It may be tempting to think that Hollywood today has reached its lowest point in regard to its ethics and those of its stars. Unfortunately, it seems that the movie business has attracted scandal since its birth.

In addition, to maintain the reputation of its stars, studios have always hired fixers, double dealers, and outright shysters to do the dirty work for them. Here are 10 scandals from the Golden Age of Hollywood that they tried to cover up.

10 Loretta Young Adopted Her Own Child

Loretta Young had it all. She was beautiful. She was successful. She was recognized, even winning an Oscar for her 1947 performance in The Farmer’s Daughter. And she was hiding a secret.

After she finished shooting The Call of the Wild in 1935, Young disappeared from view. When she returned to public life 18 months later, she brought along her “adopted” daughter, Judy. In fact, the child was her own, the product of a brief relationship with (married) Clark Gable. It is unclear if the relationship was consensual.

Young was a strict Catholic and would not have contemplated aborting the child. The secret was kept from everyone, including her daughter, for 31 years. Although rumors of the child’s true parentage were whispered around Hollywood for years, they were only officially confirmed in a memoir published after the star’s death.^[1]

9 Joan Crawford Did A Porno

Joan Crawford was one of MGM’s biggest stars. She was known to be ambitious and somewhat ruthless in her pursuit of her career. She won an Oscar for her leading role in Mildred Pierce in 1945 and received two other Oscar nominations and a host of other awards. Crawford was Hollywood gold.

This must have made the persistent rumors that she had begun her career with roles in porn a little awkward. She is said to have starred in a film called Velvet Lips. At one point, her brother was offering copies to the highest bidder. There are no longer any copies of the film in existence, possibly due to the efforts of studio fixers employed to see that stars were not embarrassed by their indiscretions.

Crawford’s first husband, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., confirmed that she was blackmailed over the films, even receiving threatening calls when they were on their honeymoon. A film was sent to the studio, but the company lawyer denied that the woman in the film was Crawford.

She denied participating in porn films until the end of her life. However, her FBI file (because, you know, McCarthy and all that) appears to confirm the existence of the film. Crawford’s biographers state that “a film of Crawford in compromising positions was circulated . . . to be used at smokers” (men-only stag parties).^[2]

They also suggest that the file contains evidence that the studio paid Crawford’s brother as much as $100,000 to stop him from leaking the film. This is supported by mysterious payments made by Crawford to the studio, which are supposedly repayment for the blackmail money.

Crawford’s family problems continued after her death. Her daughter, whom Crawford had disinherited, published a tell-all memoir, Mommie Dearest, which depicted the star in a whole new light.

8 Jean Harlow Was Forced To Marry

Jean Harlow was the original blonde bombshell. She catapulted to stardom after appearing in Howard Hughes’s Hell’s Angels. It is fair to say that Harlow had a tumultuous life. She married her first husband on January 18, 1927, at age 15 and was divorced a few years later. Her second husband was killed in a gunshot accident, though there was much speculation that she had killed him.

Then she had an affair with a married boxer. When the scandal threatened to become public, the studio forced her to marry cinematographer Harold Rosson. However, the marriage was for public consumption only and they quietly divorced a few months later when the scandal was forgotten.

Harlow did want to marry William Powell. She fell for him in 1935 on the set of Reckless and wanted to get married, have a family, and give up acting. But Powell was not reckless. He had just been divorced from Carole Lombard and thought the public might not like him to marry so soon. He also made it clear that he never wanted children.

Powell’s caution, however, only went so far, and Harlow soon found herself pregnant. Knowing that he did not want children and that the studio would not tolerate an unmarried mother, Harlow aborted the baby that she wanted and never told Powell what had happened.^[3]

7 William Randolph Hearst Tried To Shoot Charlie Chaplin (And Killed Someone Else Instead)

William Randolph Hearst was a businessman, politician, and newspaper publisher. In fact, he was a tycoon with the largest newspaper business in the world, one of the most powerful people in America, and the inspiration for Orson Welles’s masterpiece, Citizen Kane. Hearst was known to be ruthless, hot-tempered, and, occasionally, downright nasty.

So it is fair to assume that he would not have taken news of his mistress having an affair lying down. He believed that Marion Davies was sleeping with Charlie Chaplin. Instead of confronting Chaplin outright, Hearst invited Chaplin and a number of other film people to join Hearst on his yacht. This must have made for rather uncomfortable small talk.

Thomas Ince was a Hollywood producer who specialized in Western films. His studio was profitable for a while, but it began to flounder. Looking for investors, Ince boarded Hearst’s yacht, hoping that the trip would change his fortunes. It did.

The official version of the death—certainly the one that Hearst had printed with indecent haste in his newspapers—was that Ince had developed digestive problems which proved fatal despite his swift hospitalization. Ince’s body was immediately cremated.

Despite Hearst’s vigorous attempts to control the publicity surrounding Ince’s death, rumors kept surfacing that Hearst had shot at Chaplin, missed, and killed Ince instead. Although the Los Angeles Times ran the headline “Movie Producer Shot on Hearst Yacht,” it was swiftly pulled and later editions carried no mention of the shooting.^[4]

A secretary aboard the yacht was quoted as saying that he had seen Ince bleeding from a bullet wound to the head. Ince’s wife was unavailable for comment as she had embarked upon a sudden tour of Europe.

6 Tallulah Bankhead Had Multiple Abortions

Tallulah Bankhead was as famous inside Hollywood for her sexual activity as she was for her beauty around the rest of the world. At one point, she was said to have had 185 notches on her bedpost and she hadn’t finished counting.

Knowing that the studios would not have tolerated a pregnant star, Bankhead had four abortions by age 30. She wasn’t the only one. The studios had established protocols for this contingency and booked women into hospitals under false names for vague procedures. They were attended only by their own doctors, and visitors were strictly prohibited.

Bankhead was one of the few regular visitors to the hospital. She was briefly married to a man whose proposal she accepted because “he’s the only one who ever asked me.” It didn’t last.

Her promiscuity was legendary. She had affairs with men and women, often in semipublic places, and made a practice of opening her door to visitors naked. She is even said to have flashed the audience while performing in a Broadway play, causing a priest and three nuns to walk out.

Bankhead is said to have regretted her abortions later in life when she found herself unable to have children due to a hysterectomy performed after she contracted gonorrhea.^[5]

5 Patricia Douglas Was Raped

Patricia Douglas was a wannabe star. At 20, she was invited to attend an audition for MGM studios. Unknown to her, the “audition” was a party thrown by Louis B. Mayer for MGM’s sales executives. The party had been in swing for three days by the time Douglas attended, believing that she might be getting her “big break.”

Douglas was not worldly wise. She was a virgin from Kansas City, Missouri, who dreamed of being a star. She was not the only girl invited. In all, around 120 young women were bused in to “entertain” approximately 300 drunken delegates at a remote ranch. Dressed in cowboy hats, short skirts, and boots, the girls were promised a hot meal and $7.50 for the entire day.

Still under the impression that they were taking part in a screen test, the girls had their makeup done and were told to wait on the “set.” Knowing that the film business was difficult and wanting to be professional, they waited for their cue. However, the sales executives believed that the girls were a different sort of professional altogether.^[6]

Without transport or telephones, the women had no means of escape and had to fend off the male advances as best they could.

Douglas was brutally raped. Unlike others in Hollywood, she refused to be bought off and chose to press charges against MGM salesman David Ross. MGM hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to dig up dirt on Douglas. When they could find none, they coerced people into claiming she was a promiscuous woman who had a sexually transmitted disease.

The parking lot attendant initially said that he had seen her being attacked but later changed his mind. Afterward, his children admitted that his later statements were untrue. Douglas’s character was destroyed, and her assailant got away with rape.

4 Errol Flynn Was A Pervert

It’s not a secret that Errol Flynn had a large sexual appetite. The phrase “in like Flynn” was popularized after his trial for the statutory rape of two girls. Flynn was acquitted of all charges, and the trial only increased his reputation as a Lothario.

Flynn began his Hollywood career after working as a river guide for a film crew, fighting off crocodiles, and dodging arrows from headhunters (apparently true). He was spotted and offered a role in a remake of Mutiny on the Bounty.

In addition to Flynn’s predilection for underage girls, other rumors followed him around. It is said that he lost his virginity at age 10. He had a two-way mirror installed in his bedroom and another allegedly in the bathroom.

He was famous for his sexual “experiments” fueled by drink and drugs, but nothing seemed to dampen the public’s enthusiasm for him. Flynn died at age 50 of a heart attack. It is alleged that the coroners at the inquest removed a number of genital warts from the body as souvenirs.^[7]

3 Judy Garland Was Forced To Take Drugs

Judy Garland was first spotted by an MGM scout in 1935 as a young teen. They liked her voice and her acting but not her looks. She was signed and immediately began playing girl-next-door roles, working six days a week for up to 18 hours a day. To keep her energy up and her weight down, the studio supplied her with amphetamines. When it came time to stop work, they gave her sleeping pills.

Garland married at 19 against the wishes of the studio and was ordered back to work 24 hours after the wedding. When she became pregnant, they arranged for her to have an abortion.

By the time she began work on Meet Me in St. Louis in her early twenties, Judy Garland was completely reliant on amphetamines. The studio “protected” her by not allowing anyone else near her. When she called in sick, they recouped their lost production costs from her paycheck.

At one point, Garland checked into a hospital to learn to eat and sleep properly again. But when she came out, studio bosses ordered her to lose weight and she went straight back on the pills.

When Garland’s life began to spiral out of control, the studios abandoned her. She died from a barbiturate overdose in 1969 at age 47.^[8]

2 George Raft Really Was A Gangster

George Raft specialized in playing tough guys like convicts, crooks, and mobsters. Perhaps it was Raft’s real-life association with mobsters that influenced casting directors. His first role was a coin-tossing henchman in Scarface, which set the precedent for his career. He is known to have had lifelong associations with Mafia men like Owney Madden and Bugsy Siegel.

Raft had grown up in Hell’s Kitchen, a poor area of New York where his best friend, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, taught Raft how to flip coins. Raft admitted to running bootleg liquor operations for the mob. Later, Siegel, a known mobster with movie connections, helped Raft break into the movie business.

The Mafia never seemed to be far away from Raft’s film work. Al Capone even showed the Scarface director how to fire a tommy gun.^[9]

1 Alfred Hitchcock Was A Stalker

Alfred Hitchcock was a gifted director, but he was also rather peculiar. Though he was married for 54 years, he claimed to have had sex only once. It didn’t stop him from becoming obsessed with his leading ladies, however. Grace Kelly and Janet Leigh both complained about his controlling nature. He refused to allow them to speak to other cast members or drive to the set with anyone other than him.

But it was Tippi Hedren who really became the focus of his obsession. While Hitchcock was riding high from the success of Psycho, he picked the unknown actress Hedren to star in The Birds. She became an instant star. But she was also tied to a contract with Hitchcock which left her in a vulnerable position.

On the set of The Birds, the director ordered the other cast members not to speak to her or touch her. Meanwhile, he told Hedren that they didn’t like her. He made several advances to her, which she rebuffed. Hedren claims that the scenes where she was attacked by birds were Hitchcock’s revenge.^[10]

Instead of using mechanical crows as they were supposed to, he used live birds, which were attached to her by elastic. The birds became distressed and viciously attacked her. Filming one scene with real birds attacking her in a bedroom took five days.

Eventually, she snapped. According to Hedren, Hitchcock was so offended when she called him a “fat pig” and rebuffed his advances that he set out to ruin her. He would not use her again, but he refused to allow her to work for other directors.

When her work on The Birds won an award, he would not allow her time to collect it. Hedren also claimed that Hitchcock actively campaigned against her to prevent a nomination for an Oscar for her role.

Though Hedren continued to work, her career never really recovered.

Ward Hazell is a writer who travels and an occasional travel writer.

We may have been fighting each other since the dawn of time, though the average person still has little idea of what war is really like. Our mental image of what happens on the battlefield is heavily influenced by pop culture, particularly the movies. Unfortunately, the people making those movies have usually never been around a real fight, either, and are mostly just making things up as they go.

See Also: Top 10 Awesome Films Hollywood Ruined With Lies

While we agree that fiction requires some suspension of disbelief to be enjoyable, that applies to genres like science fiction and horror. Misrepresenting serious subjects like war on the big screen comes with its fair share of drawbacks. Most of us grow up with a glorified idea of what war is really like, as movie writers are busy writing about dual-wielding guns rather than the stench of poop in the aftermath of a typical battle.

