Old Hollywood was nothing like the industry we know today, and for every exciting story from the past, there are dozens of terrible ones.
Stars could be punished for their private lives
Movie contracts could be seriously overreaching, to the point where they included ‘morals clauses.’ These allowed them to cancel contracts over any kind of behavior that could embarrass them. Kind of like cancel culture today, except, you know, a lot harsher.
William Haines was one of those examples. Haines was a major MGM star and lived with his longtime partner, Jimmie Shields, but MGM wasn’t happy about that. They told him he had to marry a woman instead of living openly as a gay man. Haines refused, and his acting career ended soon afterward.
Mae West was arrested because of a play she wrote
Mae West was never really interested in being subtle. She actually wrote and starred in a play titled Sex that opened in New York in 1926. Audiences kept showing up, but authorities weren’t exactly enthusiastic, and the Municipal Vice Squad raided the production in 1927.
They arrested West along with other cast members for obscenity. She ended up with a $500 fine and a ten-day sentence on Welfare Island, but only served eight days. They were that serious over a Broadway show that wouldn’t even bat an eyelid today.
Judy Garland was given amphetamines while she was still a teenage MGM star
Judy Garland was only 13 when MGM signed her, and it’s because they knew she had talent. But they soon became too interested in things like her weight and schedule. She made The Wizard of Oz when she was 16, and she was already dealing with punishing working hours.
That’s why they gave her ‘pep pills,’ which were amphetamines. The goal was to keep Garland, and young stars like her, awake and working. They’d give them sleeping medication afterward. It was a grueling schedule, one part of the day spent filming, another rehearsing something else. Garland never got to experience her teenage years properly.
Hollywood thought a Chinese actress was too Chinese
The Good Earth is one of MGM’s most famous films. But one of the most interesting details about it has to do with the Chinese character O-Lan. The studio already had a famous Chinese American actress available to play her. Her name was Anna May Wong.
Wong actually wanted to play the character. She couldn’t do it, though, because Paul Muni had already been cast as her husband and Hollywood’s production rules made interracial romance on screen an issue. Wong was shut out of the role. Yes, she was too Chinese to play a Chinese woman. How ridiculous.
Hollywood filmmakers went to prison after refusing to answer Congress’s questions
Washington was a very bad place to be a Hollywood screenwriter in October 1947, and it’s all thanks to the House Un-American Activities Committee. It called film workers to testify about Communist activity. Ten men actually refused to answer questions about their politics.
These included Dalton Trumbo and Ring Lardner Jr. All ten men were cited by Congress for contempt, and they were convicted of their crimes. They served federal prison sentences beginning in 1950. Seven were screenwriters, two were directors, and one was a producer. They were punished for refusing to share personal information about themselves.
An actress was given heroin after an injury so production could continue
Barbara La Marr was filming Souls for Sale in 1923 when she hurt her ankle. Most studios today would stop production to let an injury like that heal, but that wasn’t an option back then. Her son later claimed that studio doctors treated her with several drugs to keep her working through the pain.Â
He said these included heroin, and it was the start of her drug dependency. There are no medical records confirming it, but really, it totally seems like something that would’ve happened back then. Hollywood was just that cruel.
Hollywood executives tried to buy Citizen Kane to burn it
Audiences hadn’t even properly seen Citizen Kane yet, but some powerful people wanted it gone. That included William Randolph Hearst. He’d learned that Charles Foster Kane seemed eerily similar to Hearst himself. No wonder his circle pushed back.
Hollywood executives, led by MGM boss Louis B. Mayer, allegedly offered RKO about $800,000 for the movie. Not because they wanted to see the movie or anything, but because they wanted to burn the negatives. They wanted the film gone. RKO said no, and thank goodness they did.
Hedy Lamarr sold war bonds by offering kisses
War bonds could be tough to sell sometimes, but not if you were Hedy Lamarr onstage. She sold a lot of them during World War II by ‘selling’ her kisses to anyone who bought them. Lamarr was helping raise money for the U.S. war effort and said she’d kiss anyone willing to buy $25,000 in bonds.Â
It worked. It actually worked so well that, by the end of that single night, she’d managed to sell $7 million worth of bonds. She ended up touring the United States with that sales tactic.
The original Tin Man nearly died because of his makeup
You might not immediately recognize the name Buddy Ebsen, but he was the guy who originally played the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz. It was a role that nearly killed him. MGM used aluminum powder to give his skin that special look, and Ebsen ended up breathing too much of it.
He breathed in so much of it, in fact, that he became seriously ill and spent time in the hospital under an oxygen tent. He was out after roughly ten days of filming. Jack Haley took over the role, and the studio changed the makeup formula to a paste instead. You can still hear some of Ebsen’s singing in the finished movie.
An old Hollywood stunt includes a star’s real death
The final stunt in The Skywayman was supposed to look dangerous. But it ended up being too dangerous because it killed the two men doing it. That’s right, on August 2, 1920, pilot Ormer Locklear and Milton ‘Skeets’ Elliott took a plane into a nighttime dive near Los Angeles.
The cameras were rolling, and the ground lights were meant to go dark so Locklear would know when to pull up. Something went wrong, however, and the plane slammed into the ground, killing both men. Fox released the movie anyway and kept footage of the fatal crash in the final cut. You won’t be able to see it, though, because the film is now lost media.Â
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
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