Old Hollywood gossip & stories

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MrsBsDayOff said:
Just reading about Maximilian Schell who died a few years ago and shocked to find out he's been accused of sexual abuse by both his niece and daughter. Sounds credible too. Can't look at him the same way now in films.

There was similar claims with Yves Montand and Klaus Kinski. Great actors but vile child molesters apparently
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feels depressingly commonplace, especially in Hollywood and especially in that era.

has anyone listened to the Root of Evil podcast? It’s about the black dahlia murder and it’s links to Hollywood corruption (sort of).
 
cee-bee said:
feels depressingly commonplace, especially in Hollywood and especially in that era.

has anyone listened to the Root of Evil podcast? It’s about the black dahlia murder and it’s links to Hollywood corruption (sort of).
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I’ve listened to it, found it really interesting.
 
Don’t think anybody has mentioned Rita Hayworth? Part Spanish but Hollywood gave her a makeover which basically got rid of any Spanish heritage which is a shame but she’s so gorgeous, ultimate femme fatale imo.
Also Vera Ellen who I think is the best dancer to ever grace Hollywood. People speculated she always wore high necks to hide the effects of an ED but not sure how I feel speculating about that given I don’t think she ever spoke about having an ED. She stepped out of the lime light and I barley hear anyone mention her which is a shame because she’s so talented
 
rubysdeadfly said:
Don’t think anybody has mentioned Rita Hayworth? Part Spanish but Hollywood gave her a makeover which basically got rid of any Spanish heritage which is a shame but she’s so gorgeous, ultimate femme fatale imo.
Also Vera Ellen who I think is the best dancer to ever grace Hollywood. People speculated she always wore high necks to hide the effects of an ED but not sure how I feel speculating about that given I don’t think she ever spoke about having an ED. She stepped out of the lime light and I barley hear anyone mention her which is a shame because she’s so talented
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Just reading up on Vera, apparently withdrew from public life due to loosing a child to SIDS. She died of ovarian cancer age 60.
 
rubysdeadfly said:
Don’t think anybody has mentioned Rita Hayworth? Part Spanish but Hollywood gave her a makeover which basically got rid of any Spanish heritage which is a shame but she’s so gorgeous, ultimate femme fatale imo.
Also Vera Ellen who I think is the best dancer to ever grace Hollywood. People speculated she always wore high necks to hide the effects of an ED but not sure how I feel speculating about that given I don’t think she ever spoke about having an ED. She stepped out of the lime light and I barley hear anyone mention her which is a shame because she’s so talented
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Rita was used by everyone. She admitted to Orson Welles that her dad used to abuse her. Her mother and father used to dance but after having kids, her mother gave it up and she was taken out of school at 12 to do it instead. Some of the dances they did were very erotic and had people talking and thinking they were an actual couple rather than father and daughter. It turned out he was assaulting her and as well as physically beating her. Her mother knew and did all she could to stop it, even sleeping with her in the same bed.

She was used just as much in Hollywood. When she got there, they did all they could to take the 'Latina' out of her including raising her hairline with electrolysis which was agony but they didn't care about it. They also dyed her naturally brunette hair red so she looked less 'simple' and because of this, she had to have it tinted every other day for years.

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It's funny when people say actresses were more natural back in the day because 90% of the time, they did have surgery to fix stuff that the studio heads thought needed fixing, it's only that it wasn't talked about then like it is now. Marilyn, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and were just a few among many who had stuff done.


www.marieclaire.com

The Pre-Plastic-Surgery Era: 4 Weird Ways Old Hollywood Stars Changed Their Faces

If you think today's stars go to extremes, think again.
www.marieclaire.com www.marieclaire.com
 
shellie said:
It's funny when people say actresses were more natural back in the day because 90% of the time, they did have surgery to fix stuff that the studio heads thought needed fixing, it's only that it wasn't talked about then like it is now. Marilyn, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and were just a few among many who had stuff done.


www.marieclaire.com

The Pre-Plastic-Surgery Era: 4 Weird Ways Old Hollywood Stars Changed Their Faces

If you think today's stars go to extremes, think again.
www.marieclaire.com www.marieclaire.com
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Yes, they did, within the confines of what was actually possible back then. There was one actress who ended up with a nose prosthetic because of early nose surgery that went wrong. The rest was pure glamour ie. artificiality which was expected, unlike now where there's an expectation that a woman look uber-glam AND 'natural' (which seems to mean bearing no signs of artificial improvements while having all of them money can buy, and a pro glamour squad). I think half of this weird expectation of natural' glam is down to technology - the horrible intrusion of high res digital camera that amplify any texture or pore or stray hair into something that wouldn't even be noticed at all with the normal human eye in real life.

It's really interesting to me, the old fashioned glamour - the transformations that occurred due to not only physical 'improvements' (look at utter goddesses like Garbo and Dietrich pre and post stardom and you see the massive changes made in every aspect of their presentation) but make-up, hair styling and just as crucially, lighting to create these visions that were supposed to look super-human, not 'relatable' or 'natural'. Von Sternberg's lighting of Dietrich was incredibly complex - tiny little pencil thin lights pointed here and there on her face to conjure up the sculpted effect you see in her classic shots from films like Shanghai Express. They'd paint a streak of silver greasepaint down her nose which the light would pick up ... lots of stuff like this. I love those older black and white films because they are all about painting with light - scenes and faces and the best of them to me are way more interesting than anything that came later, visually. They're much more like paintings, no surprise that many of the best early directors had trained as painters.
 
Found a free Joan Crawford autobiography of herself reading it but the link won't work because I think you need to have the app (which was installed on my phone by the manufacturer). This is it if anyone else has it on their phone.
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I saw this post on another thread and thought some of you might enjoy it ... @littlepup I hope you don't mind.

littlepup said:
If anyone’s interested in old Hollywood scandals it can be a real rabbit hole. Some had controversy around them but just died young like Valentino but it seems half of Hollywood in the 1920s had drug and alcohol addictions. Gun crime and suicide was prevelent too. Links to people below are good starting points.

“A spate of newspaper-driven Hollywood scandals during the early 1920s included William Desmond Taylor's murder, the Roscoe Arbuckle trial, the death of Olive Thomas, the mysterious death of Thomas H. Ince, and the drug- or alcohol-related deaths of Wallace Reid, Barbara La Marr, and Jeanne Eagels, all of which prompted Hollywood studios to begin writing contracts with "morality clauses" or "moral turpitude clauses", allowing the dismissal of contractees who breached them.”
Mable Normand’s name comes up all over these cases too.
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