When Lady Harriet Mordaunts daughter was born, doctors thought she might be blind. The 1920's was a grand time for the United States. It was the largest divorce settlement in American history at the time. There was, after all, that pesky fact that he was a foreigner (Flynn was Australian) and xenophobia was at its height in the early days of the Second World War. She regularly and openly consorted with known gangsters, including Bugsy Siegel, and in response to her husbands impotence (at least according to wagging tongues in Hollywood), she carried on an affair with Clark Gable, one which she thought belonged in the headlines of the local papers, much to his chagrin. The building remains in 2019, housing various offices for companies involved in the film industry. Scandals of Warren G. Harding The nation plunged into mourning, little suspecting that the beloved leader they eulogized as "an ideal American" would soon be revealed to have been the head of the most corrupt administration in the nation's history. A jury found the work indecent but preferred not to hold them responsible for it. The public found the story too salacious to ignore, especially after the marriage split up after less than two months. And Tone? Tone, well-connected with powerful MGM, used his influence to ensure that Neal was unable to find acting roles in Hollywood. In 1949 the married Bergman (her husband was neurosurgeon Petter Lindstrom) began an affair with Italian director Roberto Rossellini (an earlier affair she had with American actor Gregory Peck was kept hidden at the time). After many appeals, the case went in his favor. Some said that Jack deliberately placed his medicine where his wife would confuse it with nostrums of her own and thus take it accidentally. Cleveland will go down in history as the 22nd and 24th President of the United States, but his first term in office was nearly waylaid by a campaign scandal. The scandal involved ornery oil tycoons,. 1988, Platinum Girl: The Life and Legends of Jean Harlow. READ MORE: How the Ponzi Scheme Got Its Name. An oil painting completed in 1884, Sargent used socialite Virginie Gautreau as his model, depicting her wearing a black dress held up by two narrow straps. Check out 11 scandals that caused more than one decent citizen to nearly drop her hand fan. When she was introduced to film director Irving Thalberg, for whom she was to star in a Hollywood production, she asked him, How do you get laid in this dreadful place? Supposedly a sneering Thalberg told her to ask anyone. Library of Congress. When The Washington Post published a glossary of the flappers philosophy in 1922, it defined life as One long petting party accompanied by jazz. Lana Turner was the classic blonde bombshell of the 1940s, a popular pinup among American servicemen and teenage boys and a favorite co-star with Clark Gable. Chaplins reputation never fully recovered. Eve Golden. Pickfords action evolved from scandalous to courageous, and her reputation emerged unscathed. By 1904, his spending had so far outpaced his bank account that he sold most of his belongings to pay off his debtsnot even his parrot was safe from creditors. Hoover used, or rather abused, his position as head of the FBI to keep files on stars, directors, producers, and reporters indeed on anyone whom he considered possibly subversive or anti-American. In the third, he was acquitted, though the press and the public had long before convicted him. The Watergate Scandal, as it came to be known, altered American politics forever, and changed the way Americans looked at their elected officials. Wikimedia. Library of Congress. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. SFGate The Death Of An Actress In San Francisco. Her death was less a scandal than a sensation, and in 2014 a group of roughly 100 film fans gathered to mark her demise by viewing 13 Women in a Hollywood parking lot, an event geared towards raising awareness (and money) for suicide prevention. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. Actress Jean Harlow was a scandalmongers dream, openly flaunting her sexuality on screen to the point that new censorship restrictions were written to curb her filmed allure. He liked them young, both his first and second wives were sixteen when he married them, and the second, Lita Grey, convinced Chaplin that she was pregnant with his child, leading to a hasty marriage (he could otherwise have been imprisoned for having sex with a minor). But after U.S. postal inspectors started probing his scheme, it collapsed, and Ponzi went to prison. Once word got out, Pickfords career might have been derailed if not for the fact that Moore was reported to be abusive. But it was no mannequin. The jury found him not guilty; he resumed his pulpit, and spent the next decade campaigning for presidents and commenting on public affairs. To many Americans, petting parties epitomized everything that was evil about the Jazz Age. When she learned that he had similarly stalked other actresses (including Zsa Zsa Gabor and June Allyson) and of his underworld contacts, she broke off their affair. Wikimedia. Finally offered a film contract in 1933, a dozen years after the scandal, he died of a massive heart attack before the project could be started. They republished it anyway. Franchot