The Doom Book: A Peek Into Golden Hollywood’s Age of Sin

Murders. Overdoses. Suicides. Assaults. This was the face of Hollywood's Golden Age before the Doom Book took over the scene...

It was the one list you didn't want to be on. Decades before McCarthy, there was William H. Hays and the Doom Book, a list that destroyed the careers of some of Hollywood's most gifted...and most scandalous. 

In this episode, we're talking the Hays Code, the rape and murder of Virginia Rappe, and Hollywood's most salacious controversies. 

What was pre-code Hollywood really like? What did we lose in the aftermath? It's a story as twisted as Fatty Arbuckle's 3 back to back murder trials, and it's all here in this episode of Scandal Queens. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to another new episode of Scandal Queens. If it's your first time here, I'm EB, the D influencer helping you deconstruct the narcissistic cult of celebrity. And today we're covering a particularly interesting, nasty, but still kind of fascinating chapter of Hollywood history that a lot of people don't really talk about. See, I've always thought of myself as a casual fan of old Hollywood, right? Like I grew up watching a lot of stuff from the 40s and 50s. My mom was born in the 50s, so a lot of that kind of stuff was always playing in our house. And when I was a teen, I found love of films from the 20s and the 30s, especially anything universal horror from the 30s. That's why I have a whole leg sleeve of tattoos from Universal Horror. Um, I didn't just grow up knowing the names of Marilyn Monroe. When I was 18, I bought myself my first Bing Crosby DVD films collection, a collection which I added to my Bing Crosby record and CD collection that I had already been growing through high school. And like every kid who grew up in America between the 70s and the 2000s, I knew about McCarthyism and how the Red Scared had flushed up left-leaning people in Hollywood and throughout the rest of the entertainment, academic, and political world. So color me shocked when I heard about the Doom Book for the first time, an allegedly leather-bound list of 150 or more celebrities who had been blacklisted by the US government for their lewd and lascivious behaviors and beliefs. I had never heard of such a thing. Like I had literally never heard of that until a couple days ago. Um, and I and though I was like vaguely familiar with the larger picture of like censorship and in in Hollywood, and I knew pre-code and the like how pre-code was about restrictions, but I just didn't know the details, right? Enter the Hayes Code. Decades before McCarthy's Red Scare swept through the glamorous avenues of Hollywood, America's film industry was the target of another concentrated attempt to take control of the den of sin. It was a sweeping act of censorship that didn't just alter the careers of some of the biggest stars you've ever or never heard of. It ended them. It sent some into exile and others into prison in some instances. That's right. Led by Will H. Hayes, William H. Hayes, America's first quote unquote motion pictures are. The Hayes Code sought to squash out what was seen as the rampant sin that had gripped the inner and outer worlds of Hollywood's elite circles and the films being made. Thanks to this puritanical code, a dawning age of cinema was lost, a whole movement dedicated to showcasing both the brightest and lowest sides that life can offer. The Hayes Code shut out interrational relationships on film. It completely erased sexually liberated and empowered women. And even homosexuality was pretty much stamped out. They had to develop this quote unquote like queer code. It reverted the minds of American cinemas uh back to like 10-year-olds, because that was the whole standard, uh, which we'll talk about more. But Will Hayes was like, we have to protect the 10-year-olds, and you have to think of the 10-year-olds. And so movies were essentially made with 10-year-olds in mind, which was then reflected in audience, in audience goers. Um, the the Hayes Code would become the backbone of the select censorship that we see making its return to American cinema today. So that's why we're gonna talk about it. Not just because it's fascinating, not just because it's filled with like insane like murders and rapes and drug scandals and affairs and all kinds of stuff. Um, it's because it's reflective of things that are going on now. The Haze Code, the doom list, and the 32 don'ts and be carefuls that turned the whole of the American film industry upside down. Now, before you go, Evie, this sounds super boring. Just you're gonna have to trust me, okay? I promise you. Um, this is a story packed to the brim with sex, drugs, and endless scandal. Uh, and it's way raunchier than um anything we've talked about with the Kardashian. So that's what we're gonna get into today. Pre-code Hollywood, where the Haze Code came from, and what we lost in the midst of it all. But before we jump in, let's do a quick temperature check and weigh in on some of the comings and goings of Hollywood's biggest names. Right off the top, Casey Wasserman is refusing to exit gracefully. Uh, Casey Wasserman, once a close personal friend of Jeffrey Epstein co-conspirator Gislaine Gislain Maxwell, um, he's refusing to step down from the 2028 LA Olympics organization committee, uh, despite calls from the mayor of Los Angeles and a third of the city council. Wasserman, who is the head of the star-making Wasserman talent agency, uh, who once managed the careers of giants like Chapel Roan, was implicated in a series of sexually graphic emails to Gislaine Maxwell, which were released earlier this year. He was also forced to admit to flying on Jeffrey Epstein's private jet with his wife in 2002. After Wasserman's ties to the international child sex trafficking ring were exposed, a flood of artists and athletes left his agency, citing their horror and disgust, yet still he remained the head of LA 28, which is the organizing committee for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Los Angeles. Now, this the LA City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez has been very outspoken about all this, and she specifically had this to say about Wasserman's continued presence on the Olympic committee. Shouldn't it be the bare minimum expectation that you don't have a leader who is associated with an international sex trafficking ring? We have an obligation and a duty to protect these athletes and uphold the integrity of the games. The LA 28 committee uh took did actually take a vote on this because they've received a lot of pressure. This vote just happened a couple days before I recorded this episode um early in June. And they essentially voted, hey, you know what? None of our business. They held a whole press conference. They got questioned about it by the media and they said, you know what, it's none of our business. We're not we're not gonna look into that. That's none of our business. So he's gonna stay there. Um, but still, members of the Los Angeles City Council, as I said, including the mayor, are voicing their opinions on his role and they think he should step down, which he is. It's that's who you want to represent the city. It's crazy. Um, this news comes only days after claims that Wasserman is delaying his step down from his beleaguered talent agency, which is very, very, very interesting. So after the news broke of Wasserman's ties to Epstein and Maxwell, and after artists and athletes began leaving his agency, Wasserman announced that he was gonna step down as the head of Wasserman talent agency. Um, because as he said, the issue had become a quote unquote distraction, right? Which was gonna threaten the future of the company, aka people don't want to work there, people don't want to give them money because he's tied to Gislaine and Epstein. Um now sources inside the agency have told page six that it was all a bait and switch and that Wasserman has no plans to actually step down. According to these insiders, Wasserman is torpedoing deals that would buy out his ownership of the agency so that he can cling on to his role and avoid any accountability for his ties to Maxwell and Epstein. The sources told page six that 14 different entities have made non-binding offers on the company, but almost all were basically rejected for one reason or another. Now, three remain, but a source who has seen the files claims, and this was a direct quote on page six. What is clear to me and has been clear to me since about two weeks ago is that he doesn't really want to sell it, nor does he intend to sell it or intend