Hollywood’s dark side: History of scandal and intrigue
Drug abuse, mystery deaths, murder, forced abortions, underage sex and systemic sexism all swirled behind the silver screen where the “casting couch” became a symbol of power, privilege and predatory behaviour. Hollywood has had its fair share of scandals.
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Back in 2013, comedian Seth McFarlane was introducing the best supporting actress nominees at an event before the Oscars when he joked: “Congratulations, you five ladies no longer have to pretend to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein.”
It would be another four years before the Hollywood mogul would finally be rumbled amid a string of sexual abuse allegations — but back then it was clear everyone understood the joke.
Now dozens of women including Gwyneth Paltrow, Ashley Judd, Salma Hayek and Cara Delevingne have come forward with allegations ranging from rape to sexual harassment, while Bill Cosby has been jailed for sex crimes and Kevin Spacey is facing sexual assault charges.
While the revelations have prompted a global reckoning that stretches far beyond Tinseltown, such scandals are nothing new in Hollywood — an environment Marilyn Monroe once compared to an “overcrowded brothel”.
Drug abuse, mystery deaths, murder, forced abortions, underage sex and systemic sexism all swirled behind the silver screen where the “casting couch” became a symbol of power, privilege and predatory behaviour.
Here we chronicle some of the most shocking scandals in an industry resplendent with deceit and intrigue.
BRAD, JEN AND ANGE
They were the first couple to be given a joint moniker — Brangelina. But behind the picture-perfect family with three adopted and three biological children, it was hard to forget that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s relationship came at the expense of Pitt’s first wife, Jennifer Aniston, who was cast aside when the couple met and fell in love on the set of their first movie together, Mr And Mrs Smith, in 2004.
At the time you could buy T-shirts which declared you to be on Team Aniston or Team Jolie.
Despite this, Brangelina became the accepted first couple of Hollywood. That is, until September 2016 when Jolie filed for divorce in a move that shocked fans who had been so used to seeing the happy family together.
Since then, one of the messiest divorces in Hollywood has filled daily headlines with accusations Pitt battled alcohol abuse and was investigated by the FBI over an”incident” on a private plane in which he was alleged to have attacked his son Maddox, 15 at the time.
Pitt denied the allegations and was never charged in relation to them. But it was all fuel for a custody battle, settled in December.
Last week Pitt’s mum, Jane, told US media Jolie had ruined her son’s life.
JFK AND MARILYN MONROE
She was the most glamorous actress of her generation, he was US President — and it has long been alleged the pair had a secret affair.
Rumours began when Monroe slipped off her fur coat and seductively sang “Happy Birthday” to John F. Kennedy in May 1962.
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While most accounts suggest the pair only met on a few occasions, the actress apparently told her close friend and masseur Ralph Roberts that she spent a night with Kennedy at Bing Crosby’s home in March 1962.
As the late actress Susan Strasberg recalled: “Marilyn loved the secrecy and the drama of it but Kennedy was not the kind of man she wanted to spend her life with, she made that very clear.”
Only one photograph exists of the pair together, taken the night Monroe sang in her sequined dress.
Three months after the famous performance she was dead following an overdose of barbiturates. Just over a year later Kennedy was assassinated in Texas.
DEATH OF BOB CRANE
You know something is definitely a scandal if they make a movie about it. And when the film Auto Focus was released in 2002, it alerted a legion of Hogan’s Heroes fans to the rise and demise of the show’s biggest star, Bob Crane.
Crane played the role of Colonel Hogan in the hugely popular comedy about POWs in a German concentration camp running rings around their captors. It ran for six seasons from 1965 to 1971.
The Hogan character was a smooth-talking ladies’ man and, as it turned out, so was the actor who played him.
In later years Crane struggled to match the professional success he had found in Hogan’s Heroes but he exploited his fame to seduce women.
He would secretly film his frequent liaisons with the help of a friend named John Carpenter, an electronics salesman.
