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42: Star Wars Episode XV: 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,...
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43: Star Wars Episode XVI: 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, an one of the most reliably bankable stars in Hollywood, on and...
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44: Charles Manson’s Hollywood, Part 1: What We Talk About When We Talk About...
This season, You Must Remember This will explore the murders committed in the summer of 1969 by followers of Charles Manson, and the Hollywood music and movie scene surrounding the killings. Throughout...
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45: Charles Manson’s Hollywood, Part 2: How Manson Found His Family
Today we’re tracing Charles Manson’s life from his birth to a teenage con artist, through multiple stints in reform schools and prisons, and finally to San Francisco circa 1967, where Manson began to...
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46: Charles Manson’s Hollywood, Part 3: The Beach Boys, Dennis Wilson, and...
After bringing his family to Los Angeles so he could look for a record deal, Charlie Manson befriended Beach Boy Dennis Wilson, and used the drummer to gain credibility in the Los Angeles music scene....
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47: Charles Manson’s Hollywood, Part 4: Spahn Ranch and the Beatles’ White Album
After wearing out his welcome at Dennis Wilson’s house, Manson moves his family to Spahn Ranch, a dilapidated Western movie set where the cult starts preparing for Helter Skelter, Manson’s made-up...
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48: Charles Manson’s Hollywood, Part 5: Doris Day and Terry Melcher
Charles Manson became convinced his best chance at rock stardom was impressing Terry Melcher, a record executive who had made stars out of The Byrds, and who was also the son of one of old Hollywood’s...
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49: Charles Manson’s Hollywood, Part 6: Kenneth Anger and Bobby Beausoleil
The first person to go to jail for a Charles Manson-associated murder was Bobby Beausoleil, a charismatic would-be rock star who had put in time as a muse to Kenneth Anger — child...
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50: Charles Manson’s Hollywood, Part 7: Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring
In the first of two episodes about the Manson Family’s most famous victim, we’ll trace actress Sharon Tate’s early years, her romance with celebrity hairdresser Jay Sebring, and the on-set affair that...
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51: Charles Manson’s Hollywood, Part 8: Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski
While trying to launch her own acting career, Sharon Tate fell in love with, and eventually married, Roman Polanski, the hotshot Polish filmmaker who had his first massive American hit in the summer of...
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52: Charles Manson’s Hollywood, Part 9: August 8-10, 1969
Over the course of a single weekend, half a dozen hippies massacred seven people. This episode includes disturbing details about very violent crimes. Show notes: This episode is graphic and disturbing!...
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53: Charles Manson’s Hollywood, Part 10: Roman Polanski After Sharon Tate
Roman Polanski was in London the night his pregnant wife was murdered in their home. He returned to Los Angeles, devastated, to find himself wanted for questioning in a crime which the LAPD, initially,...
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54: Charles Manson’s Hollywood, Part 11: Death Valley ’69
After the murders, Manson moved his family to the depths of the California desert. There, even before they were finally apprehended by the law, their utopia started to fall apart. Hollywood was in the...
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55: Charles Manson’s Hollywood, Part 12: The Manson Family on Trial
The trials of the Manson family became a kind of public theater which a number of current and future filmmakers found themselves caught up in. Joan Didion bought a dress for a Manson girl to wear to...
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56: MGM Stories Part 1: Louis B. Mayer vs. Irving Thalberg
This season we're going to tell 15 stories about different people who worked at the same movie studio over the course of five decades, as the movie industry transitioned from silents to sound, into its...
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57: MGM Stories Part 2: Marion Davies, William Randolph Hearst, and Citizen Kane
Marion Davies is enshrined in memory as the gorgeous but questionably talented mistress of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst -- thanks in part to the depiction of a Davies-esque character in...
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58: MGM Stories Part 3: Buster Keaton’s Biggest Mistake
In 1928, silent comedy star Buster Keaton made what he would later call “the worst mistake of my career”: against the advice of fellow silent comedy auteurs like Charlie Chaplin, he gave up his...
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59: MGM Stories Part 4: John Gilbert and Greta Garbo
Rising romantic lead John Gilbert signed with MGM in 1924 and the next year he starred in King Vidor’s The Big Parade, the studio’s biggest hit of the silent era. That same year, Louis B. Mayer brought...
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60: MGM Stories Part 5: William Haines and Hollywood’s First Openly Gay Marriage
The rare silent star who made a relatively smooth transition to sound films, William “Billy” Haines was one of the top box office stars of the late 1920s-early 1930s. Beginning in 1926, Haines started...
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61: MGM Stories Part 6: Jean Harlow
As part of the publicity campaign for his film Hell’s Angels, Howard Hughes made Jean Harlow a star, branding her “The Platinum Blonde.” But after Hell’s Angels, Hughes couldn’t figure out what to do...
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