Tone derailed his own career by becoming enmeshed in several scandals in the 1930s and 40s. Jack Pickford was the brother of Mary Pickford, arguably the most powerful woman in Hollywood in 1916. The Teapot Dome Scandal of the 1920s shocked Americans by revealing an unprecedented level of greed and corruption within the federal government. Average, law-abiding citizens had no problem buying illegal booze from such people. Bettmann / Contributor / Getty Images. But even the innuendo collected by Hoover for personal reasons often took a backseat to the scandals which emerged from the stars decadent lifestyles. Morrow and one of the children were decapitated by the helicopters rotor; the other child was crushed beneath the machine. The boy hadnt stolen the moneyhed earned it sleeping with gentlemen at a house on Cleveland Street, and so did other young telegraph boys. Thaw was committed to a mental institution before being released in 1915. The frontiers of capitalist innovation always attract investment scams, and there were many such frontiers in the 1920s, fed by technological inventionradio, airplanes, telephony, electrification, chemical breakthroughsand the associated more general economic boom of the era, explains Edward J. Balleisen, a professor of history and public policy at Duke University and author of the 2017 book Fraud: An American History from Barnum to Madoff. Thelma Todd with Chico Marx in the 1932 film Horse Feathers. The divorce was eventually granted. Turners daughter, Cheryl, was acquitted, though the scandal remained for many months, with numerous reports that Lanas testimony (she was the only eyewitness to the killing) had been nothing more than an example of her practicing her craft as an actress. Instead, she ended up, as they say in movieland, on the cutting room floor, her part eliminated, her work rejected (according to most stories of her suicide, in fact, she wasnt cut out of the final print of the film until after her death, though her fourteen-minute appearance had been reduced to four). 2023 A&E Television Networks, LLC. For most people, the Roaring 20s conjures up images of flapper dresses, sparkles, and bootleggers wearing fedoras. Intentionally or not, the message that filtered down to the public was: Be bold. Online, Medium Hollywoods Golden Age Era Of Secretly Bisexual, Homosexual And Lesbian Stars, Alabama Public Radio Tallulah! The married (and very Catholic) Kennedy was soon involved in an extramarital affair with the actress, one which saw him maneuver to dominate her career, her social life, and her financial affairs. Hollywood obliged, with both steamy rumors of illicit affairs and reports of sexual activities which were at the time illegal. Harding was inept, Coolidge was mediocre, and Hoover was overcome by circumstances he neither understood nor could control. FBI. Her death created a sensation in Hollywood, both from her manner of accomplishing it and the note which she left behind. According to one writer, MGM studios maintained an open account upon which their stars could charge the services they requested, thus keeping their expenses secret from wives and husbands. Both mens character witnesses painted impeccable pictures. Having lost Joan, Tone turned to a fashion model and actress named Jean Wallace. She had been mangled in a manner similar to some of the victims of the notorious London killer Jack the Ripper; eviscerated, dismembered, exsanguinated, and then posed. Michelle Vogel. She created scandal by aborting a pregnancy in which the father was a leading man in one of her films, married to another (William Powell). During the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 against the Austrian Empire, a man stood out for his violent tactics in suppressing the revolutionaries: Julius Jacob von Haynau, an Austrian general who earned the nickname, the Hyena. News of his brutality, particularly against Hungarian women, excited much anger in the English public. Public discussion of sex was regarded as disgraceful. Mary was an underage actress whose letters to Taylor were allegedly removed by the helpful LAPD. In 1936, the wife of Max Baer, the former Heavyweight Champion of the World (and eventually the father of Max Baer Jr, who portrayed Jethro Bodine on The Beverly Hillbillies), named Jean as one of the women with whom her husband had been unfaithful to his marriage. She married Millais, though she paid a pricenever again would she be allowed to attend a social event if Queen Victoria was present. According to Lita, Chaplin had demanded an abortion prior to their marriage (which she couldnt have because she wasnt pregnant) and told her that their marriage would be short. In the end, the murder of William Taylor was never solved, other than by Hollywood gossips who were sure they knew who the killer was and what their motive had been. Prohibition was a nationwide ban on the sale and import of alcoholic beverages that lasted from 1920 to 1933. In reality, Hendley explains, what Ponzi actually did was simply take money from new investors and give it to old investors, without actually investing in anything tangiblein other words, he merely recirculated cash.. Eventually, the practice faded. Landis later attempted to deflect the blame for the accident, claiming that the cause of the