not to be involved. So just sounds like more of the same from the inside elites, wriggling out of any justice for the crimes that they've been complicit in. Up next, the former wife of George Lucas, Marsha Lucas, has died at age 80. That's right, George Lucas' ex-wife and the woman who is widely credited with much of the creative force behind the original Star Wars films, has passed away surrounded by family and friends in Rancho Mirage, California. Now, Marsha, of course, was the main editor behind the first Star Wars film, A New Hope, as well as Return of the Jedi. She also worked on the editorial teams for Martin Scorsese's taxi driver. Alice doesn't live here anymore, and New York, New York. Scorsese, by the way. I know I fucked that up. Um, if you're a Star Wars fan, then you probably most know Marcia Lucas as the woman who pushed for the infamous lightsaber duel between Obi-Wan and Darth Vader, which George originally didn't want, like one of the most iconic scenes. And she was also the woman who almost single-handedly was responsible for editing the 40,000 feet of footage that made up the film's the first film's like awe-inspiring, the battles, the battle scenes, right? The battle scenes. Interestingly, those battle scenes as well were also made using the technology invented by Jerry Jeffers, who's married to Marsha, uh Melissa Cargill. Sorry, Melissa Cargill. Um, and Jerry Jefferess, uh, who had developed the technology in a Berkeley laboratory that has ties to the CIA. It's a whole thing. There's I have a whole deep dive going on on Patreon if you want to know more about that. But it's kind of an interesting tie to Star Wars and the early the some of the psych psychological experiments that the CIA was getting up to. So very, very interesting stuff. But yeah, Marsha Lucas has died. Um, obviously, you know, sending best wishes to her friends and family. Uh huge to see a woman in in film doing that at that time. Uh legendary contributions, way more than I can list here. So hopefully she's in a better place than this. And last but not least, Shia LaBeouf has finally been sentenced for his New Orleans rampage. Uh, spiraling actor Shia LaBeouf has been sentenced for his involvement in the February 2026 battery of three New Orleans locals. The incident came as part of escalating behavior from LaBeouf that we all witnessed all across TikTok, down to him screaming at random people in Rome. Um, and this came back to that New Orleans French Quarter incident, uh, which eventually resulted in the even Stevens star being filmed, shoving Barstaff to the ground and hitting other individuals in the face. Now, LaBoeuf would, you know, after it all happened, he went on his whole like repent trail where he went and visited a bunch of churches and then he sat down for an interview and claimed that he physically assaulted, he violently assaulted those three people because he was scared of gays. Um, and he basically like insinuated that he had been messed with by gay people in the past and he was afraid that these gay people were gonna like, I don't know, I guess sexually assault him in the street. I don't uh I that's that's the insinuation that I took from it. Um, but overall, the New Orleans Police Department has him by it. They did charge him with three counts of simple battery. Now, LaBoeuf, however, has, shock surprise, uh, been sentenced to big old whopping probation for these three violent assaults, uh, as most rich privileged white insiders to the Hollywood corruption ring are. One does have to wonder uh what role LaBoeuf's newfound religion has to play in his scot-free escape from any accountability for his increasingly violent and deranged behavior, but that's probably just another one of those mysteries that we won't get the answer to until 50 years from now when someone releases a Hollywood gossip book about it. All right, here we go. The infamous Doom list, the Hollywood list of shame that turned the film industry upside down. Now, this doom list was a collection of 150 plus alleged names, said to be kept in a series of leather-bound books that were distributed to the biggest Hollywood studios of the 1920s and 30s. To get your name on this list, okay, meant that in most cases, like except for maybe the biggest stars, that you didn't work again. All right. This was big and this was before McCarthyism. It was a catastrophe if you were someone who was just kind of breaking ground, especially if you were a woman uh who didn't already have some kind of established career outside of Hollywood. If you like were still trying to make your big break or you were just about there, this doom list could be the end of everything for you because it was the end of some of the biggest players in Hollywood. Um, drawn in by the wild antics of the time, many found themselves in the sights of the doom list before they ever made a name for themselves in the heights of Paramount or MGM or Fox, developed by Will H. Hayes in the 1920s, legends of the Doom List still circle Hollywood and any kind of like Hollywood fandom to this day. But how did Hollywood, placed almost synonymous with excess and sexuality and hedonism, get caught up in a puritanical revolution and a decades-long censorship war? Well, if you really want to understand how Will H. Hayes took over Hollywood with his doom list and the Hayes Coach, you first need to understand a little bit about what Hollywood was really like behind the scenes as the silent films transitioned to talkies and platinum-haired actors like Gene Harlow became recognized ticket selling names in their own right. Now, yes, we're doing some historical context, but I promise you, this is not history you ever got taught in school because it is raunchy, it is crazy, it is true crime. Uh, and I'm shocked. I don't, I cannot believe I'm shocked, but I'm absolutely shocked by it. So, yes, historical context time, but this is juicy gossip. Juicy gossip, guys and gals, juicy gossip. So, right from the very start, the film machine that would become the bright lights of Hollywood was plagued by corruption. At Sennet Studios, you had the infamous quote unquote bathing beauties. Go and look into this, who were allegedly put through the ringer of Max Sinate's casting couch. This is considered to be the original casting couch, and according to the Ronchier stories, like if you go and read the it's basically a tabloid book, Hollywood Babylon, they talk about the casting couch, but there's lots of talk about this, this, this real literal casting couch that Senate would subject his bathing beauties to. The same was allegedly happening over at Fox with Daryl Zanek, who had a private bedroom, again, allegedly, um, that was concealed behind his office. It was like you go into his office and then there was a hidden door that would take you into a hidden bedroom. And he apparently had a strict do not disturb policy from 4 to 5 p.m. when he was holding his quote unquote auditions. The first big scandal for the Hollywood machine broke in 1920 when it was announced that Olive Thomas, who was like one of the most considered to be like one of the most beautiful women in the world, and she was one of the biggest stars in silent film. Like, literally go and look at her. I'll put pictures up on Patreon, but stunning woman, stunning. But it was announced suddenly in 1920 that she had died in a Paris hospital. And the world was absolutely shocked because she was, I think she was like 23 at the time, 22. She's very, very young. They all died young because they were all on drugs and partying and doing crazy stuff, and they all had STDs and stuff. But um, she she dies in this Paris hotel, and it's an absolute scandal. And the death had come after a night of partying. Allegedly, there's so many different stories. There's like eight different stories that they all they're all everyone tells a different story. But the death had allegedly come after a night of partying with her also famous husband, Jack Pickford, which, if you don't know who he is, go and look him up as well. But the stories vary, but essentially, what it is is Olive Thomas and Jack Pickford are going on their second honeymoon because they've been so busy and they haven't been able to see each other. So they go to Paris together for this second honeymoon and they are partying it up in Paris. And this is still like the Bohemian times, okay? So this is like you've got all these artists, you've got all these writers and poets and these thinkers and these great minds and talents all around, and they're just drinking expensive champagne and eating caviar and just like having this