From Deception to Hollywood's Dark Side: Unveiling Death on The Lot

Bad Blood: The Final Chapter

Sony Music

Society & Culture, News, True Crime

4.7 • 4.5K Ratings

🗓️ 1 June 2023

⏱️ 3 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This season, we’re getting into 1950s Hollywood, ground zero for a cultural transformation that would upend every aspect of Americans’ lives. A movie theater in every city, a TV in every living room, and a Post-war America determined to be happy at any cost. Also, during this period… a slew of untimely Hollywood deaths. The rules of the road for the next seventy years were being written in real-time, and not everyone would make it out alive. This is the story of how Hollywood sold us on a new American Dream, and left a few unlucky stars holding the bag. Hosted by Adam McKay (The Big Short, Vice, Succession), DEATH ON THE LOT arrives June 1st. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is shot towards the end of the 1961 film The Missfits that shows Marilyn Monroe
0:07.5	Montgomery Clift and Clark Gable all in a park car. And watching the movie, it hit me
0:14.8	within a few years Monroe Clift Gable. All three actors asleep in that car would be dead.
0:23.8	I just couldn't get that shot out of my mind. And I realized that this needed to be the next
0:33.4	season of this podcast. I'm Adam McKay, producer, director, writer. And in the first season of our show,
0:43.3	Death at the Wing, we explored the tragic deaths from the wild world of 80s basketball. And how
0:50.2	those deaths helped us understand a political and cultural moment that changed America in a big way.
0:57.3	Well, this season we're going back further to 1950s Hollywood, the moment after World War 2 when
1:05.4	the country was riding high, but also refusing to confront many of its very serious problems. And
1:12.3	the entertainment industry was at the heart of a lot of this massive change. The myth of the 50s
1:20.0	as it's kind of fabulously warm, welcoming, safe place, it seemed to be all pretty celebratory.
1:27.2	I don't see much criticism going on of anything. It was a time of racial reckoning, a space race,
1:34.4	unions winning, and the suburban dream being sold one viewer at a time. Murder at and bigotry,
1:41.9	atomic bonds and secret societies, a pivotal point in the American experiment. When the winners
1:49.2	and losers of the next half century were being decided in real time. Somebody turned around and
1:57.2	said to me, oh, you're on the blacklist. It happened that quickly and that easily.
2:04.5	A lot of the strikers who were protesting that day were rounded up and sent to jails. Warner Brothers
2:10.9	employees, IOTSI counter protesters, the police, the studio police, all kind of losing their heads
2:17.6	in this melee. The mob's going to stop at nothing and he was correct in that assessment.
2:27.4	Trailblazing actors who got railroaded by racism. Stars who live fast and die young and writers and
2:35.0	directors exploring new political ideas. Iconic figures like Hadi McDaniel, James Dean, and Rod Serling.
2:43.8	An incredible moment in history and of course being a massive wealthy narcissist, I believe that Hollywood
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