(gentle mysterious music) - Hi, friends. How are you? I hope you're having
a wonderful day today. My name is Bailey Sarian, and I'd like to welcome you to
the library of dark history. (dramatic music) We need, like, books, if this
is, how is this a library? I don't know. But this is a safe space for all of the curious cats out there who wonder like, "Hey, is history really as boring as it seemed in school?" Oh, nay, nay. This is where we can learn together and talk about all the dark,
mysterious, dramatic stories our teachers never told us about. So growing up, I don't
know if you know this, but I was Judy Garland. Like, I was Judy Garland. I don't know if you know that,
but like I was Judy Garland and I was just Judy Garland. And, hi. I loved all the glitz and glamor of that Hollywood golden era. And then I wanted to
look a little bit deeper. Of course, surprise, surprise. It has a dark and seedy past. Well, there's a lot of nonsense going on. A lot of shenanigans
were going down, Okay? Unfortunately, it's still that way today. Am I right? Hollywood. I know, I know. How many stereotypes come to mind? There are the parties. There are the beautiful people,
all the glitter, the glam, and then there's the other stuff. Super dark stuff like studios
covering up violent crimes, feeding kids drugs to
keep them awake longer, sexual assault, forced abortions and secret murders that happened on set, and, of course, coverups. Basically there's a lot more drama behind the scenes then on the scenes. I know, they should
turn the cameras around and what a great show. So let me open up my little
dark history book here to the Hollywood chapter. Hm. I found it. Okay, friends. So how did we get here? Well, we're gonna go
all the way back to 1883 when a guy named Harvey
Henry Wilcox bought 150 acres of wide open undeveloped
land near Los Angeles. And this happens to be the exact area we know today as Hollywood. But Harvey wasn't
interested in making movies, maybe because, like, they
also just didn't exist yet. But also Harvey was a very religious man and thought this area would be perfect, well a perfect little place
to make a religious community. Sounds like a cult leader, if you ask me. Oh my god, Hollywood's a cult. Oh, I just saw the mysteries. Oh god. Anyways, Harvey and his wife
would farm apricots and figs and set up churches and help build houses. Now, remember these were
like the Prohibition times and Harvey and his wife,
they really leaned into that. I mean, this was just gonna be a good little Christian
community, you know? Well, the farming thing didn't
really work out for them, but people did start moving to the area as the population of Los
Angeles started to grow. And in 1887, Harvey would
officially register the town as Hollywood, California,
a name his wife picked because she overheard
someone say it on a train. And she's like, "Hey, that's a great word. I like how it sounds. I'm taking it." And over the next few years
the town would keep developing electricity, telephone service, gas lines and it started to look like a real city. Meanwhile, on the East Coast, that's where movies were being made. And these pioneers of the movie industry were looking for new
ways to push themselves. They wanted to make movies better, developing new technology
quicker and quicker, but they ran into some problems. For starters, the weather was really bad. Plus as movies got bigger, so did the size of the productions. It was no longer just one
guy filming one actor, you needed a whole crew and a studio and space to go along with it. The other problem on the
East Coast was our friend, do you remember him? Shout out Tommy Edison. Hey! Remember he was all
about being the pioneer of the filmmaking industry
and was quick to sue anyone who made any progress in
his fields, his specialty. Well, these guys didn't want to get sued, so what's a filmmaker to do? Well, these guys used their noggins and they headed to Southern California. Added bonus? If Tommy did find out
you were making a movie and tried to slap you with a lawsuit, you would be close enough to Mexico that you can make a run for the border. So Hollywood had the weather,
the space, no Edison. And it was a largely undeveloped area right next to both a
beautiful beach and a desert that was perfect for filming Westerns. Yeah, which just so happened to be like the most
popular genre of the time. So now by 1910, the film industry
had arrived in California in a very big way. And with this brand new
industry came a lot of workers, carpenters, electricians, costumers, and other highly skilled
workers were moving to Hollywood to help
make movies, you know? So there was problems
with the film industry from the very start. There were a lot of people
willing to sacrifice and do whatever it took
to be a part of it. And to make things worse,
California was very undeveloped and in a lot of ways, it
was still lawless, you know? It was literally the Wild West and the industry moved
