Howard Hughes

The Many Loves of Howard Hughes Archive by Karina Longworth

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Throughout the history of You Must Remember This, one character we’ve returned to frequently is Howard Hughes, whose story dovetails with the stories of some of the most interesting actresses of the Golden Era, from silent star Billie Dove to Katharine Hepburn, to a series of brunette bombshells, including Ava Gardner, Jane Russell, Gina Lollobrigida and more.

Episodes:

  • The Many Loves of Howard Hughes, chapter 1: The first episode of a multi-part series on the Hollywood romances of Howard Hughes traces Hughes’ arranged marriage at age 18 to Southern society belle Ella Rice; his affairs with silent star Billie Dove and Jean Harlow, who Hughes helped to establish as a sex symbol whose body was used to evoke both money and military might; and his attempt to invent himself as the most powerful independent producer in town, with his directorial debut, Hell’s Angels. [Listen]

  • The Many Loves of Ida Lupino: In this second installment of our ongoing series, The Many Loves of Howard Hughes, we explore the life, loves and work of Ida Lupino. Hughes dated Lupino when she was a teenage starlet; nearly 20 years later, after Lupino had become the only working female feature director in 1940s Hollywood, Hughes signed his ex-girlfriend’s production company to a deal at RKO. [Listen]

  • Katharine Hepburn in 1938: Introduced by Hughes’ close confidant, Cary Grant, Hepburn and Hughes became a celebrity couple in the modern mold: mutually attracted in part based on the fame of the other, they were hounded by paparazzi, their rumored impending nuptials dissected by outsiders until the relationship itself frittered away. By 1938, Hepburn’s “woman wearing the pants” image had transitioned from merely controversial to cripplingly unfashionable, and when she was named in the infamous "box office poison" ad of May 1938, her career sunk as low as it would go. [Listen]

  • Jane Russell: Our long-running series on the women in the life of the infamous aviator/filmmaker continues with a look at Hughes’ professional and personal relationship with Jane Russell, which began in 1940 when Hughes randomly pulled a photograph of the 19 year-old out of a pile, and lasted for most of her film career. [Listen]

  • Gene Tierney: On-screen, gorgeous brunette actress Gene Tierney helped to invent the femme fatale in movies like Laura and Leave Her to Heaven, and off-screen, she had serious romances with four of the great playboys of the 20th century: John F. Kennedy, Howard Hughes, Prince Aly Khan and costume/fashion designer Oleg Cassini. So how did she end up, at age 38, standing on a ledge fourteen floors above 57th Street, wondering what her body would look like on the pavement if she were to jump? [Listen]

  • Rupert Hughes’s Women: Howard Hughes was not the first man in his family to find success in Hollywood, or to build a reputation built in part on multiple relationships with women. His uncle, Rupert Hughes, was a respected writer and director in the silent era, whose accomplishments included one of the first Hollywood meta-movies. He also married three times, while making frequent public statements, and films, critiquing marriage and divorce laws. One of his marriages ended in a sensational divorce trial; the other two Mrs. Hughes committed suicide. [Listen]

  • The bacchanal of 1920s Hollywood: Frederica Sagor would pen one of the frankest memoirs of 1920s Hollywood ever written, revealing the systematic sexual exploitation of women in the film industry by men like Marshall Neilan -- one of Howard Hughes’s early mentors. Frederica’s story also details how tough it was for a woman to hold on to power behind the scenes in the film industry as Hollywood evolved. [Listen]

  • Ann Dvorak: 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 she was cast in Howard Hughes’s production of Scarface. But Hughes would sell her contract to Warner Brothers, and when Ann later accused Hughes of having “sold [her] down the river,”  she would swiftly suffer the consequences of going up against Hughes in the press when his mastery over the medium of publicity was at its peak. [Listen]

  • Linda Darnell: A stunning brunette sex symbol married to cinematographer Pev Marley, Darnell thought her affair with Hughes would result in marriage to the aviator. But after Hughes’s near-fatal 1946 plane crash, Marley tried to make a deal to sell his wife to the tycoon--which was not what Darnell wanted. This was not the low point of a life that ended in incredible tragedy, amidst a career that, to this day, has not been given the acclaim it deserves. [Listen]

  • Yvonne DeCarlo: 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, De Carlo fit the mold of Howard Hughes’s mid-century girlfriends to a T. But that relationship would be brief, and De Carlo would go on to distinguish herself in movies, TV and as a star of the original production of Stephen Sondheim’s Follies. [Listen]

  • Gina Lollobrigida: This Italian pin-up, along with Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot, was emblematic of a brand of post-war European sexuality that America happily imported. But the Hollywood career of  “La Lollo” was delayed, thanks to Howard Hughes, whose obsession with Lollobrigida led him to keep her virtually imprisoned in a Los Angeles hotel, and sign her to a contract that made it essentially impossible for her to work for any other US producer. [Listen]

Gina Lollobrigida (The Seduced, Episode 6) by Karina Longworth

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Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts.

This Italian pin-up, along with Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot, was emblematic of a brand of post-war European sexuality that America happily imported. But the Hollywood career of  “La Lollo” was delayed, thanks to Howard Hughes, whose obsession with Lollobrigida led him to keep her virtually imprisoned in a Los Angeles hotel, and sign her to a contract that made it essentially impossible for her to work for any other US producer.

