Gossip isn't always hot air. Welcome to MsMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the most noteworthy stories, rumors, myths, and gossip from the Golden Age of Hollywood that just happened to be true.
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00:00 "Well now this is interesting. I thought I was getting an exclusive on this."
00:06 Welcome to Miss Mojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the most noteworthy stories,
00:11 rumours, myths, and gossip from the golden age of Hollywood that just happened to be
00:16 true. For this list, we're considering old Hollywood as anything before 1970.
00:21 "There isn't a dirty cover-up in this entire business that I don't know about, and your
00:27 hand is in every one of them, you reek of it!"
00:31 10. Marlene Dietrich insured her voice for $1 million
00:35 "An apple they say keeps the doctor away."
00:40 German-born Hollywood star Marlene Dietrich was known for her crisp and raspy voice. However,
00:46 the story that there was a massive insurance policy taken out on it is actually true.
00:51 "Would you never learn to believe without proof?" "I believe you, madame."
00:58 Before the rise of mass media, this kind of policy would have seemed ridiculous. But classic
01:03 Hollywood stars' entire livelihoods might depend on a couple of distinctive features.
01:08 Their image and natural talents were suddenly major financial assets. In fact, Dietrich
01:14 wasn't the only star whose studio wanted to protect its star's body parts.
01:19 Full-time star and famed pin-up Betty Grable's legs were also insured, so was comic Jimmy
01:25 Durante's characteristic nose.
01:28 "I got it! I knew I'd seen this face before, I knew it! Now I know how to get this out
01:32 of here." "What face? How?"
01:34 9. The inspiration behind Citizen Kane
01:37 "Kane helped to change the world. But Kane's world now is history, and the great yellow
01:43 journalist himself lived to be history."
01:45 Orson Welles' masterpiece about Charles Foster Kane's road to success, wealth, and ultimately,
01:52 complete moral destruction, had a very real and very scandalous parallel in reality. Kane
01:58 was modeled after uber-wealthy publisher and producer William Randolph Hearst.
02:03 Rumors were sparked pre-release, but Welles was somewhat cagey about his inspiration,
02:08 for reasons that soon became obvious.
02:10 "Within days, the word was out that Hearst was absolutely furious about this film and
02:16 wanted it destroyed. Period."
02:18 Although he would say Hearst's life was just one of many inspirations, the parallels were
02:23 clear. Gossip columnists Luella Parsons and Hedda Hopper threw themselves to the mat to
02:29 protect Hearst, viciously going against Welles and the film. Hearst himself retaliated with
02:34 a full-fledged attack campaign in his newspapers, making sure Citizen Kane would not be destroyed.
02:40 "I do not want the country to think about and talk about and dwell upon the fact that
02:45 you're all Jews and that many of your key executives and directors and writers are now
02:51 refugees from Germany. And he was right, they didn't want that. So they pulled the movie."
02:57 8. The Passing of Peg Entwistle
03:00 Hollywood is full of stories where hopeful creatives came to try their luck and failed.
03:05 But the story of the actress who took her life from the Hollywood sign had passed into
03:09 legend for so long that it seemed like the kind of thing only a screenwriter could think
03:14 up.
03:15 "And we pull back to reveal Peg, sitting there, trying to hold it together. Because
03:23 that's our context now."
03:25 Unfortunately, it actually happened. Peg Entwistle was a promising stage actress who made the
03:31 jump to films in the early 1930s. Sadly, her role in 13 Women, her first and only movie,
03:38 was all but edited out of the final cut.
03:40 "Oh gosh, it's good to see you. Tell me, do you see any of the old crowd? You know,
03:45 the dear old cappers?"
03:46 "No, I don't get around much. I've been taking a motor trip with a friend, and when
03:49 I saw you were here, I simply had to come in and say hello."
03:52 She ultimately climbed to the top of the sign's "H" and took her own life in 1932. A movie
03:58 about her life and death was notably a central plot of Netflix's Hollywood miniseries.
04:04 "What the hell did you stop for? We were really getting it."
04:07 "That was incredible."
04:08 "Really? Oh, gosh, I'm sorry. Should we just go right back into it?"