out there specifically to take advantage of
those loose labor laws and create a society that
would feed the movie machine. By the 1920s, most of the major
studios that we know today, MGM, Warner Brothers,
Universal, Paramount, they exploded onto the scene and they were all
competing with one another for that box office money. (cash register ringing) So they came up with what
they thought would be an effective method of getting
people to see their movies and not their competitor's work. They would cast recurring
actors and actresses that everyone could recognize and fall in love with in their films. Almost as if it didn't matter what the movie was actually about, the performers would keep
audiences coming back. They called these actors
and actresses movie stars. And now we're gonna pause for an ad break. (bright mysterious music) With a new year just starting, it's so important to make it a habit to take some time for yourself. When I want to, like,
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Best Fiends free today on the app store or Google Play. That's friends without the R, Best Fiends. Try and beat my score. I'm at 846, okay? Thank you so much, Best Fiends. Buh-bye. Now, let's get back to today's story. (bright mysterious music) Along with movie stars
came a rise in attention and with attention comes publicity stunts. One of the first movie
star publicity stunts happened around 1910 and involved an actress
named Florence Lawrence. Yeah, that's a name. Florence Lawrence? Florence Lawrence? Yeah. Who was said to be the
greatest moving picture actress in the worlds. Oh yeah. But then out of nowhere,
newspapers started reporting that she had died tragically
in a street car accident. But then the studio said, before she died, Florence filmed one final movie. So of course everyone
wanted to see this thing. You know, like she died,
we have to go support her and see her last movie. Then the head of the studio
started taking out ads in the papers claiming Florence
was actually still alive. And she was going to go to
the premiere of the movie. Wait, what? It didn't matter what was
true and what was false. The public was fricking
eating it up, okay. And it worked. I mean they needed their
Florence Lawrence fix. So the studio head tells
reporters to show up to the train station at a specific time and have their cameras ready
for the story of the century. While reporters and
hundreds of fans gathered at the train station clamoring to get the best view
of who may be arriving. Now, the train pulls in, the
brakes screeched to a halt, the door is open and out
walks Florence Lawrence. Oh, she's alive, well, and in the flesh, you know what I'm saying? People are basically
just fainting and dying, and, like, they are
pouncing on this poor woman. She's back from dead. She's like Jesus! But not really, because she
wasn't dead in the first place. They're, like, ripping
buttons off her jacket. They're just losing
their goddam minds, okay? This is really one of the first times we saw people treat an
actress like a superstar. So when the studio saw this reaction, they realized they had the power to create a public figure
who had major influence. And with major influence
comes box office draw, which is like a fancy
Hollywood way of saying they could get people to the
theaters and watching movies and they can make money. Yay. Money, it's always
about money, right? So talent didn't matter as long as the public
was eating up the stories the studio created and were giving them
all their money, okay. All the studios jumped on board and started creating stars of their own because they saw how well
this was working for them. So this works out well for the studios because the movie-going public
just wants to know everything about their favorite stars. And the press is more
than happy to feed them because they're using movie stars to sell their products, too right? And in order to sell more and more papers, they start publishing some
pretty wild stories of their own. Mm-hm, juicy affairs, murder,
coverups, wild drug parties. But the studios didn't love these stories because they worked really hard to create and keep squeaky clean images of their movie stars. You know, something that
people would want to be. So when nasty rumors started to spread about these golden geese, they took it upon
themselves to cover it up. And then it all comes to a head in 1921 when a popular comedian and
movie star named Roscoe Arbuckle is arrested for rape and murder. Mm-hm. So Roscoe Arbuckle was
born March 24th, 1887, in Smith Center, Kansas. Now Roscoe was a big baby
when he was born, literally, like he weighed 13
pounds when he was born. So a big baby. That's a big boy. Now this is important for two reasons. Number one, it gave his
mother chronic health problems that would kill her just 11 years later. And number two, it led to the creation of his nickname, Fatty Arbuckle, which was a nickname he