Gina Lollobrigida in Bread, Love and Dreams, 1953

Gina Lollobrigida in Bread, Love and Dreams, 1953

Music:

The music used in this episode, with the exception of the intro and outro, was sourced from royalty-free music libraries and licensed music collections. The intro includes a clip from the film Casablanca. The outro song this week is “For Tomorrow” by Blur.

Excerpts from the following songs were used throughout the episode:

Reflectif - Artist Unknown 

Rendezvous 3 - Martin Landh 

Mysterious Grand Piano - Jonas Elander

Cluedo - Hakan Erikson

Sophisticated Gentleman 3 - Magnus Kingbloom

My Simple Thing 2 - Peter Sandberg

Yellow Leaves 5 - Peter Sandberg

After the Freakshow - Jenny Roos

Jazz and Blue Piano 1-Jonatan Jarpehag

Campers Day-Magnus Ringblom

Tomorrow I’ll Be Gone - Franz Gordon

Speakeasy 2 - Gunnar Johnsen

Credits:

This episode was written, narrated and produced by Karina Longworth.

Editor: Olivia Natt.

Research and production assistant: Lindsey D. Schoenholtz.

Social media assistant: Brendan Whalen.

Logo design: Teddy Blanks.

Gina Lollobrigida, 2014 | Photograph by Jonathan Becker for Vanity Fair

Gina Lollobrigida, 2014 | Photograph by Jonathan Becker for Vanity Fair

Yvonne De Carlo (The Seduced, Episode 5) by Karina Longworth

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Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts.

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, De Carlo fit the mold of Howard Hughes’s mid-century girlfriends to a T. But that relationship would be brief, and De Carlo would go on to distinguish herself in movies, TV and as a star of the original production of Stephen Sondheim’s Follies.

Yvonne De Carlo in Salome, Where She Danced (1945)

Yvonne De Carlo in Salome, Where She Danced (1945)

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Music:

The music used in this episode, with the exception of the intro and outro, was sourced from royalty-free music libraries and licensed music collections. The intro includes a clip from the film Casablanca. The outro song this week is “Sing” by Blur.

Excerpts from the following songs were used throughout the episode:

Reflectif - Artist Unknown 

Green Lace - Artist Unknown

The Smoke Room - Gunnar Johnsen

Tomorrow I’ll Be Gone - Franz Gordon

Speakeasy 2 - Gunnar Johnsen

Club Noir-2 - John Ahlin

Rendezvous 3 - Martin Landh

The Charleston 3 - Hakan Ericsson

Mas Cerca De Ti 5 - Martin Carlberg

Campers Day - Magnus Ringbloom

Muensters Theme Song - Jack Marshall 

Yvonne De Carlo as Lily Munster, c. 1964

Yvonne De Carlo as Lily Munster, c. 1964

Credits:

This episode was written, narrated and produced by Karina Longworth.

Editor: Olivia Natt.

Research and production assistant: Lindsey D. Schoenholtz.

Social media assistant: Brendan Whalen.

Logo design: Teddy Blanks.

De Carlo, Yvonne_04.jpg

Linda Darnell (The Seduced, Episode 4) by Karina Longworth

Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts.

A stunning brunette sex symbol married to cinematographer Pev Marley, Darnell thought her affair with Hughes would result in marriage to the aviator. But after Hughes’s near-fatal 1946 plane crash, Marley tried to make a deal to sell his wife to the tycoon--which was not what Darnell wanted. This was not the low point of a life that ended in incredible tragedy, amidst a career that, to this day, has not been given the acclaim it deserves.

Linda Darnell, Jeanne Crain, Ann Sothern, and John Venn in A Letter to Three Wives, 1949

Linda Darnell, Jeanne Crain, Ann Sothern, and John Venn in A Letter to Three Wives, 1949

Linda Darnell & Joseph L. Mankiewicz, c. 1948

Linda Darnell & Joseph L. Mankiewicz, c. 1948

Music:

The music used in this episode, with the exception of the intro and outro, was sourced from royalty-free music libraries and licensed music collections. The intro includes a clip from the film Casablanca. The outro song this week is “She’s So High” by Blur.

Excerpts from the following songs were used throughout the episode:

Reflective - Artist Unknown 

Song for Johanna - Franz Gordon

Tomorrow I’ll Be Gone - Franz Gordon

Mas Cerca De Ti 5 - Martin Carlberg

Whiskey Rondo - Hakan Eriksson

Time for Miles - Artist Unknown 

Club Noir 2 - John Ahlin

Speakeasy 2 - Gunnar Johnsen

Victoria’s Vintage Pearls 3 - Peter Sandberg

Sunset - Kai Engel

Sweet Flower Girl - Artist Unknown 

Dust Bowl 1 - Hakan Eriksson

Jazz And Blue Piano 1 - Jonatan Jarpehag 

Credits:

This episode was written, narrated and produced by Karina Longworth.

Editor: Olivia Natt.

Research and production assistant: Lindsey D. Schoenholtz.