exquisite time. And then they come back to the hotel. Now, at this point, sources vary whether Jack Pickford fell asleep in the bed, which is generally the accepted story, or if he was outside of the room for some reason, like maybe he had fallen asleep somewhere else. I don't know. But generally it's accepted that he had he was asleep when he suddenly heard Olive call out. Now, what it turns out had happened is Olive had gone into the bathroom and had just drank something. Presumably she thought it was alcohol or she thought it was a sleeping tonic, or maybe she thought it was some kind of medication that you were supposed to drink, but it was um a medication for allegedly Jack Pickford's syphilis. And this medication was just to burn off the wounds, which was the only way they knew to treat syphilis in the 1920s. They didn't have any cures for it, they just burned off the wounds to try to delay stuff. So Olive in the bathroom allegedly screams out, oh my God. Jack eventually gets to her, but it's too late. They get her to the hospital, it's corroded her throat. They've they tried to pump her stomach multiple, multiple times, but it doesn't matter. She dies. It becomes a major, major, major scandal because all these stories spread everywhere about heroin use because Jack Pickford, as it turns out, has quite bad drug and alcohol problems. The alcohol problems were 100% proven. The heroin stuff was a lot of rumors, but it sent the rumor mills into overdrive. Stories cropped up everywhere. Pickford and Olive were called dopienes. People in Paris alleged that they had been cruising opium bars with like the seediest thugs of the French underworld. But then, as if that wasn't bad enough, the next year, 1921, the death of Olive Thomas was eclipsed by the rape and murder of up-and-coming star Virginia Rapp. Okay, Virginia Rapp. The scandal was made all the more sensational by the accused party involved, comedic legend Fatty Arbuckle. The crime went down on Labor Day weekend, September 5th, 1921. Arbuckle, who was throwing a huge hotel party with some of his studio friends, took a drunk Virginia into an adjoining suite and locked the door. Shortly after, guests at the party heard screaming and grunts, but when they tried to enter the room, they found the door locked. Fatty Arbuckle emerged from the suite a short time later in a robe with Virginia's hat allegedly squashed on his head. He, again, this is all alleged, which you'll see why in a minute. He allegedly laughed, looked at Virginia's friends, and told them to go clean her up. And this is a direct quote, she makes too much noise. Virginia's friends who had gone to the party with her found Virginia on the bed, her clothing shredded. She was moaning in pain, holding herself and saying, I'm dying, I'm dying. He hurt me. Virginia died a few days later from a ruptured bladder. Fatty Arbuckle went through a series of three trials, but was eventually acquitted after Virginia and her friend were painted by the press all three times as whores who couldn't be believed because they they were sexually liberated women. The whole Hollywood system was essentially as a young woman, and it was like mostly underage women, you had to sleep around if you were going to try to make your way through and up and get your name somewhere. That was it was a huge sex trafficking, sex abuse ring. And Virginia had developed a reputation, and her friends who had been there had also developed reputations as being women who had slept around with men for financial benefit. And so, because of that, Fatty Arbuckle basically got acquitted and never served any justice at all. Um, these two scandals created an aura around Hollywood, one of licentiousness and sexual depravity. The idea that Hollywood in the film industry was nothing more than a carnal cesspool was beginning to take shape. This idea was further cemented in 1922 with an odd and horrifying event that ties into some of the things we've talked about in previous episodes. Remember, all of these things tie together, they all connect. On February 2nd, 1922, authorities were called by neighbors to Alvarado Street in the placid and upscale neighborhood of LA's West Lake District. There they found a black man named Henry Peavy, a butler for the prominent director William Desmond Taylor, pacing the street and crying hysterically. They've killed him, Peavy shrieked. They've killed Master. Inside, police found the body of the Paramount Link director on his back on the floor, his arms straight out, and a chair fallen over his body. He had two 38 caliber bullets in his heart. In the ensuing investigation, police found a horde of secret pornography which showcased the director with a number of the leading ladies of the time, including Mary Pickford and Mabel Normand, allegedly. Taylor was a sexual deviant, they said. These claims hit new heights when a love letter from another leading lady was discovered in a pornographic tome by a cultist, Alistair Crowley. White stains, if anybody was wondering which book specifically he had hidden these love letters in. That wasn't all investigators found, though, because as they dug deeper into Taylor's life, they found a world of hedonism on full display. The director hadn't just been involved with a sea of attractive starlets, he was also deeply entrenched in some of the more homosexual communities and had been romantically involved with the mother of Mary Miles' mentor. It was revealed as well that William Desmond Taylor hadn't been William Desmond Taylor at all, but William Dean Tanner, who had abandoned his wife and child in 1908 all the way back in New York. The revelations were catastrophic for Paramount, who was kind of over his the studio that Desmond Taylor was over. And they did everything they could to quickly put a lid on the scandal that was further shaping the public opinion of the film industry, who, after all, wanted to spend their hard-earned money watching movies by people who abandoned their families to go and sleep with a bunch of underage women. Here's what's really interesting, though. William Desmond Taylor was the chief director for the famous Players Lasky. Okay, that is who he worked for, and they were owned by Paramount. Now, famous players Lasky, you might remember, is the film studio who were responsible for the US government's anti-immigrant propaganda that was used throughout the 1910s and the 1920s. We talked about that back in the first Kardashian episode in that series when her family was coming over and there was like this this like anti immigrant rhetoric and the Henry Ford melting pot, yada yada, yada, yada, yada. Well, the US government at this time said openly Hollywood is the best place, it's the most powerful tool we have. To make propaganda, and they did with the famous players Lasky, who created pro-war, pro-patriotism, anti-immigrant, anti-socialist communist propaganda for the government. Now, no one was ever fingered for Taylor's murder, though there was a long-running investigation, which basically found way too many people who would have had motives, including some like mafia ties that he would have had. Ultimately, that's what led to the case fizzling out. It's still unsolved today, and it's still considered to be one of history's biggest, like not history's one of Hollywood's biggest mysteries. There were basically just way too many people who had it in for Taylor who had the motive, essentially, to want to do something to him. But the big thing about him is this scandal and the spinning out, finding all these ties and finding out he did all these scandalous things, it shaped the public image of Hollywood again as this like rotted cesspool and something fetid, something corrupt, something sinful that you didn't want to give your money to. So this environment of, you know, like rape, murder, injustice, sexual deviancy, this is the environment that the Hollywood film industry was taking shape in. So as the 20s marched on, the silent films that starred giants like Mary Pickford began to give way to the talkies, and a new generation of stars were born, as basically personality was carried over the airwaves in a new way, um, into the parasocial hearts of fans across the nation. This new rise in films with sounds signaled the end for career giants like Buster Keaton, but they meant the rise of greats like Gene Harlow, Mae West, Catherine Hepburn, Clark Gable, and all the rest. What it also meant, though, was more money. Stars during this time period made obscene amounts of money, and the heads of the studios made even more. It created a never-ending cycle of greed. Films were