Hollywood's Shocking First Sex Symbols

Nearly 100 years ago, films in Hollywood were so much sexier and shocking than you might think they were. One of the most shocking things was how empowered and sexual women were in those films. Who were these women? And what are the scandalous reasons behind the censorship that came in? Joining Kate to tell her about these incredible women is journalist and author Mick LaSalle. This episode was edited by Tim Arstall. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener surveyhere https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK. All music from Epidemic Sounds. Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards! UK & Ireland listeners please place your vote on the Spotify mobile app here: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kate Lister?

  Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? Well, sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  In Our Time is a world-class seminar every week. Why was Jeremy a lonely snail? What were lines doing in York in the third century? I'm Misha Glennie, and every week I'm joined by expert guests to explore the ideas that shape our world.

• 0:53Speaker 02

  It's one of the first times, really, that you consistently see someone painting teeth. I know that sounds bonkers.

• 0:57Speaker 03

  If I was going to define mathematics, I would say it's the study of structure.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  In Our Time, listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Tea or coffee? Love a cup of tea.

• 1:11Kate Lister?

  Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister, and you are back once again listening to Betwixter Sheets. Come in, come in, find somewhere comfortable to plonk yourself. But I do have to tell you, and I have to keep telling you, this is an adult podcast about adults, other adults, about adulty things, and adulty way, original subjects, news being adulty, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I have to keep telling you that, because if anyone happens to get offended, we need to be able to go, well, tough tits and fair do's, we did tell you. Right, on with the show.

• 1:40Kate Lister?

  Hello, betwixters. You've joined me on a cavernous MGM soundstage in 1931. Huge overhead lights are burning, powder dust floats in the air, and the cameras are beginning to whirr for a scene. But this is Hollywood pre-code, pre-haze code, pre-censorship, and it's a very different world than the one you might be thinking of. And given that this is nearly 100 years before our present day, you might be surprised at the brazen sexuality on offer. You can't see me, but can you hear me clutching my pearls? And as you'll find out in today's episode, the women who lit up early Hollywood were pioneers in bringing sexuality to the big screen. But who were they?

• 2:25Kate Lister?

  And why did the censors come crashing down on them in the way that they did? Well, stick around and we will find out.

• 2:53Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. When you think of old Hollywood movies, you'd be forgiven for thinking of delicate women falling into the arms of big burly men. It's all a bit swoony and, well, it's a bit silly. But what it wasn't was raunchy. I mean, it was kind of raunchy in a very tame way, but it certainly wasn't hot and sexy stuff. It's suggestive at best. But that was Hollywood after the Hays Code was brought in. The women we're talking about today, Norma Shearer, Greta Garbo and Jeanne Harlow, were the women before that. They were the reason this code was needed because they brought sexuality to the big screen in a way that felt confident, modern,

• 3:36Kate Lister?

  and in many cases, quite shocking. I'm serious, I'm not easy to shock, but they managed it. But how much of this was their own doing? Or was it a product of powerful producers? It's a fascinating and entertaining world to go back to. And helping us do that today is the marvellous journalist and author Mick LaSalle. Right, without further ado, let's crack on.

• 4:03Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Mick LaSalle, how are you doing?

• 4:09Speaker 04

  I'm fine, how are you?

• 4:11Kate Lister?

  I'm doing fantastically well because I get to talk to you and I get to talk to you about an actress who, this is a terrible confession to someone who's done as much work on this area as you have, but somebody that I don't know an awful lot about, Norma Shearer.

• 4:25Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, she's not as famous as a lot of them.

• 4:28Kate Lister?

  No, I'm so glad you said that. So am I just being really ignorant?

• 4:31Speaker 04

  No.

• 4:31Kate Lister?

  But I'd not heard of her before and my producers hadn't heard of her before.

• 4:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:35Kate Lister?

  So before I opened with the question, why has nobody heard of her? I thought I'd just check that that was an actual thing.

• 4:41Speaker 04

  I think it's a few reasons, but I think maybe the main reason, like to say, there's a few reasons. Well, one reason is that the movies that she is best known for, or at least was best known for, which was The Women, which is with Joan Crawford, where she plays kind of a saintly character, which is totally against the pattern of her whole career. And the other was Romeo and Juliet, where she's terrible in it.

• 5:05Kate Lister?

  Oh, no.

• 5:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, she's awful. I mean, she's 35 and she's playing Juliet and she's just, she's just not good.

• 5:12Kate Lister?

  Oh, no.

• 5:13Speaker 04

  Yeah. And so for years, that was what was shown on television. Then the other reason is that she was married to Irving Thalberg, who was the big producer, actually, the head of production at MGM. And when he married her, she was already famous, but a lot of people just assume, oh, she only became a star because she was married to the boss.

• 5:34Kate Lister?

  Oh.

• 5:35Speaker 04

  That's the other thing. And then she had, because she was presented as the first lady of MGM, and I think that the next generation of film critics had it in for her and just kind of minimized her achievement. But I think also too, that's like the revenge against the true feminist. And one of the ways that revenge was taken on her, I think, was to just deny that she was the thing that she really was, which was the principal, you know, trailblazer at this time for women in film, her and Greta Garbo to an extent. But Shearer was really important. And can I tell you how I got interested?

• 6:11Kate Lister?

  Please do, yes.

• 6:12Speaker 04

  Okay, so. This is what happened is that I really liked movies from the pre-code period. It's the period where movies weren't censored in the United States.

• 6:22Kate Lister?

  That's the Hays Code, right?

• 6:24Speaker 04

  Right, and it was not censored from nineteen twenty-nine or so when talkies came in up to July first nineteen thirty-four, when all of a sudden they, the censorship really came in. And so it was a really good age for women in movies and it was a pretty good age for men in movies, too. And so I loved those movies, but when I was like my early twenties, Norma Shearer died. And I remember reading her obituary, which was written in the L.A. Times, and it was all about what a bad actress she was.

• 6:55Kate Lister?

  Oh.