was most well known by. Now, Fatty over here was
a singer and a dancer who was discovered by a Hollywood
bigwig in the early 1900s. He started appearing in silent comedies, which is weird, like silent comedies. When you think about it,
like how? I don't know. Anyways, but the joke was
usually about his weight. And soon he became one of the most famous comedians in America. In early September of 1921,
at the height of his fame, Fatty went to San Francisco
to party with a few buddies. So they're there, they're drinking, they're hanging out in some like hotel, when some girls came
knocking on their door. Knock, knock, knock. Who's there? We don't really know exactly
what happened at this party. But what we do know is someone named Virginia Rappe
started feeling very sick. Some sources say that she
started screaming at the party. And when her friends asked her, like, what's wrong, what's wrong? She started yelling, "He did it." Others say that once she
started feeling sick, she just went home and
immediately hopped into bed. And she just never got out. Whatever the case was. A few days later she died and it was later determined
she had a ruptured bladder. So a friend of hers went public and said that the reason
her bladder was ruptured was because she had been raped
to death by Fatty Arbuckle. The press caught wind of what happened and it quickly became the
biggest story in the country. Soon rumors started circulating about how Fatty had been
abusive to this woman, slapping her around and forcing
her to have sex with him. Other stories said, the reason she died was because Fatty was well
fat and crushed her to death. He went to trial a total of three times on three different sets of charges, but he was never convicted. But the trials took so
long that it didn't matter. Fatty's image was completely destroyed. His films were banned and
his career never recovered. So the studios weren't so
worried about Virginia. From their perspective, they
had invested lots of time and money into making Fatty a star and all of that was now lost. The other studios took notice as well. So they realized how destructive and expensive a scandal like
that would be for them too. The studios decided to make sure that something like this
would never happen again. So enter to the scene, the fixer. Now fixers came in two flavors. They were either bodyguard
types or public relations hacks. The studio hired them to
investigate any problems popping up with their stars or even things like, ah, that looked like
they could be a problem. Then they would fix them. Yeah. Fun fact, the word fixer
actually comes from the word used to describe someone who gets rid of bodies or cleans up evidence at crime scenes. Mm-hm. But first we're gonna
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I.V. for partnering with me on today's episode. Now let's get back to today's story. (bright mysterious music) Now, of course, studios didn't
see their stars as people, but as little money-making machines who have to present a perfect image to the public at all costs. Now this would become especially bad, when we see the studios use their fixers and their power to create
and control their stars from a very young age, force feeding them drugs to stay awake and drugs to fall asleep
and working 18 hour days before they're even 17 years old. Basically, if you wanted to be a star, your life was no longer your own. You see actresses had it
pretty much the worst. Okay, look, their hair
was usually dyed and cut instantly after they
signed their contract, then they were forced to
stay under a certain weight. And if they couldn't do it on their own, the fixers would step in to
keep food away from them. Swipin' it, swipin' it out of their hand. Slappin' it, slappers
slapping the food away. Instead they fed them things
like coffee and diet pills. So that's nice. The actresses even had appearance reviews with the studio heads and even
their names would be changed. You were just a blank slate, baby. MGM once held a contest
to have the public vote on the stage name for an
young actress named Lucille. And that's how Lucille
became Joan Crawford. Girl. Yeah, we're talking about you. Fun fact, Joan always hated her new name because it reminded her of crayfish. Can I just say, side note? I just finished "Mommie
Dearest," not that long ago. Oh, Joan, Joan, Joan, Joan, Joan. Not you, girl. Joan Crawford, she was somethin'. Wow. Maybe another day. Okay, but anyways, you should
read that if you haven't. And okay, look, it wasn't
super official stuff. The studios didn't let
you have relationships with like your kids
without their permission. They called this a morality clause, which they could kind of use to apply to just about anything. The big problem with
these morality clauses was that they gave studio
heads the legal power to basically say anything
was in violation of it. For example, let's say a
female star got pregnant. The studio could make her get an abortion because it was a violation
