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The golden age of film defined Hollywood for more than a generation. And while Old Hollywood may evoke romantic images of soft-focus stars, the era was also marked by a certain "make it up as you go" spirit that could lead to folly (or worse).
The surprising facts about Old Hollywood in this episode of the List Show run the gamut, from the amusing to the appalling. You'll learn what "The Black Box" was and why a film crew dumped asbestos on Judy Garland.
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13 Surprising Facts About Old Hollywood | Mental Floss
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0:00
If you're a movie lover, you can probably picture the scene from The Wizard of Oz where
0:03
a blanket of snow falls over Dorothy lying in a poppy field. But did you know that the snow dumped on Dorothy and Friends was actually asbestos
0:09
The carcinogenic material was a common substitute for snowflakes in filmmaking until shortly
0:13
after World War II. A staggering 1,000 pounds of the toxic material brought the snowy landscapes
0:19
of Quebec to life in 1936's The Country Doctor. It was also used in the 1942 musical Holiday
0:24
Inn, starring Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. Hi, I'm Erin McCarthy, editor-in-chief of MentalFloss.com, and welcome to The List Show
0:31
Cancer-causing faux snow is the first of many fascinating and sometimes scandalous facts
0:35
about old Hollywood that I'm going to share with you today, from the time the Vatican's
0:39
newspaper investigated Shirley Temple to the time John Barrymore's friends allegedly smuggled his corpse from the morgue. Let's get started
0:52
Southern California's clement weather and wide-open spaces made it an ideal location
0:56
for the film industry to set up shop in the early 20th century. It was also about as far as you could
1:01
get from Thomas Edison. After building the world's first film production studio in New Jersey in the
1:05
early 1890s, Edison churned out patented adventures related to making and showing movies
1:10
Then, in 1908, he spearheaded the creation of the Motion Picture Patents Company
1:15
an East Coast association where all the major patent holders in the film industry pooled their
1:19
resources. It was essentially a monopoly, and aspiring filmmakers could hardly lift a finger
1:23
without fearing a lawsuit for patent infringement. It was harder to enforce patent laws over such a
1:27
great distance, and West Coast judges were also less amenable to Edison and his cohort
1:32
Sure enough, filmmakers started migrating to SoCal. In 1923, the Hollywood sign was erected on Mount Lee, but not to promote Hollywood
1:39
That year, Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler had built a luxury housing development
1:44
called Hollywoodland. To publicize it, he fashioned a 43-foot-tall sign that spelled
1:48
out its name, illuminated with some 4,000 light bulbs. The sign had fallen into disrepair by the 1940s
1:55
The H wasn't even upright anymore. But instead of tearing it down, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce saw an opportunity
2:01
Making a deal with the city of Los Angeles, it did away with the last four letters, patched
2:05
up the Hollywood part, and gave it a new life as a welcome sign of sorts—for the city
2:09
itself and the glamorous world of entertainment it had come to represent. By that time, labor unions had already popped up to protect stage workers' rights
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that in 1934 an official studio zone was established. If studios filmed inside that circle
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it was considered a local shoot and workers, in those days, for these purposes, mostly extras
2:27
were on their own for basics like food and transportation If workers had to show up for a shoot outside the zone on the other hand the studio had to provide those things In 1970 the circle radius was
2:37
expanded from 6 to 30 miles, generating a new nickname, the 30-mile zone. That's where the
2:43
internet tabloid TMZ got its name. And if TMZ had existed in the 1930s, there's a good chance it
2:48
would have covered this next story. As Shirley Temple gained fame for films like Baby Take a Bow
2:52
and Wee Willy Winky, still waiting for that gritty reboot, some people grew skeptical that
2:57
such a mature and talented child could even exist. They also found it suspicious that
3:01