• 6:56Speaker 04

  I know, I don't know how you do a hit piece on somebody who just die.

• 6:59Kate Lister?

  My god.

• 7:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I had this weird background. I had seen every pre-code movie that I could see, but I avoided everything with Norma Shearer because I just know, oh, well, she's the one, yeah, she's the one who's no good, right?

• 7:13Kate Lister?

  Right, yeah.

• 7:14Speaker 04

  So, so anyway, so I have this background where I know pre-code, but I don't know Norma Shearer. And for some reason, there was a cat that I had to feed, and the cat was very neurotic because his people were on vacation. So I decided to watch a movie with the cat rather than just feed the cat. Because I'd basically run out of any pre-codes, I got a movie called The Divorcee with Norma Shearer. And I put that on with the cat, you know, I had the cat there. And I started watching it and I, I almost fell off the couch because it was really, really daring. I thought, what is going on? And so then I watched another Norma Shearer movie and it was the same thing. And so then I, so that I, I went to the library to read all the books about how great Norma Shearer is,

• 7:59Speaker 04

  and there was nothing there. And then I started reading, like, and I would go to the index and look up Norma Shearer, and it was all about how she was lousy, she had played the perpetual virgin on screen, which I thought, this is nuts, you know, this, this didn't happen. But I thought, maybe I'm crazy. So I went and I got varieties from like nineteen thirty and thirty-one, thirty-two, instead of just reading how she was regarded in her own time. And I found that I was right, that that she was considered like a real trailblazer. And so then, so I thought, okay, I'm I'm gonna have to write a book now, you know, I'm, you know, I didn't like, I didn't like wanna write a book. I just thought I got.

• 8:38Kate Lister?

  But there's an injustice there, isn't there? Like, that's that's not fair. That's the, of course you had to write a book, and I'm so glad you did.

• 8:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's exactly, it is, it was a feeling of like, like, this is like so unfair, and I'm I'm the only one who knows this. Like, I like, I'm the only one that knows. And so I really felt like kind of obsessed with like getting the story out. But then in the process, I I realized that there was like a whole story about the women from this period, and that became the book that I wrote. But, you know, Shearer, Shearer, and then a little bit, to a lesser extent, Garbo, are the the most important people in the book. But the era itself, the precode era, was an amazing era for women in cinema. So, but she was at the head of, you know, she was the trailblazer, she was at the head of it.

• 9:28Kate Lister?

  I watched The Divorcee last night. That is spicy. Like, if I had pearls, I I might have clutched them. I'm not easily shocked. I don't, you know. It wasn't the content that shocked me. I've seen far worse. I didn't expect that from a movie of that era. That scene where she's shouting her ex-husband, she's like, you'll be the only man who's not allowed into my bedroom from now on. And it was like, no, really?

• 9:52Speaker 04

  Yes, and the scene that made me almost fall off the couch was when, basically, she finds out that her husband has had a one-night-stand with this woman. And he says, oh, it doesn't mean a thing, doesn't mean a thing. And he goes off on a business trip. And she kind of, interestingly, not in a spirit of revenge, but more like in a, in a spirit of inquiry, you know? It's like, she decides to go and have sex with his best friend. And then, when he comes home from this business trip, acting just like a guy. I mean, that whole way he's acting, I can see any guy behaving like that, just wanting to sweep it under the rug and just forget it.

• 10:30Kate Lister?

  Hello, darling. Everything's fine. How've you been? Tra-la-la, all fine. Nothing to see here.

• 10:35Speaker 04

  And she says, like, you know, you, you're like a, you're like a boy who's been spanked and kissed, is all happy again. And he says, yeah, I feel just that way. It kind of misses the point of what she's saying. But the part that made me like fall off the couch was when she says, I've balanced our accounts.

• 10:51Kate Lister?

  What a, what a turn of phrase.

• 10:53Speaker 04

  I've balanced our accounts and, and, oh, that, yeah, that was, and then the other one, though, is the one you're talking about. You're the only man in the world that my door is closed to.

• 11:02Kate Lister?

  I know. It's, it's, I mean, this is what your book is about. It's so interesting. It's this pre-code style of filming, which was markedly different to what was happening after the code. And you look at it, and I guess it's because all we've seen for such a long time is stuff that happened after that censorship came in. And they sort of, they just almost pretended that the other stuff didn't happen. It wasn't played. It wasn't advertised. It just kind of faded away. And when you watch it, there are women having premarital sex. There's films about abortion. There's film about sex workers. There's films nudity. Tarzan's mate, people swimming around in the nip. It's, it's really quite raunchy stuff.

• 11:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, it is. It's, it's great. And, you know, after that, they couldn't, those films couldn't be released. And in some cases, when they were re-released, because, you know, they had no anticipation of TV or home video or anything like that. When they weren't released, they were released cut. And then in some cases, the studios threw out the negative, the, the original negative of what was cut. But the good news is that most of the time that was able to be recovered. But the even better news is that the most risque films were the ones that were deemed un-editable. You know, it was just like too much. So as a result, those are, they remained in great condition, you know, that they remain intact. Because they couldn't be edited out into harmlessness.

• 12:24Kate Lister?

  I was just about to ask you about Babyface, and I've just remembered I was supposed to be talking to you about Norma Shearer.

• 12:28Speaker 04

  Oh, no, no, but I mean, Babyface, we could talk about Babyface. Yeah, Babyface is great.

• 12:33Kate Lister?

  I love that film. That's, was that one of the ones that managed to survive that, that was uncuttable?

• 12:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, that is, that was uncuttable. What, but what's really weird about Babyface is that, okay, so back in those days, there were seven censorship boards. This is during the pre-code period. There were seven censorship boards in seven different states. Basically, when you made a movie, what you were worried about is getting cut by the censorship boards. They were a lot more liberal than what followed. But the censorship board that they were most afraid of was New York, because it was just the, you know, huge market. It was the biggest state at the time. Babyface, we didn't know this until like 2003. We knew the version that we had. And that was pretty far out there.

