

2017-10-3100:55:404

116: Bela and the Vampires (Bela & Boris Part 2)
With Dracula (1931), Bela Lugosi instantly became the first horror star of sound cinema. It’s not easy being a trailblazer, and Bela would have difficulty capitalizing on his newfound stardom. In this episode we’ll discuss how Dracula made him, and trapped him, and trace the subsequent vampire roles that became his bread and butter.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

116: Bela and the Vampires (Bela & Boris Part 2)

2017-10-2401:03:214

115: Where the Monsters Came From (Bela & Boris Part 1)
Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff were two middle-aged, foreign, struggling actors who became huge stars thanks to Dracula and Frankenstein, the first two of a trend of monster movie hits released by Universal Studios during the 1930s. This season, we’ll discuss their parallel but very different lives and careers. Today, we’ll start by exploring where each man came from, what they were doing before they got to Universal, and why Universal began making monster movies in the first place.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

115: Where the Monsters Came From (Bela & Boris Part 1)

2017-10-1700:36:5011

114: The Last of Jean/Jane Works Out (Jean & Jane Part 9)
Jean Seberg, now plagued with mental illness and alcoholism, comes to a tragic end in Paris. Jane Fonda reinvents herself, once again, for the 80s.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

114: The Last of Jean/Jane Works Out (Jean & Jane Part 9)

2017-08-2200:52:562

113: Coming Home (Jean & Jane Part 8)
Jean buries her child in Iowa, and then returns to Paris in a fragile mental state. Increasingly plagued by both justifiable paranoia and delusions, she makes her last significant films (including another misguided collaboration with Romain Gary), and another attempt at marriage. Back in the States, Jane subsumes her passion for activism into her new marriage to Tom Hayden, and works to get her movie career back on track by producing commercial yet socially conscious vehicles in which she can star in. One of these films, Coming Home, would become both an anti-war and feminist landmark, and would win Jane another Oscar.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

113: Coming Home (Jean & Jane Part 8)

2017-08-1501:04:234

112: Hanoi Jane & The FBI vs. Jean Seberg’s Baby (Jean & Jane Part 7)
After shooting a film with a much-changed Jean-Luc Godard, Jane Fonda travels to Vietnam, where she naively participates in a stunt that would leave her branded “Hanoi Jane” for decades. The world media had a field day mocking her, the US government set to work plotting to destroy her, and Jane would seek refuge in a new relationship with activist-turned-politician Tom Hayden. Meanwhile, in the midst of divorcing Romain Gary, Jean found herself pregnant. Having wiretapped a phone call between Jean and a Black Panther about her pregnancy, the FBI decided to “neutralize” both Seberg and her unborn child.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

112: Hanoi Jane & The FBI vs. Jean Seberg’s Baby (Jean & Jane Part 7)

2017-08-0801:07:251

111: Jean and Jane Become Public Enemies (Jean & Jane Part 6)
On the heels of making her biggest Hollywood movies in years, Jean Seberg becomes involved with two black radicals, one a cousin of Malcolm X who spouted violent, anti-white rhetoric, the other a leader of the Black Panthers. Jean starts offering money and support to these men and their causes, which attracts the attention of the FBI. Meanwhile, Jane leaves Vadim - and Hollywood - to find herself as a political activist, working on behalf of American Indians, the Black Panthers, and Vietnam veterans. Despite all her best efforts, Jane hadn’t yet alienated Hollywood - while she was being watched by the FBI, Jane starred in one of the great surveillance thrillers of the 1970s, Klute. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

111: Jean and Jane Become Public Enemies (Jean & Jane Part 6)

2017-08-0101:03:222

110: Jane vs "Barbarella" (Jean & Jane Part 5)
Having coaxed Jane into participating in an open marriage, Vadim began casting her in films as a male fantasy of female sexual liberation. This phase of her career would peak with Barbarella, a sci-fi film based on an erotic comic book featuring Jane as a horny space warrior. Jane’s perfect body was on full display and fetishized the world over, but no one knew the self-destruction that went on behind the scenes in order to maintain her looks. While Vadim was building her up as an international sex kitten, Jane was gradually becoming more socially conscious. For all of his experience with women, Roger Vadim didn’t know what to do with a woke wife. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