of her morality clause, which many times was just a reflection of the religious and social
idea of the studio head and the public at the time. So the morality clause
would end up feeling like a prison sentence in a way. So the studios didn't care
about what kind of effect this would have on the actor as a person. And if they didn't
cooperate with the studio, the studio would straight
up ruin their lives. One of the most disturbing examples of an actress who was wildly
abused by the studio system and never got any justice
was Patricia Douglas. Okay, so Patricia,
Patricia, Patricia Douglas, she was born in 1917, Kansas City and like many girls of the era, she was drawn to the glamor of Hollywood. So she headed out West
and she became a dancer and a background actor in movies. Now she was only 16 years old in 1933 when she got her big break and started appearing on
screen and movies for MGM. Now, part of the whole deal that stars had in their contracts with studios
was that they were required to go to parties to promote their brand. So Patricia was contractually
required to show up, make nice, take some photos,
schmooze about, you know, normal Hollywood BS, no big deal. Except MGM never told Patricia that this one party they sent
her to was a bachelor party for one of the studio employees and the female attendees were expected to have sexual relations
with the men there. This might be a good time to point out that Patricia was still
a teenager at the time and so were many of the
other girls at this party. Patricia, wasn't a big enough star that the studio wanted to protect her, but she was just famous enough that she would be enticing to party goers. At the party, Patricia was raped. So the fixers step in to do their thing, cover up the incident and make it go away, including trying to force
Patricia to keep quiet. However, Patricia had been in Hollywood for a few years by this point and knew all about these types of shenanigans that went down. So she immediately went to the press and told them what happened. Now, unfortunately for Patricia, the press reported on the event. But instead of saying
what really happened, they downplayed everything. The media once again, uh-huh, am I right? Yeah. Come on. Everything bad, everything bad. Yeah. Now despite the press
hanging Patricia out to dry behind the scenes, the
studio was in a huge panic. Louie Mayer, who was the head of MGM, needed to deal with this
quote unquote problem. And he needed to deal with it now. So Louie hired his personal fixer to start convincing people
to say this never happened. And on top of that, they were
going to start poking holes in Patricia's entire life story. One young actress who
was at the party denied that it was a rape in any way. And she actually described
the party as a jolly affair with lots of good, clean fun. Other party goers started
saying Patricia was a huge drunk and was making everything
up to get attention. And the final nail in the coffin, ah, well that came when Patricia
tried to sue the studio. Now it turns out the studio's fixer paid off Patricia's lawyer and on the day of the
trial, he never showed up. Patricia didn't know. She
ended up losing the case. And just like that, her time in Hollywood
was done and over with. Could you imagine? And worse, the studios
realized that once again, they could solve any problem
by just throwing money at it instead of changing their behavior, because that's too much work. Patricia's story is
probably the best example of what would happen if anyone spoke up about the studios. Hers was perhaps a cautionary tale. People were afraid of the studios and the studios liked it that way. And the studios bully reputation
really gets highlighted with the next character in our story. Somebody who tried to
cooperate with all the madness instead of fighting back, a woman named Margarita Carmen Cansino. Oh, let's pause for an ad break first. (bright mysterious music) Online shopping can be extremely
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filling out your style quiz at StitchFix.com/DarkHistory. That's StitchFix.com/DarkHistory to try Stitch Fix Freestyle. StitchFix.com/DarkHistory. Now let's get back to today's story. (bright mysterious music) Margarita was born on October 17th, 1918. Hey, isn't that when
the Spanish flu started? (bell chiming) It might be. Shout out
to you Spanish flu, hey. Now from the start, she was
a smart and committed girl who wanted to make
everyone around her happy. Her father, Eduardo, was born in Spain and was a pretty successful dancer. But in early 1931, he hit some hard times and he stopped getting jobs. Cash was drying up and he needed
to solve this problem fast. That's when Eduardo got the idea to have his daughter join the act and he decides to like really play up how exotic the name Cansino is. So he takes his daughter
to a beauty salon. He has her hair dyed black. And from that day forward,