10 Showing off Your Dog Tag Isn’t Cool

Dog tags have always been a popular part of casual fashion. They admittedly look quite cool, which is probably because of their association with the military. Because of Hollywood, a lot of us assume that wearing dog tags as necklaces is something people in the forces do all the time. As any veteran would tell you, though, showing off your dog tag isn’t considered to be sound etiquette within the military.

While it’s true that you’re to wear your tags at all times for identification while on duty, most soldiers keep them tucked inside. Off duty, keeping your dog tag visible in civilian clothes is not in good taste, even—and especially—if you’re topless, unlike what the movies tell us.^[1]

9 “Military Grade” Is an Advertising Gimmick

From knives to antivirus software to alarm systems, companies across the board brand their products as ‘military grade’, usually to signify higher quality and price. If we were to ask you what that exactly means, chances are most of us wouldn’t be able to say. We have this idea of things made by the military to be of higher quality than consumer-grade products.

As it happens, military-grade quality actually doesn’t exist and is yet another one of countless gimmicks advertising agencies use to justify exorbitantly higher prices. While it may be true that civilians don’t yet have access to a lot of military tech, it’s because it’s classified for security reasons and not because they’re somehow making better things in there.^[2]

8 Almost No One Uses Automatic Fire

As we’ve mentioned before, movies exaggerate the effects of various weapons to make them look more impressive on screen. Take grenades as an example; invisible shrapnel paralyzing someone’s lower legs isn’t as impressive as a house blowing up with six people flying in the air. Apart from giving us a faulty idea of what a battle is really like, it also affects decision-making during real-time disaster situations.

One particularly glaring difference between real and fictional wars is “automatic fire” in assault rifles. While military rifles do have a setting to turn the automatic, continuous burst mode on, almost no one uses it in real battles. Apart from bullets costing a lot of money to buy—a fact we’ll come to in a bit—the distances in a real battle are simply too great for automatic fire to be efficient. That’s not to say that automatic fire isn’t used in real wars, though those guns are usually heavier and mounted on a bipod or tripod.^[3]

7 You Can’t Fire A Rifle From The Hip

Rambo may be the best example of this one, though it’s hardly the only movie that’s guilty of it. Many war movies feature an outnumbered hero picking up a mounted gun as a last resort and just mowing down his opponents like a walking machine gun.

There are no walking machine guns because machine guns are extremely heavy, and it’s almost impossible to walk with one, let alone shoot with it. Many movies do it with guns like an AK-47 too. The dangers of shooting out of stance aside, the recoil would make it impossible to continue holding and shooting it for an extended period of time. Moreover, shooting from the hip isn’t a part of any professional training schedule and is something only seen in Hollywood.^[4]

6 Slaughter Isn’t Usually a Part of Battle

Thanks to movies like Lord of the Rings, our mental image of an ancient or medieval war usually features both sides running into each other with their cavalries and actively engaging in hand-to-hand combat throughout the battle. That’s how video games see historical wars, too, influencing our idea of how wars were really fought.

While slaughter is obviously a widespread—and crucial—part of any battle, it usually comes at the end, when the winning side is chasing the routed force. Battles, at least before mass slaughter became a part of all stages of war because of artillery and gunpowder, used to be won through attrition and strategy and not trigger-happy fighters fighting to their last breath. Most battles of history involved calculatedly tiring out the enemy for hours with arrows or mobile units, fighting in isolated units at times, and moving in with full force only when there was a definite advantage.^[5]

5 Infinite Ammo

War movies are quite lenient about the amount of ammo a unit has access to. A part of that could be attributed to making it look amazing, as a battle with everyone saving their bullets would look quite drab on the big screen.

The difference between movies and reality, though, completely changes how battles happen in real life. Limited ammo—for you and the enemy—is an essential part of military tactics, which is especially true today when wars are fought in overseas, cut-off regions. In a real battle, most of the legwork is done by artillery and all of those other big explosives. Even in gunfights, you’re likely to not hear anything for several minutes, instead of the consistent hail of bullets we all imagine. That would also heat up your guns quite fast, which is yet another thing soldiers in real battles have to think about.^[6]

4 Throwing Knives Is Not a Thing

We’re not sure when the dreaded throwing knife showed up in a movie. We can trace its origins to the art of throwing knives, which—much like the art of throwing anything else for no reason—doesn’t have many uses in the real world. It’s unclear, however, when a director saw that and decided to make it a staple weapon in war movies.

A single throw of a knife has killed many people in the fictional world, though how does it stack to its kill count in real life? According to some, it’s even ridiculous to suggest that knives could be thrown to kill.

While throwing around anything pointy is not a good idea, throwing knives hardly produces the impact necessary to kill someone. Moreover, the steel has to be sharp enough to pierce flesh and bone, which is harder than movies make it look.^[7]

3 You Can’t Just Shoot Anyone

We think of the beginning of the battle to be a coordinated and single-minded affair. The commander issues an order to shoot at the other side, and his units just fire off indiscriminately. Much like the other myths on this list, this one only exists in Hollywood too.

In reality, there are specific, written rules around what you can and cannot do in a war. Every war has its own rules of engagement, and they keep changing depending on objectives. As an example, there are times when generals have to get court orders to move into certain territories, which can take hours.^[8]

2 Everything About Cavalry Charges

We think of the historical horse cavalry as an incredibly powerful unit that could decide the course of any battle for the better part of history. Until it was made defunct by tanks and artillery, it dominated battlefields around the world and remained a staple of some of the most powerful armies.

While it’s true that the heavy cavalry was an immensely powerful unit—the mere sight of an organized unit of horses just running towards you with armored warriors is enough to scare anyone—it was quite easily countered by many infantry units throughout history. Moreover, battles rarely started with a cavalry charge breaking the enemy ranks. For one, you don’t just send your most heavily armored and well-trained unit—which was usually the case for elite cavalry units—as an opening attack. More importantly, though, horses are surprisingly (or rather unsurprisingly) unwilling to run into a wall of visible spears. Cavalry charges were mostly used to chase down disorganized enemies or other specific roles in the middle or end stage of the battle.^[9]

1 Most Soldiers Don’t Shoot to Kill, or at All

War is imagined as an absolute rivalry between two sides, one in which everyone is personally involved. The soldiers must be doing their best to kill the other side and expect the same. It’s how movies feed war to us and how we’ve all come to imagine a typical battlefield.

In reality, most of the soldiers aren’t even shooting unless a senior ranking officer is around. According to one historian, one in three soldiers in Vietnam never fired their weapons. In an average battle in WW2, only around 15 to 20 percent of soldiers on the Allied side opened fire.^[10]

About The Author: You can check out Himanshu’s stuff at Cracked (www.cracked.com/members/RudeRidingRomeo/) and Screen Rant (https://screenrant.com/author/hshar/), or get in touch with him for writing gigs ([email protected]).

Hollywood plays an important role in shaping our perception of our place in society. Movies may also define our expectations about the day-to-day connections we have with other people. Whether it’s about love, enmity, compassion, or greed, human interaction in movies directly influences our ideas of how relationships work in real life.

10 Movies Based On Common Misconceptions

Unfortunately, Hollywood still gets a lot of things wrong about society. In theory, that should be fine because the goal of many movies is to portray the world as we want it to be—not as it really is. These inaccuracies become a problem, though, when they lead to ignorance about certain issues in real life.

10 War Is a Glorious Affair

War is one subject that filmmakers have a social responsibility to portray accurately. Yet, they still refuse to get right. As quite a few critics have pointed out, the depiction of war in popular cinema remains inaccurate at best and intentionally skewed to influence the public’s mood at worst.

It can be argued that public perception affects our cinema and popular fiction and not the other way around. If that’s true, then cinema’s job is to show the world as it should be, not as it is.

War is a misunderstood affair even in movies that make a genuine effort to show conflict like it is in real life. According to some critics, a true anti-war movie is quite difficult to make. Even if you try to show aspects like the brotherhood between soldiers and excessive violence, the film unintentionally promotes the whole act.

Dennis Rothermel, a retired professor of philosophy, argues that a movie can only give us an accurate representation of real-life conflicts if it has “random infliction of violent death, abject terror, [and] heinousness as a norm of behavior.”^[1]

That doesn’t mean that movies never get it right. Some popular works—like Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, and Paths of Glory—definitely stand out when it comes to realistic portrayals of the horrors of war. If film directors and writers were a bit more diligent about the depictions of war on the big screen, popular support for wars around the world probably wouldn’t be as high as it is.

9 People Have Too Much Money

There are good and bad economic cycles. However, even when the world has rising rents and stagnating wages, it seems that Hollywood simply has no idea of how things really are. Characters in TV shows and movies usually have a lot of free time to drive the plot, all the while doing underpaid creative jobs.

Just look at Friends, the story of six young residents of New York who do almost nothing all day and can still afford rent in relatively huge apartments in posh parts of New York.^[2] Of course, it’s technically a TV show and not a movie. However, the big screen is full of unrealistically rich characters, too.

8 No Matter What Happens, the Hero Gets the Girl in the End

A lot has been said about inaccurate portrayals of women in movies, though that’s an obvious consequence of writing rooms being traditionally male-dominated spaces. Although things are rapidly changing—thanks to a deluge of women now going for writing careers in film and television—we’re still a long way from Hollywood correctly portraying women as the normal, three-dimensional people that they are.

One of the most damaging examples is when movies perpetuate the notion that the guy would obviously end up with the girl at the conclusion of the story. Most movies adhere to this cliche regardless of how separated it is from real life.

It doesn’t matter if the woman has a completely different life before she meets the hero or if they have no reason to be attracted to each other. By the time the movie ends, circumstances will make them come together and live happily ever after.^[3]

Apart from promoting the faulty belief that you’re entitled to a romantic partner just because you did your job well, it causes even deeper problems in society. As protagonists of the opposite sex almost always end up getting together, it promotes the idea that most male-female relationships are romantic in nature. As anyone who has stepped out of the house can tell you, that’s not really the case.

A realistic movie would end with the lead actor and actress solving the big problem and returning to a friendship in which they only get to see each other once a month due to work and family.

7 Parents Are Just Bad at Their Jobs

There’s no dearth of intentionally bad parents in Hollywood, though we’re not here to talk about them. In movies, it seems like parents are generally bad at their jobs. You’ll first notice it when you see a kid in a movie sneak out of the house to go party at night. Then you start seeing it in every movie.

If movie parents were anything like real parents, many movies would cease to have a plotline. Kids in movies carry out entire adventures without their parents ever knowing about it.

Unfortunately for all the youngsters out there, parents in real life are quite adept at stopping their kids from doing what movie kids do. The most effective way parents do it is by controlling the money supply. Pocket money is often intentionally calculated to stop kids from sneaking out and partying at night or partaking in any other calls to adventure.^[4]

Real parents usually know what their kids are up to at any given point. There are very few cases where a group of bright school friends solves a major world problem without their parents knowing about it.

6 Parties Are Always Fun

Every time people get together to celebrate something in the movies, it’s all fun and games. Rarely does anything go wrong or anyone get bored. Almost every college party is awesome and eventful.^[5] If it isn’t, that’s an important part of the plot. Bad parties have their own role to play in advancing plotlines.

As you know, that’s not the case in real life. Most college parties are boring affairs and usually don’t end in something scandalous. Of course, good parties exist, though they’re usually the exception. Most of the time, parties are simply a bunch of tired, overworked people sipping on wine and talking until 11:00 PM, after which they promptly go back home and sleep.

5 Villains Are Ugly; Heroes Are Attractive

We know that life is a bit easier for individuals at the top of the attractiveness pyramid. Your service at restaurants is faster, your interviews are easier, and people willingly let you skip queues all the time. Being attractive also increases your chances of survival, even though good looks don’t have any inherent survival benefits.

A big part of that could be attributed to our popular fiction, especially the movies. Villains are usually portrayed as ugly, in clear contrast to conventionally attractive lead actors and actresses.

Although we understand that it’s necessary to create that much-needed binary of good and evil, being ugly isn’t necessarily bad in the real world. In fact, being less attractive than someone else has absolutely zero effect on your skills, day-to-day abilities, or intelligence. That’s not to say that all movie villains are ugly, but attractive ones are usually antiheroes or relatable villains.^[6]

To see how it works in the real world, just look at how attractive criminals—like Ted Bundy— can get away with their crimes for so long. Or how well-dressed, polite politicians who are actively working against the people keep getting reelected.