Social media assistant: Brendan Whalen.

Logo design: Teddy Blanks.

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Ann Dvorak (The Seduced, Episode 3) by Karina Longworth

Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts.

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 she was cast in Howard Hughes’s production of Scarface. But Hughes would sell her contract to Warner Brothers, and when Ann later accused Hughes of having “sold [her] down the river,”  she would swiftly suffer the consequences of going up against Hughes in the press when his mastery over the medium of publicity was at its peak.

Paul Muni and Ann Dvorak and in Scarface, 1932

Paul Muni and Ann Dvorak and in Scarface, 1932

SHOW NOTES:  

Sources:

Seduction: Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Howard Hughes’s Hollywood by Karina Longworth

Ann Dvorak: Hollywood's Forgotten Rebel by Christina Rice

Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood by Todd McCarthy

“Sold Down the River’ Declares Ann Dvorak.” Los Angeles Times, July 19, 1932

Production Code Administration files on Scarface, Margaret Herrick Library

Lincoln Quarberg files, Special Collections, Margaret Herrick Library

Clips from Scarface (1932) and The Strange Love of Molly Louvain (1932)

Ann Dvorak and Richard Cromwell in The Strange Love of Molly Louvain (1932)

Ann Dvorak and Richard Cromwell in The Strange Love of Molly Louvain (1932)

Music:

The music used in this episode, with the exception of the intro and outro, was sourced from royalty-free music libraries and licensed music collections. The intro includes a clip from the film Casablanca. The outro song this week is “Slow Down” by Blur.

Excerpts from the following songs were used throughout the episode:

Reflectif - Artist Unknown 

Time for Miles - Artist Unknown 

Kansas City Flashback 1 - Magnus Ringbloom

Club Noir 2 - John Ahlin

Yellow Leaves 5 - Peter Sandberg

Whiskey Rondo - Hakan Eriksson

Cluedo - Hasan Eriksson 

Tomorrow I’ll Be Gone - Franz Gordon

The Smoke Room - Gunnar Johnson

Loser - Anders Ekengren

After the Freakshow - Jenny Roos

Victoria’s Vintage Pearls 3 - Peter Sandberg

Jazz and Blue Piano 1 - Jonathan Jarpehag

Traceless 5 - Peter Sandberg

Empty Streets - Gunnar Johnson

Got That Feeling - Peter Sandberg

Credits:

This episode was written, narrated and produced by Karina Longworth.

Special Guest Noah Segan as Howard Hughes

Editor: Olivia Natt.

Research and production assistant: Lindsey D. Schoenholtz.

Social media assistant: Brendan Whalen.

Logo design: Teddy Blanks.

Photo from the personal scrapbook of Ann Dvorak/Collection of Christina Rice via Huffington Post

Photo from the personal scrapbook of Ann Dvorak/Collection of Christina Rice via Huffington Post

The Bacchanal of 1920s Hollywood, via Frederica Sagor Maas (The Seduced, Episode 2) by Karina Longworth

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Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts.

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 Frederica Sagor. Sagor would go on to pen one of the frankest memoirs of 1920s Hollywood ever written, revealing the systematic sexual exploitation of women in the film industry by men like Marshall Neilan -- one of Howard Hughes’s early mentors. Frederica’s story also details how tough it was for a woman to hold on to power behind the scenes in the film industry as Hollywood evolved. 

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SHOW NOTES:  

Sources:

Seduction: Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Howard Hughes’s Hollywood by Karina Longworth

The Shocking Miss Pilgrim by Frederica Sagor Maas

Lois Weber in Early Hollywood by Shelley Stamp

Are the Stars Out Tonight? The Story of the Famous Ambassador and Cocoanut Grove “Hollywood’s Hotel” by Margaret Tante Burk

Marshall Neilan’s autobiographical notes, Marshall Neilan special collection, Margaret Herrick Library

Music:

The music used in this episode, with the exception of the intro and outro, was sourced from royalty-free music libraries and licensed music collections. The intro includes a clip from the film Casablanca. The outro song this week is “It Could Be You” by Blur.

Excerpts from the following songs were used throughout the episode:

Reflectif (Artist Unknown)

The Charleston 1 Hakan Ericsson

Club Noir 4-John Ahlin

Waltz for Cello 3—Jonatan Jarpehag

42nd and Broadway (Artist Unknown)  

Got That Feeling-Peter Sandberg

My Simple Thing—Peter Sandberg

Chamber String Rock-Hakan Ericsson

Kansas City Flashback 1-Magnus Ringbloom

Sad Drama 4-Merlean

Loser-Anders Ekengren

Black and White Memories 3-Martin Hall

Jazz And Blue Piano 1-Jonathan Jarpehag

Viona’s Lullaby-Peter Sandberg

Sunset—Kai Vogel

Marshall Neilan and Mary Pickford on set, c. 1920's | Photo via the Mary Pickford Foundation

Marshall Neilan and Mary Pickford on set, c. 1920's | Photo via the Mary Pickford Foundation

Credits:

This episode was written, narrated and produced by Karina Longworth.

Editor: Olivia Natt.

Research and production assistant: Lindsey D. Schoenholtz.