she was never seen on screen with missing baby teeth. A rumor spread across Europe that
3:04
Temple was actually an adult with dwarfism. For some reason, the Vatican's newspapers
3:08
saw fit to investigate the matter, and sent Father Silvio Massante to pay Temple a visit
3:13
After a thorough quizzing, which included going through a book of old master paintings
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for some reason, he was satisfied that she was actually a child. As for the case of the
3:21
missing baby teeth, filmmakers had filled the holes with any number of items deemed camera-ready
3:25
— including temporary dentures. Shirley Temple also experienced a method of keeping
3:29
child actors in line that would definitely be illegal today. The black box. In the early
3:34
1930s, she and a couple dozen other kids starred in Baby Burlesques, in which the child actors
3:39
would parody scenes from adult movies. I'd love to know how many adults signed off on
3:43
that pitch. Temple's roles in the film were originally played by Marlene Dietrich, Mae West, and
3:47
Dolores Del Rio. If Temple or any of the other pint-sized stars misbehaved, they get shut
3:52
into a cramped soundbox cooled by a big ice block, which also happened to be the only place
3:57
to sit. As Temple later wrote in her memoir Child Star, "...so far as I can tell, the black box did no lasting damage to my psyche. Its lesson
4:05
of life, however, was profound and unforgettable. Time is money. Wasted time means wasted money
4:10
means trouble." The adults on film sets also adopted unconventional methods in making child actors cry in emotional
4:16
scenes. For Margaret O'Brien, who played the little sister of Judy Garland's character
4:20
in Meet Me in St. Louis, competition was key. As O'Brien recounted in 2014, June Allison
4:26
and I were in competition as the best criers on the MGM lot. We were called the town criers
4:30
of MGM. So when I was having trouble crying, my mother came over to me and she said, I'll
4:35
have the makeup man put the false tears down your face, but June is such a great, great actress, she always cries real tears. And then I started crying
4:42
That motherly manipulation was positively kind compared to what Jackie Cooper endured
4:46
while filming 1931's Skippy. To elicit tears from his eight-year-old actor, director Norman Tarrig told Cooper
4:52
his dog would be taken to the pound, and then had someone fire a gun in the distance
4:56
so Cooper would think his dog got shot. Cooper later recalled the incident in his autobiography Please Don Shoot My Dog I began sobbing so hysterically that it was almost too much for the scene Norman had to quiet me down by saying that perhaps my dog had survived the shot
5:10
that if I hurried and calmed down a little and did the scene the way he wanted, we would go see
5:14
if my dog was still alive. In short, things weren't always great for kids on set. Or for adults
5:20
One example. Tippi Hedren didn't exactly have to fake her fear during the climactic avian attack
5:25
in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. They were real birds. For five days, bird handlers literally
5:29
threw ravens, doves, and pigeons right at Hedren. At one point, they even tied some to her outfit
5:35
The birds pecked at her incessantly, and the experience was so harrowing and exhausting
5:39
that a doctor had to coerce Hitchcock into giving her a week off to recover
5:43
Cary Grant, who witnessed part of the shoot, told Hedren she was the bravest woman he'd ever seen
5:48
Hitchcock and Hedren worked together again for the 1964 thriller Marnie, and for Hedren, the shoot was even more harrowing. In her 2016 memoir, she revealed that Hitchcock
5:56
had sexually assaulted her on set and threatened to ruin her career when she resisted. An ugly
6:01
but unfortunately far from isolated moment in Hollywood history. If Joan Crawford and Bette Davis' top claim to fame was for acting, their second was for hating
6:10
each other. Their feud was so legendary that it inspired a TV show in 2017, starring Jessica
6:15
Lang as Crawford and Susan Sarandon as Davis. The beef allegedly began in 1933, when the release of
6:20
Davis' movie Ex-Lady was eclipsed by the news that Crawford was divorcing Douglas Fairbanks Jr
6:25
To add insult to injury, Crawford's next husband was actor Franchot Tone, whom Davis was in love
6:31
with. More than 50 years later, Davis said, "...I have never forgiven her for that and never will.
