You Must Remember This
Episodes
“It wasn’t sexism, then” (Polly Platt, The Invisible Woman, Episode 1)
26 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Sneak Peek: Polly Platt, The Invisible Woman, Episode 1
19 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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 fi...
Season Trailer: Polly Platt, The Invisible Woman
05 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Polly Platt -- producer, writer and Oscar-nominated production designer -- lived an epic Hollywood life. And yet, if you know Platt’s name today, i...
159: Vanessa Williams, Whitney Houston and Hollywood’s Misogynoir Problem (Make Me Over, Episode 8)
10 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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 dow...
158: The Hemingway Curse? Mariel and Margaux (Make Me Over, Episode 7)
03 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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-des...
157: Cass Elliot, Carnie Wilson and Fat-Shaming in Rock and Pop (Make Me Over, Episode 6)
25 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Cass Elliot didn’t die eating a ham sandwich. But the lasting power of that urban legend speaks to a far darker story. Elliot possessed one of the m...
156: Esther Williams and the Birth of Waterproof Makeup (Make Me Over, Episode 5)
18 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Esther Williams single-handedly helped popularize the pastime of swimming — first as the star swimmer of the San Francisco production of Billy Ros...
155: Passing for White: Merle Oberon (Make Me Over, Episode 4)
11 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 1935, Merle Oberon became the first biracial actress to be nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, an incredible achievement in then-segregated Hollywo...
154: Marie Dressler, the First Female Star to Conquer Hollywood’s Ageism (Make Me Over, Episode 3)
04 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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 —...
153: Hollywood’s First Weight Loss Guru: Madame Sylvia (Make Me Over, Episode 2)
28 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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 myste...
152: Hollywood’s First Weight Loss Surgery: Molly O’Day (Make Me Over, Episode 1)
21 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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 f...
Sneak Peek: Make Me Over
14 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this companion series to You Must Remember This, Karina Longworth will introduce eight stories about Hollywood’s intersection with the beauty ind...
151: Splash Mountain (Six Degrees of Song of the South, Episode 6)
26 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
After two more successful theatrical releases, in 1980 and 1986, Disney decided to put Song of the South in the “Disney Vault” and never released ...
150: Blaxploitation and the White Backlash (Six Degrees of Song of the South, Episode 5)
19 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 mov...
149: White Allies and the Blacklist: Maurice Rapf (Six Degrees of Song of the South, Episode 4)
12 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 k...
148: “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah,” Minstrels in Hollywood and The Oscars (Six Degrees of Song of the South, Episode 3)
05 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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...
147: Hattie McDaniel (Six Degrees of Song of the South, Episode 2)
29 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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)...
146: Disney’s Most Controversial Film (Six Degrees of Song of the South, Episode 1)
22 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Disney Plus is launching with the stated intention of streaming the entire Disney library... except for "Song of the South," a 1946 animation/live-act...
Sneak Peek: Six Degrees of "Song of the South"
16 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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...
145: Ramon Novarro (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 19)
29 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 Hollywoo...
144: The Trials of Confidential Magazine: Maureen O'Hara (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 18)
22 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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’...
143: The Trials of Confidential Magazine: Dorothy Dandridge (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 17)
15 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Over two episodes, we will explore Hollywood Babylon’s coverage of Confidential Magazine and the two celebrities who testified against the scandal r...
142: Bugsy Siegel (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 16)
08 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Jewish gangster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel is frequently credited with corrupting Hollywood’s unions and “inventing” Las Vegas. Siegel did have...
141: Marlene Dietrich, Claudette Colbert, and the “sewing circle” (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 15)
25 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The bisexuality of Marlene Dietrich was not exactly a secret in 1930s Hollywood -- in fact, her ambiguous sexuality was part of her on-screen brand. B...
140: Lupe Velez (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 14)
18 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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 ra...
139: Mary Astor's Diary (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 13)
11 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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 thei...
138: Mae West (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 12)
04 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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...
137: Gina Lollobrigida (The Seduced, Episode 6)
20 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
This Italian pin-up, along with Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot, was emblematic of a brand of post-war European sexuality that America happily import...