The sordid behaviour of the two men was uncovered after Crane was found beaten to death in his apartment in Arizona in 1978. Police found Crane’s stash of films during the murder investigation.
The crime has never been solved. Carpenter did stand trial over the killing but was acquitted.
HEIDI FLEISS
When police busted the “Hollywood Madam”, Heidi Fleiss, they found a bunch of traveller’s cheques signed by actor Charlie Sheen in her possession.
As it turned out, Sheen was just one of many celebrity clients using the escort services provided by Fleiss, who famously recorded the names of many of them in her diaries.
For two giddy years before her arrest in 1993, Fleiss was making millions and rubbing shoulders with Hollywood’s elite.
She charged clients a minimum of $US1500 a night for sex with one of her hand-picked girls. Sheen admitted spending $US53,000 on sex provided by Fleiss in one year alone.
Fleiss, still only 28, was running her illegal business in plain sight but made a monumental error — she boasted about her success in a newspaper interview, earning the wrath of the LAPD.
After her arrest, the details of the hedonistic lifestyles of the rich and famous fed a tabloid frenzy.
Many of those celebrities lived in fear of being exposed, worried that their names were recorded in the Hollywood Madam’s diaries.
Fleiss was eventually sentenced to seven years in prison for tax evasion.
ROSCOE “FATTY” ARBUCKLE
His name is the stuff of playground taunts but, nearly 100 years before Harvey Weinstein was accused of being a rapist, another millionaire movie mogul found himself similarly under the spotlight.
Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was the king of silent movies but when he was accused of crushing a woman to death as he raped her, his career came crashing down.
On September 5, 1921 Arbuckle was at a party at the luxury St Francis Hotel in San Francisco when he and 30-year-old struggling actress Virginia Rappe ended up in a bedroom together.
Screams were heard and, when partygoers entered the room, the actress claimed: “He did this to me.”
When she died four days later from a ruptured bladder, 118kg Arbuckle was charged with first-degree murder which was eventually reduced to manslaughter.
He faced three trials, two of which resulted in hung juries before a third jury acquitted him in April 1922.
Although cleared, the public remained convinced of his guilt and the man who mentored Charlie Chaplin and discovered Buster Keaton died aged 46, his career having never recovered.
ROMAN POLANSKI
Some scandals refuse to die — the disturbing case of Roman Polanski is one of them.
The acclaimed director — and child rapist — has evaded justice for more than 40 years, even as fresh claims about his predatory behaviour towards young girls have kept producing headlines.
Polanski was Hollywood nobility having directed many memorable films including Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown. The event that would shape his life took place in actor Jack Nicholson’s house in Los Angeles in 1977.
The then 43-year-old Polanski plied aspiring model, 13-year-old Samantha Gailey, with booze and a sedative before having sex with her.
He was charged with a raft of offences including sodomy, sex with a minor and rape by use of drugs but pleaded guilty only to unlawful sexual intercourse.
He was sent to prison for a psychiatric evaluation but was released by mistake and fled to Europe.
The US has been trying to get the Polish-born French national back to face justice ever since, to no avail.
Hollywood forgave him, though. His film The Pianist won the Oscar for best picture in 2003.
DEATH OF NATALIE WOOD
The death of actress Natalie Wood has been a mystery since her body was found floating off Catalina Island on November 29, 1981.
Wood and husband Robert Wagner, of Hart To Hart fame, were on his yacht when, Wagner told investigators, his wife retired to their cabin.
When he went to join her, he discovered her missing. Wagner and the yacht’s captain Dennis Davern found the dinghy was also missing and the next morning Wood was found floating in the water in a nightgown, socks and down jacket.
She and Wagner had been arguing that evening and Davern claims Wagner, now 88, pushed his wife into the water. While he remains a person of interest, Wagner has never been charged over Woods’s death.
Investigators remain unsure about the death. Wagner wrote in his memoir: “There are only two possibilities — either she was trying to get away from the argument or she was trying to tie the dinghy. But the bottom line is that nobody knows exactly what happened.”
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