accident had been in part a special effects fireball detonated by an underlying erroneously, an error for which he was never charged. In a day when a womans reputation could still be irreparably damaged by divorce or an illegitimate child, petting let flappers thumb their nose at the convention while still protecting themselves against the repercussions of sex. Alarmingly for many, petting was popular among both wild flappers and average young women during the 1920s. Annie Besant, a noted feminist, Theosophist, and womens rights activist, and Charles Bradlaugh, an infamous atheist, published The Fruits of Philosophy: the Private Companion for Young Married Couples, a pamphlet by an American doctor, Charles Knowlton, and previously judged obscene. NY Daily News Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle, Acquitted For Murder Of Virginia Rappe In 1922, Never Recovered From All The Bad Press, Timeline The Mysterious Death Of The Most Beautiful Woman On Earth, Medium The Death of William Desmond Taylor, Factinate Dramatic Facts About Gloria Swanson, Hollywoods Iconic Diva, FBI to keep files on stars, directors, producers, and reporters. Wikimedia. The shocking expose not only opened the floodgates for other women to declare similar affairs, it actually ended up getting Clinton impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice. Others claimed Olive committed suicide after learning of the reason her husband carried the mercury with him on his travels. Wikimedia. Eventually, he went to Australia. Millions of dollars were awarded to the families of the victims, mostly paid by insurance companies. Silent film star Pickford tested her audiences adoration of her by committing an unthinkable act: She divorced her husband, Owen Moore, in 1920, and married Douglas Fairbanks less than a month later. She neither confirmed nor denied her sexuality, referring to herself in one interview as ambisexual. and more. Kirn Vintage Stock/Corbis via Getty Images. The press eventually went on to other things, but Flynns image was permanently damaged, and he never again enjoyed the reputation of being a romanticized gentleman, cultured and debonair. After . In other wordsdont hesitate to invest your cash!, Prohibition also played a role in making the citizens susceptible, according to Hendley. 8 Ways The Great Gatsby Captured the Roaring Twenties, How Prohibition Put the Organized in Organized Crime, Warning Signs Investors Missed Before the 1929 Crash. She did not attend Tracys funeral for the same reason. Scandals, such as the Harding Administration Scandal and Teapot Dome Scandal, and illegal activity, such as the gangster Al Capone, became eminent and symbolized corruption of the 1920s. Twenty minutes after the first copies went on sale, the pair were arrested following a complaint by the Society for the Suppression of Vice. Online, Gloria and Joe: The Star-Crossed Love Affair of Gloria Swanson and Joe Kennedy. Their affair was the talk of society in both Hollywood and Boston, where Rose Kennedy chose to ignore it, at least publicly. At least occasionally, those business leaders fretted about the potential threat posed by Soviet communism.. FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. Here are some of the greatest scandals to emerge from Hollywood during its Golden Age. But they also came to an end because the flappers who dared to pet in public helped make open sexual expression more commonplace. In 1921, Fatty Arbuckle was accused of raping and killing Virginia Rappe. What Happened In Room 1219? According to Halpins affidavit, when the child was born, Cleveland used his political influence in the city to have Halpin committed, and sent the child to an orphanage. Whether suicide or murder, there is little doubt that the premature death of Olive Thomas once called the most beautiful woman in the world was painful in the extreme. She abandoned her unhappy marriage to Ruskin in 1854 and filed for annulment on the grounds that she was still a virgin. Young female wannabe stars were frequent guests to his office so that he may evaluate their skills. agriculture. But the 1920s had a darker side. Luciano was the prime suspect of many, and following her death, he assumed control of her restaurant, an event she had once told him, before witnesses, would occur only over her dead body. Ordinary members of the public could sit down at the breakfast table and over tea and toast, read every juicy, salacious, delicious detail of who did what and to whom. Tracy was buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park, alongside his wife Louise. Wikimedia. The affair continued until at least 1930 when Kennedy summarily dumped his paramour in the aftermath of her completing a film, Queen Kelly, which was a critical and box office failure. But when it came to relationships with the opposite sex he was less gifted. But Kellerman rejected this notion, preferring a tighter one-piece suit that left the arms and legs bare. His arrest had the newspapers dubbing him, the Boy Jones. Despite increased security, he would cause more furor over an apparent inability to stay away from the palacehe was caught again in 1841 and sentenced to hard labor. 