Podcast Seasons Archive
A guide to previous seasons of You Must Remember This
Charles Manson’s Hollywood
How did a career con man who wanted to be a rock star befriend some of the most influential people in the music business in late 1960s Hollywood, including the son of Doris Day? Listen to our 12 episode exploration of the Manson murders and its connections to and reverberations around 1960s Hollywood.
EROTIC 90’s: Erotic 90s continues the story of Erotic 80s, with 21 episodes tackling sex in Hollywood movies of the 1999s, spanning the creation—and disastrous rollout—of the NC-17 rating in 1990, through the release of Eyes Wide Shut in 1999. Listen to all 21 Erotic 90s episodes here.
EROTIC 80’S: Here in 2022, there is more public conversation about the nuances of human sexuality–and sexual abuse and harassment–than at any time in modern history. And yet, sex has all but disappeared from mainstream American movies, most of which would pass the sexual standard set by the strict censorship of the Production Code of the 1930s. This season of You Must Remember This will explore the relatively brief period, beginning in the 1970s and ending around the end of the millennium, when Hollywood movies explored the sexual lives, mores and fantasies of adults with degrees of candor, realism and imagination not seen before or since. Why did genres like the erotic thriller, body horror, neo-noir and the sex comedy flourish in the 80s and 90s, what was happening culturally that made these movies possible and popular, and why did Hollywood stop taking sex seriously? Each episode of Erotic 80s examines a single year, and one or more films that share a genre, a theme or a star, with topics ranging from the politics of porn, to the first camcorder sex tape scandal, to the sexualization of teens, to Hollywood’s lingering fear of interracial coupling. Some of the stars and filmmakers covered include Tom Cruise, Melanie Griffith, Richard Gere, Glenn Close, Rob Lowe, Mickey Rourke, Kevin Costner, Sean Young, Adrian Lyne, Amy Heckerling, Brian DePalma and much, much more... Listen to all 12 Erotic 80s episodes here.
SAMMY AND DINO: This season, we look at the movies, music and lives of Sammy Davis Jr and Dean Martin. Singers, actors, TV stars and nightclub performers, Davis and Martin became rich and famous selling versions of mid-20th-century hipness as the biggest stars in the Rat Pack who weren’t Frank Sinatra. The standard-setter for masculine cool in the second half of the twentieth century -- as well as a nexus where Hollywood power, political power and mafia power came together -- the Rat Pack feels uniquely uncool today. But Sammy and Dino were both more than the Rat Pack, and examining their lives and careers in tandem reveals tons, about the evolution of racial attitudes from the beginning of the 20th century -- when Italians and Italian-Americans like Dean were widely considered to be non-white; about how Hollywood responded to, and influenced, changing ideas about masculinity and “the man” from World War II to Vietnam and beyond; and above all, about the differences and similarities between mainstream capitalism and underground criminal economies, which is laid bare by the intersection of the music industry and the mafia. Listen to all nine episodes here.
GOSSIP GIRLS: HEDDA HOPPER & LOUELLA PARSONS: From the anonymous tips posted on Deux Moi to the streams of annotated paparazzi shots that fill the Daily Mail, today’s celebrity gossip -- democratized, based on technological surveillance -- looks completely different than it used to, when non-famous people could only go “behind the scenes” if led by authoritative guides. How did we get here? This season on You Must Remember This, we’re going to go back about a hundred years, to the very beginning of the idea of going “behind the scenes,” to talk about the two powerful women who invented and dominated Hollywood gossip as it was known in the 20th century: Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper. Parsons and Hopper were both self-made women, single moms from middle America who shattered the glass ceiling; they were also small-minded, self-obsessed bigots who used their power to persecute outsiders, police sexuality, and ensure that the rich, powerful people who made movies lived in fear. Through stories of these women, their rivalry with one another and their incestuous relationships with the institutions and powerful men that controlled media, the movies and even federal law enforcement, we’ll track the evolution of gossip over the course of a century. Listen to all nine episodes here.
POLLY PLATT: THE INVISIBLE WOMAN: As an Oscar-nominated production designer, screenwriter, producer and executive who put her stamp on some of the greatest and most loved films of the 1970s and 80s – including Paper Moon, Terms of Endearment and Broadcast News — Polly Platt had a major impact on the careers of Barbra Streisand, Tatum O’Neal, Garry Marshall, Cameron Crowe and Wes Anderson. She also lived an epic Hollywood life off-screen; her personal life was the stuff of a Great American Novel, full of romances, heartbreak, alcoholism and the challenges of adapting to cataclysmic cultural change as an independent, professional woman – and single mom. And yet, despite all of this, if you know Polly Platt’s name today, it’s probably because, in 1970, her husband and creative collaborator Peter Bogdanovich had an affair with Cybill Shepherd while shooting the film that made both Bogdanovich and Shepherd major stars of their era, The Last Picture Show. But Platt was much more than a jilted wife: she was the secret, often invisible-to-the-public weapon behind some of the most loved American “auteur” films (many of them comedies, directed by men) of the last decades of the 20th century.
