75: The Blacklist Part 5: The Strange Love of Barbara Stanwyck: Robert Taylor
Barbara Stanwyck’s second marriage, to heartthrob Robert Taylor, didn’t make sense in a lot of ways, but the pair were united by their conservative politics.
View Article76: The Blacklist Part 6: He Ran All The Way: John Garfield
The biggest star to ever be blacklisted.
View ArticleBlacklist Flashback: Charlie Chaplin During World War II
In 1922, Charlie Chaplin was one of the most beloved men in the world.
View Article77: The Blacklist Part 7: Monsieur Verdoux: Charlie Chaplin's Road to...
The witch hunt that forced him to leave his adopted home, and Hollywood career, behind.
View Article78: Storm Warning: Ronald Reagan, the FBI and HUAC
From movie actor to politician, from Democrat to Republican.
View Article79: She: Richard Nixon + Helen Gahagan Douglas
From a Broadway and opera star to an exciting politician in the days of FDR.
View ArticleBlacklist Flashback: Howard Hughes + Jane Russell
Ava Gardner gets violent, Hughes’ 15 year-old muse, and how Russell’s boobs did what the Spruce Goose couldn’t.
View Article80: Salt of the Earth: Howard Hughes + Paul Jarrico
The first screenwriter to be taken to court by a studio over his blacklist firing.
View Article81: The Blacklist Part 11: Born Yesterday: Judy Holliday
The one star who was subpoenaed to testify about her ties to Communism who was fully supported by her studio.
View ArticleBlacklist Flashback: Lena Horne During WWII
Stunning singer/actress Lena Horne was the first black performer to be given the full glamour girl star-making treatment.
View Article82: The Blacklist Part 12: Stormy Weather: Lena Horne + Paul Robeson
Horne, 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.
View Article83: The Blacklist Part 13: On the Waterfront: Elia Kazan
A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, and East of Eden were made possible because their director named names.
View Article84: The Blacklist Part 14: 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.
View ArticleBlacklist Flashback: Frank Sinatra through 1945
Sinatra’s rise to fame and his experiences during World War II
View Article85: The Blacklist Part 15: Frank Sinatra and Albert Maltz (Breaking The...
Sinatra's attempts to hire Hollywood 10 member Albert Maltz, plus his rocky relationship with JFK.
View Article86: The Blacklist Part 16: Kirk Douglas, Dalton Trumbo, and Otto Preminger...
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...
View Article87: Six Degrees of Joan Crawford: Douglas Fairbanks / Lucille LeSueur Goes to...
In order to understand Joan Crawford’s rise to fame, we have to talk about what Joan - born Lucille LeSueur, and called “Billie Cassin” for much of her childhood - was like before she got to Hollywood,...
View Article88: Six Degrees of Joan Crawford: Douglas Fairbanks Jr. / Our Dancing...
Joan Crawford’s early years in Hollywood were like - well, a pre-code Joan Crawford movie: a highly ambitious beauty of low birth does what she has to do (whatever she has to do) to transform herself...
View Article89: Six Degrees of Joan Crawford: Clark Gable, Franchot Tone and Barbara Payton
By the mid-1930s, Joan Crawford was very, very famous, and negotiating both an affair with Clark Gable (her most frequent co-star and the only male star of her stature), and a new marriage to Franchot...
View Article90: Six Degrees of Joan Crawford: The Middle Years (Mildred Pierce to Johnny...
Joan Crawford struggled through what she called her “middle years,” the period during her 40s before she remade herself from aging, slumping MGM deadweight into a fleet, journeywoman powerhouse who...
View Article91: Six Degrees of Joan Crawford: Bette Davis, "What Ever Happened to Baby...
Robert Aldrich’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? has done more to define later generation’s ideas about who Crawford was than perhaps any other movie that she was actually in. Unfortunately, most of...
View Article92: Six Degrees of Joan Crawford: Mommie Dearest
The year after Joan Crawford died, her estranged, adopted daughter Christina published a tell-all, accusing her late mother of having been an abusive monster when the cameras weren’t around. Three...
View Article93: Peg Entwistle (Dead Blondes Part 1)
This season we’re going to explore the stories of 11 blonde actresses who died unusual, untimely or otherwise notable deaths - deaths which, in various ways, have outshined these actress’ lives. Today...
View Article94: Thelma Todd (Dead Blondes Part 2)
Thelma Todd - a curvaceous white-blonde who predated Jean Harlow - was a sparkling comedienne who began in the silent era and flourished in the talkies, both holding her own opposite the Marx Brothers...
View Article95: Jean Harlow Flashback (Dead Blondes Part 3)
Jean Harlow was the top blonde of the 1930s, and even though she didn’t survive the decade - she died in 1937 at the age of 26 - she’d inspire a generation of would-be platinum-haired bombshell stars....
View Article96: Veronica Lake (Dead Blondes Part 4)
Veronica Lake had the most famous hairdo of the 1940s, if not the twentieth century. Her star turn in Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels and her noir pairings with Alan Ladd made her Paramount’s...
View Article97: Carole Landis (Dead Blondes Part 5)
Carole Landis was a gifted comedienne, a decent singer, and - once she dyed her natural brown hair blonde - perhaps the most luminous beauty in movies of the early 1940s. Plus, she was one of the most...
View Article98: Marilyn Monroe: The Beginning (Dead Blondes Part 6)
Today we begin the first of three episodes on the most iconic dead blonde of them all, Marilyn Monroe. We’ll start be revisiting our episode on Marilyn from our series on stars during World War II, in...