'Petting parties' added some steam to Jazz Age soirees. But even sex takes a back seat to scandal when it comes to attracting the attention of an often lascivious public, and when the scandal is about sex, especially illicit sex, the morally upright cant help but line up to buy. Nonetheless, Taylor maintained a relationship with actress Mabel Normand, and on February 1, 1921, he entertained her at his home, where he was found dead the following morning. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Tracy was one of them, on multiple occasions. The morning of January 15, 1947, saw the beginning of one of Hollywoods greatest scandals as well as one of its most famous unsolved mysteries. 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Americas Forgotten Mass Imprisonment of Women Believed to Be Sexually Immoral, The First Birth Control Pill Used Puerto Rican Women as Guinea Pigs. Kennedy, determined to become a Hollywood mogul to supplement the income derived from his stock market and real estate fortunes, didnt care a whit about Swansons character. Warned by her father to avoid men and alcohol in New York, she told an interviewer, He never said anything about women and cocaine. It was she who uttered one of the most deflating political put downs of all time, referring to Republican Presidential candidate Thomas E. Dewey as resembling the little man on the wedding cake. During her short career, she was linked romantically with Clark Gable, William Powell, Spencer Tracy, Hughes, Baer, Paul Bern, Louis B. Mayer, Franchot Tone, Lee Tracy, James Stewart, and others, including Talullah Bankhead, Clara Bow, and Joan Crawford. The scandal, which was fed by the Catholic Legion of Decency, numerous newspapers and magazines, and from the pulpits of churches across the country drove Bergman from the United States. June 5, 2019, The Black Dahlia. Some of the nations greatest film heroes were subject to damaging tales, some true, some speculative, and some criminal. Stompanato was killed and Turners daughter was charged with manslaughter. Jamie founded Listverse due to an insatiable desire to share fascinating, obscure, and bizarre facts. After some likely exclamations of I say! and protracted harrumphing, both Gordon-Cumming and the prince were dragged through public mud. Stompanato wooed Lana with flowers and phone calls while she was filming The Lady Takes a Flyer, and unaware of his reputation and mob contacts, she began dating him. Dont be timid. Like Cleveland before him, Warren G. Harding also had a secret out-of-wedlock child, a daughter he conceived with a 19-year-old woman named Nan Britton. One study found that by 1924, 92 percent of college women had tried petting. When Charles demanded a divorce, Harriet attempted to evade a separation by claiming insanity, eating coal, and smashing dishes. Marlow Stern, The Daily Beast. She was linked to sexual relationships with both men and women, among the latter were Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, and Hattie McDaniel of Gone With the Wind fame. Axel Madsen. Some of the speculators never actually went to Florida themselves. These men were celebrated for their pluck, courage and daring, says Nate Hendley, author of the 2016 book The Big Con: Great Hoaxes, Frauds, Grifts and Swindles in American History. Chaplin was not alone. To the Protestant jurys great disappointment, the mother superior later testified she hadnt meant that kind of excitement. Neal eventually married a receptionist named Gale Bennett, living with her in Palm Springs until 1965, when she was murdered. As it turned out, this wasnt the first time Jones had made himself at home in the palace. As described in a Los Angeles Times review of Jules Tygiels 1994 book The Great Los Angeles Swindle: Oil, Stocks and Scandal During the Roaring Twenties, one of the most audacious promoters was Courtenay Chauncey C.C. Julian, who bought newspaper and radio ads in which he cajoled, Youll never make a thin dime just lookin on.. Worse, hed once been caught with the queens underwear stuffed down his pants! Most have been generally dismissed as urban legends, but Clara did give rumourmongers grist for the mill. 1920. Lady Mordaunt feared syphilis and confessed to her husband, Sir Charles, that shed been often unfaithful to him. Nene Adams is a published author, editor, historian, and American expatriate living in the Netherlands in a mnage trois with her book collection and her lovely partner. The combination of a female sex symbol, a mobster, and her daughters involvement was too much for the press to resist and the trial became a media circus. and being excited in the presence of a visiting priest. Many of his investors refused to believe theyd been conned, and hung on to his worthless certificates. Clinton vehemently denied the allegations, which were later revealed to be true. Normands cocaine use and resulting connections to organized crime figures were also considered, but no firm evidence could be found. Much of the hand-wringing about petting parties focused on the supposed immorality of the young woman who attended them. 1952, Secretary Says She Destroyed Hoovers Letters on his Orders. Future: Heaven only knows what.. Eventually, though, the market stalled, prices fell, and many were stuck with properties worth far less than theyd expected. She enjoyed drugs and alcohol, and didnt attempt to hide the fact from the public.