• 13:18Speaker 04

  But then it was discovered in a tin can somewhere was the original version. That's from, you know, that was that that was made before the New York censors got to it. And so that that's the one that's probably the one that you saw, because that's the one you see these days.

• 13:35Kate Lister?

  Yep, young working girl hustling away to the to the very top, using only her her looks and wit.

• 13:41Speaker 04

  Well, let me ask you this, did you, because because I I know the movie pretty well. How long ago did you see it? Because you may not.

• 13:47Kate Lister?

  It was a while ago.

• 13:48Speaker 04

  So a while ago. OK, well, there's one point where she has sex with a guy on a train. Like, the guy wants to throw her off the train because she's like stalling away on the train with a friend. And she has sex with the guy on the train. And that is not in the version that we had up to two thousand and three. That's the scene that was in. But anyway, Babyface, Babyface to me is like precode one oh one. Like, if you want to get somebody into precode movies, you show them babyface and that that does it. Because because that's so much fun. And Barbara Stanwyck is a blast in that.

• 14:21Kate Lister?

  Like, unrepentantly unlikable but likable with it.

• 14:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. Her precodes are really fun. I mean, she's one of my favorites. That's great. There's a movie called Night Nurse. That's really a blast. Her and and Joan Blondell. She's just great. She's a lot of fun. She's real hard boiled.

• 14:39Kate Lister?

  Right, I'm gonna ask you about Norma Shearer now because I've I've had my little side quest already. So let's talk about where she came from. What were her origins? Because one of the other remarkable things about her is like, if you don't know who she is, go and Google her. Look at a picture. She's not immediately someone that would strike you as that's a movie star. She doesn't have that Greta Garbo or Jean Harlow look. So how does she get into the talkies?

• 15:03Speaker 04

  OK, so what happens with her? She was born in nineteen oh two. We're pretty sure it was nineteen oh two. And she's from Canada. She's from an English speaking suburb of Montreal. I called Westmount and she's from an upper middle class background. But then her father lost all the money when she was about eighteen. And she was thinking of becoming like a concert pianist. But then they sold the family piano and they took the money. And the three women, the mother and the two and two sisters, Norma and her older sister, went to New York to make it in movies and also to make it on Broadway, just to do anything she could do. And her mother didn't really get anywhere and her sister didn't get anywhere. But she, you know, started, you know, getting a little bit of a foothold.

• 15:48Speaker 04

  She tells a story. She was very ambitious. She was very smart. She tells a story where they told all these girls to show up, all these pretty girls to show up. And, and they were going to pick eight of them to be chorus girls. And so the guy was walking down the line and saying, okay, yeah, you, you, you. And she realized that he was never going to get to her. So she just started like doing her clothing fit. So the guy turned around and then she just gave him a big smile and he walked over and said, okay, sister, you win, you're in it. So she, she was kind of smart that way. And then around nineteen twenty-two, when she was about twenty years old, she made a couple of movies. I saw one of them, the other one I think is lost.

• 16:32Speaker 04

  I don't know how anybody could tell from these movies that, that she was good. Irving Thalberg saw her and wanted to sign her. He thought, he thought he saw something. And then she went out to Hollywood and met Thalberg. She thought Thalberg was Thalberg's office boy because he was so young. He was like twenty-three, twenty-four.

• 16:50Kate Lister?

  God, wow, that is young.

• 16:52Speaker 04

  He's really young. And she, she was three years younger than he was. So he was like, yes, he was like twenty, he was like twenty-four and she was like twenty-one. And he started to put her in movies and she became a pretty big silent actress. There's a great film that she made, was her first really great film called Lady of the Night. That's just a masterpiece and kind of was undiscovered for a very long time. But it's a wonderful movie. She has two roles. She plays a young, rich woman and then this girl from the streets practically. And what's the beauty of the movie, the genius of the movie is that nobody realizes that they look alike. You know, so one person has money and one person has no money.

• 17:36Speaker 04

  And the world sees them completely differently as a result. Uh, so that's a great film, but anyway, so she was just kind of gradually getting more and more important by nineteen twenty seven. I think she was probably the biggest star at MGM of the women, although she was since supplanted by Greta Garbo. So Garbo then became the biggest star, but the one thing that is, I think that her, the fact that she looked, you know, she was very pretty and everything, but she looked like normally pretty.

• 18:01Kate Lister?

  She's pretty.

• 18:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:02Kate Lister?

  Yes, that's a good way of describing it.

• 18:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, she was like normal person pretty, whereas like Greta Garbo is like, you know, like goddess pretty. You can't imagine Garbo in your classroom or something like.

• 18:12Kate Lister?

  Oh God, can you imagine turning up to work as an actress and seeing Garbo on stage, but I'm just going home. Oh, this is just.

• 18:18Speaker 04

  But you know, so I, I met a guy who, who knew Garbo, you know, is like an old timer. This is like when I was a young guy, I was like, like thirty years old. He said, you know, Garbo, whatever she had was on screen. He said, I, I thought she was kind of, he said, I, you know, it's just one guy, you know, but he said, I, she was kind of like a sallow gal. He said, and he said, the one that really struck him as like being amazing in person, in other words, being more amazing in color than in black and white. Uh, was Jean Harlow. He said, Jean Harlow was amazing.

• 18:49Kate Lister?

  I've heard stories about how, well, I've heard lots of stories about how people do lots of actresses, but how there would, the set would just be absolutely crowded with people. Just when Jane Harlow was even coming out of a trailer, just to watch her walking across the set.

• 19:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, somebody said that in the documentary based on, on my book, Campkin Women. That was Karen Morley and she was actually reasonably big herself. I mean, not like huge, like a far or something, but she was really respectable actress at the time. Anyway, so she, because she like looked normal and also because she seemed to have like a lot of integrity about her, just seemed like a good person. She started getting cast as, you know, ingenues, which she.