being pumped out to the extreme, and everyone was pushing the limits, trying to give the audience something they had never seen before, or at the very least, a new variation of something that could get them hooked. In this hand over fist financial environment, organized crime snuck in, seeding through various layers of drug trafficking, human trafficking, and racketeering that all but strangled the stars of the studios. Bugsy Siegel was one such mobster who later on in the 1930s would take control of the city's extras pool, like all the, you know, all the extras that you see milling about in a coffee shop scene or in a city street scene. Um, he he took control of them, he took over them and basically ensured that studios had to keep him on the payroll if they wanted access to the extras they needed for extensive background work. That was the story, allegedly, that he would just like pull extras if you didn't pay him, yeah, which is just crazy. I would believe, I would believe he would do something like that. But after the drugs-related death of beloved Wallace Reed, who was one of these big major stars and kind of heartthrobs, who officially died from influenza while in a sanatorium, the face of Hollywood's deep-rooted addictions were finally exposed. Reed, it turned out, had been sustaining a substantial, substantial morphine habit that was being enabled by the studios and managers and agents and doctors since a train accident he had experienced in 1919. By the time he was sectioned, put in the sanatorium in 1923, he was a full-blown, full-blown morphine addict who went straight into serious, serious, serious withdrawals. They did not think he was gonna live. Um eventually he did die. He died of influenza while he was trying to withcover, recover from withdrawals. His wife, after his death, she went on this big press tour, this big anti-drug press tour, and was talking about how sinful Hollywood was. And she would tell the press that her husband could have been saved uh if he had taken one more dose of the poison that had brought him to the sanatorium. But apparently Wallace Reed had rejected it. That was the story. Noble Wallace Reed rejects this thing at the end, which is the truth, is probably just his body succumbed after years of morphine addiction in a time when they didn't know how to manage addiction or what it was even really doing to the body, right? Um, in 1929, when Jean Eagles, a promising actress and wife of Jack Pickford, hearing that name again, uh, died of a fatal heroin overdose. The public saw the drugs trade in Hollywood for what it was. Studios were at best looking the other way while their stars medicated and partied into the night on the hardest substances they could get their hands on. At worst, they were supplying it and complicit in the trade and activity. Uh heroin, opium, cocaine, there was pretty much nothing off limits and few things illegal yet under Uncle Sam's clamping jaws. But it was clear that something had to be done because, you know, you've got people dying now of heroin overdoses and morphine overdoses when they're in their early 20s, these like promising stars who were also making a lot of money for a lot of people. Um, this something's gotta be done. So films of the time were beginning to echo the loose morals and the social depravity of real life going on behind the scenes, despite the glitz and the glamour that swathed the stars on Paramount and MGM lots. Freaks, for example, by Todd Browning, showed the exploitation of show business in both its production and its story by casting actual sideshow performers with a range of physical disabilities and deformities in a twisted revenge story. It's so good if you have not seen Freaks, you you really have to go and see it. Uh, when it came out, viewers were shocked. They were shocked by the cast, and then they were also shocked by the fact that at the start, you're kind of framed to see these people as monsters, and then by the end, you see that the monsters are the normally abled people who treat these people in horrendous, horrendous ways, right? So that kind of sends this message that threatens the status quo. Then you've got movies like Babyface, She Done Him Wrong, Night Nurse, and Tarzan and His Mate, which feature these sexually freed independent women, and that becomes another controversy altogether and a threat to Americans' very Christian right-wing establishment, which was throwing a huge, huge, huge, huge hissy fit at this time period. By the time films like The Public Enemy, Red Dust, and Scarface were becoming the norm, the studios knew they had to crack down hard. Increasing pressure from America's religious right, along with an increasingly outraged government who was no doubt threatening to pull their funding from studios like famous players Lasky, who were getting, remember, propaganda film funding from the government. They had had enough, and the studios were like, right, we're we're gonna lose money now. We gotta do something. So enter William H. Hayes. William H. Hayes was a prominent member of the Indiana Republican Party who held different positions with the party here and there from 1900 to 1918. He was also the campaign manager for Warren G. Harding in 1920 when he ran a successful presidential campaign and became the president. In thanks, Harding made Hayes the postmaster general. And it was this position that would lead him into one of the country's biggest scandals of all time. Now, I'm gonna have to heavily simplify this because it's very, very complicated. I learned about this in high school, I took the tests I needed, and then I completely wiped it from my brain. So essentially, William William Hayes was involved in the teapot dome scandal, which was essentially, in the simplest terms, a huge public corruption scandal, government corruption scandal, in which, to my understanding, oil companies basically got caught bribing members of the government in order to access oil fields in Wyoming and California. Now, where William H. Hayes comes in is as Harding's former campaign manager and the new postmaster general, he got caught in the middle of the scandal with his pants down after it was revealed that he had both taken and distributed government liberty bonds as part of his system of bribery and corruption. Now, Hayes ended up being forced to resign his cabinet position on January 14th, 1922, but he was just in time, wouldn't you know it? Because a little thing called the motion picture producers and distributors of America was just getting started. And they were looking for a new boss who could really, you know, get a foothold, get a control, get a grip on the scandalous and deviant Hollywood studio system. They they wanted to get them under control. Um, the goal of this new organization, this motion picture producers and distributors of America, was to quote unquote improve the image of the movie industry and basically get them back in line with what the federal government wanted and what the religious, the big religious groups who funded the government, what they wanted. So Hayes is a long-standing Presbyterian and a member of the Republican Party who had just been kicked out of the cabinet for massive bribery and corruption. Uh, he was tapped as the ideal candidate. And he was paid today's equivalent of $680,000 for his first year in the head role as what became kind of known colloquially as the Films Are. Now, the organization sent Hayes on his way with a straightforward approach at first, keep studio films from getting banned and reduce costs for the studios by getting the films that were being produced cleaned up enough that they could pass through these increasingly puritanical standards that were kind of being reforced, reinforced by the protests of religious groups and pressure from the government. The first result that Hayes released was called The Formula, which is not really clear what specifically that was, which is probably why it failed. It was a complete failure. It's kind of just dismissed, brushed under the rug as like just being a joke because it just didn't, it just didn't keep anything from being censored or banned. People were just like, Yeah, forget that. It didn't work. So shortly after, Hayes released his the don'ts and be carefuls list, which is just absolutely fascinating. Now, this is where big stars like Tolula Bankhead, Mae West, and Carrie Grant, and a lot of other people start getting themselves into trouble. The don'ts and be carefuls list was 11 absolute don't ever do this, like actives, right? Like, don't ever do these 11 things. And then 26, which were considered