Dark History of Hollywood: A Century of Greed, Corruption and Scandal behind the Movies (Dark Histories)

by Kieron Connolly

  And while Mayer hadn’t been part of the Will Hays-led MPPDA effort to control Hollywood’s morals on and off screen, he was chairman of the Academy. At first the Academy only held an annual banquet, at which 231 people signed up for $100 annual membership, but in 1929 the first Academy Awards were added to the dinner. Hollywood, Mayer had recognized, could earn some respectability for its movies by awarding itself prizes.

  Quite why the statuette has become known as an Oscar, no one is sure. Bette Davis claimed that she named it after her first husband, band leader Harmon Oscar Nelson. Another claim is that the Academy’s executive secretary, Margaret Herrick, said the statuette reminded her of her ‘Uncle Oscar’ – her nickname, in fact, for her cousin Oscar Pierce. And after journalist Sidney Skolsky picked up on this and repeated it in his column, ‘Employees have affectionately dubbed their famous statuette “Oscar”,’ the name stuck.

  Douglas Fairbanks presents Janet Gaynor with her Best Actress Oscar at the first Academy Awards in 1929.

  Karl Dane, a silent comedy star, had had the luxury houses and Rolls-Royces, but he spoke with a strong Danish accent. With the coming of sound, his career faltered and he was dropped by MGM. He tried a mining business venture, which failed, and working as a mechanic and waiter, but lost his jobs, and by 1934 he was selling hotdogs outside Paramount Studios. Soon after that, he shot himself. His body would have gone unclaimed if Buster Keaton and Danish actor Jean Hersholt hadn’t appealed to MGM’s management, who liked to present the company as one big family, and shamed the studio into paying for a funeral.

  There may have been some dirty tricks, too. It’s been alleged that Louis B. Mayer’s dislike for star John Gilbert was so intense he intentionally had Gilbert’s voice recorded without any bass so that it came out sounding squeaky, making the audience laugh. Whatever the truth, it’s certainly the case that Gilbert’s career stalled in the 1930s, his contract with MGM wasn’t renewed and in 1936 he died of alcoholism.

  Once a star with luxury houses and Rolls-Royces, by 1934 Karl Dane was selling hotdogs outside Paramount Studios.

  By the late 1920s, star power had been checked, the coming of sound had ended some careers, and lives, and the studios had reasserted themselves. New codes of morality on and off screen had been introduced and would be enforced, tested and twisted. For the next 20 years the stars’ lives would, for better and for worse, be under the control of the studio system.

  Karl Dane (left) and John Gilbert in 1925’s The Big Parade. Both of their careers failed with the coming of sound. Dane committed suicide in 1934, while Gilbert was an alcoholic and died from a heart attack in 1936.

  The Dream Factory – Warner Bros. studios in Burbank, California, during the 1940s, when it was producing 40 films a year, including Casablanca. Not just stars, but writers, producers, directors and all the necessary crew worked under long contracts at most studios.

  III

  HOLLYWOOD

  THE STUDIO SYSTEM

  The coming of sound had ruined some actors’ careers and the Depression had sent many studios into the red, but the 1930s and 1940s would see Hollywood grow into its most powerful form ever. Yet the success of the golden age was achieved through a controlling hold over movie stars and was maintained by the collusion of the Los Angeles police force and the district attorney, as well as the Press, in covering up sex scandals and possibly murder.

  ‘They taught me how to be a star, but not how to live.’

  Each studio – MGM, Paramount, Warner Brothers, Fox, RKO, Universal and Columbia being the majors – was, by the 1930s, like a miniature city, with its staff of actors, writers, producers, directors, designers, cinematographers, composers, editors, sound technicians and carpenters, as well as barbers, dentists, schools and fire brigades. MGM, the richest studio with 4000 people on the payroll, even had its own branch line railway.