136: Yvonne De Carlo
13 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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,...
135: Linda Darnell (The Seduced, Episode 4)
06 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A stunning brunette sex symbol married to cinematographer Pev Marley, Darnell thought her affair with Howard Hughes would result in marriage to the av...
134: Ann Dvorak (The Seduced, Episode 3)
30 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The child of a silent film actress, Dvorak was so determined to be a star that at first, she wouldn’t take no for an answer. Her big break came when...
133: The Bacchanal of 1920s Hollywood, via Frederica Sagor Maas (The Seduced Episode 2)
23 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Rupert Hughes's Women (The Seduced, Episode 1)
16 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In the new book Seduction: Sex, Lies and Stardom in Howard Hughes’s Hollywood, Karina Longworth explores the lives and careers of over a dozen actre...
Clara Bow (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 11)
11 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Rudolph Valentino (Fake News: Fact-Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 10)
04 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Rudolph Valentino was Hollywood’s first “latin lover.” His shocking death at the age of 31 was attributed to side effects from an appendectomy, ...
Thomas Ince and the Hearst "Coverup" (Fake News: Fact-Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 9)
28 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Peggy Hopkins Joyce and Charlie Chaplin (Fake News: Fact-Checking Hollywood Babylon, Episode 8)
21 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Will Hays and "Pre-Code" Hollywood (Fake News: Fact-Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 7)
14 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Wallace Reid (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 6)
07 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Mabel Normand (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 5)
31 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A frequent co-star of Roscoe Arbuckle’s, Mabel Normand was the definitive female screen comedienne of her generation. But it wasn’t her associatio...
William Desmond Taylor (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 4)
24 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and Virginia Rappe (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 3)
17 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
At a boozy party over Labor Day weekend 1921, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, silent Hollywood’s superstar plus-size comedian, followed sometime actres...
Olive Thomas (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 2)
10 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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 Ho...
D.W. Griffith, the Gish Sisters and the origin of "Hollywood Babylon" (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 1)
03 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
This season will interrogate Kenneth Anger’s controversial and influential gossip collection, Hollywood Babylon. Is this cult classic a needed subve...
120: Boris and Roger Corman (Bela & Boris Part 6)
21 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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. S...
119: Bela and Ed Wood (Bela & Boris Part 5)
14 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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...
118: Bela vs. Boris (Bela & Boris Part 4)
07 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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 (...
117: Boris and the Monsters (Bela & Boris Part 3)
31 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
After twenty years as a journeyman actor/laborer, Boris Karloff became an instant superstar as the Monster in Frankenstein (1931). Today we’ll explo...
116: Bela and the Vampires (Bela & Boris Part 2)
24 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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 diff...
115: Where the Monsters Came From (Bela & Boris Part 1)
17 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff were two middle-aged, foreign, struggling actors who became huge stars thanks to Dracula and Frankenstein, the first two...
114: The Last of Jean/Jane Works Out (Jean & Jane Part 9)
22 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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. ...
113: Coming Home (Jean & Jane Part 8)
15 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Jean buries her child in Iowa, and then returns to Paris in a fragile mental state. Increasingly plagued by both justifiable paranoia and delusions, s...
112: Hanoi Jane & The FBI vs. Jean Seberg’s Baby (Jean & Jane Part 7)
08 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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 h...
111: Jean and Jane Become Public Enemies (Jean & Jane Part 6)
01 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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 spou...
110: Jane vs "Barbarella" (Jean & Jane Part 5)
25 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
109: Jean vs "Lilith" (Jean & Jane Part 4)
18 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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...
108: Jean and Jane in Paris (Jean & Jane Part 3)
11 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
With her Hollywood career already something of a disappointment, Jean Seberg took a chance on a French film critic turned first-time director who want...
107: Jean and Otto Preminger/Jane in New York (Jean & Jane Part 2)
04 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Jean Seberg made her first two films, Saint Joan and Bonjour Tristesse, for director Otto Preminger, a tyrannical svengali character whose methods wou...