110: Jane vs "Barbarella" (Jean & Jane Part 5)

2017-07-2500:51:323

109: Jean vs "Lilith" (Jean & Jane Part 4)
Having left her husband to be the mistress of writer/diplomat Romain Gary, Jean secretly gave birth to a son, and then made the movie that she thought would prove herself as an actress once and for all. In Lilith, Seberg would go all in on her portrayal of madness - perhaps too deep. After a disastrous collaboration with Gary, Jean happily accepted an offer to star in a big budget Hollywood musical. But it was 1969, the studio system had crumbled, and that musical - Paint Your Wagon - would become a symbol of everything that was wrong with the Hollywood establishment.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

109: Jean vs "Lilith" (Jean & Jane Part 4)

2017-07-1800:51:172

108: Jean and Jane in Paris (Jean & Jane Part 3)
With her Hollywood career already something of a disappointment, Jean Seberg took a chance on a French film critic turned first-time director who wanted her to play an amoral American in an experimental movie without a script. The result was Breathless, the catalyzing hit of the French New Wave and the movie that would make Jean Seberg an icon. Soon thereafter, Jane Fonda got her own invitation to come make a movie in Paris, where she’d soon fall in love with Roger Vadim, the man who discovered Brigitte Bardot. Jane Fonda would become Vadim’s new creative muse, as well as his third wife. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

108: Jean and Jane in Paris (Jean & Jane Part 3)

2017-07-1100:50:292

107: Jean and Otto Preminger/Jane in New York (Jean & Jane Part 2)
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

107: Jean and Otto Preminger/Jane in New York (Jean & Jane Part 2)

2017-07-0400:55:412

106: Hollywood Royalty/Middle-American Martyr (Jean & Jane Part 1)
Introducing our new series, “Jean and Jane,” exploring the parallel lives of Jane Fonda and Jean Seberg, two white American actresses who found great success (and husbands) in France before boldly and controversially lending their celebrity to causes like civil rights and the anti-war movement. Fonda and Seberg were both tracked by the FBI during the Nixon administration, which considered both actresses to be threats to national security. But for all their similarities, Jane and Jean would end up on different paths. They also started from very different circumstances. Today we’ll track Jane’s difficult upbringing with her famous but absentee father and troubled mother, and the path of privilege - and tragedy - that led her to the Actor’s Studio. Meanwhile, in small town, church-dominated Iowa, Jean Seberg announced herself as the town rebel at age 14 when she joined the NAACP. Three years later, she was plucked out of obscurity by a mad genius movie director to star in one of the highest-profile Hollywood movies of the late-50s. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

106: Hollywood Royalty/Middle-American Martyr (Jean & Jane Part 1)

2017-06-2700:42:16

105: Dorothy Stratten (Dead Blondes Part 13)
Our Dead Blondes season concludes with the story of Dorothy Stratten. Coaxed into nude modeling by Paul Snider, her sleazy boyfriend-turned-husband, 18 year-old Stratten was seized on by Playboy as the heir apparent to Marilyn Monroe. She ascended to the top of the Playboy firmament quickly, and just after Hugh Hefner decided to make her Playmate of the Year, she met filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich, who fell in love with her and rewrote his upcoming film, They All Laughed, to give Dorothy a star-making role. After filming They All Laughed Dorothy planned to leave Snider and Playboy for life with Bogdanovich - but her husband had other ideas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

105: Dorothy Stratten (Dead Blondes Part 13)

2017-04-2500:45:312

104: Barbara Loden (Dead Blondes Part 12)
Barbara Loden won a Tony Award for playing a character based on Marilyn Monroe in Arthur Miller’s After the Fall. Like Marilyn, Barbara was a beauty with no pedigree who fled a hopeless upbringing in search of the fulfillment of fame. Like Marilyn, Loden found some measure of security as the mistress (and eventual wife) of a powerful man, in Loden’s case Elia Kazan. But instead of satisfying her, her small taste of fame and her relationship with Kazan left Barbara Loden wanting more, which would lead her to write, direct and star in a groundbreaking independent movie of her own. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

