{"id":35249,"date":"2016-07-07T02:00:44","date_gmt":"2016-07-07T06:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=35249"},"modified":"2016-07-06T10:03:12","modified_gmt":"2016-07-06T14:03:12","slug":"tales-from-the-golden-age-of-hollywood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/07\/07\/tales-from-the-golden-age-of-hollywood\/","title":{"rendered":"Tales from the “golden age” of Hollywood"},"content":{"rendered":"

In The Guardian<\/em>, Nell Frizzell<\/a> talks about the seamier side of Hollywood as it declined from its cultural peak in the mid-twentieth century:<\/p>\n

The show, which sounds like a dreamy mix of film noir voiceover, 1940s gossip column and Pathe news broadcast, looks at the now lesser-known figures of Hollywood\u2019s Golden Age; women like inventor of \u201cthe vamp\u201d Theda Bara, whose agents claimed she was the daughter of an Arab sheik, born in the Sahara and growing up in the shadow of the Sphinx when in fact, she\u2019d been born in Cincinnati, Ohio; or inventor of grunge Frances Farmer, an alcoholic communist committed to several mental health institutions who later became the subject of the Nirvana song “Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle”.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Instead of merely making an episode about the legendary aviator, director and millionaire eccentric Howard Hughes, Longworth uses him to talk about many of the age\u2019s leading ladies with whom he was involved, from Katharine Hepburn to Jean Harlow. \u201cIt\u2019s a rubric to tell the story of a lot of fascinating women,\u201d says Longworth. \u201cHe arrives in Hollywood in 1925 and starts to disappear in the 1950s, so you can use him to tell the story of Hollywood in that era.\u201d Which is precisely what she\u2019s doing in her upcoming book, which will chart the love affairs of the enigmatic film-maker and pilot who once used his understanding of aeronautical engineering to design Jane Russell a more supportive bra.<\/p>\n

As well as the Manson episodes, You Must Remember This<\/em> has run several other miniseries. There was “The Blacklist”, which looked at the way several of Hollywood\u2019s most successful stars were ruined by accusations of communism by the House Un-American Activities Committee. These included the legendary wit Dorothy Parker, the actor Humphrey Bogart and Charlie Chaplin, who was banished from the US in 1952 for being \u201csympathetic to the communist cause\u201d \u2013 accusations based on little more than Chaplin refusing to cross picket lines in the 1940s, speaking out about the suffering of the Russian people in the second world war and being \u201cprematurely anti-fascist\u201d.<\/p>\n

Then there was “MGM Stories”, which told the stories of 15 people who worked in the studio as it went from silent movies to talkies, including Elizabeth Taylor (who once described her 18-year contract as being \u201cMGM chattel\u201d) and the legendary \u201csweater girl\u201d Lana Turner who burned through seven husbands and countless affairs before becoming embroiled in one of Hollywood\u2019s most shocking scandals after her 14-year-old daughter was accused of killing Turner\u2019s boyfriend Johnny Stompanato. And “Star Wars” looked at the efforts Hollywood stars went to support the war effort \u2013 such as Bette Davis and John Garfield\u2019s founding of The Hollywood Canteen, where servicemen could get served pie by, and even dance with, some of the era\u2019s most famous actors, and where Lena Horne was drafted in as the only African-American pinup and therefore the only famous woman deemed appropriate to dance with black servicemen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

H\/T to Kathy Shaidle<\/a> for the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In The Guardian, Nell Frizzell talks about the seamier side of Hollywood as it declined from its cultural peak in the mid-twentieth century: The show, which sounds like a dreamy mix of film noir voiceover, 1940s gossip column and Pathe news broadcast, looks at the now lesser-known figures of Hollywood\u2019s Golden Age; women like inventor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,28,13],"tags":[262,122],"class_list":["post-35249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-media","category-usa","tag-culture","tag-movies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9ax","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35249"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35250,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35249\/revisions\/35250"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}