• 19:29Speaker 04

  Didn't particularly like, although in some of those roles she was able to do something with it. But, you know, she basically wanted to be bad, you know, she wanted to play the new woman of the time. And at the same time, Greta Garbo had come to the United States and she wanted to play good women. And she was always cast as evil in the beginning. She was like a vamp and wrecking guys' lives. And so they both, because they were both huge stars, they were able to, you know, complain and like Garbo just went on strike and uh.

• 20:01Kate Lister?

  I didn't know that.

• 20:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, Garbo went on strike for like a year or no, about eight months.

• 20:06Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 20:06Speaker 04

  In fact, some people think she really didn't go on strike. She actually had a baby. Yeah, because she, she really disappeared, you know, like she stayed home. But in any case, she, she went on strike and when Garbo came back, the terms of the deal was that she got to play good women. But she played a different kind of good woman. She played like a good woman who started off really bad. I would fall in love with a guy and then, you know, kind of convert to goodness.

• 20:29Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 20:29Speaker 04

  So she still had all the power of being bad for the first two thirds of the movie, right? Shearer, when Talkies came in, she really used that. She lobbied for kind of risque roles. And first role she played was uh, and Talkies was a kept woman in a movie called The Trial of Mary Dugan. And that was a big hit. And so she kept on like, be on the, you know, lookout for these properties. The movie, you saw the divorcee was like the most important in terms of changing her image. But basically, if you look at it, you could look at it this way, that the portrayals of women, even through the silent period, despite some nuances here and there, was that they were good women and they were bad women. You know, and, and a good woman was a virgin and bad woman was sexually active.

• 21:13Speaker 04

  Garbo and Shearer both kind of rebelled, but they, they did rebel against that. And basically what happened out of that was that Garbo got to play good, bad women. And Shearer got to play bad, good women. And anyhow, as time goes on. There are a lot more good, bad women, like there's a lot of movies about prostitutes, like a ton of movies about prostitutes.

• 21:37Kate Lister?

  Yeah, loads.

• 21:37Speaker 04

  I mean, you've done.

• 21:38Kate Lister?

  Really surprising.

• 21:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, you've, you've done, I mean, you've done like tremendous work on this subject, right? So you would really like this. This is, this is fascinating. Okay. In the beginning of the pre-code era, you started seeing a lot of movies about prostitutes, like practically every actress, except for one I can think of, played a prostitute.

• 21:58Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 21:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, they all played prostitutes. I mean, I'm counting Sheeran in this because she played a kept woman. So that's like a prostitute. That's like the highest entity prostitute, right? So it's like a courtesan. They all played prostitutes. And then around 1932, the prostitute sort of disappears. And for years, because these movies were not available, people, like I would read critics saying things like, well, the code was coming in and movies were getting more conservative. It's not true. The code, but actually when the code came in, movies getting crazier and crazier and crazier. And then the code came in like an axe. So that's not true. What really happens is that the prostitute movies weren't, even though they, the women

• 22:42Speaker 04

  were playing prostitutes, they weren't really about prostitution. They certainly weren't about the realities of prostitution. What they really were about was about what was going on with women at the time. It was about sex. It was about sex being okay. And so what happened in the beginning of the era, in order to tell stories about modern women and sex, they felt that what they needed to do was to say, okay, this is something on the fringes of society. So this is, this is prostitution. This is on the fringes. But by the time you get to like late 1932 and 1933, you don't have to pretend anymore. And so you could start making movies about women, regular women who were sexually active

• 23:25Speaker 04

  without having to have the cover story of prostitution as the excuse.

• 23:29Kate Lister?

  Yes, that makes sense. It's a narrative device to allow them to have this kind of conversation, but without actually going, they also just quite like having sex.

• 23:38Speaker 04

  Right.

• 23:39Kate Lister?

  It gives you the freedom to actually, you don't have to say that bit.

• 23:42Speaker 04

  The thing is, is that all those prostitution movies, and it's a wonderful one called Waterloo Bridge with May Clarke, who's an actress nobody even knows anymore, except for getting a ched of grapefruit shoved in her face by James Cagney in a movie one time. But that's the only thing she's remembered for, yeah. It's really a shame. But anyway, Waterloo Bridge, there's a whole bunch of these movies. The message is the same. The message of these movies, the movies are always on the side of the woman. Always, always, always. The woman isn't apologising for her life. And the message is that virginity doesn't matter anymore. You know, get over it. Chastity is not the same as virtue. And that's the whole message of these movies over and over and over and over again. It's really great.

• 24:29Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Mick after this short break.

• 24:40Kate Lister?

  Hello, Betwixters. I am jumping here because I have some very exciting news. Betwixt the Sheets has set up camp on YouTube. That's right. It took us a while, but we are there now. So if you are the kind of person who likes to see your podcasts as well as hear your podcasts, you can now go and find us right there. And the link is in the show notes. And please remember to like and subscribe because the people in charge of the money really do like that. Right, let's get on with it.

• 25:22Kate Lister?

  What was the one with Tallulah Bankhead in? Well, the premise was that she turned to sex work out of desperation, but actually accidentally tried to pick up her husband's brother.

• 25:30Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 25:30Kate Lister?

  And then it's a whole thing. But then at the end, the husband, instead of like going, get thee to a nunnery, you strumpet, he just goes, well, I had wondered where the money was coming from.

• 25:39Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 25:39Kate Lister?

  And basically forgives her.

• 25:40Speaker 04

  Yes. Oh, I'm so good. You saw that. That's really good. You saw that. That's that's.

• 25:45Kate Lister?

  I love Tallulah. I'm a big Tallulah fan.

• 25:47Speaker 04

  Okay, now that is not precode 101. That's like precode 301. I mean, that's pretty obscure. Okay, that's called Faithless. And yeah, that's, when that movie got released, some of the critics complained that Robert Montgomery, he plays the husband who says he was like sick, he was injured. And she was, the only thing she could do was the depression. And she was like, she starts off that movie really like selfish and kind of money hungry. And yeah, and so actually her becoming a prostitute is like, is like this great gift. It's like this sacrifice. And so he says, yeah, I was wondering where the money come from. Must have taken a lot to keep me alive.