Social media assistant: Brendan Whalen.

Logo design: Teddy Blanks.

Frederica Sagor Maas

Frederica Sagor Maas

Rupert Hughes's Women (The Seduced, Episode 1) by Karina Longworth

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Listen, download this episode, or find on iTunes.

Welcome to a mini-season of You Must Remember This, peripherally related to Karina Longworth’s new book, Seduction: Sex, Lies and Stardom in Howard Hughes’s Hollywood, which explores the lives and careers of over a dozen actresses who were involved, professionally and/or personally, with Howard Hughes. Inspired by the You Must Remember This episodes on “The Many Loves of Howard Hughes” produced in 2014-2015, the book goes in depth, with much new research, into the stories of stars like Jean Harlow, Ginger Rogers, Ida Lupino, Jane Russell and many more.

In this short series of You Must Remember This, we’ll discuss some of the women who serve as peripheral characters in Seduction: four actresses who were briefly seduced by Hughes, either professionally or romantically, and one writer whose travails in Hollywood during the Hughes era speak to the conflicted female experience behind the camera in 20th century Hollywood.

We’ll begin the season by talking about the complicated, intermingled romantic and professional relationships of Howard’s uncle, Rupert Hughes, who paved the way for his nephew as a Hollywood figure known for his colorful history with women. Howard Hughes was not the first man in his family to find success in Hollywood, or to build a reputation built in part on multiple relationships with women. His uncle, Rupert Hughes, was a respected writer and director in the silent era, whose accomplishments included one of the first Hollywood meta-movies. He also married three times, while making frequent public statements, and films, critiquing marriage and divorce laws. One of his marriages ended in a sensational divorce trial; the other two Mrs. Hughes committed suicide.

Rupert Hughes, c. 1920-30

Rupert Hughes, c. 1920-30

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Music:

The music used in this episode, with the exception of the intro and outro, was sourced from royalty-free music libraries and licensed music collections. The intro includes a clip from the film Casablanca. The outro song this week is “Charmless Man” by Blur.

Excerpts from the following songs were used throughout the episode:

Reflectif—Artist Unknown

Feelin’ Lucky—Artist Unknown

Mississippi Ramble 1—Martin Gauffin 

My Simple Thing—Peter Sandberg

Traceless 5-Peter Sandberg

Rendezvous 3—Martin Landh

Song for Johanna-Franz Gordon

Ragtime Jam 3—Magnus Ringblom

Whiskey Rondo—Hakan Eriksson

Jazz And Blue Piano 1—Jonatan Jarpehag

Sleepless—(artist unknown) 

Hot Rod Rebels 5—Victor Olsson

Sunset—Kai Engel 

Bad News Piano—1-Oscar Collin

Speakeasy 2—Gunnar Johnsen

Peaceful Pianos 5—Martin Klem

After the Freakshow—Jenny Roos

Rupert Hughes and his wife in Photoplay magazine, July 1921

Rupert Hughes and his wife in Photoplay magazine, July 1921

Credits:

This episode was written, narrated and produced by Karina Longworth.

Special appearance by Noah Segan, as Howard Hughes.

Editor: Olivia Natt.

Research and production assistant: Lindsey D. Schoenholtz.

Social media assistant: Brendan Whalen.

Logo design: Teddy Blanks.

The Blacklist Archive by Karina Longworth

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In the 1940s and 50s, dozens of writers, producers, directors and stars were pushed to the margins of the film industry due to the perception of their personal politics. Though socialism and anti-Fascism had been in vogue just a few years earlier, now an affiliation with such movements was considered tantamount to treason. The Blacklist traces how this happened, through the stories of The Hollywood Ten, Dorothy Parker, Charlie Chaplin, Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, John Garfield, Kirk Douglas and more.

Episodes:

  • TENDER COMRADES: THE PREHISTORY OF THE BLACKLIST: This first episode traces the roots of communism and anti-communism in Hollywood, through the Depression, union struggles and scandals, and World War II. The major characters of the series will be introduced, including members of the Hollywood Ten like Dalton Trumbo and Edward Dmytryk, two Party members who collaborated on a film called Tender Comrade, which starred one of Hollywood's proudest Conservatives, Ginger Rogers. Tender Comrade epitomizes the political evolution that made the Blacklist happen: considered patriotic American propaganda during the War, the film was recast as problematically anti-capitalist after the war, and its makers branded with the epithet "prematurely anti-fascist." Listen

  • CROSSFIRE: THE TRIALS OF THE HOLLYWOOD TEN: In 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee subpoenaed dozens of Hollywood workers to come to Washington and testify to the presence of Communists in the film industry. 19 of those who were subpoenaed announced that they wouldn't co-operate with the Committee; of those 19, 10 "unfriendly" witnesses were called to the stand and refused to answer "The $64 Question": "Are you now or have you ever been a Communist?" Those 10 men were subsequently denied employment, and imprisoned; afraid of collateral damage to the industry, the studio moguls were thus moved to design the Blacklist. This episode will explore the work and politics of the Hollywood Ten -- and films on which they came together, such as Crossfire -- and delve into the far-reaching consequences of their false assumption that the Constitution would protect them. Listen