Drawing on Platt’s unpublished memoir (which remained unfinished when she died in 2011), as well as ample interviews and archival research, The Invisible Woman will tell Polly Platt’s incredible story from her perspective, for the first time. A trailblazer in jobs rarely held by women in Hollywood to that point, Polly Platt’s story helps us understand the obstacles preventing gender equality behind the scenes in Hollywood — in the 1970 through the 1990s, and in the present day -- and allows us to contemplate what it was like to be a woman in Hollywood during a time when the feminist movement may have been remaking American society to some extent, but failed to make major inroads in the movie industry. Listen to all 10 episodes here.
MAKE ME OVER: In this companion series to You Must Remember This, Karina Longworth will introduce eight stories about Hollywood’s intersection with the beauty industry. Told by writers/reporters known for their work at The New Yorker, The New York Times and other publications, Make Me Over will explore a range of topics, including Hollywood’s first weight loss surgery, the story of the star whose unique skills led to the development of waterproof mascara, black beauty in the 1990s, and much more. Listen to all nine episodes here.
SIX DEGREES OF SONG OF THE SOUTH: The most controversial film in the history of Disney Animation, Song of the South is a live-action/animated hybrid about a little white boy and the former slave he befriends on a plantation in post-Civil War Georgia. The film was planned by Walt Disney to cash-in on nostalgia inspired by the release of Gone with the Wind. On its release in 1946, the movie was considered technically innovative, but hopelessly retrograde in its presentation of African-Americans as grinning, singing servants who were happy to continue their circumstances of slavery post-Emancipation. And yet, Song of the South would go on to have a long, strange life into the 1980s and beyond. Listen to all six episodes here.
FAKE NEWS: FACT CHECKING HOLLYWOOD BABYLON
Considered by many to be the urtext of salacious movieland gossip, Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon has been derided by some readers as a work of dangerous libel for its embellishments and, in some cases, outright fictions about real people and events. This season, we examine some of the stories Anger tells and the way he tells them, and we’ll try to figure out the real story. Throughout, we’ll talk about how the seemingly contemporary concept of “fake news” has played a key role in Hollywood’s star-making (and star-destroying) apparatus from the industry’s earliest days, and how such practices mutated through the work of counter-narrators like Anger and beyond.
Listen to all 19 episodes here.
BELA AND BORIS
The original Hollywood Dracula and Frankenstein, Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff were two middle-aged, foreign, struggling actors who became huge stars thanks to a wave of monster movie hits released by Universal Studios during the 1930s. This season, we discuss their parallel but very different lives and careers. Listen to all six episodes here.
JEAN AND JANE
Jane Fonda and Jean Seberg, two white American actresses who began their careers at the tail end of the Classical Hollywood studio system, found great success (and husbands) in France before boldly and controversially lending their celebrity to causes like civil rights and the anti-war movement. Fonda and Seberg were both tracked by the FBI during the Nixon administration, which considered both actresses to be threats to national security. But for all their similarities, Jane and Jean would end up on different paths. Listen to all nine episodes here.
DEAD BLONDES
Dead Blondes explores Hollywood and the larger culture's fascination with blonde women as perfect angels, perfect sex objects and perfect victims. From Jean Harlow to Veronica Lake, Marilyn Monroe to Dorothy Stratten, this season tells the stories of eleven actresses who died unusual, untimely or otherwise notable deaths which, in various ways, have outshined these actress’ careers and lives. Listen to all 13 episodes here.
SIX DEGREES OF JOAN CRAWFORD
Joan Crawford's career spanned the entirety of the classical Hollywood era, and her star image was completely tied into the ebbs and flows of the studio system. Tracing her silent-era embodiment of the flapper; her marriages (and affair with Clark Gable); her mid-career resurgence with Mildred Pierce; Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and finally Mommie Dearest, these six stories explain why Crawford was quintessential female star of the 20th century. Listen to all six episodes here.
THE BLACKLIST
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. Listen to all 16 episodes here.
STAR WARS
Star Wars tells the stories of over a dozen major stars and their experiences during World War II. Topics include Bette Davis and the Hollywood Canteen, Marlene Dietrich's harrowing experiences on the front lines, Marilyn Monroe's job at a wartime factory, the stories of male stars like John Wayne and Frank Sinatra who didn't fight, and much more. Listen to all 16 episodes here.
MGM Stories
Based on requests from listeners, this season tells the story of Louis B. Mayer’s rise and fall as the head of classical Hollywood’s starriest studio, largely through the stories of the stars themselves, including Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow, Judy Garland, Elizabeth Taylor, and more. Listen to all 15 episodes here.
The Many Loves of Howard Hughes
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. Listen here.