• 26:26Kate Lister?

  That's it. Yes, it must have taken a lot to keep me alive. Yeah.

• 26:30Speaker 04

  That's, one of the critics, I remember, complained that he was like such a spineless guy that he could put up with his wife.

• 26:38Kate Lister?

  Floundering wife, yeah.

• 26:40Speaker 04

  But that's, you know, kind of missing the point of the movie. It was not like she was out having a good time. She was trying to keep this man alive. It was the only thing. Yeah, that's, that's a good movie.

• 26:50Kate Lister?

  Obviously, Norma Shearer played this role as well. Not the one that Tallulah Banker did, but this kind of selling sex as a kind of a a sort of a starter role to ease an audience into the fact that women are actually having sex.

• 27:03Speaker 04

  That's right. Yeah, but Norma Shearer is ahead of it though, because she started playing normal women who are having sex.

• 27:11Kate Lister?

  Was she the first?

• 27:12Speaker 04

  Yes, she was the first to make it acceptable and chic to be not a virgin and not married on screen. She made the movies to look for for those is like Strangers May Kiss is a movie from 1931 where she gets disappointed in love. I mean, she takes a chance and goes with this guy who dumps her. And so now she's like, and everybody knows that she was with this guy. It's a little bit embarrassing. So she just goes to Europe. That's one of the conventions of precode movies, by the way, is that if a woman, American woman goes to Europe, she has sex with everybody.

• 27:54Kate Lister?

  It's like the best gap year.

• 27:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, it is. Yeah. So she goes through all these different countries, has sex with everybody. It just says, I'm in an orgy, wallowing, and I love it. She said. And then another movie called Free Soul. Free Soul is interesting because at the time I wrote Complicated Women, I was able to say, this is the kind of thing you need to see in in modern movies. But now you see it. She plays this woman, she's this young woman whose father is a defense attorney for a crook who's played by Clark Gable. And there's this wonderful moment where she sets eyes on Gable for the first time. And it's like, oh, she wants to have sex with him. I mean, she just looks at him like, like, oh, wow.

• 28:33Kate Lister?

  Like she's gonna eat him.

• 28:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, that was, that was it. And so she does. And at one point in the movie, when she first meets him, she's wearing a dress that you don't get this on TV so much, but you get this in a movie set. You could see through the dress. Like, I've seen this at festivals where people like gasp in the room, like, I can't believe this. And it was recognized at the time. People wrote about it. Like, you know, she would say in interviews, like one time she said, the morals of yesterday are no more. They're as dead as the day they were lived.

• 29:01Kate Lister?

  So she really recognized that, that that was, that this was a shifting public opinion. It wasn't just Hollywood that was doing this. The wider public opinion was shifting too.

• 29:10Speaker 04

  She, that's what, yeah, that's what she felt. She said, economic independence has put women on the same footing as, as well, women on the same footing as men. So she knew what she was doing, what her movies were saying. And, and also another people did too, because she would be written about, like, she's Norma Shearer's. Oh, oh, and also too, when the censors wanted to come in, there was this Catholic newspaper, because Catholics are really behind the censorship thing in a big way. And this Catholic newspaper said, it seems typical of Hollywood morality that a husband as production manager should constantly cast his charming wife in the role of a loose and immoral woman. In this case, she has an affair, it's something in a movie called Riptide.

• 29:51Speaker 04

  In this case, she has an affair before marriage and an elaborate affair after marriage. We advise strong guard over all pictures which feature Norma Shearer. They are doing more than almost any other type of picture to undermine the moral code and the producer's code. That's nineteen thirty-four.

• 30:08Kate Lister?

  That's not good.

• 30:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:10Kate Lister?

  So that's pretty strong stuff. That's just, that's basically rallying Catholics to say, you can't go and see this woman in a film.

• 30:17Speaker 04

  You know, I don't know if you've heard this, but it's kind of a famous thing among, you know, geeks who are interested in film history. That around 1937, but three years after The Code, people like Marlena Dietrich and all these great actresses, Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn were identified in some article as box office poison, like they couldn't sell a ticket.

• 30:40Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 30:40Speaker 04

  But the one question that nobody's ever asked is why? Why were they suddenly box office poison? Well, the reason why there's box office poison is because their films were neutered. You know, they were like these really, you know, trailblazing sexy women who were in the advanced guard of what was going on. And suddenly, you know, their movies were that they had to play Pollyanna's and, you know, Marlena Dietrich played a nun.

• 31:08Kate Lister?

  I'm sure she was a very good nun, but it's just such a contrast between the two.

• 31:13Speaker 04

  It was ridiculous to have Dietrich as a, you know, I didn't go to Catholic school, but I did Catholic construction ministry. And I don't remember Dietrich in a habit at any point. Nobody was like Marlena Dietrich. No. It's ridiculous.

• 31:27Kate Lister?

  So Norma Shearer, she's starring in these movies. They seem to be critically well received apart from this kind of growing moral fear around it. When was it that The Code actually came in? Cause it was, it wasn't quite overnight, but there was a definite bam. Now things are very different.

• 31:44Speaker 04

  That's the one thing that the definite ban aspect is something that I really, you know, like I didn't realize, but the problem is that when people were writing about these movies for years and years, they hadn't really had a chance to like see all of them. And they suddenly became available in the early nineties because of a child called Turner Classic Movies. And that's when it became very obvious that the movies are getting more and more murderous. Like Greta Garbo in a movie that was released in late 33, early 34 plays a bisexual. And it's, and it's not, you know, that's Queen Christina. And it's, everybody knows that that's what it is. And, and that Thalberg even said to the writers, let's, you know, let's do this, but let's, you know, be subtle about it. Anyway, so the question you're asking is that when it happened to all at once on July 1st, 1934.