106: Hollywood Royalty/Middle-American Martyr (Jean & Jane Part 1)
27 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Introducing our new series, “Jean and Jane,” exploring the parallel lives of Jane Fonda and Jean Seberg, two white American actresses who found gr...
105: Dorothy Stratten (Dead Blondes Part 13)
25 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Our Dead Blondes season concludes with the story of Dorothy Stratten. Coaxed into nude modeling by Paul Snider, her sleazy boyfriend-turned-husband, 1...
104: Barbara Loden (Dead Blondes Part 12)
18 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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...
103: Grace Kelly (Dead Blondes Part 11)
11 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The quintessential “Hitchcock blonde,” Grace Kelly had an apparently charmed life. Her movies were mostly hits, her performances were largely well...
102: Barbara Payton (Dead Blondes Part 10)
04 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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 cho...
101: Jayne Mansfield (Dead Blondes Part 9)
28 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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 success...
100: Marilyn Monroe: The End (Dead Blondes Part 8)
21 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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...
99: Marilyn Monroe: The Persona (Dead Blondes Part 7)
14 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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, th...
98: Marilyn Monroe: The Beginning (Dead Blondes Part 6)
07 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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 Mari...
97: Carole Landis (Dead Blondes Part 5)
28 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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...
96: Veronica Lake (Dead Blondes Part 4)
21 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
95: Jean Harlow Flashback (Dead Blondes Part 3)
14 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Jean Harlow was the top blonde of the 1930s, and even though she didn’t survive the decade - she died in 1937 at the age of 26 - she’d inspire a g...
94: Thelma Todd (Dead Blondes Part 2)
07 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Thelma Todd - a curvaceous white-blonde who predated Jean Harlow - was a sparkling comedienne who began in the silent era and flourished in the talkie...
93: Peg Entwistle (Dead Blondes Part 1)
31 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
This season we’re going to explore the stories of 11 blonde actresses who died unusual, untimely or otherwise notable deaths - deaths which, in vari...
92: Six Degrees of Joan Crawford: Mommie Dearest
13 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The year after Joan Crawford died, her estranged, adopted daughter Christina published a tell-all, accusing her late mother of having been an abusive ...
91: Six Degrees of Joan Crawford: Bette Davis, "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?," and Crawford’s last years
06 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Robert Aldrich’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? has done more to define later generation’s ideas about who Crawford was than perhaps any other...
90: Six Degrees of Joan Crawford: The Middle Years (Mildred Pierce to Johnny Guitar)
30 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Joan Crawford struggled through what she called her “middle years,” the period during her 40s before she remade herself from aging, slumping MGM d...
89: Six Degrees of Joan Crawford: Clark Gable, Franchot Tone and Barbara Payton
23 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
By the mid-1930s, Joan Crawford was very, very famous, and negotiating both an affair with Clark Gable (her most frequent co-star and the only male st...
88: Six Degrees of Joan Crawford: Douglas Fairbanks Jr. / Our Dancing Daughters to Grand Hotel
16 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Joan Crawford’s early years in Hollywood were like - well, a pre-code Joan Crawford movie: a highly ambitious beauty of low birth does what she has ...
87: Six Degrees of Joan Crawford: Douglas Fairbanks / Lucille LeSueur Goes to Hollywood
09 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In order to understand Joan Crawford’s rise to fame, we have to talk about what Joan - born Lucille LeSueur, and called “Billie Cassin” for much...
86: The Blacklist Part 16: Kirk Douglas, Dalton Trumbo, and Otto Preminger (Breaking the Blacklist, Part 2)
21 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
How did the Blacklist come to an end? If you ask Kirk Douglas, the end began with his hiring of Dalton Trumbo to write Spartacus -- or, rather Douglas...
85: The Blacklist Part 15: Frank Sinatra and Albert Maltz (Breaking The Blacklist, Part 1)
14 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In the first of two episodes about major stars attempting to end the Blacklist, we’ll look at Frank Sinatra’s efforts to hire Hollywood Ten member...