4 Killing the Villain Ends the Problem

With few exceptions, it’s usually quite easy to tell the good guys from the bad ones in movies. Villains and heroes are clearly defined, appealing to our innate desire to see the world in simple, black-and-white terms.

Of course, that’s not how it is in real life. No one in history—other than Hitler, of course—was completely good or bad. Accurate portrayals are rarely successful, though, as people really do want to see a hero beating a villain at the end. Other than forcibly putting history into neat boxes that we can clearly oppose or support, this also promotes the perception that complex, entrenched problems can be eliminated by killing the villainous leader.

Movies usually end with the bad guys dying and things going back to normal. They ignore the fact that the underlying problems created by those villains still exist.

Take Harry Potter. Sure, by the end of the series, he has killed Voldemort and dispersed his army. While it solves the immediate problem, it doesn’t do anything about the wave of racial supremacy that Voldemort has already unleashed on the magical world.

Lord of the Rings ends with the destruction of Sauron, but he wasn’t the only inhabitant of Mordor. The Orcs could revolt and continue the war in the aftermath of the movies.

We see this in real life, too. Killing Osama bin Laden didn’t end Islamic terrorism. ISIS improved upon al-Qaeda’s methods to create an even more radical form of terrorism, and it could happen again. Of course, Al-Qaeda itself remains a potent force in quite a few countries.^[7]

Killing Hitler may have ended the immediate threat from the Nazis. However, he was just a figurehead for various racial supremacist movements that were popular around the world at that time—movements that are still alive and kicking to this day.

Associating wider problems with one easily dismissible villain also lets us absolve our involvement in the relevant issues. It’s easy for the people of Gotham to root for Batman over the Joker because it distracts them from the fact that they’re equally responsible for the socioeconomic conditions that give rise to criminals like the Joker in the first place.

3 People Have No Work, and Their Bosses Are Great

We’re not sure if Hollywood execs just don’t know how things are on the ground, but people in movies don’t seem to have the same amount of work as we do. Lunch breaks can be unrealistically long and full of exciting, drawn-out events. In fact, it seems like everyone is allowed to leave at 5:00 PM.

If you work in any competitive, modern office, the chances are that you work long hours multiple times a week with little to no time to indulge in dramatic character arcs. It’s hard to execute intricate love plots involving multiple people across the city if you’re a fresher and have to do three jobs six days a week just to make the rent.

In a similar vein, bosses in movies are surprisingly lenient. Have you ever seen a character at work who faces an emergency and asks a coworker to cover for him while he deals with it? Yeah, that doesn’t happen in real life as you can’t take over someone’s job as a personal favor in real life.^[8]

2 No One Ever Finishes Their Meals

For most people, meals in movies are perfectly normal affairs. Eating morsels of food is mostly a background activity and something that’s only added as a prop to the overall setting.

When you think about it, people in movies should be terribly malnourished. If you notice characters eating anything in a movie, they seem to have a fundamental problem finishing it. How many times have you seen a character prepare a whole breakfast only to watch her kid, husband, or other side character take a bite of it and leave?^[9]

We’re guessing a lot because it happens in many movies.

We don’t have to tell you why this is inaccurate as people usually finish their meals in real life. It’s one of the more harmless misconceptions from Hollywood as it hardly affects real-life situations. But it would still be rude to leave a meal midway in most social settings.

1 Creepy Behavior Is Actually Love

Although most of us love a classic rom-com, it only takes rewatching one of them to realize that Hollywood has normalized stalking.

From the famous jukebox scene in Say Anything to the borderline harassment of sending one letter every day to someone in The Notebook, Hollywood regularly portrays as acceptable the types of behavior that would put you behind bars in real life. The Onion even satirized it in one of their classics from 1999 titled “Romantic-Comedy Behavior Gets Real-Life Man Arrested.”

That’s not just satire, either. Stalking is a real crime around the world. Just take the United States, whereas many as 7.5 million people endure some form of stalking every year.

While we won’t assume that all cases have the same motivations, enough stories exist about crazy exes and jaded lovers to prove that it’s a real problem. Although we understand that many factors may contribute to stalking, the movies are definitely not helping.^[10]

About The Author: You can check out Himanshu’s stuff at Cracked and Screen Rant or get in touch with him for writing gigs.

[WARNING: This list contains disturbing audio and images.] Sound is both one of the most important and the least noticed parts of a movie. While it’s obviously true that there are entire teams dedicated to perfecting the sound in any professional film, their contributions aren’t as apparent as, say, a stunt artist’s.

See Also: Top 10 Incredible Sounds

We’re not really talking about the background score, either. Some of the most iconic soundtracks of Hollywood aren’t songs at all, but seemingly unimportant sounds like the toilet flush and running water in the basins in bathroom scenes to make them more realistic. Here are ten of the most iconic . . . and, in some cases, disturbing.

10Infrasound And Impending Doom

[WARNING: The youtube video linked here includes subaudible sounds that can cause listeners to suffer extreme discomfort. Please listen with caution.] Gaspar Noé’s 2002 thriller Irreversible evokes some particularly strong feelings. Of course, there’s the very graphic rape scene in the beginning of the movie which we’d highly caution against watching (for those of you who subscribe to such concepts, consider this your “trigger warning”). The rest of the movie is no High School Musical, either, and it’s understandable that it would leave some people with a bad taste in their mouths.

But the horrific scenes of violence are not the only disturbing quality of this film. Many people watching reported feeling an uneasy sense of dread, especially in the more hectic, earlier parts of the film. While many just brushed it off as the filmmaker’s genius, he later admitted to using infrasound to cause the effect in the first 30 minutes of the film.

For those who aren’t familiar with it, infrasound (or subaudible sound) is sound just below our normal hearing range. It doesn’t have to be completely below the threshold, either. Just start approaching the lower end and you’ll begin to “feel” what we’re talking about.

Because people can’t hear the sound but can physically sense it, infrasound ends up causing unexplained feelings of intense dread. It has been effectively – even if sparingly—used in Hollywood ever since they figured out how to reproduce it, as it is highly effective at creating that sense of creeping terror many horror movies leave you with. Interestingly the sound is also associated with many large-scale natural disasters, which suggests that our reaction to it is part of our inbuilt self-defense mechanism.^[1]

9That Time Hollywood Made Us All Listen To Animal Sex

Contrary to popular belief, Jeff Goldblum was not the highlight of the Jurassic Park franchise. It is also remembered for some of the best depictions of dinosaurs on the big screen. For an animal we have never seen in the flesh and only know about from scattered remains of bones around the world, the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park were quite believable and multi-dimensional. So how did they know what the dinosaurs sounded like?

Simply put, they didn’t. We usually don’t associate ancient animals with any sound, but we do it with dinosaurs because of Jurassic Park, as they created these sounds out of thin air and were basically the first to do so effectively. For anyone who has wondered how they were made, they’re taken from many animals in various stages of having sex. The velociraptor is voiced by mating tortoises, and the T-rex is dolphins in heat. I wonder how many parents would have made their kids stay home from the cinema if they knew they were about to listen to two hours and seven minutes of animals doing the dirty.^[2]

8 Time Dilation In Inception

Inception is one of the few movies that uses sound design as a central part of its storytelling. Hanz Zimmer’s score is hands down one of his best works to date, and much like other aspects of the movie.

One song that keeps showing up throughout the movie—Edith Piaf’s ‘Non, je ne regrette rien’—is more than just an artistic use of the classic song. As some fans found out, the length of the song—2:28 minutes—may have directly influenced the length of the movie . . . 2:28 hours.

More eagle-eyed and hardcore fans, however, had their ears on even more mind-blowing references in the background score, because the famous French song is referred to in other secret places too. As you can see in the clip above, the music in the dream sequences is stretched out and heavy in bass. The time signature of the music in the dreams actually perfectly corresponds with the song, only stretched out according to the time dilation you’re supposed to experience in the dreams, and tweaked to make it sound better.^[3]

7 Star Trek’s Warp Drive

Star Trek will always be remembered for its innovative use of everyday sounds. This makes sense as they had to come up with a lot of new sounds owing to the vast scope of their futuristic setting at a time that no one had really gone there before. The most distinctive and innovative creation of a sound in the series is probably the warp drive.

While it’s easy to imagine the warp sound from movies in 2020, it wasn’t back then. The sound designer, Doug Grindstaff, wanted to make an authentic effect that would serve as a blueprint for all warp drive sounds in the future, and he was successful to a large extent, too.

For the sound, he went back to his college and borrowed a test oscillator from the physics lab. The resulting warp-drive sound effect will now forever be in the human consciousness. The sounds in Star Trek – along with a few other pioneering movies – defined the genre for decades to come. What a legacy!^[4]

6 The Lightsaber

Star Wars is another classic franchise that came up with quite a few unique ways to convey its sound, especially its brilliant and iconic score. Its biggest breakthroughs in sound design, though – much like most of the other entries on this list – lie in sounds that we don’t even notice.

Take the lightsaber. While most people these days would think that it was generated by some kind of a computer, we forget that technology wasn’t as advanced as it is today. The sound was – like a lot of iconic sounds in Hollywood – made by something found in the junk. More specifically, it was made by the hum of an idle film projector combined with the static buzz of a television.

For another classic sound from the series, the iconic ‘pew pew’ sound of the blaster gun was made by a guy smacking a thick wire with a hammer. I want his job!^[5]

5 Psycho Stabbing

When it comes to psychological horror that gets under your skin while not being overtly visible, Alfred Hitchcock set the benchmark. His movies are some of the most iconic psychological thrillers of all times, and for good reason, too. His use of innovative camera techniques and sound design became the standard for many notable works of the genre since then. Psycho is, no doubt, the most iconic of these. It was made using tools and techniques that were clever as well as genre-defining.

One notable scene is when he murders his hotel guest in the shower—the scene most of us imagine when we think of the movie. The sound design of the sequence was central to its successful execution (so to speak), and it didn’t disappoint. Particularly unique in its time was that it was completely free of any music, heightening the tension of the scene.

Many innovative techniques were used to come up with the sparse sounds that made it to the final edit. The sickening sound of the stabs, for example, was made by stabbing casaba melons. Now that I’ve told you that, watch the clip above and you’ll recognize the sound immediately for what it really is.^[6]

4 The Ringwraiths Of The Lord Of The Rings

The Lord of the Rings was the beginning of a new era of fantasy cinema, and—much like its source material – played a pivotal role in defining that genre as we know it today. Of course, much like all aspects of the movie, the sound was brilliantly done, with quite a few cool little secrets involved.

The sound of the Ringwraiths, for one, was made by rubbing plastic cups together. Suddenly they don’t seem so terrifying, right? Another iconic sound from the movie, Balrog’s weird crackling growls, was recorded from the sound of rocks grinding on the floor. It’s probably best that we stop there or you’ll never be able to enjoy the film series in the same way again.^[7]

3 The Mysterious Punching Sounds In Raging Bull

The sound of the punch is one of the most iconic and recognizable sounds in Hollywood, as well as one of the most unnoticed (at least when it’s done well). Whenever we hear it in a movie, we tend to not even register it.

As it turns out, we actually owe a lot of those sounds to Raging Bull, which was the first movie to really play with the acoustics of a bar fight. The movie uses many different types of sounds according to the mood of the different fights in the movie, giving them a dimension most of us wouldn’t even have explicitly noticed. It remains one of both Martin Scorsese and and sound editor Frank Warner’s best works. To this day they have never revealed how any of those sounds were made. This secret, alas, is one that remains a mystery for now. But next time you notice an amazing punch sound in a film or TV show, you know you have Raging Bull to thank.^[8]

2 The Wilhelm Scream

Sound design is a vital part of any movie, with some sounds becoming so associated with a movie that they effect how we remember these works of fiction forever. Some sounds, however, transcend genres. The Wilhelm Scream is by far the most popular and used voice sample in movies, and you just need to hear it to instantly recognize why. So watch the video above for a rather hilarious, albeit horribly low-quality, series of clips showing the sound featured in different films.

As the name suggests, it’s the sound of a human scream. It was first heard in a movie made in 1951, though it wasn’t until it was picked up by Warner Brothers and used in the 1953 film ‘The Charge at Feather River’ that it really gained popularity. Since then, the iconic Wilhelm Scream has been used to simulate the sound of people falling or getting shot in hundreds of movies.