View Article99: Marilyn Monroe: The Persona (Dead Blondes Part 7)
How did Marilyn Monroe become the most iconic blonde of the 1950s, if not the century? Today we will trace how her image was created and developed, through her leading roles in movies and her featured...
View Article100: Marilyn Monroe: The End (Dead Blondes Part 8)
How did a star whose persona seemed to be all about childlike joy and eternally vibrant sexuality die, single and childless, at the age of 36? In fact, the circumstances of Marilyn Monroe’s death are...
View Article101: Jayne Mansfield (Dead Blondes Part 9)
More famous today for her gruesome car crash death than for any of the movies she made while alive, Jayne Mansfield was in some sense the most successful busty blonde hired by a studio as a Marilyn...
View Article102: Barbara Payton (Dead Blondes Part 10)
In our Joan Crawford series, we talked about Barbara Payton as the young, troubled third wife of Crawford’s ex Franchot Tone, whose inability to choose between Tone and another actor brought all three...
View Article103: Grace Kelly (Dead Blondes Part 11)
The quintessential “Hitchcock blonde,” Grace Kelly had an apparently charmed life. Her movies were mostly hits, her performances were largely well reviewed, and she won an Oscar against stiff...
View Article104: Barbara Loden (Dead Blondes Part 12)
Barbara Loden won a Tony Award for playing a character based on Marilyn Monroe in Arthur Miller’s After the Fall. Like Marilyn, Barbara was a beauty with no pedigree who fled a hopeless upbringing in...
View Article105: Dorothy Stratten (Dead Blondes Part 13)
Our Dead Blondes season concludes with the story of Dorothy Stratten. Coaxed into nude modeling by Paul Snider, her sleazy boyfriend-turned-husband, 18 year-old Stratten was seized on by Playboy as the...
View Article106: Hollywood Royalty/Middle-American Martyr (Jean & Jane Episode 1)
Introducing our new series, “Jean and Jane,” exploring the parallel lives of Jane Fonda and Jean Seberg, two white American actresses who found great success (and husbands) in France before boldly and...
View Article107: Jean and Otto Preminger/Jane in New York (Jean & Jane Episode 2)
Jean Seberg made her first two films, Saint Joan and Bonjour Tristesse, for director Otto Preminger, a tyrannical svengali character whose methods would traumatize Jean for the rest of her life and...
View Article108: Jean and Jane in Paris (Jean & Jane Episode 3)
With her Hollywood career already something of a disappointment, Jean Seberg took a chance on a French film critic turned first-time director who wanted her to play an amoral American in an...
View Article109: Jean vs "Lilith"
Having left her husband to be the mistress of writer/diplomat Romain Gary, Jean secretly gave birth to a son, and then made the movie that she thought would prove herself as an actress once and for...
View Article110: Jane vs "Barbarella"
Having coaxed Jane into participating in an open marriage, Vadim began casting her in films as a male fantasy of female sexual liberation. This phase of her career would peak with Barbarella, a sci-fi...
View Article111: Jean and Jane Become Public Enemies
On the heels of making her biggest Hollywood movies in years, Jean Seberg becomes involved with two black radicals, one a cousin of Malcolm X who spouted violent, anti-white rhetoric, the other a...
View Article112: Hanoi Jane & The FBI vs. Jean Seberg’s Baby
After shooting a film with a much-changed Jean-Luc Godard, Jane Fonda travels to Vietnam, where she naively participates in a stunt that would leave her branded “Hanoi Jane” for decades. The world...
View Article113: Coming Home
Jean buries her child in Iowa, and then returns to Paris in a fragile mental state. Increasingly plagued by both justifiable paranoia and delusions, she makes her last significant films (including...
View Article114: The Last of Jean/Jane Works Out
Jean Seberg, now plagued with mental illness and alcoholism, comes to a tragic end in Paris. Jane Fonda reinvents herself, once again, for the 80s.
View Article115: Where the Monsters Came From (Bela & Boris Part 1)
Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff were two middle-aged, foreign, struggling actors who became huge stars thanks to Dracula and Frankenstein, the first two of a trend of monster movie hits released by...
View Article116: Bela and the Vampires (Bela & Boris Part 2)
With Dracula (1931), Bela Lugosi instantly became the first horror star of sound cinema. It’s not easy being a trailblazer, and Bela would have difficulty capitalizing on his newfound stardom. In this...
View Article117: Boris and the Monsters (Bela & Boris Part 3)
After twenty years as a journeyman actor/laborer, Boris Karloff became an instant superstar as the Monster in Frankenstein (1931). Today we’ll explore how Karloff, unlike Lugosi, managed to maintain a...
View Article118: Bela vs. Boris (Bela & Boris Part 4)
Lugosi and Karloff, the two stars made by Universal’s monster movies, made eight films together. Today we’ll dive deep into some of these movies (including The Black Cat, The Raven, Son of Frankenstein...
View Article119: Bela and Ed Wood (Bela & Boris Part 5)
Forgotten by Hollywood, struggling with morphine addiction and a dependency on alcohol, at the end of his life Bela Lugosi was welcomed into a rag tag bunch of micro-budget movie-making freaks led by...
View Article120: Boris and Roger Corman (Bela & Boris Part 6)
Where Bela Lugosi lived his last decade in sad obscurity, Boris Karloff worked until the very end of his life, even as his body began to fall apart. Some of that work was for Roger Corman, the...
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