  Being signed up to a major studio was what all movie actors sought, but to achieve that they would have to give away a great deal in return. Firstly, actors signed seven-year contracts. Why seven years? Because that was the longest Californian law would allow. But, while the studio could review the contract every six months and release an actor, the actor didn’t enjoy the same get-out rights. And though the pay for stars could be wonderful, the bigger names earning a few thousand dollars a week, starting salaries began at $50. Even then, contracts were for only 40 weeks a year, with the other 12 weeks an unpaid ‘vacation’ period, during which actors weren’t allowed to work elsewhere. ‘So, instead of getting $50 a week for the first year, it worked out at $35,’ said Ava Gardner, who arrived as a 17-year-old starlet in 1941. ‘Out of that you always had to be well-groomed and shell out for your food and a place to live.’ But what would some of the young, pretty actresses do if they were hard up and weren’t allowed to take on other official work? ‘Many of the starlets and contract players had to put out,’ said Ava Gardner. ‘Plenty of them thought nothing of giving a little bit away when the rental was due.’

  In the studio system, if actors under contract turned down scripts, they could be suspended and the period of suspension added to their contract. Joan Fontaine’s seven-year contract with David O. Selznick, who produced Rebecca, eventually lasted a decade.

  ‘Many of the starlets had to put out,’ said Ava Gardner. ‘Plenty of them thought nothing of giving a bit away when the rental was due.’

  While many starlets were let go after six months, for other players a seven-year contract could easily last much longer. ‘If the studio didn’t have a script ready for you,’ said Joan Fontaine, who starred in Rebecca, ‘they would send you one that they knew you would turn down.’ That way, as she was technically suspended, they didn’t have to pay her until they had something suitable. ‘It was a terrible tyranny because the actor had to capitulate,’ she said. In addition, the length of the suspension wouldn’t count as part of her time under contract. Due to such suspensions, Fontaine’s seven-year contract with studio head David O. Selznick ended up lasting a decade.

  And, even if an actor managed to get himself fired in order to be released from a contract, the other studios wouldn’t snap him up – word probably already having circulated that he was trouble. One might wonder why actors agreed to such unfavourable terms, but they were grateful for the work. That was just the way things were under the studio system.

  SUICIDE AT THE HOLLYWOOD SIGN

  ERECTED IN 1923 as ‘Hollywoodland’ to advertise housing developments, the Hollywood sign was only intended to last 18 months, but as ‘Hollywood’ became more than just a locality and the international label for American movies, the sign was kept up. Nine years later, 24-year-old Peg Entwistle climbed up the workman’s ladder to the top of the ‘H’ of the Hollywoodland sign and threw herself off. She’d been a successful stage actress on Broadway, and, during the Depression, had moved to Hollywood. But she’d only appeared in one film and hadn’t been signed up by a studio. As the movies hadn’t given her a new life, the Hollywood sign would be the means of her death.

  Those who became stars didn’t just owe their careers to the studios, they usually even owed them money. Expected to be seen living the high life, the studios set their stars up with grand houses and domestic staff, and when the stars became stretched financially, the studios would then lend them money. It was a good way for the studios to keep their stars dependent and therefore loyal.

  At MGM the involvement of the studio in the private lives of its stars even extended to a chart in the main production office following each actress’s menstrual cycle. That way the studio could schedule filming around days when she might not be at her best. Actors and actresses were also subject to their contracts’ ‘potato clause’, which stipulated that their weight must be kept within a certain range. According to Irene Mayer, Louis B. Mayer’s daughter, actresses with a weight problem might even be given worms to help them lose some pounds.

  Damage Limitation

  ‘If you get into trouble,’ MGM’s stars were told
, ‘Don’t call the police. Don’t call the hospital. Don’t call your lawyer. Call Howard.’ Howard was Howard Strickling, the studio’s head of publicity. Yes, his office would provide benign press releases about the studio’s stars, but he would also orchestrate cover-ups when his stars were in danger of making the headlines through brawls, sex scandals and even shootings.

  Buron Fitts (left) with his wife and friends at a première in 1930, was the Los Angeles County District Attorney who, according to Budd Schulberg, ‘was completely in the pocket of the producers.’