If you’ve seen any popular movie of the last five decades – like Star Wars, Avengers, Avatar, The Hunger Games, or Indiana Jones – you already know what this sounds like . . . you just may not realize it.^[9]

1 The Art Of Foley Effects

In case you didn’t notice, most of the sound effects we have spoken about aren’t over-the-top musical numbers that require creative genius to produce. They are everyday sounds that make moments in movies seem so realistic we don’t even notice. It’s due to these techniques that film making in Hollywood reached such a peak that it was possible to enter a movie theater and get lost in a fantasy world for two hours. Of course nowadays its our livings rooms we get lost in thanks to the likes of ThePirateBayAppleTV and Disney+.

If there’s one person we owe all of that too, it’s Jack Foley, the sound effects engineer who pioneered the technique of taking common objects and using them to re-create the sounds of humans and their interactions with the physical world. This art (and it really is an art—see the video above for proof) is named after him, and it’s one of those jobs that you won’t notice if it’s done well.^[10]

From Pirates of the Caribbean to Treasure Island (and Treasure Planet, and The Secret of Treasure Island, and Muppet Treasure Island…) the silver screen has taught us a lot about pirates. But these movies have taken a lot of creative license with their pirate lore, and the screenwriters haven’t been able to resist making up a thing or two. Here are ten things that you think you know about pirates, but have been tweaked, altered, or are straight-up lies by Hollywood.

Top 10 Awesome Films Hollywood Ruined With Lies

10 Pirates were Criminals

A pirate is anyone who uses the sea to commit theft. This term encompasses a whole host of sea-based activity, from the coastal raiding or the Vikings and the boat hijacking of the Somali pirates. But most people think of the Caribbean raiders that operated between 1650 and 1720, a time period known as the Golden Age of Piracy. Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean movies take place at the end of this period.

But there was also a form of legal piracy. Anyone who owned a ship (or the ability to get a loan for one) could apply to the government for a Letter of Marque. This was essentially a piracy license. At the time, Spain was shipping large amounts of gold and silver through the Caribbean on gallon ships. France and Britain were extremely jealous of all that treasure, so they were happy to write licenses for anyone who wanted to try to steal it—provided that a percent of the loot went to the government.

Historians believe that the Golden Age of Piracy came to an end because Spain stopped shipping treasure through the Caribbean, causing France and Britain to stop writing Letters of Marque and instead round up all the illegal pirates who were annoying their colonies.^[1]

9 Pirates Are Noble Anti-Heroes

Pirates were not a fan of violence, so Jack Sparrow’s reluctance to face his opponents has historical credence. Ships and good crew weren’t cheap, so it was in the pirate’s best interest not to damage either. Their goal was to convince the other ship to surrender without bloodshed. The best way to do this, though, was by being so terrifying horrible and violent when they did go to battle that no one would ever try to fight them again.

To convince people to hand over their riches, pirates would turn to Game of Thrones level torture. There are accounts of people being strung up by their arms, beaten with cutlasses, fingers cut off one by one, and placing burning matches into the victim’s eyelids.

The branding worked. Pirates were considered so terrifying that many ships offered to surrender to avoid even the possibility of violence. Although pirates are shown as fearsome in today’s media, they don’t quite reach the level of terrifying they displayed in real life.^[2]

8 Pirates said “Argh” and “Shiver me Timbers”

Pirates did not have a distinct way of talking. They were ordinary sailors, often coming from jobs on merchant ships or other sailing vessels. If they created their own way of talking, it would be a significant tip-off to pirate hunters and anyone willing to turn them in.

Expressions associated with pirates, such as “argh!” and “matey,” are were the result of later dramatization. Lionel Barrymore added an “arrrgh” to his lines while starring as Billy Bones in the 1934 version of Treasure Island. English actor Robert Newton enjoyed the exclamation and used it while starring as Long John Silver in the highly popular 1950 version of Treasure Island. Newton was given free rein to lean into his native West Country accent, which he took to his later roles as Blackbeard in Blackbeard the Pirate and a reprisal of Long John Silver. His way of speaking worked its way into the public pirate consciousness, adding the words to their lexicon.

This fictional pirate-speak is so popular, two friends in Oregon designated September 19th as International Talk Like a Pirate Day. The date was chosen because it was the birthday of a creator’s ex-wife.^[3]

7 Pirates Buried Their Treasure

Real-life pirates had no reason to bury their treasure. Loot taken from enemy ships was almost immediately divided up and distributed among the crew according to rank. The loot might consist of gold and silver, but it might also include fabric, cocoa, and spices. Once a pirate had their part of the fortune, they quickly spent it. Pirates saw no need for a savings account and a 401k. It was a dangerous, potentially criminal job, so there was no time like the present to spend.

There are a few notable exceptions. The English pirate Sir Francis Drake buried several tons of gold and silver along the Panamanian coast to hide it from the Spanish, but he and crew retrieved it soon after. Captain Kidd also buried a treasure on Long Island while on the run from the British crown, but was unable to return to it because he had been arrested. It was soon dug up and used against him at trial. Rumors that he buried treasure in other locations continue to motivate treasure hunters to this day.

Similarly, pirates did not make treasure maps. It would be highly inconvenient to have pieces of paper that would allow anyone to dig it their life savings. This myth was popularized by movie adaptions of Treasure Island, along with the idea that “X marks the spot.”^[4]

6 Pirates Gave “The Black Spot”

The Black Spot was invented by Robert Louis Stevenson for his novel Treasure Island. In the book, a piece of paper with a blackened spot is given to a pirate to signify a verdict of guilt. If received, the pirate would be given their justice—which could be anything from the removal of leadership to death.

In Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest the Black Spot is a boil that marks those who owe servitude to Davy Jones. As punishment, the Kraken hunts down those who bear the mark. A similar concept of the Black Spot used in a pirate-themed episode of Doctor Who.

Despite its popularity in fiction, pirates did not use a Black Spot. If they wanted to depose a leader, they deposed them. Warning someone that you’re going to kill them only gives them a chance to escape. There was no need for pirates to have the kinds of drawn-out suspense that add color to a fictional story like Treasure Island.^[5]

10 Movies You Had No Idea Were Filmed In The Wrong Locations

5 Pirates Walked the Plank

The first writer to make their characters walk the plank was Daniel Defoe, of Robinson Crusoe fame. His 1724 book A General History of Pirates features the pirates throwing a latter off the side of the deck and telling their captives that they were free to go, provided they were willing to swim.

From there, walking the plank has been included in Treasure Island, Peter Pan, Monty Python, Pirates of the Caribbean, and even Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. However, there is no historical proof that pirates made their victims walk the plank. They were, however, fond of equally terrible punishments such as flogging, marooning, and straight-up murder. If they felt like drowning someone, they threw them over the side without any theatrics.

The earliest historical mention of walking the plank comes from not from a pirate, but the testimony of a surgeon’s mate before the House of Commons. He described the officers of a slave ship discussing whether or not to make the slaves walk the plank in order to save on food.^[6]

4 Pirates Wore Eyepatches

There is almost no historical evidence that pirates wore eyepatches. The only pirate recorded as wearing one was the famous Rahmah ibn Jabir al-Jalahimah, who wore one after losing an eye in battle. He gained notoriety as one of the most fearsome pirates in the Persian Gulf.

There is a theory that pirates wore eyepatches not to cover a missing eye, but to keep one eye dark-adapted and ready for battle below decks. Since it takes the human eye about 25 minutes to adapt from bright sunlight to total darkness, having one eye dark adapted would provide a considerable advantage when trying to fight off dark-adapted opponents below the deck of a ship. Mythbusters gave the theory a “plausible” rating.

This theory, however, seems to have originated in the 1930s when the United States was exploring it as a potential military tactic. A 1939 Navy handbook says, “Dark adaption in one eye is independent of dark adaption of the other. Advantage may be taken of this fact by placing a patch over one eye.” A 1934 text calls this “a pirate’s patch.”^[7]

3 Pirates Flew “The Jolly Roger”

The “Jolly Roger” with its black background and skull and crossbones is universally recognized as the pirate flag. This version was flown by “Black Sam” Bellamy, Edward England, and Edward “Blackbeard” Teach. But pirates had no centralized authority, so each ship could develop their own spin on the Jolly Roger.

Some crews decided that the skull and crossbones were too minimalist and opted to include an entire skeleton. Others wanted to include an hourglass, intended to remind a victim that they were running out of time. Figures stabbing a heart were also used. Walter Kennedy couldn’t decide what symbols to use, so he included a skull and crossbones with a naked man holding a sword and an hourglass.

Pirates did not raise their flags until they were as close as possible to their target ship. This would hopefully give the ship just enough time to panic and decide to surrender. This way, the pirates got a ship full of treasure and for no work—besides raising their pirate flag.^[8]

2 Pirate Ships Were Enormous

The standard-issue image of a pirate ship is a large, three-masted galleon with rows upon rows of cannons. Although these were popular with the royal navy, pirates were not a fan. Galleons were large and sunk deep below the waterline, which is inconvenient for a band of criminals who might need to make a quick getaway. Pirates preferred small single-masted sloops that could get in, get out, and hide in shallow waters if necessary.

The reason small sloops didn’t make it into the public consciousness is that they are hard to film. Large ships are more visually impressive, especially if the pirates are meant to be intimidating. It is also easier to pack all of the necessary camera equipment onto a larger vessel rather than squeezing it onto a small one. Plus, it gives the actors more room to play with, so why not get the biggest pirate ship possible?^[9]

1 Pirates Were White

The modern Pirates of the Caribbean movies made an effort to correct this misconception, but the fact still holds that throughout pirate movie history, almost all pirates were portrayed as white. Adaptations of Treasure Island and Peter Pan were not interested in historical accuracy when they were casting roles.

This was not the case. Pirates regularly raided slave ships in search of treasure, and would often offer the slaves their freedom in exchange for joining the pirate crew. On some pirate ships, over a quarter of the crew were freed slaves. Pirate ships were also one of the few places where black Americans could obtain positions of power. Captain Kidd had a black quartermaster, and Blackbeard famously had a largely black crew.

As pirates were first and foremost sailors, they were a mix of different nationalities and backgrounds. Pirate ships were a rare opportunity for people of different races and cultures to mix and share in the loot.^[10]

10 Dark Secrets That Expose The Truth About Hollywood

TV, they say, reflects society, but sometimes, what it really reflects is the ideas of TV execs.

Some TV execs are obsessed with diversity, equality and the future of the planet.

Which is a very good thing. Sometimes, however, TV execs are just aware that these ideas are trendy, and think they can use them to boost ratings. That’s sort of OK too, we guess.

Top 10 TV Shows That Predicted The Future And Got It Right

But, instead of creating new shows to explore these important themes, they try to make their current TV shows reflect them instead, even when they’re not a comfortable fit. And the screen writers, who have to do as they’re told, don’t seem to put much effort into it, either. It’s almost as if they don’t really care.

Here are 10 ways in which popular TV shows were ruined by someone’s bright idea.

10 Hey, Transgenderism is Trendy, Let’s Do That

Transgenderism is a hot issue. Everyone seems to have an opinion on it. So why not introduce a transgender character in every show? We can show that transgender people are just the same as us, and deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.
Great.

Oh, but wait. What if we have a show where none of the characters treat anyone with dignity and respect? Like Shameless, for example. The story of an alcoholic father, and his dirt-poor family, Shameless was famous for being unwoke. Even the show’s gay characters find ‘way-out-there’ concepts like bisexuality difficult to deal with.

Never mind, press on. We can make the transgender character explain transgenderism to the gay guy, in a nightclub, while he fondles a prosthetic penis. That will get the dignity and respect message across.

And if you’re confused about gender pronouns and want to know more, check out the video above and all will be clear . . . or not.

9 Diversity is good, Here’s a Lesbian

When TV characters abruptly change their sexuality, viewers are apt to find it a little bit disconcerting. Sure Ellen Degeneres did it on her show, but then that was a sit-com based on her life and personality, and Ellen came out in real-life at the same time, which is understandable (although her show was cancelled a season later).

But Veep’s motives seem harder to fathom. Sure, its tough being the daughter of a Vice-President. Makes dating difficult. Maybe it was that.

Or then, again, there aren’t too many laughs to be got from a heterosexual relationship.

I know, let’s make her a lesbian.

Sarah Sutherland’s character swerves from being engaged to a man to dating her mother’s female security guard without any character development in-between, and barely pauses for breath before the affair is spun to benefit her mother’s political career.

It’s almost as if the writers had some really funny gay jokes and just needed a gay character to hang them on.

Surely not?

8 If stupid is funny, stupider must be funnier, right?

You create a character with an idiosyncrasy, and its funny. Ned Flanders is a nice but slightly holier than thou neighbor – let’s make him a rabid bible-thumper. But it isn’t just The Simpsons who have been guilty of flanderizing their characters.