the two of them would perform in casinos all over the West Coast. The Cansinos would make a decent living as a father-daughter dance duo
called the Dancing Cansinos down in Tijuana, but Margarita didn't know about any of the money they made. You see Eduardo would
send her out to the river to catch fish for dinner saying that they couldn't afford any food. And if Margarita couldn't catch
any fish, he would beat her, just making it like a point
only to hit her in places the audience wouldn't see the next night, all while screaming at her
about how stupid she was. Neighbors who lived near them at the time would later say that
Margarita never said a word and just promised she'd get
everything right the next day. Now you might think it
doesn't make much sense that Eduardo couldn't afford
to feed either of them. And you'd be right. I mean, it turns out
Eduardo would get paid for the performances and
then immediately spend all the cash on alcohol or gambling. But the two big reasons
Eduardo took Margarita out to Tijuana were that
Margarita was a minor and wasn't allowed to perform
in local LA nightclubs. And two, at the time,
it was a popular place for Hollywood moguls to just go hang out, have a drink and enjoy
the local sex workers. He was really hoping to
make Margaritas a star and he wanted to make sure she would do anything he said
to like make that happen. So when Margarita was 16 years old, she had her first big break. A Fox executive happened to
catch one of her performances and immediately signed her
to a six-month contract. The only condition that executive had was Margarita had to change her name. So she did, to Rita Cansino. Rita appeared in 16 films
between 1934 and 1937. Eventually she met two men
who would change the course of her life forever. The first guy, Eddie
Judson, was like her father and he was obsessed with
Rita becoming a star. The two of them got married
in 1937, the year they met, and Eddie immediately got to work, setting up publicity events for his wife all around town, telling
her he would leave her if she didn't cooperate. Because of this, she earned the nickname the most cooperative girl in town. Like what a great
nickname, thanks. Thanks. He also forced her to dye
her naturally brown hair, a deep red, because he
thought she looked too Latina. He even made her go through
painful electrolysis treatments to move her hairline back and attempt to look more white. With her brand new look, Rita was attracting all the
big power players in town. Rita's husband, Eddie, arranged a meeting with the second man who would
change the course of her life. His name was Harry Cohn. How come everyone's name is Henry or Harry or, those are like the two,
everyone's name was that. Harry was the head of the
20th Century Fox studio. Yeah. So money, great. Harry told Eddie that
he loved what he saw, AKA a cash cow that could
be sold to the public as both the wholesome girl next door and the exotic sex pot at the same time. But he tells Eddie he has two conditions for signing a deal with her. First, she has to change her name, again. Harry wants Rita to go for
something more all American. So she agrees to take
her mother's maiden name and becomes Rita Hayworth. Yes, that Rita Hayworth. Now the second condition Harry
had was more controversial. Harry told Eddie he needed
to have sex with Rita. When Rita hears this, she finally snaps. Snaps, because by the way, Rita has been in this
meeting the entire time these two men were having
a meeting about her career. Just no one was talking to her, right. Rear tells the men
there's no chance in hell that something like that
is ever gonna happen. Harry gives in and agrees to sign Rita to a seven-year contract. But from this point on, he makes sure to make
Rita's life a living hell. Well remember the fixers from earlier? Whenever Rita was on shoots, Harry would have a fixer place
a bug in her dressing room to make sure she wasn't
saying anything bad about him. You know, to listen in. Harry also gave himself final say regarding anything having to do with Rita. So Harry was right about one thing. The public loved Rita Hayworth. I mean, she starred in a bunch of films over the next few years, including her most iconic role, "Gilda," where Rita played the femme fatale in a detective thriller. And Rita owned that role so much it became synonymous
with her public image. Fun fact, when the
United States government was testing atom bombs in World War II, there was actually a picture
of Rita Hayworth painted on the side of one of them. And the name of that bomb? Gilda. Eventually Rita became so famous that she was able to leave Eddie and move on to a string
of other famous affairs. She had five husbands in total. We're not judging. A little. One of the most prominent
of those husbands was a man named Orson Welles. In 1942, he was known for
being a 25-year-old boy wonder who made a film called "Citizen Kane." Rita was completely smitten with Orson, who she thought was charming, handsome, and just like so talented. And the two got married 1943 during one of Rita's lunch
