You Must Remember This

Today we’re commemorating the life and career of Judy Garland, who died 45 years ago this month. signed to a studio contract at the age of 13, encouraged to become a pill addict as a teenage MGM contract player, crowned a superstar by The Wizard of Oz at age 17 and married for the first time at 18, Garland lived more than her share of life before reaching legal maturity. But today, we’re going pay particular attention the last two decades of her life, the post-MGM years, during which Garland battled through one comeback after another, ultimately establishing intimate relationships with her fans on TV and in live performances that would cement Garland’s legacy as one of the most powerful performers of all time. These triumphs were, at the time, usually overlooked by an essentially paternalistic mainstream media which existed to criticize and condescend to nonconformists and which, much to Garland’s dismay, delighted in the negative and the tragic. We’ll explore Garland’s struggles to assert herself within an industry that nearly killed her, and against a media which seemed to be out to get her. We’ll also take a look at Garland’s rise as a gay icon, and the connection between Garland’s death and the Stonewall Riots, which took place the night of Garland’s funeral. Full shownotes at youmustrememberthispodcast.com.

During the last year of his life, Kurt Cobain was obsessed with Frances Farmer, an actress from his hometown of Seattle who died in 1970. Farmer’s beauty and unique screen presence made her a star, but her no-bullshit ballsiness made her a pariah -- and a target of a hostile and predatory media -- in 1930s Hollywood. Farmer’s career went down the tubes in the 1940s when a couple of incidents of inconvenient drunkenness led to her being committed to an insane asylum by her own mother, and given a lobotomy. Or, so Cobain and his wife, Courtney Love, frequently told journalists while Cobain was promoting In Utero, the Nirvana album that includes Cobain’s tribute to the actress, "Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle" (Love also claimed to have been married to Cobain whilst wearing a dress once owned by Farmer, and the couple named their daughter Frances, although that was likely at least co-inspired by Frances McKee of The Vaselines). Unbeknownst to them, the notion that Farmer was lobotomized was a fiction invented by a biographer with ties to Scientology, a lie which was then dramatized in a Mel Brooks-produced movie. By the time Kurt and Courtney were championing Farmer as a proto-punk martyr in the 1990s, the legend of Frances Farmer as patron saint of…well, women like Courtney Love, had been printed so many times that it had swallowed up the truth, and loomed much larger than her actual body of movie work. Today we’ll explore how, and why, that legend got printed, and try to explain how Frances Farmer, of all people, became an avatar for all the other the beautiful, bright women whose self-destruction can be traced back to their signing of a studio contract. Today we have special guest stars! Nora Zehetner (who you may know remember from Brick, Grey’s Anatomy, Mad Men or more recently her recurring role on IFC’s Maron) played Frances Farmer; Brian Clark played Kurt Cobain, and Noah Segan IS Rex Reed. More shownotes at youmustrememberthispodcast.com

A Very Special Halloween Episode! The writer-producer Val Lewton produced and ghost-wrote 11 films in just three years as head of the horror unit at RKO, many of which -- Cat People, I Walked With A Zombie, The Curse of the Cat People, The Body Snatcher -- were huge hits, helping to keep the troubled studio afloat in the early 1940s, and becoming influential genre film classics. On today -- which would have been Lewton's 110th birthday, if not for his untimely death in 1951 -- we take a look back at his life and career, and ask the question: did Hollywood kill Val Lewton?

Welcome to the second episode of You Must Remember This, the podcast devoted to exploring the secret and or/forgotten histories of Hollywood's first century. Today, we look back to 1979, when -- while the music world was full of punk and post-disco coke rock, and the movie world was making the transition from the "New Hollywood" of the '70s into the blockbuster age -- Frank Sinatra recorded Trilogy: Past, Present and Future, a triple album including big band standards ("The Past"), covers from "the rock era" including Billy Joel and Beatles songs, but also "Theme from New York, New York" ("The Present") and, most amazingly, a 40 minute song cycle about life, love, death and visiting outer space ("The Future"). We'll take a look at how and why "The Future" was made, and theorize as to why it's fallen into the dustbin of pop cultural history.  

Welcome to You Must Remember This, a new podcast exploring the secret and/or forgotten histories of Hollywood's first century, written, narrated, and edited by Karina Longworth. In our first episode, Karina and guest Farran Nehme explore the hard Hollywood life of Kim Novak.