The dirty rags of the golden age of cinema, exposed

The classic Hollywood hides some dark passages that could well be taken from the rawest dramatic scripts. Unfortunately, these behaviors so common in the golden age of cinema have little to do with fiction, and among them, the most sounded is the harassment to which famous actresses were submitted by the producers of their films.

Not even in the land of Oz was all light and goodness. Nothing further from the reality, since there was a lot of incorrect behavior in the shooting of the famous film. The worst part was taken by its protagonist, Judy Garland, who was said to have been the victim of sexual harassment by the dwarves who appear on the tape.

Most of them had exemplary behavior, but they needed so many that they ended up hiring everyone they found, including prostitutes and pimps with all kinds of criminal records. They soon became noticeable appearing drunk on the set or riding orgies in the hotel where they were staying. The most contentious stalked the young Garland tucked under her skirt, despite the girl was only 17 years. However, the worst performers with the actress were not the dwarves, but the producers of the film.

The adolescent Garland gave the stretch in the middle of the shoot, and to hide her physical change, the producers forced her to wear painful reducing belts so that she would still look like a child. They were squeezed so tightly that they almost caused him a spinal injury, and in his endeavor to continue exploiting it as a child star, they also forced him to abort a couple of years later.

Then he was married to her first husband, musician David Rose, but the pull of the actress at the box office continued to rely on his image of ” good girl.” That’s why, when she became pregnant, she was pressured to abort by the producers of her films, her own mother, and even her husband, since they all lived on the money that the actress won. In the end, Garland interrupted her pregnancy against her will. The star of The Wizard of Oz was not the only one who did. There was a time when Hollywood producers had almost feudal control over the lives of their actresses, including Joan Crawford, who was the highest grossing star of her time.

Just when she was at the height of her fame, Joan Crawford announced her pregnancy, and within a few weeks, she was told she had lost her baby by slapping her belly by a “slip on a boat. ” However, what happened is that Hollywood executives thought that as a mother, Crawford would walk away from the sets by not shooting for a while those films with which they made so much money, so they pressured him to abort, With the sole aim of continuing to generate profits.

A Clark Gable, however, does that affected because the baby had expected the actress was his. Although Crawford was married at that time to Douglas Fairbanks Jr. In that way, avoiding a possible scandal that affected his career was also another reason why he was forced to abort.

Just as they controlled pregnancies, the producers also controlled marriages. The mature William Powell had a torrid affair with the sex symbol Jean Harlow and were about to get married when the actress discovered that there was a clause in his contract that he could not marry without the permission of his producers. They did not give it to him, thinking that the girl would lose the pull as an erotic icon if she passed through the vicarage.

Alfred Hitchcock’s control over Tippi Hedren was even greater. The protagonist of Los pájaros has confessed on several occasions, that was harassed by Hitchcock during the filming of this film. The English director tried to kiss her when they were in a taxi, but she rejected him, and from that moment he made life impossible. On the set, nobody could talk to the actress, and finally, ended up prohibiting any physical contact with Hedren, so that she was completely isolated.

However, Hitchcock went much further to shoot a mythical scene in the film. Supposedly they were going to film it with props birds and special effects, but in the end used real birds without warning Tippi Hedren. They threw hundreds of birds against the actress for a week, which was what they took to shoot the scene. Hedren ended a nervous breakdown, as well as countless wounds and bruises. It was the price that Alfred Hitchcock made him pay for rejecting his kiss.