  • DOROTHY PARKER: Columnist, poet and celebrated Algonquin Roundtable wit Dorothy Parker spent years in Hollywood, working as a screenwriter in partnership with her second husband, Alan Campbell, and contributing to important films such as the original A Star is Born and Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur. Much to the surprise of many of her closest friends, beginning in the late 1920s Parker became increasingly drawn to socialist causes. Parker’s political calling was merely socially problematic before World War II, when Parker spearheaded the formation of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League; after the war, when Parker’s name was named before HUAC, her political convictions killed her Hollywood career at its peak. Listen

  • THE AFRICAN QUEEN: HUMPHREY BOGART, KATHARINE HEPBURN AND JOHN HUSTON: 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 John Huston all protested HUAC in ways that damaged their public personas and their ability to work in Hollywood. Hepburn’s outspokenness resulted in headlines branding her a "Red" and, allegedly, audiences stoning her films. Bogart and Huston were prominent members of the Committee For the First Amendment, a group of Hollywood stars who came to Washington to support the Hollywood Ten -- and lived to regret it. With their career futures uncertain, the trio collaborated on the most difficult film any of them would ever make, The African Queen. Listen

  • THE STRANGE LOVE OF BARBARA STANWYCK: ROBERT TAYLOR: 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 of ways, but the pair were united by their conservative politics. Both joined the blacklist-stoking Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, but only Taylor testified before HUAC. Called to shamed MGM for forcing him to star in wartime pro-Soviet film Song of Russia, Taylor would become the only major star to name names. Today we’ll talk about Taylor and Stanwyck’s relationship, and the difference between her groundbreaking career as the rare actress who refused to sign long term studio contracts, and his much more conventional experience as MGM chattel. Listen

  • HE RAN ALL THE WAY: JOHN GARFIELD: 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 and World War II films. Garfield was not a Communist; most of his friends -- and his wife -- were, but they mostly thought “Julie” was well-meaning but not a serious political animal. HUAC disagreed, and in the early 1950s, Garfield became the biggest star to be blacklisted. Listen

  • MONSIEUR VERDOUX: CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S ROAD TO HOLLYWOOD EXILE: In this episode, we catch up with Charlie Chaplin’s post-The Great Dictator, talk about Chaplin’s savage satirical follow-up, Monsieur Verdoux, and explain the witch hunt that ended with him forced to leave his adopted home, and Hollywood career, behind.  Listen

  • STORM WARNING: RONALD REAGAN, THE FBI AND HUAC: 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, Ronald Reagan had a major personal impact on the witch hunt’s manifestation in Hollywood, the Blacklist. This episode will trace the years in which Reagan was primarily known as a movie and TV star, and explore his two marriages to actresses, his testimony to HUAC, his behind-the-scenes work as an informer to the FBI, his late-career incarnation as bridge between Hollywood and corporate America, and more. Listen

  • SHE: RICHARD NIXON + HELEN GAHAGAN DOUGLAS: The wife of actor Melvyn Douglas (Ninotchka, Being There), Helen Gahagan Douglas transformed herself from a Broadway and opera star into an exciting new politician in the days of FDR. A persistent, nagging voice of conscience in Congress during the time of HUAC and nuclear panic, Douglas’ political career came to an end amidst inaccurate allegations that she was a Communist supporter -- many of which were leveled at her by her opponent in the 1950 Senate race, Richard Nixon. Listen

  • SALT OF THE EARTH: HOWARD HUGHES + PAUL JARRICO: Today we explore one of the more troubling aspects of Howard Hughes’ legacy: the firm hand he played in enforcing the blacklisting of Hollywood workers, both as the head and owner of RKO Pictures, and as a powerful rich guy whose influence went as high as the U.S. Congress. This episode also tells the story of Paul Jarrico, the first screenwriter to be taken to court by a studio (RKO) over the question of his firing during the blacklist period. In partnership with the also-blacklisted writer Michael Wilson and director Herbert Biberman, Jarrico made Salt of the Earth, a pro-Union, proto-feminist, Neorealist-influenced independent film which the blacklisting-supporting unions effectively squelched, with the help of the media, politicians, and Hughes.  Listen

  • BORN YESTERDAY: JUDY HOLLIDAY: Judy Holliday won an Oscar for her first starring film role (in Born Yesterday) and of her eight major film roles between 1950 and 1960, four were in films now considered classics. She was one star who was subpoenaed to testify about her ties to Communism who was fully supported by her studio and subsequently wasn’t blacklisted from movies. Holliday’s career was short-lived nonetheless, in part because she represented a highly idiosyncratic, working-class, urban, Jewish authenticity in a time when conformity was being peddled as an equivalent to safety. Listen

  • LENA HORNE + PAUL ROBESON: 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 had associated with leftists and “agitators,” got caught up in the anti-communist insanity. One of those agitators was Paul Robeson, a singer, actor and political firebrand who was a mentor and friend to Horne. But once the red panic began to heat up, that friendship became problematic for Lena, and like so many others, she was forced to choose between her career and her friendships. Listen