• 32:28Speaker 04

  But how it happened is because, you know, Will Hayes, it's called the Hayes Code. Will Hayes couldn't care less about censorship. He didn't, he didn't care about that. The guy who cared about it was a guy named Joseph Green. And he was brought in. He got himself into the position of head of this thing called the Studio Relations Committee. And Breen was the one who, in his job in the studio relations committee, was to mediate with the seven censorship boards on behalf of the studio to get the studio's products through. But he didn't do that, of course. What he did instead was he conspired with the Catholic Cardinals

• 33:08Speaker 04

  to get them to establish a rating system to make it so that Catholics were told that if you saw this movie or that movie, you're going to go to hell.

• 33:19Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 33:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, there was an A rating, which is, okay, you can go. A B rating, like, you can go, we're not afraid about it. And C is, if you see this movie, you're going to hell.

• 33:29Kate Lister?

  That's a hell of a rating system. Like, that's, like, what, 18 plus now, we've got like 15 with advisory, and this one, you're going to hell.

• 33:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, I know, it should be like a pitchfork, should be the thing. I know, you're always so, this is what's funny, though, this is what's funny. What Catholics, of course, they got this list at church. They'd get this list on Saturday, they'd look, they'd say, oh, I'm gonna go to hell if I see this movie, and they'd go to that movie.

• 33:52Kate Lister?

  Of course they would, of course.

• 33:55Speaker 04

  Because they know that that's, that's gonna be the good.

• 33:57Kate Lister?

  That's the good movie.

• 33:58Speaker 04

  That's the good movie. But the studio heads were terrified about this. They were terrified. In fact, in fact, there was a cardinal in Philadelphia, which is a big market, who said that on pain of mortal sin, you can't go to the movies anymore. So they were really terrified, and they were all, and all these guys, they were all worried, they were, you know, every one of them, except Daryl Zanuck, was Jewish. And this is at a time when, you know, they were really worrying about antisemitism, and, I mean, with good reason, obviously, if you go by history. And by the way, Joseph Breen, the guy who was administering code, was a raving anti-Semi. I mean, his correspondence, it wasn't just like things he said, things he put in print, things he wrote to people.

• 34:43Speaker 04

  He just saw the studio heads as like these really evil Jews who are gonna destroy, you know, the world.

• 34:50Kate Lister?

  Corrupting everyone's morals.

• 34:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, to just corrupt morals. So the studio heads were just kind of paranoid about this, and they just decided to. They agreed with, they agreed to Breen's terms, which was that they wouldn't release a movie without his approval. And so he remained the head of deciding what gets done for nineteen years. That's a long time.

• 35:13Kate Lister?

  Really is. And the rules were so strict. Like, they'd had this code in place before, but it was voluntary. Now it was basically not voluntary. And it wasn't just like, you can't show people shagging out with no clothes on. It was that, that no nudity at all. Subjects like adultery can't even be discussed. Nothing sexually suggestive at all. Certainly no loose women. Subjects like abortion are absolutely out. I mean, it was really, nothing gay, nothing even vaguely gay. That's all gone as well.

• 35:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, nothing gay. The portrayal of homosexuality in movies is interesting because if people, like, if you're gay and you're trying to look to see, like, did anybody know I existed? You know, that kind of thing. You can find a lot of gay stuff in movies, especially for some reason, movies from the Fox Corporation. A lot of it is just like really, really bad stereotype stuff, like guys from N'Sing around, like a tailor saying, oh, you know, where, where we're gonna put the gun and give room for a bulge and so, you know, just like fluttering around. It's nothing flattering, but at least they exist, you know. But occasionally you look at something that was like, you know, like Greta Garbo in Queen Christina is clearly,

• 36:24Speaker 04

  I mean, it's, it's, she has a girlfriend that she kisses. I mean, there's no hiding it. In that kind of like humane presentation of gender and sexual preference, and you wouldn't see that again for another forty years. That was gone.

• 36:38Kate Lister?

  It's a real betrayal. It was a real betrayal. Awful. What's Norma Shearer up to during this? I mean, she must have just been sat there going, well, what the hell am I supposed to do now? I'm Hollywood's bad girl.

• 36:50Speaker 04

  I know. Well, yeah. Well, what happened is that the next one we should have made was The Barats of Wempole Street, which, which was pretty good, actually. Yeah, it's not bad. It's actually all right. And then she takes two years off during which time she has a second child. First child she had, she made a movie called Let Us Be Gay, which gay and indifferent.

• 37:10Kate Lister?

  I was gonna say, now that's overt.

• 37:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, but she made another when she got pregnant in nineteen thirty and decided to really just go into a movie really quick so that there would be something while she was out. And then in nineteen five, she just took the year off. And so she went two years not making a movie. They should play Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, and she was terrible.

• 37:30Kate Lister?

  Why was she terrible? Was it like, what was terrible about it?

• 37:33Speaker 04

  She's not like uniformly terrible, the whole movie. But first of all, especially now, because what we're used to with like Leonardo DiCaprio or Olivia Hussey, that that's the one that's that's to me, that's the version. Olivia Hussey and Leonard Wyeth, you know, they're teenagers and she's there. She's like, I think she was thirty three or thirty four when she made it. So first off, that looks weird. Romeo is forty three. Mercutio is like fifty five.

• 37:59Kate Lister?

  In a wheelchair.

• 38:00Speaker 04

  So right, yeah, it's right off top, but also she kind of is sort of fluttery and seems to have a kind of fluttery sense of like who is. They can't see, I'm trying to flutter on a podcast, but you know, it's just.

• 38:13Kate Lister?

  I can see it. I can see it's fluttering. It's kind of like, so like you said, saying that she was sort of like flighty and flaky and not really committing to the gravitas of the role.

• 38:21Speaker 04

  No, no, no, she is committed to the gravitas. She's like achingly poignant in every moment. And and has this kind of sweetness to it. No sexuality, certainly, and no rawness, no, no raw emotion and no, nothing of being a teenager. It was just more like precious and and it's not very good. And then then she was in Marianne Tournette.

• 38:42Kate Lister?