those were the be carefuls. And they were like, we would prefer you not to do any of these, but if you are gonna do them, you have to do them like very, very specifically this way and no other way. Okay. And the idea between this, like, don'ts and be carefuls list was simple. And if they they thought Hayes thought, I'll give the studios this list and they'll censor themselves before anyone can come along and ban their films. That seems like it's just gonna work really, really well. This first original list contains a pretty obvious giveaway of the kind of McCarthyism direction things would soon be taking. Um, and here were some of the things on the list. So the 11 things that you absolutely under no circumstances were allowed to do: no profanity, no nudity, suggested nudity, no illegal drug trafficking, homosexuality, interrational relationships, which they called miscegenation, miscegenation. Don't know, never heard that word before in my life. Sex hygiene or VDs, you can't show childbirth scenes, no children's sex organs. I agree with that, but it's crazy they had to write that down, which makes me think there were probably some like really insane films being made. Um, no ridicule of the cur clergy. That's on a don't ever do it. Um, no offense to national feeling, race, or creed, uh, and no willful offense to any other nation or creed. So can't basically no, no political slurring of America or anyone outside of America, right? Now, here were the be carefuls, which are just awesome. Very telling to me. Um, the be carefuls were the use of the flag, arson, international relations in general, use of firearms, theft and safe cracking, brutality and gruesomeness, committing crimes, treason against the US, cruelty to animals, smuggling, liquor and scenes, surgical operations, sympathy for criminals, sedition, rape, marriage infidelity, fatality and warfare, lustful kissing, suggestive dance scenes, undressing scenes, even in silhouette, and public ridicule of politicians. Absolutely ridiculous. And you can see I like the you see why we're talking about this now? You see why you see some similarities poking up. Um, Hayes did his best to enforce his first kind of loose variation of the code to the best of his abilities, but he was a weak little man. Go and look at pictures of him. Or you, if you're on Patreon, you will have already seen the pictures of this weak little ratty man. I don't even want to say that because it's an insult to rats. They're they're noble creatures. He was, he was, he was not, he was not. Um, and he couldn't enforce this code either, right? He he he claimed that he had it was this noble cause and everything was gonna change, but no one listened to it. It was like he was he stood on this platform of like, we've got to look out for the 10-year-olds, we've got to look out for the 10-year-olds. Um, the studios basically just ignored the rules. They continued to platform giants like May West, the backbone of whose films were all about sexual impropriety, as far as tight wads like Hayes would have been concerned. And thus came the Doom Book and a Hollywood blacklist that took down the careers of absolute giants. So after the Don'ts and Be Carefuls list, we finally get to the Doom Book. And I and like I said, the Doom Book, it's one of these like big mysteries. This is now, I've never wanted, I've never been like, I want this Hollywood collectible, but I have never wanted something so bad in my life than to get my hand on my hands on one of my hand, I'm I'm I'm I'm a pirate now, um, to get my hands on one of these, a copy of these Doom books. They're considered to be lost, but they were said to have been leather bound and distributed by Hayes to the studios as like proper books. And I know someone out there has one of these somewhere, and it's like, please, can I have it? Please, please. I'll even like not tell anyone. I will like not even read it on to anyone in the I will not tell anyone. I'll sign a contract, man. But if I I would just die to get my hands on one of these, I I can't even imagine. But we get the Doom book after it's the 1920s. You've got Hayes coming in, he's this film czar, and he's supposed to clean up Hollywood. And he's pushing the studios as hard as he could, but they're just not listening. So Hayes decides I've got to try a new tactic. And this tactic was the Doom Book, okay? This leather-bound book of 150 celebrities who it supposedly, it wasn't just celebrities, it was also like any anyone, any creative. So it was like actors, dancers, extras, directors, producers, writers, like anybody, anyone, anyone, anyone. Anyone who would engage in lascivious, problematic or what they considered at the time seditious behavior that could threaten a production from getting banned. And the idea was to give the studios a list of people that the government didn't want to see, that the studio, that the like the main this new governing body didn't want to see, that they said the public didn't want to see, and that the religious groups were saying openly that they didn't want to see. And so they thought if we give them this list, the studios just won't put these people in these movies, and then voila, everything just kind of takes care of itself, right? Because the studios will just take the decision to stop putting those people in movies and they'll push them out. But here's what's crazy this is a mystery thing. One of these books has never popped up, but everyone is 100% certain that this book existed. There's references to it in the media. There's times when certain celebrities, as we're about to talk about, get asked about it. They get told, like they'll have a reporter who straight up says to them while they're like snapping those crazy photos with the flash, they'll they'll say, Oh, Talula, you you're in the Doom book. What do you think about that? So we know it existed, okay? Not a single copy has ever shown up anywhere in the world, not anywhere, ever. But certain names have long been associated with Will Hayes' infamous Doom book. And this is the juiciest part of the episode. I'm so excited. We're just gonna have just like hold my hand, reach out, hold my hand, hold my hand. I'm so excited to have this conversation with you because no one else wants to have this deep dive conversation with me. So we're gonna have it here now. This is the juiciest part of the episode because this is when it turns out that Hollywood's at least elites were holding on to this like endless parade of secrets that they didn't want anyone in decent society knowing. But then we found out everything because of this doom. So let's do it. Let's talk about some of those infamous names that we're pretty sure were on the list, either because they confirmed it or the media said something, or very, very, very wide, pretty solid speculation on this. Okay. So the biggest one that's like a hundred percent is Tulula Bankhead. Now, Tulula Bankhead was one of the first and most prominent names on Hayes' Doom book list. Like, if you look anywhere, everyone's like, oh no, Tulula, Talula, Tulula, Talula. And we we pretty much do know this because she basically told us. Um, Bankhead was uh one of those legends. Like, she's a legend, she was a legend on stage, she was a legend on screen, and she got her first round of exposure in silent films. Um, and the movies were like When Men Betray 30 a week and the trap, you know, silent movie title. But she really blew up in the 20s when she appeared in over a dozen plays in London over eight years. She was like fine, she bought herself a Bentley and she used to cruise around. She's all glamorous. Um, when she finally made her big break in Hollywood in the 1930s, she already had a reputation as an established actress, and that reputation carried Tolula Bankhead through films like Devil in the Deep with Carrie Cooper, Charles Lawton, and Carrie Grant. Now, acting wasn't really what got Tolula Bankhead in trouble with Will H. Hayes. Her movies weren't like particularly like raunchy or seditious or anything like that. What got Bankhead put on his conservative shit list was her open expression, both of her bisexuality and her love of partying and drugs. Bankhead was essentially one of the last true bohemians, really, in my personal opinion. This is this is when we see the end of this kind of like that like artistic bohemian lifestyle. And she was she was really, really like one of those and was never quiet about it. Um, bankhead got her start in New York, where she had become a member of the women's group known as this is so happy Pride Month, by the way. Uh this women's group known as the Four