  • ON THE WATERFRONT: ELIA KAZAN: Elia Kazan introduced audiences to Warren Beatty, James Dean and Marlon Brando. His films of the 1950s -- including A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, and East of Eden -- comprise perhaps the most impressive body of work of an American director of the decade. But Kazan, who was briefly a Communist in the 1930s, likely would not have been able to make many of those films had he not named names to HUAC in 1952. Listen

  • AFTER THE FALL: ARTHUR MILLER: 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, a parable about anti-communist hysteria set amidst the Salem Witch Trials. But despite the committee’s sensitivity to criticism, HUAC didn’t subpoena Miller until he became engaged to Marilyn Monroe, then the biggest star and sex symbol of her day. Miller and Kazan would remain estranged for a decade, until the latter directed a play written by the former which, while drawing headlines for its depiction of Monroe, also seemed to parallel their falling out over HUAC. Listen

  • FRANK SINATRA AND ALBERT MALTZ (BREAKING THE BLACKLIST, PART 1): 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 Albert Maltz. Timing got in the way of Sinatra’s good intentions: this was the exact moment when Sinatra had become the coolest middle-aged man in America as “chairman of the board” of the newly-formed Vegas act now known as the Rat Pack. It was also the moment when Sinatra thought he was on the verge of acquiring real political power through his proximity to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy. Listen

  • KIRK DOUGLAS, DALTON TRUMBO, AND OTTO PREMINGER (BREAKING THE BLACKLIST, PART 2): 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 flaunting of that hiring. Otto Preminger, who hired Trumbo to write Exodus, might see it differently. In truth, the end of the blacklist was a process that took over a decade, and couldn’t have happened without actions taken by, amongst others, Charlie Chaplin, director Joseph Losey, members of the Academy's Board of Governors and president John F. Kennedy. We'll talk about the connection between the end of the blacklist and the weakening of the production code, and what both had to do with the slow dissolution of the studio system amidst the rise of independent producers and a younger generation of audiences. Finally, we’ll discuss how those who had been blacklisted struggled to move on. Listen

Salt of the Earth: Howard Hughes + Paul Jarrico (The Blacklist Episode #10) by Karina Longworth

Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts.

Today we explore one of the more troubling aspects of Howard Hughes’ legacy: the firm hand he played in enforcing the blacklisting of Hollywood workers, both as the head and owner of RKO Pictures, and as a powerful rich guy whose influence went as high as the U.S. Congress. This episode also tells the story of Paul Jarrico, the first screenwriter to be taken to court by a studio (RKO) over the question of his firing during the blacklist period. In partnership with the also-blacklisted writer Michael Wilson and director Herbert Biberman, Jarrico made Salt of the Earth, a pro-Union, proto-feminist, Neorealist-influenced independent film which the blacklisting-supporting unions effectively squelched, with the help of the media, politicians, and Hughes. 

Paul Jarrico testifying to the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1951.

Salt of the Earth (1954)

Show notes:

Here is a list of published sources that the entire season draws from:

The Red and the Blacklist: An Intimate Memoir of a Hollywood Expatriate by Norma Barzman

Dalton Trumbo: Blacklisted Hollywood Radical by Larry Ceplair and Christopher Trumbo

Trumbo: A biography of the Oscar-winning screenwriter who broke the Hollywood blacklist by Bruce Cook

When Hollywood Was Right: How Movie Stars, Studio Moguls, and Big Business Remade American Politics by Donald T. Critchlow

Odd Man Out: A Memoir of the Hollywood Ten by Edward Dmytryk

City of Nets by Otto Friedrich

Hollywood Radical, Or How I Learned to Love the Blacklist by Bernard Gordon

I Said Yes to Everything by Lee Grant

Army of Phantoms: American Movies and the Making of the Cold War by J. Hoberman

Naming Names by Victor S. Navasky

West of Eden: An American Place by Jean Stein

The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930-60 by Larry Ceplair

Sources specific to this episode:

Much of the research for this episode stemmed from the book I’m working on about Howard Hughes in Hollywood. I’ve taken two trips to the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, which holds nearly 100 boxes of Hughes materials from the office of Dick Hannah, who supervised Hughes’ publicity for the second half of his life. Hughes instructed his press agents to clip every article about him that they could find, as well as published pieces relating to his obsessions, from organized crime and gaming to certain actresses with whom he was once or currently sexually involved, to people he sued or was sued by. Thus, the files include much material on Jarrico, HUAC and Hughes' management of RKO.

Key sources referenced in this episode found at UNLV include:

--Transcript of Hughes’ 1952 American Legion address

--Jimmie Fidler’s November 8, 1951 column “Views From Hollywood,” published in the Valley News

--Coverage of the Hughes/Jarrico trial in The Mirror, Variety and the Los Angeles Examiner

--”Silver City: Who Caused the Trouble?” by Elizabeth Kerby, Frontier, May 1953

--”Reds in the Desert” no byline, Newsweek March 2, 1953

Special thanks also to Hilary Swett at the Writers Guild of America West for pointing me to clippings files and documents in their collection -- a true wealth of information, much which, in the interest of running time, I wasn’t able to include or could only briefly mention in this episode.

Key sources referenced in this episode found at the WGA include:

--Reports from the American Library of Information, and many memos and documents relating to RKO’s subscriptions to their service.