  Oh, my producers just sent me a picture of the Romeo and Juliet. Yes, that does look a bit weird.

• 38:47Speaker 04

  It looks a little weird.

• 38:47Kate Lister?

  Even from the still, that's they look a little, they're not teenagers. Yeah, you're right.

• 38:52Speaker 04

  No, they're not teenagers. Romeo Romeo has a receding hairline. I mean, it's it's Leslie Howard. Uh, it's it's like every, it's it's it's bad when you realize that that's the way you're going.

• 39:03Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 39:04Speaker 04

  And you're only seventeen. It's pretty sad.

• 39:08Speaker 04

  Anyway, that she she made she was Marie Antoinette. You know, there's a French actress Natalie Bai. You know her at all?

• 39:14Kate Lister?

  No, I don't know her. No.

• 39:15Speaker 04

  No, she's she's wonderful. Wonderful French actress to be around for years. But anyway, I was just thinking about her. It's like there's certain people. You don't put them in a period piece, you know, there's certain people that are like, you wouldn't put like Jennifer Aniston in a movie set in sixteen hundred.

• 39:33Kate Lister?

  Do you know what? I know exactly what you mean because I saw Wuthering Heights the other night and I know there'll be people out there who violently disagree with me, but I just couldn't buy into Margot Robbie being a teenager from eighteen hundred.

• 39:45Speaker 04

  Well, I thought it was.

• 39:46Kate Lister?

  Is that an exact thing?

• 39:47Speaker 04

  No, no. Yeah, it's exactly that. I mean, that movie.

• 39:50Kate Lister?

  That's only me. That's only my opinion.

• 39:52Speaker 04

  Oh, Wuthering Heights. I mean, Wuthering Heights. My favorite part of the movie, I thought was absolutely hilarious, is when Heathrow is going for a walk in the moors and finds Margot Robbie masturbating in the moors. It was like I said, what is this? What they do in England?

• 40:04Kate Lister?

  Dressed as a milkmaid.

• 40:06Speaker 04

  I guess this is.

• 40:08Kate Lister?

  It is. That's exactly what we do in England. Yeah, I'm not too far from the moors. In fact, I was just doing it today, wandering around.

• 40:16Speaker 04

  I was just laughing out loud. I could not believe it. I say, oh, this is the fog and this is what you do on the moors. Did you masturbate?

• 40:22Kate Lister?

  This is what we do. We have instructions from from teenage years that you go out on the moor if you want to masturbate. No, that was a strange moment.

• 40:29Speaker 04

  That movie, that movie is ridiculous.

• 40:31Kate Lister?

  It's wild.

• 40:32Speaker 04

  I thought that was that was totally all they do. I mean, part of the thing of Heathcliff and Cathy is that they never get to have sex. I mean, it's like.

• 40:43Kate Lister?

  It's true. It's true. And she really goes for it, doesn't she? I mean, they have, there's a sex montage. I don't know if anyone, sorry, I'm spoiling this for people now. There's an actual sex montage, like Rocky, but they're shagging all over the place.

• 40:56Speaker 04

  It's it's silly. It's so ridiculous. It's like they get to the point where we're tired of them having sex and we're wondering.

• 41:02Kate Lister?

  I never thought that I would say there was there's enough of Jacob Elordi having sex on screen. Thank you very much. But I got there. I was just like, no, take it down a notch.

• 41:11Speaker 04

  Oh, it's so ridiculous. Well, anyway, I think I think Sheer is one of those people. She doesn't really, she doesn't belong in a ball gown from, you know, from from seventeen eighty. It's just, it's just not her. And then she made the women and then people, you know, because that was the movie that everybody saw because she she plays the woman whose husband is cheating on her with Joan Crawford. Who hey there gods Joan Crawford didn't like Norma Shearer.

• 41:34Kate Lister?

  She didn't like anybody Joan Crawford.

• 41:36Speaker 04

  You're absolutely right. She didn't like any, she didn't like Jean Harlow and everybody loved Jean Harlow. Yeah, Joan Crawford didn't like anybody.

• 41:48Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Mick after this short break.

• 41:58Kate Lister?

  Hello betwixters, I am jumping in here because I have some very exciting news. Betwixt the Sheets has set up camp on YouTube. That's right, it took us a while, but we are there now. So if you are the kind of person who likes to see your podcasts as well as hear your podcasts, you can now go and find us right there and the link is in the show notes. And please remember to like and subscribe because the people in charge of the money really do like that. Right, let's get on with it.

• 42:41Kate Lister?

  What's happening in Norma Shearer's personal life because didn't her husband die quite young?

• 42:46Speaker 04

  Her personal life, she was devoted to her husband and but her husband did the, but people thought, you know, her husband was a kind of a sickly guy. He, he had a heart condition from having, I think he's having had a, I think rheumatic fever. He wasn't expected to, you know, you know, like make, to become an old person, they certainly. And he was also always exhausted. He worked, worked like 16 hour days. So people believe that the, the kind of the, the sexual order that she showed in her films, like especially with the Clark Gable was as a result of, even though as soon as the camera turned off, it was like, stop. Like Gable said to his friends, because he was kind of a young actor at this point. He said, I don't know what's going on. This woman's not wearing underwear.

• 43:31Speaker 04

  You know, it's a, is that supposed to be an interest of realism or something? I don't get it. Like what's going on? So there's some idea that, that she was a little bit sexually frustrated when she was with Dahlberg. Even though she was in love with him and talked about him like for years and called her second husband Irving and all this stuff. But when her husband died after a period of mourning. She definitely started acting like Norma Sheeran in a pre-coded Norma Sheeran movie. And she had affairs with a lot of different people, a lot of young guys too, like James Stewart. Tyrone Power, she was, I think Tyrone Power was bi. I don't think he was gay, but I'm not sure. But anyway, she went after Tyrone Power when they were making Marianne Truett.

• 44:14Speaker 04

  And then the studio told Tyrone Power that he had to accompany her to the premiere. And he said, I want stunt pay.

• 44:23Kate Lister?