Blacklist Flashback: Frank Sinatra through 1945
07 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Before our episode on Frank Sinatra’s attempt to end the blacklist, we’re going to flashback to an episode from April 2015, on Sinatra’s rise to...
84: The Blacklist Part 14: After the Fall: Arthur Miller
31 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Arthur Miller considered Elia Kazan a close friend and collaborator, but when Kazan named names to HUAC, Miller broke with him and wrote The Crucible,...
83: The Blacklist Part 13: On the Waterfront: Elia Kazan
24 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Elia Kazan introduced audiences to Warren Beatty, James Dean and Marlon Brando. His films of the 1950s -- including A Streetcar Named Desire, On the W...
82: The Blacklist Part 12: Stormy Weather: Lena Horne + Paul Robeson
17 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Horne's last years at MGM overlapped with the first HUAC hearings. Horne, an outspoken proponent of equal rights, who from the beginning of her career...
Blacklist Flashback: Lena Horne During WWII
10 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Stunning singer/actress Lena Horne was the first black performer to be given the full glamour girl star-making treatment. But as the years went on and...
81: The Blacklist Part 11: Born Yesterday: Judy Holliday
03 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Judy Holliday won an Oscar for her first starring film role, and of her eight major film roles between 1950 and 1960, four were in films now considere...
80: The Blacklist Part 10: Salt of the Earth: Howard Hughes + Paul Jarrico
26 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Today we explore one of the more troubling aspects of Howard Hughes’ legacy: the firm hand he played in enforcing the blacklisting of Hollywood work...
Blacklist Flashback: Howard Hughes + Jane Russell
19 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In advance of next week’s episode dealing with Howard Hughes’ role in the blacklist, we revisit our October 2014 episode on Hughes’ relationship...
79: The Blacklist Part 9: She: Richard Nixon + Helen Gahagan Douglas
12 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The wife of actor Melvyn Douglas (Ninotchka, Being There), Helen Gahagan Douglas transformed herself from a Broadway and opera star into an exciting n...
78: The Blacklist Part 8: Storm Warning: Ronald Reagan, the FBI and HUAC
05 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The post-war Communist witch hunt had a big impact on Ronald Reagan’s evolution from movie actor to politician, and from Democrat to Republican. And...
77: The Blacklist Part 7: Monsieur Verdoux: Charlie Chaplin's Road to Hollywood Exile
29 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Picking up where last week’s episode left off, we’ll catch up with Chaplin’s post-The Great Dictator activism, talk about Chaplin’s savage sat...
Blacklist Flashback: Charlie Chaplin During World War II
22 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In 1922, Charlie Chaplin was one of the most beloved men in the world. In 1952, after over a decade of being publicly shamed, he was essentially manip...
76: The Blacklist Part 6: He Ran All The Way: John Garfield
15 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
John Garfield was Brando before Brando -- a Method-style actor who repped the New York working class while becoming a major sex symbol in film noir an...
75: The Blacklist Part 5: The Strange Love of Barbara Stanwyck: Robert Taylor
08 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Barbara Stanwyck’s first marriage helped to inspire A Star is Born. Her second marriage, to heartthrob Robert Taylor, didn’t make sense in a lot ...
74: The Blacklist Part 4: The African Queen: Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn and John Huston
01 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
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 J...
Blacklist Flashback: Bogey Before Bacall
23 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Humphrey Bogart was Warner Brothers' most valuable star in 1947, when he, his wife Lauren Bacall, his future African Queen co-star Katharine Hepburn...
73: The Blacklist Part 3: Dorothy Parker
16 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The New Yorker columnist, poet and celebrated Algonquin Roundtable wit spent years in Hollywood, working as a screenwriter in partnership with her sec...
72: The Blacklist Part 2: Crossfire – The Trials of the Hollywood Ten
09 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee subpoenaed dozens of Hollywood workers to come to Washington and testify to the presence of Commun...
71: The Blacklist Part 1: The Prehistory of the Blacklist
02 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
This episode will trace the roots of both communism and anti-communism in Hollywood, through the Depression, union struggles and scandals, and World W...
70: MGM Stories Part 15: Mayer’s Downfall
22 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
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 th...