breaks on her film shoot. After they took their vows, a friend asked Rita what what's
next for the happy couple? Like, what are you guys up to? And Rita was like, I got
to get back to the studio. So that was their honeymoon, I guess. The funny thing is, is that
Orson Welles would later say that Rita never actually
liked being a star, but she didn't want to let anyone down. You know, she was already there. Her friends would say
she seemed to happiest whenever she was with
Orson, which would be cute if Orson Welles hadn't cheated on her with countless other
women like Judy Garland, but more on that later. It was around this time that Orson began outright
ignoring his wife for months at a time. The cheating didn't bother
Rita, but the neglect did. She filed for divorce in 1948. Apparently during the divorce, Rita told Orson, "The only
happiness I've ever had in my life has been with you." And Orison responded with,
"Well, if this was happiness, imagine what the rest
of your life has been." So he seemed like a really nice guy. Hm. Rita Hayworth would spend the
rest of her life chasing love, garnering the affection
of many powerful men who either expected her
to be Gilda the sex pot or wanted to control her. At one point she even
married a prince. Yeah. And she was like straight up a princess, like, good for her. By the '60s, Rita began to suffer from early onset Alzheimer's but she wasn't diagnosed until 1980. Like, that's a long time. Yeah. The studio blamed her inability to remember lines on alcoholism. Super nice. Then came Dorothy herself, none other than the iconic Judy Garland. Oh yes. If Patricia was an
example of somebody trying to speak out against the studio system, and Rita was an example of somebody just trying
to go with the toxic flow, then Judy is the best example of somebody who tried both
to disastrous results. Sadly. Now we're gonna pause for an ad break. (bright mysterious music) 2022 is going to be a big
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iconic movie stars in the world. She made quite a few
movies to say the least, but her most famous role
was in "The Wizard of Oz." But what you may not know
is that she was abused for most of her life by the
studios that wanted nothing, except for her to be their lap dog, their cash cow, their money maker. She was Britney Spears before Britney Spears was Britney Spears. You know what I'm saying? Like Judy, poor, poor Judy bless her soul. Judy over here was born Frances Gumm in Minnesota on June 10th, 1922. She always preferred the name Judy because of a popular song, but nobody really knows
where she got Garland from. Like, what was that about? But it's okay, you know. She was the daughter of two
old-time stage performers. And because of that, she
started training and dancing and singing at a very young age. Now she appeared on
stage for the first time when she was just 12 years old. And from that point on,
she pretty much never left. At age 13 years old, MGM signed her to be their next big star. Just a few years later she
started acting in major films. And by the time she was just 17, she starred in "The Wizard of Oz." Well, her experience
as a 17 year old on set wasn't like fricking
what you would expect. It was terrible, upsetting
and frickin' dangerous. For starters, they wanted
her to work 18 hours a day for six days a week. And in order to stay awake, the
studio would give her speed. Yeah. And when it was time to sleep for the three or four
hours she was allowed, they would give her a sleeping pill. To keep her weight where they wanted it, she was given a daily diet of
black coffee, chicken soup, and diet pills, amphetamines
and 80 cigarettes, four packs a day. She's how old? She's 17! She's 17 years old. What are they doing? They didn't give a shit. They didn't give a fuck. The crazier thing about it is
that like all this was legal because she'd signed a contract and they had a fixer
to protect the details from getting to the press. To make it even more fucked up, they would only give her
things like food and sleep when they thought she did good work, like as a reward system. If she said she was tired and she, like, didn't
want to do something, they would say that she didn't care about her friends at the studio or that she would make
everyone lose their jobs. Just playing some serious mind games and putting a lot of pressure on her. So Judy learned at a very young age how to give people what they wanted in order to get what she needed, needed, as in what she needed to just survive. So when "The Wizard of Oz" took off, things actually got even worse for her because the studio wanted
to make more and more movies to keep making more and more money, right? So eventually Judy realized
the studio needed her and she would fight back,
like, in her own way. For example, Judy decided
she wanted a family, but she knew the studio