104: Barbara Loden (Dead Blondes Part 12)

2017-04-1800:44:09

103: Grace Kelly (Dead Blondes Part 11)
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

103: Grace Kelly (Dead Blondes Part 11)

2017-04-1100:50:074

102: Barbara Payton (Dead Blondes Part 10)
In our Joan Crawford series, we talked about Barbara Payton as the young, troubled third wife of Crawford’s ex Franchot Tone, whose inability to choose between Tone and another actor brought all three of them down into tabloid Hell. Today, we revisit Payton’s story, and expand it, to explore her rise to quasi-fame, and the slippery slope that reduced her from “most likely to succeed” to informal prostitution, to formal prostitution, and finally to a way-too-early grave. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

102: Barbara Payton (Dead Blondes Part 10)

2017-04-0400:44:59

101: Jayne Mansfield (Dead Blondes Part 9)
More famous today for her gruesome car crash death than for any of the movies she made while alive, Jayne Mansfield was in some sense the most successful busty blonde hired by a studio as a Marilyn Monroe copy-cat. Mansfield’s satirical copy of Monroe’s act was so spot-on that it helped to hasten the end of the blonde bombshell, paradoxically endangering both actress’ careers. But she did manage to star in Hollywood’s first rock n’ roll movie, Hollywood’s first postmodern comedy, meet The Beatles, experiment with LSD, cheerfully align herself with Satanism for the photo op, and much more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

101: Jayne Mansfield (Dead Blondes Part 9)

2017-03-2800:42:211

100: Marilyn Monroe: The End (Dead Blondes Part 8)
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

100: Marilyn Monroe: The End (Dead Blondes Part 8)

2017-03-2100:46:595

99: Marilyn Monroe: The Persona (Dead Blondes Part 7)
How did Marilyn Monroe become the most iconic blonde of the 1950s, if not the century? Today we will trace how her image was created and developed, through her leading roles in movies and her featured coverage in the press, with special attention to the way Monroe’s on-screen persona took shape during the height of her career.  We’ll pay special attention to the films Niagara, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, How to Marry a Millionaire, and Bus Stop, and the struggles behind the scenes of Seven Year Itch and The Prince and the Showgirl. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

99: Marilyn Monroe: The Persona (Dead Blondes Part 7)

2017-03-1400:42:003

98: Marilyn Monroe: The Beginning (Dead Blondes Part 6)
Today we begin the first of three episodes on the most iconic dead blonde of them all, Marilyn Monroe. We’ll start be revisiting our episode on Marilyn from our series on stars during World War II, in which we traced the former Norma Jean from her unhappy, almost parentless childhood through her teenage marriage, her work in a wartime factory, her hand-to-mouth days as a model, her struggles to break into movies and, finally, the sex scandal that made her a star. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

98: Marilyn Monroe: The Beginning (Dead Blondes Part 6)

2017-03-0700:45:127

97: Carole Landis (Dead Blondes Part 5)
Carole Landis was a gifted comedienne, a decent singer, and - once she dyed her natural brown hair blonde - perhaps the most luminous beauty in movies of the early 1940s. Plus, she was one of the most dedicated USO performers of WWII, and her elopement with an Air Force pilot on her travels became the inspiration for a book, movie and long running tabloid narrative. But then Landis fell into an affair with Rex Harrison - and this affair turned out to be Landis’ last.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

97: Carole Landis (Dead Blondes Part 5)

2017-02-2800:47:191

96: Veronica Lake (Dead Blondes Part 4)
Veronica Lake had the most famous hairdo of the 1940s, if not the twentieth century. Her star turn in Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels and her noir pairings with Alan Ladd made her Paramount’s biggest wartime draw behind Hope and Crosby, but behind the scenes, Lake was a loner with a drinking problem who didn’t give an F about Hollywood etiquette. Bankrupt and without a studio contract, in the early 1950s she consciously quit movies. She claimed she left Hollywood to save her own life - so how did she end up dead at 50?Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

96: Veronica Lake (Dead Blondes Part 4)

2017-02-2100:47:59

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118: Bela vs. Boris (Bela & Boris Part 4)

118: Bela vs. Boris (Bela & Boris Part 4)

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