Take Kramer in Seinfeld for instance. Kramer is eccentric. You can tell that by his funny hair. In fact, each year his hair gets funnier. Or at least higher. And his behavior moves from the merely eccentric to the downright bizarre.

Does that make it funnier? Maybe. Maybe not. But it’s more likely that some lazy writers mistook a personality trait for a personality and exploited it for all it was worth.

7 I know, Let’s Do Politics, We All Agree on That

Some programmes are born political, and some have politics thrust upon them. When your program is a buddy sitcom with a straight, and vapid, Jewish interior designer and her WASPy gay, and obsessive, lawyer roommate, the politics aren’t always obvious. A life-style comedy, about living in ’90s New York, Will and Grace was smart and funny and successful for 8 seasons.

And then they brought it back. For one night only, Will and Grace did politics. Up until then the show was, if anything, anti-political. The characters were too self-centered to be politically active, though they occasionally pretended to be.

The awkward 10-minute Will and Grace special made the assumption that their audience were all progressive Democrats, and the show was proudly anti-Trump. Which is a bit of a leap. While previous shows had dropped in the occasional joke about conservative attitudes and politics, this reboot was a flat-out party-political broadcast.

While the reboot was a special, and not a regular episode, no one looked comfortable. The humor, where there was any, was forced, and even the canned laughter seemed strained. Which was unfortunate, because the special was the beginning of a Will and Grace reboot which tried very hard to tone down the politics but couldn’t quite manage it for two whole seasons (with a third coming up). Not surprisingly the total audience for the politicized series’ was less than one third what it had been for the original ’90s series’.

6 Hooray, We Reached Our Goal, Now Let’s Pretend We Didn’t

Some TV shows have concepts which are open-ended. Others have a clearly defined goal. Take Prison Break for example. Series 1 is all about 2 brothers trying to break out of prison. The concept is in the title, for goodness sake. So when, at the end of season 1, they manage to break out of the prison, it’s job done.

Switch off the lights and go home.

But the series was a success, and a successful series cannot stop at season 1. So, what do the writers do then?

They have a season of Lincoln and Michael being on the run, and then for season 3 they stick them right back in prison again.

At which point, the audience switched off in droves.

Prison Break is not the only show to fall for this. The premise of The Mentalist was that Patrick Jane, as played by Simon Baker, is helping the police with their cases, whilst also using them to help him catch the man who brutally murdered his wife and child. Every few episodes, he reminds the team that that is the only reason he is there.

Half-way through season 6, they catch him.

Well done.

Then Jane takes a holiday, and comes back to work for another 27 episodes.

Why?

10 Episodes That Were Banned From Television [Videos—Seizure Warning]

5 I am Woman Hear Me Roar

Feminism. It’s been around for a while, but it still seems to confuse screenwriters.

Take Supergirl, for instance. Already on dangerous ground, for calling her Supergirl rather than Superwoman (OK, that’s down to the comic book creators, so we’ll give them a pass) portraying Kara Zor-El, Superman’s cousin, as a strong independent woman, should be easy.

After all she’s superwoman (sorry, girl).

So why does everyone on the show need to keep making speeches about how strong and independent she is? Strange.

But it’s not just the superhero shows that feel the need to portray their female characters as badass. Being a feminist always seems to mean being Strong. Male characters can be strong, too, of course, but they can be other things too.

Women just get to be strong.

And talk about it. A lot.

4 Just Say No, No, No.

Remember The Fresh Prince of Bel Air? That streetwise kid from Philly who goes to live with his rich relations in Bel Air? Will Smith knows the ways of the world. He has been brought up on the Mean Streets. He knows what’s what.

And then, 3 seasons in, he is tempted to take drugs. Not so that he can party, but so he can study. Of course, he doesn’t actually take them, because he is Too Smart, but his cousin accidentally swallows some, thinking that they are vitamins, and ‘almost dies’.

The episode is even called Just Say Yo, clearly referencing Nancy Reagan’s ridiculously simplistic Just Say No campaign, and the episode feels as if it has been written by the same people who wrote her slogans.

The Fresh Prince is not alone. Programs aimed at teenagers often have characters considering taking drugs but ultimately thinking better of it, while those aimed at adults have characters who let their hair down. But only once. They smoke a little weed, and they giggle a lot, before, ultimately being sick/paranoid/locked-up, whereupon they give themselves, each other and us a little lecture about the dangers of drugs.

None of which is entertaining. Although Carlton dancing on amphetamines is.

3 They’re Bound to Cancel the Show Before We Have to Explain What’s Going On

Ah, Lost. That great writing experiment, when the writers hit on the wheeze that they didn’t have to tie up loose ends, at all. Someone noticed that TV shows get cancelled, and when they’re cancelled, no-one tells you how it ends.

Why not make the most of that?

Keep throwing in weird stuff, polar bears, for example, time-travelling conundrums, or a vague and ill-defined Sickness. Don’t worry. You won’t have to explain it.

What about some random numbers? Chuck those in too. That will keep them guessing.

Lost was not the only series where the writers pulled this trick, but they were certainly the most blatant. For 5 seasons, they allowed fans to believe that all this weirdness would actually add up to something, while they counted their money. Unfortunately for them, instead of cancelling the show outright, the network announced that there would be one final season, so that the writers could tie all those loose ends into a nice neat bow and gift them to their fans.

Oh dear.

2 I’m not racist, I know an Indian/Asian/Middle Eastern guy

Diversity in TV is good. But the Token Asian Friend, not so good.

The Token ethnic Friend is always smart – usually a computer programmer/math genius/astro-physicist. He is always shy, retiring, and ridiculously deferential to people who are in no way his superior. And, most importantly, he never gets the girl.

Take The Big Bang Theory, for instance. Raj Koothrappali, as played by Kunal Nayyar, can’t even speak to women for 6 whole seasons. He is reduced to doing a dumb mime whenever one appears in the room. He is the last character to find a mate. Even Sheldon, the human robot, gets coupled long before Koothrappali sees any action.

Or how about Community, a sitcom based in a community college. Abed Nadir (played by Danny Pudi) is a middle-eastern film student. Which means he makes film references instead of talking to people. Because, of course, he can’t speak to people. He’s too shy.

The Token non-white Friend is never the Best Friend, just a friend. Sometimes they disappear for episodes at a time, and no one wonders where they’ve gone. They are not the main character, nor the main character’s best friend. They are not the protagonist, nor the antagonist. But they do tick that diversity box.

Here’s a radical idea. Why not have an Asian/Indian/Middle Eastern character who is a bit crap at math, but has great people skills, huge amounts of charisma, and always gets the girls?

1 I May Be Dead, But Boy Am I Woke

Even zombie shows can’t get away from Hollywood’s insatiable need to be on message. Take The Walking Dead, for instance. The post-apocalyptic zombie horror franchise seems to tick all the boxes.

It’s got badass (sorry Strong and Independent) women.
It’s got a militant anti-capitalist agenda
It’s got a rainbow nation of characters, both alive and undead.
It’s got a gay man and a lesbian
Even if you don’t count the zombies, the show has a high number of disabled characters
It even has an Asian friend who is more than a token.

Finally, a show that manages to put the story before message, right?

Well, maybe not. A careful analysis of the deaths in TWD have shown that as the series has developed the number of white middle-aged men being killed, has risen out of all proportion to their numbers in the post-apocalyptic society.

Is this a cynical agenda-pushing narrative? Probably.

Or, maybe it’s that the communist, feminist, homosexual, ethnic minorities are finally getting their own back?

Let’s hope so.

10 Times Virtue Signalling Ended In Disaster

The Chinese are said to be avid movie fans, so it is not surprising that Hollywood producers would be keen to distribute their films to China, with its 1.4 billion potential cinema goers.

10 Of The Weirdest Things The Chinese Government Has Banned

And as they often do, Hollywood producers try to be aware of the different cultural sensitivities of the countries they distribute to. The communist Chinese censors are known to have particular likes and dislikes. They dislike talking animals and ghosts, for example. And they are so sensitive about their lack of tumble-dryers, that the makers of Mission Impossible III cut a scene where Tom Cruise runs through a line of washing in Shanghai. Here’s 10 of them.

10 Cut Cut Cut

The Chinese censors have a whole list of things that they don’t like, that might be surprise western cinema goers. Talking animals are out, for example, as is anything to do with ghosts.

Movie execs have started to make a different cut suitable to Chinese tastes. Take Django Unchained for instance. The Tarantino film was always going to be a difficult sell in China, because of their aversion to graphic violence and nudity. So a torture scene of a naked Django and his wife being tortured had to go, as did the flashback of a slave being mauled by dogs. Did it help? Not really. The movie did get a limited release, but was quickly pulled from theaters.

The Chinese censors also dislike any scene in which a Chinese character gets the worst of it in a fight. In Skyfall, the scene where James Bond kills a Chinese security guard is cut entirely, as is the Chinese prison scene.

9 Like Disney, But Without Chubby Bears

Normally, Disney movies are a certainty for distribution in China, with their family friendly films. However, the censors took exception to the movie Christopher Robin, a harmless fantasy, starring Ewan McGregor as the grown-up Christopher Robin who has forgotten his childhood companions, Winnie the Pooh, Piglet, and Tigger too.

The reason for the lack of distribution may lie in the fact Winnie the Pooh is seen as a dangerous and subversive character in China. Pooh’s revolutionary tendencies came to light in 2013 when a picture of the Chinese leader Xi Jinping walking next to President Obama, was shared online, next to a picture of Pooh walking side by side with Tigger. Oh boy.

Since then, the Chinese president and Winnie the Pooh have featured in a number of memes and the bear has become a ‘symbol of dissent’.
Christopher Robin was a non-starter.

8 Change Nationality

One thing that is certain to get a movie on the no play list is any mention of Tibet. Censors operate a strict See no Tibet, Speak no Tibet, Hear not Tibet policy. This can be tricky for movie producers. Obviously, Seven Years in Tibet, had no chance of getting a release. That movie, however, caused China such offence that they banned the director, Jean-Jacques Annaud, of its stars, Brad Pitt and David Thewlis, and the entire Sony Pictures distribution company were banned from ever entering China again.

Sometimes, though, compromises are reached. Take Doctor Strange, for example.

In the graphic novels, on which the Marvel movie was based, The Ancient One is a Tibetan mystic, hailing from the fictional Himalayan region of Kamar-Taj. In the movie, TAO is a Celt. Ah yes, the Celts. Famous the world over for their mysticism and Himalayan ancestry.

7 Make the Chinese Guy the Hero

Flattery will get you everywhere, it seems. The Chinese are no exception. If you can show the Chinese as heroes, you are much more likely to get a distribution certificate, than if they are the villain.

In The Martian, for instance, the Chinese space agency comes to NASA’s aid, and helps rescue the American astronaut who has been left stranded on Mars, thus demonstrating that the Chinese Space Agency is superior to their American counterparts.

The decision certainly paid off, because The Martian took $50 million in its opening weekend in China.

6 Make It a Travel Show

Lots of films are glorified travel shows. Production companies can get financial incentives to film in certain countries, and generous tax breaks and cash rebates certainly influence the decisions about location shoots.

In return for the bucketful of cash, the director provides enticing backdrops and a 2-hour long showcase of the area. Most of the time these decisions have little effect on the audience and can even slide by unnoticed. After all, one beautiful old city is much like another, right?

Sometimes movies are a little less subtle. Take Looper, for example. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is learning French. ‘Why the fuck French?’ asks Jeff Daniels. Gordon-Levitt, in a beautiful Bruce Willis impersonation says, ‘I’m going to France.’ Which seems reasonable. But, says Daniels, “I’m from the future. You should go to China.”

The message is clear. “China may not be where it’s at now, but it’s where it’s going to be. Can we please have distribution rights?”

10 Reasons Why Communism Sucks

5 Gratuitous Product Placement Even When It Makes No Sense

Product placement has long been a feature of feature films. After all, it’s a great way to offset some of those pesky production costs, right? And, if you can use your product placement to ingratiate yourself into a closed market like china, so much the better.

So, in Iron Man 3 we see Dr Wu drinking some Gu Li Duo milk before he operates on Tony Stark. Which was timely, because China was, at that time, needed to restore confidence in its milk production after reports that it had been contaminated with mercury.

The film also opens with a question on a screen card. “What does Iron Man rely on to revitalize his energy?” After a 3 second blackout, the answer appears. Gu Li Duo, obviously.