would never allow it. So she decided to get pregnant
and hide her pregnancy until she started showing. Once her pregnancy was that far along, there was nothing the studio
could do about it, you know? Unfortunately, before
Judy's pregnancy could get to the safe window, Judy's own mother would expose
the secret to the MGM studio and they did exactly what Judy feared. They forced her to get an abortion. Their reasoning? The public wasn't ready
to see her as a mother. That's fucked up. As time went on, Judy sank
into a deep depression. I wonder why? We just don't know. We just don't know. They had her working these long hours, insane expectations on and off screens. This had major psychological
effects on her, as well as physical,
which is not surprising. Judy once said the studio
became a haunted house for her. Every day when she went to work, she had tears in her eyes and resistance in her heart and mind. Judy once missed 17
straight days of filming because she wasn't feeling well. So when a director of one
of her films asked about it, she said, like, "It's a
struggle to get through the day. I use these pills. They carry me through." Instead of adjusting their expectations, the studio charged her
$100,000 for the cost of her psychiatric care and their lost time. (blows raspberry) Like her drug problem
was a burden to them, as if they didn't force
feed it to her for years. As years go on, Judy has a
harder and harder time performing due to her struggles
with eating disorders, sleeping, suicide attempts, and drug use. She would go in and out
of treatment centers, through marriages and divorces and her health just started to decline. And money became even harder to come by. The narrative portrayed to
the public by the studios and their fixers was that
she was a tormented artist who was difficult to work with
and couldn't control herself. So of course, just putting
the blame all on Miss Judy. No matter what Judy said
to try and draw attention to the fact that she was abused throughout her time with MGM, no one at MGM was ever held accountable. Sadly, Judy Garland died from
an accidental drug overdose in 1969 after consuming the
very same sleeping pills MGM gave her in the first place
when she was just a child. So the Golden Age of Hollywood was not at all that glamorous. I don't know what to say. I mean, this was just a
little, tiny little snippet of a huge-ass problem
that still goes on today. Thank you so much. From the smoke-filled studio parties where young women were raped, to the erasing of all identities as a way to like fully
controlling the sleep and diet of their biggest stars, accountability was nowhere to be found. So if you want to end on some
kind of bittersweet note, after Rita Hayworth died in 1987, her agent reflected on a
trip they took to Brazil. You see, one day Rita
disappeared from the group, like panicked, everyone's like
searching for her everywhere. She was nowhere to be found. But then the phone rang and a voice says, "Hey, I heard you're
looking for Rita Hayworth. She's a mile up the road on the beach." So her agent and her family,
they all head to the beach to like where they see a group of kids flying beautiful, colorful kites. And sitting in the middle of
all the kids was Rita Hayworth with a huge smile on her face. Her agent says he had
never seen her so happy. Well, everyone, thank you so much for learning with me today a little bit of, you know, how dark
Hollywood's past really was. You know, there's also something else, like, did you know, Hollywood used to be
called Hollywood Land? We should do an episode on that. Anyways, remember, don't
be afraid to ask questions to get the whole story because
we deserve that, don't we? Yeah, we do. Now, I'd love to hear your
reaction to the story. So make sure to use the #darkhistory so I can follow along
over on social media. And don't forget to join
me over on my YouTube, where you can watch these
episodes on Thursday after the podcast airs and also catch "Murder
Mystery and Make Up" which drops every Monday. Thank you so much for
hanging out with me today. I hope you have a wonderful
day and you make good choices. Bye! "Dark History" is an Audioboom Original. A very special thank you to one of our historical
consultants, Movikarma, who can be found on Instagram
at M-O-V-I-K-A-R-M-A. This podcast is executive produced by Bailey Sarian, Kim Jacobs,
Dunia McNeily from 3arts, Ed Simpson and Claire
Turner from Wheelhouse DNA. Produced by Lexxi Kivin. Research provided by Ramona Kivett. Writers, Jed Bookout,
Michael Oberst, Joey Scavuzzo and Kim Yaged and me, Bailey Sarian. And a big thank you to our
historical consultants, Movikarma and David Lazar. And I'm your host, Bailey Sarian. Bye!
I love Bailey Sarian I literally adore her but these damn podcasts have so many ad breaks and it’s really killing me. I get immersed into the story and then BAM another ad break lol i feel like it really takes me out of the story.