Riders of the Algonquin Hotel. Now, the Algonquin Hotel in the 20s and was like this hot again, it's this it was a bohemian kind of hot spot. It was like all the big literary minds, all the big artists, the who's who of thought and culture they used to gather here. And Bankhead just slid right in, and she became a part of this group of four women uh called the four writers of the Algonquin Hotel. And they were all basically bisexual or lesbians. Now, it was at the Algonquin Hotel that Bankhead started partying with this crew, and that's where she started dabbling in cocaine and marijuana. Years later, she would quip about this time saying, My father warned me to avoid alcohol when I got to New York. He didn't say anything about women in cocaine, which is just fantastic. Fantastic. Bankhead never picked up drinking, but she fell in love with cocaine. Cocaine isn't habit forming, and I know because I've taken it for years, she once told a reporter. Her exploits went on. In the 1920s, MI5 had to approach the headmaster of Eaton Private School, which is where like all the country's leaders um are educated, after a rumor had spread that Bankhead had been seducing the schoolboys during her time in London. And uh the only reason that that investigation didn't discover anything was because the headmaster of Eaton just refused to answer questions or cooperate with any investigation whatsoever. But Bankhead didn't keep much else about herself a secret. She described herself as a quote-unquote very satisfied Jane after having sex with Johnny Wisemuler, the actor who played Tarzan. Then in 1932, she got tongues wagging again after she complained about not having a new lover for six months. Bankhead would go on to be tied to men and women romantically, including Rex Whistler, Dola Dunsmuir, Patsy Kelly. Uh Bankhead referred to herself as ambisextress, which is just also, again, so fantastic. Uh, this was exactly the kind of behavior that William H. Hayes had been made films are to squash out. So he made Talula Bankhead uh a target and he wanted to squash her like a bug. After that interview, when Talula complained about not having a lover for six months, he put her in the book and that immediately went to the media. And when the media confronted Tulula about it, she she went on record. This is in print publicly, when they were like, What do you think about William Hayes and his little doom book and you being on the list? And she said, and I quote, he's a little prick. Tallula was pushed out of Hollywood thanks to the book, which is obviously the sad part of the story by studios who wouldn't hire her. But that was not the end of her career because Tulula had already made a name for herself on Broadway and in the West End in London. So that's what she did. She went back to the stage, she rebirthed her image beneath the heat of the floodlights, and she went on. She survived. She continued to provide for herself. And William H. Hayes couldn't keep a bad bitch down. It will probably come as no surprise if you listened to my episode a few weeks back on Jean Harlow, um, that she was also allegedly at the top of the Doom Book list. Harlow was known for playing morally ambiguous, sexually liberated women who had this like sassy quick wit. And that wasn't something that repressed men like Hayes or the men of the American right claimed they wanted to see at the time. They didn't want it on in on televisions, on on movie screens in front of their women and children. They didn't want their women and children acting like the women that they, you know, took to hotels. That's not what they wanted to see. So up Jean's name went on the list. Sadly, Hayes wouldn't have much time to affect. Well, it's not sadly. Thankfully, Hayes wouldn't have much time to affect Jean's career as she was dead at the age of 26 before really the full reverberations of Hayes Code had been enforced. Um, sorry, she was she was dead at 26 in 1937. The Hayes Code took effect in 1934, is when they really started like hammering down the enforcement. So she she only had a few years um before she passed away. And if you want to know more about Gene Harlow and all that, please go back and listen to that episode. I know what you're thinking so far. You're thinking, all right, so this was just all about like shutting women up and like just making sure women couldn't be sexual or sassy or smart in films. But it wasn't just women on the Doom Book list. The men were just as likely to find themselves getting the invisible axe, no matter how rich or powerful, or beloved or skilled they were, no matter how much money they made for the studios. James Whale is the perfect example of that. Without a doubt, James Whale was one of the most prolific, profound, and beloved directors of the golden age of Hollywood, and he still is to this day. He also happened to be allegedly at the top of Hay's Doom Book list. Now, you listening to this are most likely to know James Whale from like what I think it's got to be considered his seminal film because like literally every single person on the planet knows this film. Frankenstein, the 1931 film adaptation, Mary Shelley's novel, starring Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's monster. I mean, like everybody knows it. I've got it tattooed on my body, everybody knows it. It's hard to describe just how big a hit that movie was. It took in 12 million dollars during its first release. And remember, 1931 was the Great Depression, and it took in 12 million dollars, which is probably like, I don't know, a billion dollars today in today's money. Um, and it wasn't the only hit that James Well directed either. That was not the only one you would think, oh yeah, everybody who's given a bunch of money could could make one. Uh no, he made so many good movies. He made so many hit movies. He also directed The Old Dark House with Boris Karloff again in 1932, which got rediscovered and like re-released in 2017 after being lost forever. Uh in 1933, he made the New York Times best film of the year with The Invisible Man, which again still beloved to this day. The next major hit from Whale was The Bride of Frankenstein, which is considered to be like his his I guess I guess like his masterpiece, his magnum opus. Uh, critics loved it, the public loved it. He, I think he'd been kind of hesitant to do it because he didn't want to get like stuck doing horror films, but people loved it. And then he directed a slew of other acclaimed and not so acclaimed films. Like he he did so many films before and after the horror films: The Kiss Before the Mir by Candlelight, One More River, Remember Last Night, and that's just a few of them. And despite One More River having some really overt sexual sadism themes implied in the husband and wife relationship, Wales' horror films at Universal weren't what landed him in Hayes Burn book. For that, the Barb was sharpened over Whale's sexuality. James Whale was an openly homosexual man throughout his career. And again, remember this is the like nine, this is the 1910s, 20s, 30s that these people are moving around in when you could go to jail for this stuff, right? He was not James Whale was not someone who publicized it. He wasn't like like out waving a flag, he didn't like have a flag out in front of his house, which I'm not saying is a bad thing. I'm just saying that's just not how he was. But he did not ever, around anyone who was ever actually around him, ever hide it either. He lived openly as a couple with his partner David Lewis from 1930 until 1952, just a few years before his death. Insiders called James Whale the quote unquote queen of Hollywood, and those who knew Whale said it was clear and evident from anyone in his personal atmosphere that, you know, he was what he was. In the 50s, he became notorious for his pool parties, which featured an array of Hollywood's handsomest young hopefuls playing in the pool for Whale's entertainment. He didn't swim himself, despite his last name being Whale. It was this honesty, this insistence on living truthfully as himself that landed Whale on Hayes' list, and allegedly that led him to being pushed out of Hollywood. The last successful Hollywood film he made was The Man in the Iron Mask in 1939, which came after a nasty dust-up with the get this Los Angeles console for Nazi Germany in 1937. They tried to get one of his movies banned, one of his war films, because they didn't like the way the Germans were portrayed. Whale was pushed out of Hollywood and eventually migrated to Broadway in 1944, but it was a failed start. His play, Hand in Glove, was not well received and no one bought