04:13 "Yes, please. Alright everybody, let's do a pick up. Roll sound."
04:16 7. Gossip columnists essentially worked for the studios
04:20 Old Hollywood stars were essentially the property of their studios. Even their personal lives
04:25 were constructed fantasies, designed to maintain the glamorous facade.
04:29 "Any more thoughts about who you might marry?"
04:31 "Ha! I ain't doing that again. I had two marriages. It just cost the studio a lot of
04:35 money to bust them up."
04:36 Surprisingly, gossip columnists didn't always exist in opposition to this.
04:41 For as feared as she was, Gossip Queen Hedda Hopper's career was made possible by MGM chief
04:48 Louis B. Mayer. Luella Parsons, for her part, owed her career to mogul and film producer
04:53 William Randolph Hearst.
04:56 Columnists might print an embarrassing story about a star, but they often kept the more
05:00 damning ones for a rainy day.
05:01 "He should know whose carcass it is he's been handling, and just how many others in this
05:06 town could identify it in the dark. That column has already been written. Joan Crawford's
05:11 early tawdry years. And it's been locked away in my desk drawer since 1946."
05:16 A columnist couldn't anger the system too much if they wanted to stay relevant. If anything,
05:22 one hand fed the other, creating a myth-making hype machine that benefited everyone, save
05:27 the occasional actor whose career was ruined.
05:30 "Even if you could print it, you couldn't print it. And you wouldn't want to, Thor,
05:33 it's beneath you."
05:34 "The facts are never beneath me."
05:35 "People don't want the facts, they want to believe. That's our great industry, mine and
05:39 yours too."
05:40 6. Chaplin's younger partners
05:43 Chaplin's left-leaning politics earned the ire of conservatives in Hollywood, but it
05:48 was a 1944 paternity suit, launched by Joan Barry, that exposed what many had talked about
05:54 for years.
05:55 "What good has all this money done Chaplin? Wasting his substance and debauching girls.
06:01 What good has it done the country?"
06:03 Chaplin lost the suit, even though blood tests proved that he wasn't the father of the baby
06:07 in question. However, it helped cast more light on his tendency to date people who were
06:11 too young. Leta Gray, for instance, was a minor.
06:14 "I don't know that I could get into any detail on that, really. That would be indelicate."
06:21 The two had to marry in Mexico in 1924, as it would have been against the law to do so
06:26 in California. However, much of the damage was compounded by the actor marrying the teenaged
06:31 Oona O'Neill amid the Joan Barry paternity scandal.
06:35 "He wanted somebody younger, classier. Didn't he?"
06:42 5. Judy Garland's treatment at MGM
06:45 "Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."
06:50 Being launched to superstardom by Hollywood's biggest studio would be a lot for any teenager.
06:56 Judy Garland had more than overnight fame to worry about. The bigwigs at MGM not only
07:01 controlled her food intake, but also fed her pills that contributed to substance use disorder
07:06 for the rest of her life.
07:07 "I'm honestly very hungry."
07:09 "Those will take the edge off."
07:13 "No, I gotta sleep tonight."
07:16 "Halpert will give you something for that later, down the hatch."
07:20 For years, it seems her struggles were chalked up to personal problems, but the truth has
07:24 since become more widely known. Indeed, there's no denying that whatever Garland may have
07:29 dealt with throughout her life was made exponentially worse by the systematic psychological and
07:35 physical mistreatment she withstood.
07:37 "Is there anything you've ever wanted to do that you've never done?"
07:41 "Retire."
07:42 "Oh, come on now, you!"
07:44 4. The Oscars were created as a union-busting technique.
07:48 "This is the night when all the glitz and glamour of the silver screen is on display
07:53 on the world's most famous red carpet."
07:56 Today, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is an organization notably dedicated
08:02 to film preservation and the awarding of the coveted Oscar for achievements in filmmaking.
08:07 The first awards were given out in 1929 to great fanfare.
08:11 "270 guests packed this room, paying $5 a piece for a ticket to attend. Douglas Fairbanks
08:18 hosted and all the golden statuettes were awarded in a mere 15 minutes."