6:35
The two stars continued sliding each other offscreen until the early 1960s
6:39
when they finally got a chance to duke it out on the same set. Both starred in the 1962 thriller Whatever Happened to Baby Jane
6:45
While filming a scene where Davis' character attacks Crawford's, Davis clocked her rival in the head with a little too much gusto
6:51
In a later scene, when Davis had to drag Crawford's limp body around, Crawford purposely botched takes and may have even weighed down her costume to make it harder on Davis
7:00
When Crawford died in 1977, Davis is said to have spotted this possibly apocryphal sick burn
7:06
You should never say bad things about the dead. You should only say good
7:09
Joan Crawford is dead. Good. Long before Joan Crawford became Joan Crawford, she was Lucille Faye Le Sur
7:16
Studios didn't exactly downplay that they made Hollywood hopefuls adopt stage names, but
7:20
In Crawford's case, MGM literally ran a public contest promising a cash prize to whoever submitted the winning name
7:26
Joan Arden was the first choice but as the official story goes another actress already went by that name and MGM settled on Joan Crawford Though the name eventually grew on her Crawford initially hated how much it sounded like crawfish Film historian Janine Basinger actually pointed to a different reason for MGM to avoid Joan Arden Apparently two separate people had submitted the name to the studio meaning MGM
7:47
would have been on the hook for two separate $1,000 prizes. Crawford, for her part, was
7:52
apparently never disabused of the potentially dishonest story behind her stage name
7:55
Other monikers arose more organically, like the Rat Pack. According to Humphrey Bogart and Lauren
8:00
Bacall's son, Steven, his mother coined the phrase. Bogart and friends were having an especially debauched week in Las Vegas, and Bacall said
8:07
"...you look like a godd****** Rat Pack." These days, the Rat Pack generally refers to Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis
8:13
Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop. But Sinatra was the only member who'd been there from the beginning
8:18
At its inception, the Rat Pack comprised Sinatra, Bogart, Judy Garland, and David Niven, along
8:23
with some other pals. Bogart and Bacall starred in four movies together during the 1940s, but they never kissed on
8:28
screen for longer than a few seconds. In fact, nobody kissed on screen for longer than a few seconds during that era
8:34
From the 30s through the mid-1960s, Hollywood followed the Motion Picture Production Code
8:38
which banned, among other things, excessive and lustful kissing. Though it didn't specify a time limit, three seconds was the unofficial standard
8:46
So if you're ever watching a Golden Age classic and wondering why the romantic leads keep pausing to walk and or talk between kisses, that's why
8:53
For every proven story from Tinseltown's 20th century heyday, there's a plethora of
8:57
legends that we'll probably never know the truth about. one of the wildest ones. After John Barrymore died in 1942, his friend supposedly stole his
9:05
corpse from the morgue and brought it back to Errol Flynn's house. According to Flynn's ghostwritten
9:09
memoir, My Wicked, Wicked Ways, he came home to find Barrymore propped up in Flynn's favorite chair
9:14
He looked puffed white bloodless. They hadn't embalmed him yet. I let out a delirious scream
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Director Raoul Walsh, who was behind the prank, largely corroborated Flynn's account in his 1972
9:25
memoir, Each Man in His Time. John's granddaughter Drew Barrymore even confirmed the story during an
9:30
an appearance on Hot Ones in 2020. But Gene Fowler's son Will always told a different story
9:35
According to Fowler, he and his father spent the whole night with Barrymore's corpse in the morgue, and it never left their sight. Gregory William Mank, author of Hollywood's Hellfire Club
9:44
The Misadventures of John Barrymore, W.C. Fields, Errol Flynn, and the Bundy Drive Boys
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thinks Flynn probably made it all up, and Walsh went along with it for fun. As Mank told Mental Floss in 2020, Flynn worshipped Barrymore, and he created this
9:56
wacky corpse-swiping saga to give his idol a resurrection of sorts. Temporary, though, it was
10:02
Our next episode is all about vaccines. If you have a fun fact about the history of vaccination
10:06
drop it in the comments for a chance to be featured in that video. We'll see you then
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