  To achieve near silence when it was needed, Strickling and the other studios had friends in the police. The studios created a great deal of wealth for Los Angeles, so it was in the city’s interest to keep Hollywood in a good light. Heads of police and local politicians were frequent visitors at the studios – not because they were investigating crimes or discussing employment law, but because they were having their photographs taken with stars and promoting themselves for future election days. According to screenwriter Budd Schulberg, district attorney Buron Fitts ‘was completely in the pocket of the producers’. And when politicians, the police, the Press and the law weren’t being charmed by the glamour of Hollywood, they were being paid off by the studios.

  If the rumour went round that a star was gay, his studio might set up a romance with one of its actresses. Rock Hudson’s studio Universal put him together with Mamie van Doren.

  Lupe Velez – ‘the Mexican Spitfire’ – with her husband, Tarzan actor Johnny Weissmuller in 1935. In 1944, divorced and ashamed at being pregnant out of wedlock, Velez wrote a suicide note to her boyfriend, took an overdose of sedatives and killed herself.

  Strickling worked with Eddie Mannix, Louis B. Mayer’s general manager, who’d begun as a carnival bouncer for brothers Nicholas and Joseph Schenck at New York’s Paradise amusement park. When the Schencks had moved into movies and co-created MGM, they took Mannix with them to keep an eye on Mayer.

  Lavender Marriage

  Of all the studios, MGM put the greatest value in creating stars. It therefore also had its work cut out protecting these stars, often from themselves. When actor William Haines was arrested with a sailor at a YMCA in 1933, Mannix and Strickling managed to hush the story up. But Mayer had had enough. He offered Haines the option of a ‘lavender marriage’ – a fake marriage to silence rumours about his sexuality – but Haines decided against it: he’d remain with his long-term boyfriend Jimmie Shields. Soon after that Haines found himself dropped by the studio. Giving up acting, he remained in Hollywood and made a successful second career as an interior designer to the stars.

  Similarly, following well-founded rumours that Rock Hudson was gay, Universal Pictures invented a romance between him and another Universal contract player, the curvaceous Mamie van Doren. ‘I think they used me to make people say, “Well, if he’s going out with her, he certainly isn’t gay,”’ said van Doren.

  Strickling, it’s alleged, had to pay out many times to keep photographs of a knickerless Velez from being circulated.

  Hush Money

  But what to do about a wronged wife? While Tarzan actor Johnny Weissmuller was married to singer Bobbe Arnst, his first of five wives, he began an affair with actress Lupe Velez. To protect Weissmuller, who was an MGM prize asset, Strickling paid Arnst $10,000 to go away. Weissmuller soon married Velez, but she was a heavy drinker who would end up dancing wildly at parties and lifting her skirt. Strickling, it’s alleged, had to pay out many times to keep photographs of a knickerless Velez from being circulated. Similarly, it’s also Hollywood folklore that Joan Crawford starred in a pornographic film before she was famous. When she became well-known, MGM, through money and Mob connections, managed to suppress the film from reaching the public – but saved it for after-dinner screenings at the homes of MGM executives.

  Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn began a relationship in 1942 while making Woman of the Year (pictured). Their affair lasted until he died 25 years later, but as he was married, MGM kept the romance secret.

  All in the Family

  Louis B. Mayer liked to refer to his staff at MGM as his ‘children’ and the studio as a ‘family’. If so, it was a really rather incestuous one. When Ingrid Bergman began an affair with Spencer Tracy, it wasn’t just her husband, Petter Aron Lindström, who was upset, but director Victor Fleming. Why? Because he’d been having an affair with Bergman, too. Still, it was Lindström who took the matter to Mayer. The affair was duly stopped with Mannix threatening to fire Tracy. Tracy, of course, was also married, but he soon embarked on a 25-year affair with Katharine Hepburn. Strickling, subsequently, went to great lengths to keep that affair quiet, too.