--”The Hughes-Jarrico Imbroglio and the Screen Writers’ Guild” by Mary C. McCall, Jr., Frontier, May 1952

--”Jarrico vs. Hughes: A War For Credit That Could Have Ended the Screen Writers’ Guild” By Barbara L. Hall, Written By September-October 2015

Other sources:

The Marxist and the Movies by Larry Ceplair

Salt of the Earth: The Story of a Film by Herbert Biberman

Special thanks to our special guest, Noah Segan, who returned as Howard Hughes.

This episode was edited by Henry Molofsky, and produced by Karina Longworth with the assistance of Lindsey D. Schoenholtz. Our logo was designed by Teddy Blanks.

Blacklist Flashback: Howard Hughes + Jane Russell by Karina Longworth

Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts.

In advance of next week’s episode dealing with Howard Hughes’ role in the blacklist, we revisit our October 2014 episode on Hughes’ relationship with Jane Russell, his wartime efforts to balance his aviation and moviemaking businesses, and his shaky run as head of RKO Pictures. Also: Ava Gardner gets violent, Hughes gets a teenage girlfriend, and Russell’s boobs manage to do what the Spruce Goose couldn’t.

The original show notes for the episode contains sources, soundtrack information and more.

Star Wars Archive by Karina Longworth

Hollywood-Canteen-01.jpg

Our Star Wars season explores the lives and work of stars during World War II.

Episodes:

  • BETTE DAVIS AND THE HOLLYWOOD CANTEEN: The first episode of this multi-part series starts with the woman who dominated all aspects of Hollywood, including its war effort, in the late 1930s-early 1940s: Bette Davis. This is the story of how she evolved from a wannabe starlet who was constantly told she was too ugly for movies, to the most powerful woman in Hollywood, by playing heroines that had never been seen on screen before — to borrow a term from Davis herself, sympathetic “bitches.” After Pearl Harbor, the tenacious Bette became the figurehead of the Hollywood Canteen, a nightclub for servicemen staffed by stars, which was the locus of the industry’s most visible support of the troops on the home front. Listen

  • CAROLE LOMBARD AND CLARK GABLE : Carole Lombard came into her own in the mid-1930s first as the queen of screwball comedy, and then as romantic partner to the star dubbed The King of Hollywood, Clark Gable. When the US entered World War II, to the chagrin of her stoic husband, Lombard immediately volunteered their services to FDR, and the actress ended up spearheading the first of many Hollywood whistle stop tours to sell bar bonds. Hurrying back from that tour, Lombard died in an awful plane crash, leaving a guilt- and grief-ridden Gable behind. In his despair, the 41 year-old Gable had strings pulled so that he could join the army to fight against Hitler -- a huge Gable fan who reportedly became desperate to capture the actor while he was flying combat missions over Germany. Listen

  • HEDY LAMARR: Hedy Lamarr was a pioneer in more ways than one. After inventing the movie sex scene scandal as the Austrian teenage star of the banned film Ecstasy, she gave up acting to become a trophy wife to a Fascist arms dealer. Then, on the brink of world war, she fled her marriage, hopped a boat to New York, and talked her way into a contract at MGM. With her first Hollywood film, Algiers, Lamarr became a major star, and the so-called "most beautiful girl in the world" had a promising career ahead of her. But she was bored in Hollywood, and in the midst of World War II, she used her free time to co-invent a radio-control technology meant for 1940s-era torpedoes, which would ultimately pave the way for cell phones, wifi, bluetooth, and drone warfare. Listen

  • GENE TIERNEY: On-screen, gorgeous brunette actress Gene Tierney helped to invent the femme fatale in movies like Laura and Leave Her to Heaven, and off-screen, she had serious romances with four of the great playboys of the 20th century: John F. Kennedy, Howard Hughes, Prince Aly Khan and costume/fashion designer Oleg Cassini. So how did she end up, at age 38, standing on a ledge fourteen floors above 57th Street, wondering what her body would look like on the pavement if she were to jump? The answer to that question begins at the Hollywood Canteen. Listen

  • RITA HAYWORTH AND ORSON WELLES: Margarita Cansino went to work at age 12, pretending to be her father’s wife so that the pair could get work as a dance team in Mexican nightclubs. Within a decade, chubby, visibly Hispanic wallflower Margarita had been transformed into Rita Hayworth — the quintessential all-American sex goddess of the World War II era. At the peak of Hayworth’s stardom, she fell in love with and married writer/director/actor/radio personality/magician Orson Welles. The glamour girl and the boy genius were happy together, for awhile — as long as both bought into a utopian plot they had cooked up to leave Hollywood. When that soured, the couple broke up…and then made a movie together, The Lady From Shanghai, in which Welles distorted their failed relationship into a bad-romance masterpiece.   Listen