tickets. And when he went to try his hand at directing a couple more times, mostly in short films, uh it just, it just nothing landed. It all came to nothing. James Whale took his life on May 29th, 1957. He was 67 years old. He left behind a note which read, To all I love, do not grieve for me. My nerves are all shot, and for the last year I have been in agony day and night, except when I sleep with sleeping pills, and any peace I have by day is when I am drugged by pills. I have a wonderful life, but it is over, and my nerves get worse, and I am afraid they will have to take me away. So please forgive me, all those I love, and may God forgive me too, but I cannot bear the agony, and it is best for everyone this way. The future is just old age and illness and pain. Goodbye, and thank you for all your love. I must have peace, and this is the only way, Jimmy. Queer film scholars now study elements of Wales films as important pieces of queer film history. So if you want to do something to celebrate this Pride Month and you haven't quite found what you feel comfortable doing yet, uh, why not go and enjoy a pre-code film from James Whale? Go pop in a universal horror film in memory of James Whale. William Haynes was another popular young man who found himself wrapped up in the nasty snare of the Hayes Code. Haynes first made his name in the 1926 hit Brown of Harvard. And in this film, he played this arrogant young man who gets humbled by the end. And it also featured Jack Pickford and Mary Bryan, so it was a huge hit. The next box office hit that put Haynes' name in the bright lights and the papers was Show People with Marion Davies. From that point to 1932, he was one of the top five box office stars. People would literally buy tickets to whatever it was as long as he was in it. When the talkies took over, he was one of the few lucky ones who was able to make the transition. In 1930, he was voted by the Quigley Poll as one of the top box office attractions in the country. Then in 1933, the trouble started. Haynes was arrested in a YMCA with a young sailor he had picked up in Pershing Square. Haynes' secret double life was finally exposed for all the world to see. As it turns out, not only was he a gay man, but Haynes had been living in a committed relationship with a man, one Mr. James Jimmy Shields, since 1926. It was a huge scandal. Louis B. Mayer, the head of MGM at the time, who was also, remember, the man who exposed himself to 12-year-old Shirley Temple. He confronted Haynes and he told William Haynes, if you want to continue this career, you're going to get married right now. And they demanded, uh Louis B. Mayer demanded that he get married in a lavender marriage that would be arranged by the studio. Now, this is like I almost cried writing out this, like when I was reading this story and writing all this out. Haynes refused Louis B. Mayer's demands to live as anything other than what he was. He refused the Lavender marriage and he remained with his partner, Jimmy Shields, for 47 more years. But his contract with MGM, the biggest studio on earth at this time, was terminated. Haynes was fired, his contract was ripped up, and he was basically out on his butt. After that, despite being the biggest artist, being the biggest actor in the world, essentially the Brad Pitt, um, there just wasn't much of a chance for him. He made a few more minor films, but by the end of the 30s, he had officially retired from acting. He and his husband, because that's what they were, whether uh I don't I don't care if if people like, well, they it wasn't legal. I don't care. Marriage is not a it is a legal thing, but it's also not. It's just a commitment. Um, and that's what they were. They they considered themselves married. Everyone that knew them personally considered them married. So we're gonna consider Haynes and Jimmy Shields married. They went on together to have a highly successful interior design and antique dealing career together. Their early clients were their friends and included names like Joan Crawford, Gloria Swanson, Carol Lombard, Marion Davies, and George Kukor. Haynes also designed an office for Frank Sinatra, which is so cool. And he did the interiors of the Mocambo nightclub, which you can still go and look up. The couple were called, and I quote, the happiest married couple in Hollywood by Joan Crawford. And that, to be honest, seemed to hold true to the end because they stayed together forever. Haynes was diagnosed with lung cancer in the summer of 1973 and died in the hospital the day after Christmas that same year. A few months later, his partner, Jimmy Shields, who had been with him the for the greatest portion of his life, um, died after a long session of drinking and taking barbiturates. The note he left behind read, Goodbye to all of you who have tried so hard to comfort me in my loss of William Haynes, who I have been with since 1926. I now find it impossible to go it alone. I am much too lonely. The two were interred side by side together in Woodlawn Memorial Cemetery. Now, these weren't the only names on the Dune Book. Like I said, there was 150 actors, and the reasons that they were on there, you could go on and on and on and on and on and on and on. Um, but these were like some of the big ones. Fred Astaire was alleged to have made his way onto that list, though one struggles to understand why. I'm guessing it was because he was not racist and he tried to get like black people on his sets and things. Uh Clark Gable was also on the list for a handful of boundary pushing films that he was in from the 1920s to 1934, especially the ones he was in with Gene Harlow, like Red Dust. Wow, go and check that one out. You think your hockey players are doing something, go and watch Red Dust. Uh Joan Blondell, of course, was allegedly on the list for her frequent characterization of powerful, sometimes sexually empowered women. I love Joan Blondell. I spent the day uh just yesterday before I filmed this, watching a whole bunch of Joan Blondell movies. Absolutely love her. I love her in East of Heaven with Ben Crosby, where they get it's so good. Absolutely adore her. Um, but she got into a lot of trouble for the film Night Nurse, which was a very controversial pre-code film. Barbara Stanwyck was obviously there as well. Also, love me some Barbara Stanwyck. Um, mostly she was there because she was in this movie Babyface, which I mentioned earlier. And Babyface was all about um this woman basically like sleeping her way up the chain in order to get power. Like she just keeps going for increasingly richer, more powerful men, and the only purpose is for her to gain money and power over them. Uh, and people didn't like that. And so she ended up on the Hayes list for that. She was in some other stuff, but babyface is the big one that people didn't like. Um, but also Edward G. Robinson was on the list, James Cagney was on the list. Uh, anyone with even a hint of what Hayes kind of saw as this quote-unquote degeneracy through his Presbyterian Republican eyes, they were up for the chop. And like I said, it wasn't just the actors, it was sound people, it was script writers, it was directors, it was everybody, editors, like anybody and everybody who could be connected and shamed and pushed out because they were a minority or misunderstood or progressive or anti-war, they were they were basically like pushed, pushed, pushed out and chopped. Now, I know some of you might still at this point be thinking, like, oh wow, that's some juicy gossip, but why does this matter? And it matters because we can see ripples of this happening again today, right? And the the Hayes Code had a dramatic effect on films and had a dramatic effect on culture in really powerful, really bad ways. Um, while the Hayes Code was little more than a joke to Hollywood in the early years, by 1934, it had become a threat that had to be taken seriously. Religious boycott groups in America picked up steam as the groups became more and more disgusted at films of like Mae West and Gene Harlow and anyone else with half an ounce of independence, joy, or counterculture in them. The government and the film industry, both feeling the pressure, decided something had to be done. So the production code administration or PCA was created. The PCA reviewed all scripts produced by the studios and gave a seal of approval or not. Now, the seal of approval was required for the film to be distributed to national and international audiences, and it wasn't just that. Studios could face fines of up to $25,000, which is $500,000 in today's money for releasing their films without a