If you are wondering how you missed that bit of product placement it is because, unless you are in China, you didn’t see it. Extra scenes were added to the film, around 4 minutes in total, all of which was used to increase the presence of Chinese actors, or peddle questionable milk drinks to a wary public.

The producers must have wanted to get into China real bad, because the film also features 2 Chinese supporting actors, a shot of some cheering Chinese schoolchildren, and product placements for a Chinese electronics company and a construction company. They also changed the movie’s bad guy from The Mandarin, as stated in the graphic novel, to an English guy pretending to be a mandarin. Come on.

But at least they didn’t make Tony Stark use a Vivo phone. Captain America, however, wasn’t so lucky. Iron Man 3 made $121,000,000 in China. That’s an awful lot of milk.^[]

4 Blame It On the Russians

The trouble with films based on comic books is that the source material is not always as commercially driven as the film industry. So they can blame China for, say, a killer virus, without a second thought.

Movie makers, however, have a different set of priorities. When Paramount Pictures hired Marc Foster to direct World War Z, they probably already had distribution rights in mind. So, they changed the origin of a zombie virus from China to Russia, because a) whoever heard of a virus emanating from China and b) the Russian market is much smaller.

But they might as well of not bothered, because they didn’t get a distribution in China. Or Russia either. Obviously.

3 Who’s That Army?

In 2012, MGM put out a remake of Red Dawn. The original 1984 film had starred
the unlikely combo of Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen as brothers who take a break from High School to organise a resistance against the impending Russian invasion.

OK, sure, it’s not the greatest movie ever made, and the final scenes are beyond cheesy, but, for some reason, someone thought a remake was a good idea.

This time the brothers are not high school kids, but a marine on home leave (played by Chis Hemsworth) and a football player (Josh Peck). Slightly less ridiculous.

And the army was not Russian, it was Chinese. I mean North Korean.

After principal photography was complete, the studio realized that having China as an aggressor might not play well in China, so they spent a ‘considerable’ amount of time, and money, to digitally alter the invading army’s uniforms and insignia.

Because North Korea does not distribute Hollywood movies, so who cares about them, right?

Didn’t work though. The film was never released in China.

2 Move Production to Hong Kong

One way to ensure that you get that all-important distribution deal is to work in partnership with the Chinese film industry, and even shoot the movie there.

The Transformers franchise was always popular in China, so when it came to making Transformers: Age of Extinction, they decided to collaborate with Chinese production companies to really make the most of their opportunities.

The movie financed in partnership with China, it was partly filmed in Hong Kong, and it included a ton of product placement, including for a soy-milk drink (in case you didn’t want to drink actual milk, for some reason), and the Chinese version of Red Bull.

Though the movie was terrible (no surprise there), it did make a lot of money. Most of it in China.

In fact, the movie made $300 million in China, $50 million more than in the US, and almost a third of its eventual $1 billion revenue.

Because doesn’t everyone want to see a movie in which autobots ask a mechanic (played by Mark Wahlberg) for help to defeat a bounty hunter who is out to catch Optimus Prime?

Er, no.

1 Change The Entire Film

Sometimes when you tinker with a film it makes little difference to the finished product. After all, who cares what brand of milk the hero drinks? Most audiences barely even notice that stuff.

Occasionally, however, the changes are so great that the film is barely recognizable. Take The Karate Kid, for instance. Not the 1984 awesome Ralph Macchio, Noriyuki Morita classic, but the crapola 2010 Jayden Smith, Jackie Chan remake.

The original film was set in Los Angeles, where new kid on the block Macchio falls foul of a black-belted karate chopping bully who happens to be the boyfriend of the girl Macchio likes. He recruits his caretaker-cum-karate-master to help him prepare to fight him.

It’s basically Rocky for kids (John G Avildsen directed both). The 2010 version saw Jayden Smith move to Beijing.

The film should have been easy for the censors. It was filmed on location in Hong Kong. It had a load of Chinese actors, and as much product placement as you could eat. It was heavy on Chinese scenery, even showing Jayden and Chan doing their Rocky style training on the Great Wall itself.

But the censors didn’t like it. The Hong Kong setting meant that the movie’s bully was Chinese. An older Chinese kid beating up a scrawny American kid did not play well.

So, after all that effort, it looked as though The Karate Kid might not make the cut.

In order to get it through, the film underwent some rather brutal cuts, which changed the story entirely. The gladiatorial element of the film was cut, and instead it became a nice coming of age, getting in touch with your feelings, type movie.

Oh, and it was given a new name too. The karate kid was now a Kung Fu Dream.

10 Bizarre Aspects of Chinese Culture

In celebration of Halloween this month, we shine a spotlight on one of Tinseltown’s oldest and scariest attractions: Hollywood Forever Cemetery. The palm tree-lined graveyard in the land of make-believe and broken dreams even shares a wall next to the legendary Paramount Studios. Since 1899, the lush 60-acre lot has served as the final resting place of silver screen queens, hunky heartthrobs, movie moguls, and rock and roll royalty. And one more thing: it’s haunted. 

The facility features the impressive (and spooky) Abbey of the Psalms Mausoleum, and hosts music concerts, outdoor screening of film classics. The site also stages the largest annual Dia de Muertos event in North America. Additionally, a wide range of feature films and T.V. shows have shot there, including Californication, 90210, and American Greed. Fittingly, the indie band The Kills used the cemetery for their killer music video, “Doing It To Death”.

So while you’re still among the living, ditch the lame tour bus and head instead to where everyone’s dead. P.S.: admission is free. 

SEE ALSO: 10 Fascinating Graveyards You Must See

5 Whodunnit?

Glamour. Mystery. Drugs. Sex. The murder of famed silent film director and notorious playboy William Desmond Taylor had it all. On the morning of February 2, 1922, Taylor was found dead in his bungalow in the then-posh Westlake district of Los Angeles.

He had been shot in the back, most likely during the previous night, resulting in a massive investigation of yet another roaring ’20s sensational crime that dominated headlines for months.

A slew of Hollywood players would be questioned, including the director’s erstwhile girlfriend and cocaine addict, Mabel Normand. The popular leading actress, one of Taylor’s many conquests, had been the last person to see him alive on the evening of his murder. After an extensive interrogation, Los Angeles Police Department ruled her out as a suspect despite persistent accusations from scandal sheets of the day.

Unwanted attention also followed Mary Miles Minter. The blonde hair, blue-eyed nineteen-year-old ingenue had been in love with Taylor, and became another regular fixture in the frenzied tabloid fodder and the rumor mill. The same suspicion applied to her controlling stage mother, Charlotte Shelby, who just happened to own a .38-caliber pistol.

Ultimately, authorities were unable to establish any credible leads or produce the murder weapon and filed the case cold. Taylor’s family had his remains interred at Hollywood Forever, where over the years, several people associated with the scandal ended up. Then and now, they still ain’t talking.

But this isn’t where the story ends. Hardly. A muck-raking news reporter orchestrated the kind of publicity stunt that only could have occurred in La-La land. Florebel Muir, the Hollywood correspondent of the New York Daily News, attempted to out scoop her rivals with a half-baked plan involving Taylor’s butler, Henry Peavey. 

Three days before Taylor’s murder, Peavey had been arrested for “social vagrancy” — and Muir hoped she could extract a murder confession out of him. Spoiler Alert: it didn’t work. 

She paid a Chicago hoodlum named Al Weinshank to dress up as a ghost and hide near Taylor’s mausoleum at the cemetery. After luring Peavey to the gravesite, the two-bit spirit suddenly appeared in a white sheet and cried out, “I am the ghost of William Desmond Taylor! You murdered me! Confess, Peavy!” 

Not surprisingly, the butler coughed up only a hearty laugh before giving the conspirators a piece of his mind. As for the ghost, Weinshank would later join the real dead after being gunned down in the 1929 St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.^[1]

4 Hamlet Goes To Hollywood

With the arrival of sound motion pictures in the late 1920s, many actors suddenly found themselves out of work. The transition from silent films to “talkies” were especially challenging for those with a thick foreign accent or a weak voice. While some stars plunged into obscurity, Karl Dane took a much darker path.

Originally from Denmark, Rasmus Karl Therkelsen Gottlieb landed at Ellis Island, NY in 1916 with $25 in his pocket. He toiled as a factory worker, carpenter, and a mechanic before stumbling into show business — a stroke of luck that would change his life. He soon changed his name and traveled to California, where he began working in silent pictures.

His first big break came in 1924 with the movie, The Big Parade with John Gilbert and Renee Adoree. The film became a box office smash and thrust Dane into stardom. He then appeared with Valentino in The Son of The Sheik that was released shortly after the heartthrob’s death in 1926.

Dane began earning $1500 a week (over $20,000 today), starring in several comedies. But in a few years “talkies” would change everything — and by the early 1930s, he struggled to find even bit parts. Eventually, “The Great Dane” committed suicide, dying from a gunshot wound to the head.^[2] 

3 The Lady In Black

Over a century after first landing in Hollywood, the man known as Valentino remains firmly planted in pop culture as an enduring icon. When he died in 1926 at the age of 31, his legion of female fans mourned worldwide. One of his admirers, however, vowed never to leave his side and came to be known as “The Lady in Black”.

From humble origins as a taxi dancer after immigrating to America from Italy, Valentino captivated audiences with his smoldering sex appeal and gravitas, creating phenomena never seen before. Movies such as The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Sheik, and Blood and Sand firmly established the “Latin Lover” as an international sex symbol.?

While in New York to attend the premiere of his last film, he collapsed in his hotel on August 15, 1926. The great Valentino died eight days later from complications of a ruptured ulcer. An estimated crowd of 80,000 people lined the streets of Manhattan to pay their respects and nearly caused a riot. His body was then transported by train to California — and that’s when things got weird.

Recent financial troubles had left his estate in shambles despite earning $10,000-per-week (at a time when most people made around $2,000 a year). As a result, Valentino’s remains were laid to rest in a borrowed crypt from his friend, June Mathis. Then on the anniversary of his death in 1927, a mysterious veiled woman clad entirely black left roses at the star’s final resting place before vanishing. 

Every year, she would return, repeating the same ritual while creating intrigue of her identity. Was she a former lover? An obsessed fan? Regardless, the mystery continues today for all to contemplate — and possibly even witness a rare glimpse of the infamous “Lady in Black.”^[3]

2 A Tangled Webb

Actor Clifton Webb, a two-time Oscar nominee, is best remembered for his supporting roles in films such as Laura and The Razor’s Edge, and the first to portray the character “Mr. Belverdere.” But to the paranormal community, Webb receives top billing as a man who not only saw ghosts and lived with a ghost — but even became one himself. 

Born on November 19, 1889, in Indianapolis, Webb Parmelee Hollenbeck began his career in showbiz as a ballroom dancer. He later appeared on Broadway under his newly adopted stage name and starred a string of successful musicals as well as comedic plays by his good friend, Noel Coward. 

He went on to achieve movie stardom in his mid-50s, playing obsessively well-dressed, pedantic characters that never strayed too far from his vibrant personality. At a time when studios demanded that artists keep their sexuality closeted, Webb never hid that the fact that he was gay. His wit and charm also made him a popular figure on the Hollywood party circuit and as a host of lavish gala affairs.

Additionally, throughout his adult life, he lived exclusively with his overbearing mother, Maybelle, who accompanied him everywhere — including the afterlife. Not long after she died in 1959, Webb claimed Maybelle often appeared in the form of an apparition at their plush Rexford Drive mansion in Beverly Hills. However, she wasn’t the only one. 

Webb, an insomniac, told friends that he’d seen the ghost of Grace Moore, a famous opera singer, who once lived at the house prior to a fatal plane crash in 1947. And then shortly before his death in 1966, Webb predicted he would never leave the beloved home. Ever.

Subsequent owners of the property reported seeing the shadowy appearance a couple dancing near the front entrance. Sadly, the Rexford Drive house would be torn down in 1982, causing the Webbs to take up residence elsewhere. But not just anywhere. Visitors at Hollywood Forever have reported seeing a dapper, ghostly figure pacing up and down the long marble corridor of the Abbey of the Psalms Mausoleum. There, near the crypt Clifton shares with his mother, the actor remains in search of a good night’s slumber.^[4]

1 Scandal of the Century

Since the birth of the movie industry, countless young women (and men) have flocked to California from all over the world with hopes of achieving fame and fortune. Chicago-born beauty Virginia Rappe was one of them.

