Young became pregnant, hid the pregnancy, and gave birth in secret. In 1935, for example, Clark Gable allegedly date-raped co-star Loretta Young while on an overnight train from a studio location to Hollywood. Stars and studio employees had plenty of other opportunities for sordid behavior. Mayer on set when she was still a teenager. Judy Garland also reported being groped by Louis B. When he tried to rape her, she fled-and she kept the incident a secret until recently revealing it at age 95 in an essay in the Hollywood Reporter. Take Janis Paige, an actress who was told by her MGM director to go on a date with a man she had never met. The “casting couch” was ubiquitous, and women were expected to make themselves available to powerful men as dates and, sometimes, more. From casting to production to their private interactions with stars and studio heads, women were barraged with propositions, assaults, and assumptions that they were sexually available.Īt the time, there was no concept of workplace harassment, and women were expected to endure scrutiny and sexualization in order to get work. The Hollywood dictatorship had a clear underclass: women. Mayer, head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. And MGM and other studios upheld their positions not just by creating great movies, but by suppressing gossip and “fixing,” or disguising, unsavory stories. Mayer-functioned with the help of an army of staffers who moved in lockstep to create some of Hollywood’s most memorable films. That dictatorship-overseen by studio head Louis B. “Pretend it’s not a movie studio-pretend it’s a country.” “It’s probably easiest to think of MGM as a totalitarian state,” says Stenn. Studios like MGM managed the lives of their actors, from their marriage choices to their hairstyles, and demanded complete loyalty from their employees. The excesses of the convention party where Douglas was raped, says Stenn, were egged on by the expectations that, while attending conventions away from home, men could-and would-act as they pleased without suffering any consequences.Īt the time, just a handful of Hollywood studios dominated both the motion picture market and the lives of their employees. “If you had a stag event, you’d have entertainment, and that would have meant women,” says Stenn. “A few of them effectively functioned as pimps,” says filmmaker and Hollywood biographer David Stenn, whose documentary, Girl 27, tracks the story of Douglas’ abuse and its aftermath.ĭancers, extras and starlets were regulars at these male-centered affairs. Without a contract to protect them, they were viewed as expendable and were often recruited as “party favors” by men on set. When they arrived, they sometimes found they were expected to do more than be a pretty face. She might also see it as a meal ticket-often, studios and others would pay women to attend parties. When a woman was selected to attend a stag party put on by a director or star, she might view it as a compliment. “I’m going to give you some advice: Don’t go to any parties,” director Sam Wood warned Pauline Wagner, a starlet who was Fay Wray’s stunt double for the 1933 movie King Kong. The party was just one facet of a pervasive culture of sexual exploitation that was aided and abetted by the most storied studios of Hollywood’s Golden Age. “Stag parties” like this one-put on by and for Hollywood men-were both common and notoriously dangerous for young women. Article clippings of Patricia Douglas, featured in ‘Girl 27′.
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