clearance from the PCA. You couldn't just hitch up your bootstraps and release your own film, not unless you were ready to tussle with the PCA and bankrupt yourself in the process. The sweeping censorship bands suddenly found their feet. Queer characters practically disappeared from movies overnight and wouldn't make a reappearance for years. Queer coded characters emerged, individuals who left hints of who they were, but living and loving out loud, that was completely and totally forbidden. The idea that sinful behavior had to be punished was reinforced. Noir films were reshaped entirely, many losing their morally ambiguous or dark endings. Women and minorities were especially hard hit. The bold, sexually liberated women who had been depicted by self-actualized and independent women like Mae West, Gene Harlow, and Norma Shearer were no more. Their brash and brazen independence and self-assertion, their wit and sash was pushed aside for a softer, more demure damsel in distress, more accidentally witty than she was wily or otherwise. Black people were pushed to the fringes, Asian people were pushed to the fringes, interracial relationships were totally banned. In short, Hollywood movies after 1934 got watered down. The Hayes Code would hold strong until it finally collapsed in 1968. But admittedly, thankfully, some filmmakers, some studios, some actors rebelled, but they just did not have the freedom to make things openly the way they once had. The behind-the-scenes hedonism got quieter and the drug deals got slicker and more distant, but the films occasionally still played in the face of the new PCA laws. The Outlaw in 1943 set audiences on fire when Jane Russell's cleavage was featured heavily in the cinematography and advertising, which, fair enough, right? I mean, have you seen Jane Russell's cleavage? It does deserve its own cinematography. That is, it could have its own film. Another middle finger came to the Mora Police again in 1944 when director Preston Sturge, Sturgis, Sturges subverted code enforcement entirely by creating a comedy. This is so funny to me, and it reminds me of Gilmore Girls. Uh, by creating a comedy about a pregnant woman who can't remember who the father of her baby is. It's called The Miracle at Morgan's Creek, and it bypassed moral objections by being so witty and fast-paced that it basically just flew completely over the heads of the censors. They just, they, they, it was too quick and good for them, essentially. And it just is tell me that's not Gilmore Girls coded. In 1955, the man with the golden arm was released without the PCA seal of approval. Now, this was a big no-no, and people are like, Oh god, this is it. This is gonna be the end. And this is this was a Frank Sinatra film, right? The man with the golden arm was a Frank Sinatra film, and it was all about this man who was battling narcotics addiction and uh addiction, and that was supposed to be a no-no, an absolute, you don't show drug use, you don't show drug abuse, and you certainly don't ever in like infer or hint that an American citizen might fall prey to drug addiction. But the man with the golden arm did it with Frank Sinatra, and even though they went out without the PCA seal of approval, which was supposed to be against it and they were supposed to get fined, they won three Academy awards. And the PCA was ultimately, you know, William Hayes was ultimately left holding his his dick in his hand. There's no, there's really no better way to say that. Um, there were other ways to get around the Hayes code, though, cartoons basically. Cartoons were still allowed to do whatever they wanted. So you had Woody Woodpecker that like people died in Woody Woodpecker cartoons and other things like that. And you had like Betty Boop, which was a very, very sexual. There's like a horrible Betty Boop where she gets raped by like the big businessman. It's absolutely fucking horrific. Um, but all cartoons were basically allowed to just get on doing whatever they wanted to do. Um, with the exception of when Betty Boop did eventually get shown on TV, they did make her buy a long, she she was in a longer, more covering dress than she normally would have been in the older cartoons that showed in the movies. But yeah, cartoons were a big loophole and they abused that as much as they could until the Hayes code finally collapsed in 1968. What's really kind of interesting to me, anyway, when we step back and we kind of look at this time period is the unintended consequences. It's all those unintended consequences of Hayes and his infamous Doom book. I mean, the ultimate goal of Hayes was to stamp out what he saw as this kind of like moral degeneracy and perversion. But the very act of being hinted at in this infamous Doom book really only made people more infamous and it drew more attention to what was going on at Hollywood. It made Hollywood look worse because the second your name was associated with the Doom book, it was like kicking a hornet's nest. The press was right in there, digging as deep as they could into every facet of your life to try to find out what it was that you were hiding. And there was, there was a lot to hide. There was a lot to hide. I've been reading some crazy stuff over the last couple of weeks, which I'll be sharing more over on Patreon and over on TikTok. Um, and we're gonna be covering some of it in future episodes, not immediately, not immediately. Um, but it it's it's it's insane. And as we've already seen through the Kardashians, through the series on Lou Taylor, Brian Wilson, the Britney Spears conservatorship, Hollywood is a twisted place, and it has been from the very beginning. That has not changed. The girls on the casting couch, the children abused, and oh uh, uh, we're gonna have a Charlie Chaplin episode. Speaking of abusing children, uh, the system is the same. It just refines itself decade after decade, generation after generation, getting sharper and quieter at its craft of subjugating and exploiting, subjugating and exploiting. It's always been there. Sydney Sweeney today is Alana Turner of yesterday. The cycle repeats, reshapes, and continues. But we, as the audience, do have power over that. No matter what anyone says, we have power enough to spot the patterns, recognize them for what they are, and disengage where we see them. And that line will be difficult and different for everyone. Ultimately, though, it's up to each one of us to decide where we're gonna draw the line and what we are and aren't willing to be a part of. You know, it's the same thing that I always say. One thing is definitely for certain though. Hollywood is not done giving us scandals quite yet. And that's it. That's it for today's episode. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you learned something. I hope you're as fascinated as I am by all the craziness that was going on behind the scenes in the golden age of Hollywood. If you want more deep dives into the twisted world of Hollywood, including my deep dives into the Kardashians, Hollywood cults, and the psychedelic revolution and its ties to the CIA, head over to patreon.com slash scandalqueens and join me over there. If you're more into human psychology, relationships, or narcissism, head over to my Substack where I post essays, guides, and all kinds of written goodness on the human psyche. You can get that over on the real ebjohnson.substack.com. For everything else, follow me at the real ebonson on all social media platforms. Well, not all of them, because I am I'm I'm on Facebook and Twitter technically, but I never post there. Um but YouTube, Instagram, TikTok at The Real EB Johnson, you name it, that's me. Uh last but not least, if you loved the podcast, if you loved this episode, if you thought I was juicy, if you learned something, why not leave a quick five-star review? It helps me grow the podcast and it also helps me fight back against the Swifties, who I've mentioned this briefly in passing, but they tried to tank me a few months ago by flooding me with bad reviews. So if you want to piss off your local Swifty, please consider leaving a five-star review on Apple or Spotify. It's quick, it's easy, and most importantly, it's free for everyone else. Thank you so much for listening. I will be back next week with the start of another Deep Dark series dive into another side of Hollywood that they don't want you to see. And this one, a lot more modern. We're gonna be bringing it back into the modern times faces that you're familiar with. So be there or be square. And as always, keep your secrets closed and your receipts closer. Stay scandalous, queens. Bye bye.