The brunette fashion model managed to land a handful of roles before her career took a fatal turn. On September 5, 1921, Rappe attended a party at the elegant Saint Francis Hotel in San Francisco to honor the popular comedian Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle.

The portly funnyman had recently signed a lucrative contract with Paramount Pictures, making him the highest-paid actor in Hollywood. Despite Prohibition, bootleg booze flowed freely throughout the raucous evening.

At some point during the celebration, Rappe became ill and rested inside Arbuckle’s suite. Witnesses recall seeing her suffering in agonizing pain as her condition continued to worsen. She died a few days later at the age of 26. A massive scandal ensued, alleging Arbuckle had violently raped her and caused her bladder to rupture.

Three sensational trials followed, creating a media circus fuelled by an outage public. The first two proceedings ended in hung juries before a panel found Arbuckley not guilty. His career, however, never recovered. In 1933, he attempted a comeback with Warner Brothers Studios to star in a series of comedies but died from a heart attack shortly before shooting began. 

Over the years, the sounds of a sobbing woman have been heard around Rappe’s gravesite at Hollywood Forever. Perhaps her spirit continues to lament over a career ruined — or to paraphrase Raymond Chandler, the cold chill felt then and now, serves as a reminder that L.A. is a town where the angels left a long time ago.^[5]

About The Author: Christopher Warner is an actor and freelance writer. His articles have appeared in several magazines and websites across multiple genres, including Military History Matters, Portland Monthly, WWII Quarterly, Nostalgia Digest, and Aviation History.

Recycling is good for the planet, they say. And Hollywood has long been a pioneer in the practice.

While the rest of the world was still throwing stuff away, movie-makers were carefully collecting, protecting and recycling their sets, props, effects and even whole scenes.

There are times when audiences are able to spot these recycled movie components, but most of the time they are re-dressed and re-purposed and slide right past even the most eagle-eyed movie fan.

Here are 10 ways in Hollywood recycles.

Top 10 Things Hollywood Does To Kowtow To The Chinese Communist Party

10 Scream and Scream and Scream

The Wilhelm Scream is one of the most famous, and widely used sound effects in cinema, having made over 400 film and TV appearances.

It’s first outing was at The Charge At Feather River, a B Movie western of no particular note, except for 2 things. It’s main selling point at the time was that it was filmed in 3D, with arrows and spears being hurled at the audience, which was still something of a novelty in 1953.

The movie’s other claim to fame was not immediately apparent. A minor character in this minor film, Private Wilhelm, is shot in the leg with an arrow, screams, and falls off his horse. It took up about 2 seconds of airtime, and it is doubtful that any of the cinema-goers would have remembered it.

Which was good, because it meant that the sound of Wilhelm’s scream could be used over and over (and over) again. If you listen closely, you can catch it on a falling stormtrooper in Star Wars, and a falling astronaut in Toy Story.

In fact, Disney has a particular fondness for Wilhelm, and his screams echo throughout their canon, and in recent years he has taken on a virtual life in dozens of video games, including Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto.

The character of Private Wilhelm was played by a little-known actor named Ralph Brooks. However, the scream was recorded separately. It is not known for certain who recorded it, but it is popularly believed to be Sheb Wooley, an actor and singer, who had a number one hit with his song The Purple People Eater in 1958.

So that’s why he’s screaming.

9 When You’ve Seen One Boat, You’ve Seen Them All

It is very expensive to film at sea. Special equipment has to be built because tripods don’t work on a moving floor, cameras get wet, gear washes overboard, cast and crew get sick, and the weather is always changeable, which makes continuity a nightmare.

If filming on top of the water is hard, filming below it is harder.

When making Ice Station Zebra, a Cold War suspense movie, with submarines, filmmakers had use of an actual submarine, and a second unit photographer, John Stevens, who specialized in filming in difficult to impossible situations. He devised a method of attaching a camera to the outside of the sub as it dived.

And, because one submarine looks very much like another, especially in the dark, and underwater, the footage has been used by practically every submarine movie since, including Gray Lady Down, Never Say Never Again and Firefox.

8 Reduce Reuse Recycle

In some ways, film makers are like your funny uncle.

No, not that one.

Filmmakers are hoarders. They keep off-cuts from their movies long after release day, because they believe they might just come in useful one day.

And, darn it, they’re often right.

Take Stanley Kubrick, for example. Kubrick is famous for doing a large number of takes, and taking miles of additional footage. In the opening scenes of The Shining, for example, Jack Nicholson drives through the Rocky Mountains on a beautiful sunny day to the Overlook Hotel.

Kubrick shot hours of helicopter footage for the 2 mins and 47 seconds of screen time. Which left an awful lot of film gathering dust in his garage.

When Ridley Scott made Blade Runner 2 years later, he shot his own Rocky Mountain sequence, but because of the changeable weather conditions, found that his sunlit interior car shots of Harrison Ford listening to his voice over, while attempting to smile, did not match the overcast exterior.

Time to open the boxes in Uncle Stanley’s garage.

Change the music, and paint out the Volkswagen Beetle Sedan, and you are good to go.

Ridley Scott is not the only film maker to realize the importance of recycling. David Koepp borrowed footage from Jurassic Park for a dream sequence in Secret Window, where Johnny Depp falls off his sofa, and off a cliff, onto the rocks below.

And Robert Zemeckis recycled and entire actor. Crispin Glover was recycled from Back To the Future into Back To The Future II, as Marty McFly’s dad, after he refused to sign on for the sequel. Zemeckis recycled shots from the first movie, and hired a stand in for long shots.

Glover sued.

7 A Whole New World. Not

The Disney Studio frequently recycled its animations, painting over entire scenes and slotting them into new ones. And not just incidental background footage.

Thirty-six years after the famous scene of Snow White singing and dancing with forest animals there came a less famous scene where Maid Marion dances with, well, forest animals, in Robin Hood.

Robin Hood also snitched bits from The Jungle Book and The Aristocats, among others.

Robin Hood was not the only film that robbed from the riches of the Disney back catalog. The process of tracing over old footage, known as rotoscoping, has been around almost as long as the animated film.

But if you think that the animation business has moved on, think again. Digital animators are continually reusing ‘3D assets’, but because they can be given a new skin, it is much more difficult for audiences to spot.

6 More Wild West Frontier Than Final Frontier

Sets are large. And expensive. And large.

In pre-CGI days, sci-fi shows relied on physical sets, which were expensive. And, of course, large. Which was fine for the interior of a spaceship, which would be used in every episode.

But shows like Star Trek used a different location every week, and coming up with new, alien, sets, could be budget busting. The pilot episode of Star Trek cost $630,000 dollars, making it a record breaker, for the time. Although Star Trek is one of the most successful series of all time, with an infinite number of worlds to explore, and a seemingly infinite number of parallel-universe Star Trek spin-offs, the production company still needed to be mindful of its budget.

They reused props were they could. The Nomad robot from the episode The Changeling was used in later episodes, after changing its name and giving it a costume change. But its most obvious money saving ploy was to reuse entire sets from a selection stored at the Forty Acres studio backlot.

Forty Acres stored a large number of sets. When Gone With the Wind needed to burn down Atlanta, they went to Forty Acres and rummaged through the unwanted flats and set fire to them.

It was also used as the fictional Wild West town of Mayberry, home to The Andy Griffith Show. When the Star Trek production team made the episode Miri, they simply rolled onto Mayberry set, and dressed it to look post-apocalyptic.

They obviously found it easy, because they used the set again in further episodes, including The City on the Edge of Forever, where Kirk and Spock explore the town.

Top 10 Secrets Of Iconic Hollywood Sounds

5 What’s in a name?

The title of a film is pretty important. And you might expect that filmmakers would want to make them pretty unique, too. But you would be wrong.

In 1995, David Cronenberg directed Crash, which starred James Spader and Holly Hunter, about people who developed a sexual fetish about car crashes. The film was controversial, but well-known. In 2004, David Haggis also directed a film called Crash, which starred Don Cheadle, Sandra Bullock and Thandie Newton, about people whose lives collide.

Cronenberg was said to be none too pleased.

The 2008 movie Twilight had little choice in its title, being based on the best-selling book of the same name, but it shared its title with a gritty 1998 movie starring Gene Hackman and Paul Newman, about a retired detective working one last case.

Sometimes the best name for your movie has already been taken. When Ridley Scott made Gladiator in 2000, he must have known that the name had already been taken in 1992 for a boxing movie starring Cuba Gooding Jr. He was faced with the choice of picking a new name, which didn’t suit his film quite so well, or sticking with his choice and hoping that his Gladiator became the Gladiator.

Good choice.

4 Tin Men

Sometimes a particular prop becomes so iconic that you don’t want to disguise it.

Take Robby the Robot, for instance. Robby made his first appearance in Forbidden Planet in 1956. He was not the first robot. George Melies’ Trip to the Moon, in 1902, featured a mechanical chauffeur driving a newlywed couple to Saturn, and Metropolis, in 1927, showed the mind of a woman being transferred to the body of a female-shaped robot, while the Flash Gordon series in the 1930’s had robots who looked suspiciously like men wearing helmets and shiny suits. (Surely not).

By the 1950’s, movie-makers became obsessed with idea of robots, and their designs became the definitive images of what a robot should look like.

In The Day The Earth Stood Still, in 1951, we see the humanoid type robot. Like a human, but better. This one has laser eyes.

There was the robot/vehicle hybrid, such as Gog and Magog in the movie Gog in 1954, who boast awkwardly moving arms and wheels. As seen later in Daleks.
There was the robot giant, in Target Earth in 1954, which was later re-imagined as a Transformer or an Iron Giant.

And then there was Robby the Robot in Forbidden Planet. Though he undoubtedly was influenced by all the robots who had preceded him, Robby the Robot was different. He did not look like a man in a tin suit. Or a vehicle or a giant.

Robby the Robot had a unique, mechanical look. With his domed head and visible mechanical parts, Robby was all machine. He had revolving antennae for ears, and a wicked sense of humor. When asked why he was late, he replied, “Sorry, miss, I was giving myself an oil-job”

Robby was an instant hit, and he made a number of appearances in other shows.

He played a murder suspect in the TV series The Thin Man, had an appearance in The Twilight Zone, and cameos in The Addams Family, Man From U.N.C.L.E. and even Columbo.

He went on to appear in a number of movies including Gremlins, Earth Girls Are Easy, and as an evil robot in Hollywood Boulevard

In 2004, Robby received the ultimate robot accolade when he was inducted into the Robot Hall of Fame, where he resides among other notable robots such as the Mars Pathfinder, ASIMO and Huey, Dewey and Louie.

3 A Biblical Epic (Sort Of)

When the Python’s decided to make The Life of Brian, they faced a lot of hurdles. First, EMI withdrew their funding just days before shooting began, because they were worried that the subject was controversial. The production was saved by George Harrison, of The Beatles, who put up £3 million, just because he wanted to see the film.

The film was banned in many places because it was considered blasphemous, despite the fact that, as the Pythons repeatedly pointed out, this was not the story of Jesus but of Brian, who just happened to be born at the same time.

Audiences weren’t having it. Perhaps their confusion was due to the fact that the setting looked very familiar. Brian was filmed in Monastir, Tunisia, and reused many of the sets that Franco Zeffirelli had used when he had filmed Jesus of Nazareth two years earlier.

Even many of the extras were the same. Director Terry Jones said, “I would have these elderly Tunisians telling me, ‘Well, Mr Zeffirelli wouldn’t have done it like that.’ Ouch.

2 Yodelay, Yodelayheehoo

Another stock sound effect that has been used repeatedly in Disney movies and elsewhere is The Goofy Holler. It was originally recorded by the yodeler, Hannes Schroll for the Goofy short film, The Art of Skiing.

The sound starts of as a yodel but ends up as more of a yell.

Whatever it sounds like, the Goofy Holler has made its way into a large number of Disney movies, including Pete’s Dragon, The Rescuers and Moana.

The Joker does a Goofy Holler when he crashes his plane in Batman: The Animated Series and the sound effect even found its way onto Family Guy, in the episode Dial Meg for Murder.

1 The Battleship Untouchable

While Hollywood may reuse props, sets and sound-effects in ways that largely go unnoticed by audiences, there are times when recycling is less about saving time or money, and more about paying homage to previous filmmakers, or iconic movies.

Take The Battleship Potemkin, for example. The silent movie from 1925 is regarded as one of the most influential films of all time, and its most famous scene, known as The Odessa Steps, has been remade dozens of times as a nod to film-making greatness.