08:24 It all started because Louis B. Mayer, the intimidating head of MGM, was annoyed when
08:29 union rules complicated the building of his beach house. Seeing that unions were coming
08:34 to Hollywood, Mayer co-founded the Academy and the Academy Awards to take the place of
08:39 a real union and keep the talent in line.
08:42 "I found the best way to handle filmmakers, he said, was to hang medals all over them.
08:46 If I got them cups and awards, they'd kill them to produce what I wanted."
08:50 It didn't work, and the Academy and the Oscars have long broken free from their original
08:55 purpose.
08:56 3. Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine's sisterly feud
09:00 "A feud implies continuing hostile conduct between two parties. I can't remember an
09:09 instance where I instigated hostile behavior."
09:12 Siblings growing up to become Oscar-winning movie stars is a Hollywood melodrama in the
09:17 making.
09:18 In the late 1940s, sisters Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine were dogged by rumors about
09:25 their longstanding animosity. Even when photos surfaced of one actively snubbing the other
09:30 backstage at the Oscars, the two largely kept it classy for the media, without necessarily
09:35 denying the estrangement either.
09:37 "I wasn't turning my back on my sister in that photo. I just didn't see that she was
09:42 there."
09:43 While they went through a lot over the decades, the tension was reportedly never resolved.
09:47 De Havilland was famously cagey about their feud up until the end of her life, but Fontaine
09:52 spoke more freely about it once the strictures of old Hollywood fell away.
09:57 "Then the legend is true."
09:59 "It's absolutely true. She never got over it. I talked to a child psychologist about
10:04 it once and he said, 'If it hasn't cured by the time you're, oh, 20, it will never
10:11 change.'"
10:12 2. Walt Disney formerly welcomed Nazi Germany's biggest filmmaker
10:17 Much of the Third Reich's most indelible and ultimately harmful images came courtesy of
10:22 propaganda filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. Before the horrors of the Holocaust were fully known,
10:27 she cemented images of German excellence through her filmmaking.
10:42 When she came to Hollywood in the late 1930s, most studios refused to receive her. One man,
10:47 however, did open his doors.
10:49 "Since they were opened, 7 million people have enjoyed them. So we'd like for you to
10:55 see and enjoy them too."
10:57 Fresh off the success of his first animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,
11:02 Walt Disney gave Riefenstahl a reported three-hour tour of his studio. However, myths that he
11:07 screened her film there have been deemed untrue. Later, Disney reportedly denounced the visit,
11:13 denying he knew who she was or her importance to Hitler's propaganda machine.
11:18 "If we do something that isn't right, we hear from the various members of the staff,
11:22 'It just isn't right, she can't do that.'"
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11:38 1. Loretta Young's Child with Clark Gable
11:43 "Why was you heading?"
11:44 "Why not?"
11:45 An ill-timed pregnancy could ruin a young actress's life. This was back in the day
11:51 when studios often pressured expectant actresses to terminate pregnancies in order to keep their
11:57 contracts. But Loretta Young, a strict Catholic, came up with a plan to hide her pregnancy,
12:03 and later claimed that she had adopted the child. As her daughter, Judy Lewis, grew,
12:08 she began to resemble her famous father, and rumors were rampant.
12:12 "I had my father's very large ears, and when I was small, if I went in public with her,
12:19 I always wore bonnets, so my ears were covered."
12:23 Young didn't tell her daughter the truth until well into adulthood, but eventually,
12:27 she confirmed that Clark Gable was Judy's biological father.
12:31 The darker truth was exposed after all three were dead. Unfortunately,
12:35 the encounter with Gable that resulted in Young's pregnancy with Lewis was not consensual.
12:40 "I'm very tired, Mr. Houlihan, and I know you must be."
12:43 "Me tired? Heck no!"
12:44 "Well, I thought you might be, asking such personal questions."
12:47 What old Hollywood rumor that turned out to be true surprised you the most? Let us know in the
12:52 comments. "She disappears for a while, reappears. She wants to share blessings, adopt a child."
12:57 "Sure, she's always yearned to be a mother, that's it."
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