  When Ingrid Bergman began an affair with Spencer Tracy, it wasn’t just her husband, Petter Aron Lindström, who was upset …

  Smile for the Cameras

  Given his busy sex life, Clark Gable was one of MGM’s most problematic stars. He’d arrived in Hollywood with his first wife Josephine Dillon, who’d been his acting coach and was more than ten years his senior. But by 1930, as Gable’s career began to take off, the marriage was over and Gable moved in with wealthy Ria Langham, who was 17 years his senior. It didn’t stop there. He was already having an affair with Joan Crawford, who was now pregnant, probably by Gable. He’d agreed to marry her, but then she wasn’t actually available: she was married to Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

  Distraught at her husband’s adultery, Ria Langham approached MGM, threatening to expose all of Gable’s affairs. Gable, reminded that he was in breach of the ‘moral turpitude’ clause of his contract, quickly put his house in order: forgetting his promise to wed Crawford, he agreed to marry Langham. That still left Crawford’s pregnancy to deal with, so Strickling arranged for an abortion.

  Gable might have been newly wed, but he was continuing to see Crawford, albeit discreetly. Nervous that Langham might still expose him, MGM forced Crawford and Fairbanks into a second honeymoon. Making a fuss of it, the studio staged a parade of police cars and well-wishers to see the couple off. Gable and Langham, meanwhile, were sent on a press tour of America to make their marriage as public as possible, too. Then, as punishment for his behaviour, Gable was relegated to a series of B-movies.

  Suicide Whitewash

  The studios could keep quiet stories about stars bedhopping, but what if the story was the naked corpse of a Hollywood figure?

  When Howard Hughes gave Jean Harlow her break in Hell’s Angels in 1930 even he said she had ‘a voice like a Missouri barmaid screaming for a keg’. But she was cute. ‘It doesn’t matter what degree of talent she possesses,’ wrote Variety Magazine of Harlow on the film’s release, ‘nobody ever starved possessing what she’s got.’ Her career was soon flagging, however, until in 1932, when aged 21, she married MGM producer Paul Bern. He was more than 20 years older than Harlow, but he managed to get her a contract at his studio.

  Then, two months after their wedding, a naked Bern was found shot dead at their Beverly Hills home. Harlow was away visiting her mother at the time, but the butler, on finding the body, knew the protocol. He first called Strickling, who arrived with Mannix and Irving Thalberg, MGM’s head of production. A suicide note was found that read: ‘Dearest Dear, Unfortunately, this is the only way to make good the frightful wrong I have done you and to wipe out my abject humiliation. I love you, Paul… You understand that last night was only a comedy.’

  Was this a genuine suicide note or just a peace-making message from an earlier marital falling-out? It’s been suggested that Strickling and others found the message among Bern’s things and planted it as a suicide note. The MGM heads all knew that Bern was, in fact, still married to actress Dorothy Millette (he’d married her 20 years earlier), but that their relationship had fallen apart after she’d had a mental breakdown.

  Joan Crawford was now pregnant, probably by Gable. He’d agreed to marry her, but then she wasn’t actually available: she was married to Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

  HOLLYWOOD’S MOST
FAMOUS LOVE CHILD

  WHILE FILMING The Call of the Wild in 1935, Clark Gable had an affair with Catholic co-star Loretta Young. She became pregnant and when it became too conspicuous to hide, MGM sent her on a long holiday to England. The love child, Judy, was born in secret at Young’s home and brought up in an orphanage until she was 18 months old, when Young announced that she was going to adopt the girl. Not many people in Hollywood believed Young wasn’t the child’s natural mother.

  While Gable was alive, Judy never knew that he was her father and only met him twice. However, as a young child she did have ears that stuck out just like her father’s. To hide this, Loretta Young would make Judy wear bonnets whenever she was being photographed. When the girl was seven, Young decided Judy should have plastic surgery to pin her ears back. The surgeon warned that it’d be a very painful operation on a child so young. ‘He suggested it should wait until I was older,’ wrote Judy. ‘But she insisted.’

  Despite hearing rumours throughout her childhood that Gable was her father, it wasn’t until the eve of her wedding, when she was 23, that Judy was told by her fiancé that the rumours were true. Judy confronted her mother, who admitted the truth, calling Judy ‘a walking, mortal sin’.

  Jean Harlow, accompanied by relatives, at the funeral of her husband, Paul Bern. When their butler had found Bern shot dead, he’d first called MGM before ringing the police. Although ruled a suicide, doubt has always surrounded the circumstances of Bern’s death.