In the original Soviet classic, the citizens of Odessa come out in support of the mutinous crew of the Potemkin, and in support of Revolution. A crowd gathers on the steps near the waterfront, when a unit of Cossacks march into the crowd of civilians with fixed bayonets, with more soldiers firing into the crowd.

The civilians, boxed in, are massacred on the steps, an elderly lady is shot in the eye, through her spectacles, and a lone baby carriage bounces dangerously down the Odessa steps.

Sound familiar? It should.

The Untouchables recreated the scene at Union Station. A woman struggles up the staircase with two suitcases and a baby carriage. Kevin Costner, anxious to get her out of harms way, helps her pull the carriage up to the top, only to let go, when Al Capone’s bookkeeper appears, surrounded by a group of armed henchmen.

Luckily, Andy Garcia was at the bottom of the steps to catch the bouncing pram.

A number of films of copied the Odessa Steps sequence, including Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent, Woody Allan’s Bananas, and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather,

Peter Segal’s Naked Gun 33 1/3 wasn’t so much a homage to The Battleship Potemkin, as a parody of The Untouchables’ homage to The Battleship Potemkin.

But we think it still counts.

Top 10 Ways Hollywood Ruined Your Favorite TV Shows

Our past is filled with colorful characters who often get left out of the history books. From swashbuckling adventures to love stories to tales of rags-to-riches, their lives seem plucked right out of a Hollywood blockbuster.

10“Lord” Timothy Dexter

Sometimes it is better to be lucky than smart, and nobody exemplified this better than 18th century Massachusetts businessman Timothy Dexter. Born into a family of laborers, Dexter was largely uneducated but had a lifelong desire to integrate himself into the upper echelons of society. He took the first step in the right direction when he married a well-off widow while working as a leather craftsman apprentice.

Dexter’s true stroke of fortune came towards the end of the Revolutionary War. By that time, Continental currency had depreciated so badly that $40 in paper money bought $1 in goods, hence the expression “not worth a Continental.” As a sign of good faith, wealthy Americans began buying Continental dollars from destitute soldiers. Wanting to fit in, Dexter spent his entire wealth on Continental currency. Afterward, Alexander Hamilton enacted his financial plan, and Dexter traded his Continentals for treasury bonds and made a fortune.

Apocryphal stories soon arose of Dexter undertaking foolish financial ventures, yet, somehow, still making a profit. He was allegedly convinced to export wool mittens to the tropical Indies where they were bought by merchants headed for Siberia. Another time, people told Dexter to ship coal to Newcastle which he did, supposedly, during a miners’ strike and sold his cargo for a premium.

Yearning to show off his intellectual side, Lord Dexter, as he called himself, wrote a 9,000-word half-biography, half-philosophy book. It had no punctuation, random capitalizations, and numerous spelling errors. Not surprisingly, the title made little sense: A Pickle for the Knowing Ones or Plain Truth in a Homespun Dress.

9Howard Blackburn

Howard Blackburn came from humble beginnings as a fisherman trying to make a living, first in Nova Scotia, then in Massachusetts. A 24-year-old Blackburn became a local legend in 1883 when a winter storm blew his schooner off course. The captain had to row back in freezing temperatures without the benefit of heavy mittens. Knowing what would happen, Blackburn maintained his hands in the curved position so he would be able to continue to row, even when they froze. He returned after sailing for five days without food, water, or sleep. His fishing mate died, and Blackburn lost all his fingers and a toe.

Blackburn’s fishing career was over, but his heroic, new reputation helped him open a tavern which still stands today. Soon enough, though, the call for adventure beckoned again, in 1899, Blackburn returned to the sea. He performed a solo crossing of the Atlantic (his first of two) aboard the Great Western in 62 days. While this had been accomplished a few times before, it was done by people who still had the use of their fingers. Even a year before dying, a 72-year-old Blackburn was planning another transatlantic voyage.

8Henry Every

Henry Every might not be among the most famous pirates in the world, but his exploits were enough to rival those of any real contemporary or Hollywood creation. He was not known as the “King of Pirates” for nothing—in 1695, Every made off with one of the biggest plunders in buccaneering history.

Every heard of a Mughal Empire fleet returning home to India with a vast treasure of gold and silver, defended by scores of cannons and riflemen. To even stand a chance, Every had to ally himself with other pirates and ambush the 25-ship Mughal flotilla.

Every’s partner, Captain Thomas Tew, fell in battle against an escort ship. However, this allowed Every’s ship the Fancy to catch up to the Mughal flagship Ganj-i-Sawai. After a fierce fight and more than a few strokes of good luck, Henry Every took the Ganj-i-Sawai and plundered up to £600,000 in valuables, instantly becoming the richest pirate in the world.

The attack significantly soured Anglo-Indian relations and, with a huge bounty on his head, Henry Every became the most wanted man in the world. Astoundingly, this did not stop him from leaving the pirate life behind and enjoying his spoils. Unlike most of his fellow pirates, Every was never captured or killed in battle. He simply disappeared from the history books, and nobody knows what happened to him or his treasure.

7William John Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck
5th Duke of Portland

Like his father and his father before him, William John Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck became Duke of Portland and served as a Member of Parliament while residing at the family estate, Welbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire. However, he became better known for his eccentricities and for a bizarre paternity suit occurring almost two decades after his death.

There is no doubt that Lord Cavendish valued his privacy. Many stories paint him as an extreme introvert. Allegedly, his valet was the only person allowed to see him. The duke communicated with everyone else either through him or in writing. All of the servants and workers on his estate were instructed to never acknowledge him and ignore him even if they had to pass by him in the hallway.

The duke’s introversion led him underground, and he oversaw the extensive building of halls and tunnels underneath Welbeck Abbey. This included a secluded passage for his carriage all the way to the station, and a giant ballroom, even though Cavendish never invited anyone over, let alone throw a party.

Eighteen years after his death, a widow named Anna Maria Druce came forward, claiming that Cavendish’s reclusiveness allowed him to lead a double life as her father-in-law, Thomas Charles Druce, before faking his death. The case dragged on for over a decade, leading to an exhumation, several counts of perjury, and two people being committed to an asylum.

6General Gregor MacGregor

There are two vastly different chapters in the life of Gregor MacGregor, a member of the clan made famous by Rob Roy MacGregor. The first was his military career. MacGregor served as an officer in the British Army between 1803 and 1810, fighting in the Napoleonic Wars and rising to the rank of general. Afterward, he joined Venezuelan forces in their war for independence against Spain, becoming a hero worthy of full military honors upon his death.

Then there is also the Gregor MacGregor who tried to pull off one of the most audacious cons in history. Upon his return to Britain, MacGregor claimed to have been made Cazique (prince) of a new country called Poyais near the Black River. This eight-million-acre area was rich and fertile but needed investors and settlers to develop it. Due to the disintegration of the Spanish Empire, investing in new Latin American governments was considered the smart thing to do, and MacGregor generously offered a £200,000 Poyais bond at a six percent return rate.

Overall, MacGregor made £1.3 million off Poyais bonds, but there was just one problem—Poyais did not exist. Many of the Scottish settlers died in their new “home,” and when word reached London, MacGregor fled to Paris where he tried the con again and was arrested.

5Sidney Weinberg

Hollywood loves a rags-to-riches story and few, if any, top that of early 20th-century investment banker Sidney Weinberg. He came from meager beginnings—one of eleven children of Jewish immigrants who came to New York chasing the American dream. He dropped out of school at 15 and started looking for work.

In 1907, sixteen-year-old Weinberg wanted to work on Wall Street. He picked a nice looking, tall building—43 Exchange Place—and went into every office asking if they needed a boy for errands. He landed a position as a janitor’s assistant at a small brokerage house named Goldman Sachs.

One day, Weinberg delivered a flagpole to the Sachs residence where he made enough of a positive impression on Paul Sachs to get promoted to the mailroom. His hard work continued, and Weinberg went to business school on the company’s dime. By 1927, Weinberg became a partner. By 1930, he became CEO of Goldman Sachs after saving the fledgling company from bankruptcy. He kept this position for 39 years, earning the moniker “Mr. Wall Street.”

4“Red Legs” Greaves

The story of “Red Legs” Greaves’ life reads like a fanciful tale out of a book. Greaves was born sometime in the mid-17th century to Scottish parents exiled to Barbados by Oliver Cromwell for participating in the Scottish Civil War. Sold into slavery, Greaves tried to escape by stowing away on a ship, unknowingly boarding a pirate ship commanded by one Captain Hawkins. When he was discovered, Greaves had little choice but to join the crew, even though he despised Hawkins’ cruel treatment of his prisoners. Eventually, Greaves challenged Hawkins’ leadership and, after besting him in a duel, became the new captain.

Greaves was a merciful, lenient captain and after a few successful scores tried to retire as a plantation farmer. Eventually, though, his past caught up with him, and “Red Legs” was arrested for piracy and sent to Port Royal to be executed. This was in 1692, the year of a massive earthquake that plunged two-thirds of Port Royal into the water and killed around 5,000 people.

Greaves was one of the lucky survivors and escaped by joining the crew of a whaling ship. He would later become a pirate hunter and did such a good job that he earned a royal pardon. This allowed Greaves to live happily ever after and retire on his plantation home in Nevis.

3Henry Cyril Paget
5th Marquess of Anglesey

Henry Cyril Paget, Earl of Uxbridge and 5th Marquess of Anglesey, lived a life that would make any 1970s glam rocker jealous. At age 23, Paget inherited a title, a giant estate called Plas Newydd, and a fortune. By age 27, it was all gone. In 1905, aged 29, Paget died with millions of pounds in debt. The marquess embodied the “live fast, die young” mantra, although he preferred to spend his money on jewelry and luxury clothing.

A typical outfit of the marquess consisted of a lavish dressing gown (he favored French tailor Charvet), accessorized with numerous jewels, and some sort of headdress or tiara. Most of these items were only worn once. When debtors sold his collection at auction, they found over a hundred bath gowns alone.

A fan of the performing arts, Paget turned his home chapel into a theater. He hired one of the best acting troupes in the country to stage productions where he could play the leading role. The highlight of each performance was Paget’s sensual, snake-like dance which earned him the moniker “the Dancing Marquess.”

Unsurprisingly, Paget’s flamboyant lifestyle sparked rumors that he was gay, but this was dismissed by his ex-wife of six weeks. According to her, the only person Henry could ever love was himself.

2Julie d’Aubigny
Mademoiselle de Maupin

Few artists led a more thrilling life than 17th-century opera singer Julie d’Aubigny, known as Mademoiselle de Maupin. Her youth was marked by a string of duels and love affairs as the young swashbuckler roamed the French countryside looking for adventure.

It all started in 1687 when 14-year-old Maupin fled Paris with a fencing master named Sérannes, staging singing and dueling exhibitions to earn a living. When she got bored of him, Maupin started a love affair with a young woman who was promptly sent off to a convent by her parents. Supposedly, Maupin followed her and gained entry into the convent as a postulant. There, Maupin faked the death of her lover by setting her room on fire and leaving behind the body of a recently-deceased nun. This prolonged their romance for a few more months before Maupin got bored and moved on again.

Eventually, Maupin settled back in Paris where she became an acclaimed opera singer. However, this did not deter her from her wild ways. At a party at the royal palace, Maupin attended wearing men’s clothes, as she often did, and tried to strike a dalliance with a young woman. Three suitors, offended by her actions, challenged her to a duel. Maupin accepted and bested all three, although she later had to flee the city as duels were banned in Paris.

1Adrian Carton de Wiart

Adrian Carton de Wiart started his military career in 1899 by dropping out of college and joining the British Army to fight in the Second Boer War. He was sent back to England after being shot in the stomach and groin.

At the outbreak of World War I, Carton de Wiart joined the Somaliland Camel Corps. During an attack, he was shot in the face, losing an eye and a bit of ear. Again, he was sent back to England to recuperate where Carton de Wiart acquired the black eye-patch which became his distinguishing feature. He went back to the war on the European front.

At the Second Battle of Ypres, Carton de Wiart’s left hand was mangled by artillery. His hand was amputated back in England, and, after a quick break, Carton de Wiart was back on the frontline. This time he led the 8th Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment, at the Battle of the Somme and was awarded the Victoria Cross for commanding the entire battalion after all other commanders died in battle.

Between wars, he spent time in Poland where he survived a plane crash. When WWII came around, Carton de Wiart gladly went into active duty again despite being in his 60s. He survived another plane crash over Libya in 1941 and spent the next two years as an Italian POW. In his autobiography, Carton de Wiart quipped, “Frankly, I enjoyed the war.”