  • MARLENE DIETRICH AT WAR: German actress/singer Marlene Dietrich — famous for her revolutionarily ambiguous, highly glamorous sexual libertine persona, as displayed on-screen during the 1930s in films like Morocco and Shanghai Express — was embedded with the Allies during World War II as a performer, propagandist, and de facto intelligence agent. We’ll explore how and why this happened, why the experience left Dietrich depressed and financially destitute, and how Billy Wilder convinced Marlene to play a Nazi sympathizer in the filmmaker’s attempt to make a post-war Hollywood propaganda film, A Foreign Affair. Also: a few of Dietrich’s many affairs with co-stars such as John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart, her plot to kill Hitler, and the FBI investigation that tried (and failed) to prove that Dietrich was a German spy. Listen

  • LENA HORNE: Signed to a contract by MGM in 1942, 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 her studio failed to make much use of her, Horne started feeling like a token — and she wasn’t just being paranoid. A tireless USO performer during World War II, Horne and MGM were deluged with fan mail from African-American soldiers, an outpouring of support which still didn’t change the fundamentally racist institutional attitudes holding Horne back. Listen

  • HOW NORMA JEANE BECAME MARILYN MONROE: In this episode, we’ll explore how Marilyn became Marilyn, by tracing the former Norma Jean Baker from her troubled childhood through the war years, her early struggles to get a foothold in Hollywood, and the nude photo scandal which cemented her stardom. We’ll see how the future Marilyn’s experiences mirrored those of other American woman, and the culture at large, in the post-war decade, and we’ll see how her projection of vulnerability and even victimhood would ultimately have radical implications.  Listen

  • JOHN HUSTON AND OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND: She was the raven-haired beauty whose lily-white persona was forged by her supporting roles in Gone With the Wind and several Errol Flynn swashbucklers. He was the real-life swashbuckler, the heroic lover/drinker/fighter whose directorial debut The Maltese Falcon, was an enormous success. They met when Huston directed de Havilland in his second film, In This Our Life, and began an affair which would continue, on and off, through the decade, as he joined the Army and made several controversial documentaries exposing dark aspects of the war experience, and as she waged a war of her own, taking Warner Brothers to court. Listen

  • ERROL FLYNN: Errol Flynn arrived in Hollywood in 1934 and almost immediately became a massive star, his swashbuckler-persona propelling many of the decades biggest action hits, from his debut Captain Blood to his signature film, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and beyond. Flynn's dashing good looks, put-on posh British accent and life-of-the-party personality masked the fact that he was actually an Australian bounder with a shady past, a history of recurrent malaria and a propensity to avoid reality by any means necessary. Secretly too sick to serve in World War II, Flynn stayed home in Hollywood and instead starred in perhaps the biggest sex scandal of the decade. Listen

  • CHARLIE CHAPLIN: The most successful film of Charlie Chaplin’s career was also the most controversial: in The Great Dictator, Chaplin viciously satirized Hitler before the US entered World War II, and the comedy helped rally a previously war-shy American public. We’ll explore the connections between Chaplin and Adolf Hitler, and explain why most of Hollywood tried to stop The Great Dictator from being made. Then we’ll switch gears to discuss how Chapin’s wartime activism and his troubled personal life collided to benefit J. Edgar Hoover, who spent thirty years trying to prove that Chaplin was dangerously un-American. Listen

  • BOB HOPE VS. BING CROSBY: Bob Hope is remembered as the 20th-century celebrity most devoted to entertaining the troops. Bing Crosby, Hope’s partner on seven films, sang the song that became an unlikely alternate national anthem during World War II. This is the story of Hope and Crosby’s partnership, their rivalry, and the different ways they endeared themselves to the boys overseas. Included: Hope’s embrace of multi-media celebrity and his mastery of hosting the Oscars; and Crosby’s road from drunk driving to blackface, to being voted the most admired man in America. Listen

  • WALT DISNEY: As the creator of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and, with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the inventor of the sophisticated feature-length animated film feature, Walt Disney changed Hollywood and brought millions of children and adults boundless joy. And yet, Disney’s legacy is marred by the common perception that he was also a racist, misogynist and anti-semite. Listen

  • FRANK SINATRA THROUGH 1945: Old Blue Eyes was once a young, skinny kid from Hoboken, and his rise to fame coincided almost exactly with the end of the Depression and the run up to and fighting of World War II. Unlike so many young men, famous or otherwise, Sinatra didn't enlist, and the controversy over whether or not he was a "draft dodger" hung over his head, even as he suited up in films like Anchors Aweigh. Listen

  • WHY JOHN WAYNE DIDN’T SIGN UP: No actor on movie screens in the 1940s embodied American patriotism and unpretentious masculinity better than John Wayne, whose career was revitalized in 1939 with John Ford’s groundbreaking western, Stagecoach. But Wayne didn’t have the defining experience of most adult American men of the 1940s — though he played uniformed men in several movies, off-screen Wayne didn’t enlist to serve in World War II. Listen

  • VAN JOHNSON: Join us, for the final episode in our Star Wars series (for now). Van Johnson was MGM’s big, All American heartthrob during World War II, and one of the most reliably bankable stars in Hollywood, on and off, for over a decade. On screen, Johnson embodied bland, unthreatening, boyishness. Off-screen, he was an introvert with a mysterious personal life, and by 1947, Van’s lack of a lady friend was becoming a distraction. In a bizarre effort at damage control, Van married his best friend’s wife — on the same day as their divorce. Listen