144: The Trials of Confidential Magazine: Maureen O'Hara (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 18)
In part two of our two-parter on the demise of the biggest and most pernicious tabloid of the 1950s, we’ll explore what happened after the magazine’s claim that redheaded star Maureen O’Hara was caugh...
22 Jan 201934min
143: The Trials of Confidential Magazine: Dorothy Dandridge (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 17)
Over two episodes, we will explore Hollywood Babylon’s coverage of Confidential Magazine and the two celebrities who testified against the scandal rag in the 1957 trial that helped end what Anger righ...
15 Jan 201945min
142: Bugsy Siegel (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 16)
Jewish gangster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel is frequently credited with corrupting Hollywood’s unions and “inventing” Las Vegas. Siegel did have movie star friends, but the true story of his involvement w...
8 Jan 201937min
141: Marlene Dietrich, Claudette Colbert, and the “sewing circle” (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 15)
The bisexuality of Marlene Dietrich was not exactly a secret in 1930s Hollywood -- in fact, her ambiguous sexuality was part of her on-screen brand. But there is some debate as to who Dietrich counted...
25 Des 201843min
140: Lupe Velez (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 14)
Mexican actress Lupe Velez was the victim of one of Anger’s cruelest invented stories. His fabrication of her manner of death lays bare a vicious racism in addition to Hollywood Babylon’s usual sexism...
18 Des 201847min
139: Mary Astor's Diary (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 13)
In 1936, actress Mary Astor (who had not yet made her most famous film, The Maltese Falcon) and her husband went to court to fight for custody of their four year-old daughter. The trail made internati...
11 Des 201852min
138: Mae West (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 12)
Mae West was the biggest new star in Hollywood in 1933, thanks to two hit films she co-wrote and starred in as a sexually implicit, wisecracking broad who romanced a young Cary Grant. In Hollywood Bab...
4 Des 201851min
137: Gina Lollobrigida (The Seduced, Episode 6)
This Italian pin-up, along with Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot, was emblematic of a brand of post-war European sexuality that America happily imported. But the Hollywood career of “La Lollo” was del...
20 Nov 201840min
