The notorious agent Henry Willson, the subject of Robert Hofler’s book “The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson: The Pretty Boys and Dirty Deals of Henry Willson,” played the same power game with generations of boys and young men seeking Hollywood recognition. Women aren’t the exclusive victims of the casting couch. Like predecessors Monroe and Garland, her early death was suspicious, a “probable suicide.” While the abuse wasn’t explicitly sexual, Preminger bullied Seberg relentlessly, and she was severely harmed during the burning-at-the-stake climax. He cast Seberg as the lead in his ill-fated but gold-plated production of George Bernard Shaw’s “Saint Joan,” adapted by Graham Greene. In the case of “Breathless” star and fashion icon Jean Seberg, her career began when she was an Iowa teenager with summer stock experience and was plucked by the tyrannical Otto Preminger, then in his 50s, in 1956 after a massive talent search. Often, the imbalance isn’t just one of power but of age and experience. I wanted to let women, especially young women, know never to allow that kind of approach and to be forceful in telling people you’re not interested in having that kind of a relationship. Women complain all the time about somebody trying to make a pass at them or have a relationship in which they are not interested. In 2016, Hedren, the mother of Melanie Griffith and grandmother of Dakota Johnson, told Variety why she opened up decades after the sexual abuse: “I did it because this is legion all over the world. His treatment of the blond star of “The Birds” and “Marnie” caused her to stumble at what should have been the peak of her career (and is the subject of the BBC film “The Girl.”) According to Hedren, the obsessive vision of the world he manifested on-screen extended to his treatment of women on the set. Just last year, veteran actress Tippi Hedren made headlines when she revealed in her memoir, “Tippi,” that director Alfred Hitchcock had sexually molested her. And you saw Hollywood with their eyes - an overcrowded brothel, a merry-go-round with beds for horses.” So you sat with them, listening to their lies and schemes. But they were as near to the movies as you could get. Phoniness and failure were all over them. In Monroe’s memoir, “My Story,” she wrote with heartbreaking candor: “I met them all. This is another instance like that of Garland, where a star’s talent and beauty and charisma added up to low self-esteem, drug abuse and suicide in an industry that ate women for lunch. Marilyn Monroe was passed from man to man, president to playwright to center fielder. But … you saw hollywood with their eyes - an overcrowded brothel, a merry-go-round with beds for horses.” That was the attitude of most studio heads.” were Abusive with a capital ‘A.’ Mayer believed he’d built his studio brick by brick, it was his town, and he was king, so therefore he deserved all the perks of the kingdom. According to Beauchamp: “Harry Cohn at Columbia Pictures and Jack Warner at Warner Bros. When the studio system consolidated in the late ’20s and early ’30s as talkies eclipsed silent movies, the men in charge of the Big Seven notoriously abused their power. As Rickey clarifies, when it comes to abuse, “it’s not just the casting couch - it’s also the producer who tell Judy Garland she’s not pretty enough or thin enough, so she gets a nose job and starts taking amphetamines to stay employed, and nobody knows that amphetamines and drinking can’t mix, and the pills lead to instability and sleeplessness and sleeping pills and more instability, and she falls apart.” But that wasn’t the only damage done to the “Wizard of Oz” star. Mayer also allegedly groped the teenage Judy Garland, according to Gerald Clarke’s book “Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland,” and held meetings with the young woman seated on his lap, his hands on her chest. For a long time after, he wouldn’t allow any of Feldman’s clients to work at MGM.” Feldman, the agent, Mayer banned Charlie from the lot.
When she said, ‘No way,’ and went off and married Charles K. Sound familiar?Ĭari Beauchamp, author of “Without Lying Down: Francis Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood,” noted: “Mayer chased actress Jean Howard around the room. If women didn’t comply, he’d threaten to ruin their careers or those of their loved ones. Mayer, the ground zero of this kind of abuse, had means, motive, opportunity and that critical piece of the puzzle: the whip. Mayer, who co-founded Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios in 1924.
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