  Oh, that's bad. That's really, you know, you've taken it too far then. That's really bad.

• 44:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, he wanted stunt pay. So she, and then eventually in 1942, she married a guy who was 28 years old. He was a ski instructor and she was frustrated. She would make, you know, she, she made like a sex comedy called, We Were Dancing was called, and she was really trying to fight this, fight the senses on this thing. Come on, you know, this is ridiculous. It was one of those movies where two people meet. Next thing you know, they wake up in bed together and then because it's 1942, you find out they got married last night. You know, that kind of, of course.

• 44:59Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 44:59Speaker 04

  Yeah. So she just, she just retired. She stayed retired. So she, you know, she retired, she was 40, which I guess, you know, is probably a typical lot of women at the time anyway, to retire around that age. And she didn't really do much in terms of movies, except the two things. She, she discovered Janet Leigh, you know, from Psycho.

• 45:19Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 45:20Speaker 04

  She discovered Janet Leigh. She was at a ski resort and saw a picture on the wall. And it was the owner's daughter and it was Janet Leigh. And she said she shot a screentaste. So she discovered Janet Leigh and she also discovered, what's the name of that guy? He, he was the producer, uh, one of the producers of The Godfather. Oh, Evans, something Evans. And she saw him sitting by a pool and somebody was making a movie where Irving Thalberg was going to be a character. And she said, that, he, he looks like my husband. And so.

• 45:51Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 45:51Speaker 04

  She she discovered him and then he eventually can't believe I can't remember his first name, but uh. Maybe I should find out.

• 45:57Kate Lister?

  Useless with this one, sorry, no.

• 45:59Speaker 04

  Hey Siri, what is the name Evan? Oh, Robert Evans.

• 46:02Kate Lister?

  See, you don't need Siri, see, look at that, straight. Boom, it's there.

• 46:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, as soon as you, yeah, as soon as you relax, anyway, Robert Evans, anyway, yeah, so and then he eventually became a producer. So those were two big discovers, but after that, you know, unfortunately, she started like losing her mind at a fairly young age. I mean, not not fifty, but I mean, she like in her early seventies, she started showing signs of eccentricity. She would really call her husband Irving and forget who he was and and then eventually when she was in like her late seventies, she was in the motion picture production home, which is the, you know, the home for old people.

• 46:37Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 46:38Speaker 04

  And she lost her eyesight and she she had a tough last five years and and she still think everybody was Irving. She started calling everybody Irving, so. So apparently that part of a life was, you know, had a had tremendous meaning for her. But anyway, I think that what the thing about her is that you have somebody who is a genuine feminist, who's a conscious feminist. And it kind of an opportunistic feminist, I'm sure. I mean, she probably she make these movies.

• 47:07Kate Lister?

  She was a businesswoman.

• 47:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, she was a woman. Yeah, she she wanted to be big, you know. But you have this, this, this feminist, you know, woman who should be an icon. And instead, you know, she's instead written off for being the opposite of what she was.

• 47:24Kate Lister?

  It's awful, isn't it? Do you think that maybe one of the reasons why she's not as remembered as some of the her contemporaries is because she had this sort of slow fade out, whereas like, you know, Gene Harlow died young, live fast, die young, and would you give us that?

• 47:40Speaker 04

  It could be. I I really think it's just the movies that were available, but I I tell you something, things have changed in the last twenty five years. She's not gonna be like Betty Davis in terms of being known, but at least.

• 47:52Kate Lister?

  A resurgence.

• 47:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, there is something of a resurgence. I would say among the people who have heard of Norma Shearer. They've now heard of her for the right reasons. The misunderstanding about who she was is gone. Now it's just like, you know, it's a question of whether her movies catch on. I would say that the disadvantage that she has is that her best movies were in the early 30s. The movies aren't until you get to 33, 34, they're not as technically smooth. Like, you know, you said divorcee, I mean, it looked, that looks like an old movie, you know?

• 48:24Kate Lister?

  It does.

• 48:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:25Kate Lister?

  It does.

• 48:26Speaker 04

  And especially the beginning, like until it really gets going, like when they're all in that house. If I, I imagine that some people are gonna hear this and they're gonna go out, rent a divorcee and give up after 10 minutes.

• 48:36Kate Lister?

  Stay with it.

• 48:38Speaker 04

  Stay with it, yeah. Because she, because she's, she's not even that good in the beginning. Like, you're just trying to figure out what she's doing and then, then you realize, oh, I get it. Yeah, she's really good. Yeah, stay, stay with the movie because it gets, it gets there and it gets there fairly soon. Once, once they get to New York, at least she's known for what she should be known for now. That's, that's the important thing. Whether people like her or not, you know, it's up to them.

• 49:00Kate Lister?

  And now we know what she should be known for too. Thank you so much, Mick. You've been an absolute treat to talk to.

• 49:07Speaker 04

  Well, it's a treat to talk to you. You know, I, I read your book. I've listened to your, I listened to your podcast. I know the podcast. I, I definitely.

• 49:13Kate Lister?

  Oh, thank you so much.

• 49:15Speaker 04

  You did the whole, you're doing the whole thing on breakups now and you do.

• 49:18Kate Lister?

  Yes. Yeah. Yeah, but there's a few in Hollywood history you could get to grips with.

• 49:23Speaker 04

  And didn't you do like, didn't you do, I hope, I hope I'm not just taking you for somebody else. Didn't you do something about all the wives of Henry VIII?

• 49:30Kate Lister?

  Yes, we did. Yeah, we did. That was, that was a good series, wasn't it? That was, yeah, wow.

• 49:36Speaker 04

  I was looking forward to that. Yeah, I would jump on that every time there's a new episode. That was just terrific. And interesting too, Catherine Parr, right?

• 49:43Kate Lister?

  Yes, yeah, I was surprised with that one too. I didn't know very much about her. Yeah, not quite the Tudor frump that we all think that she is.

• 49:51Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah, it's like she's the boring one, right? And then it turns out, no, she's not the boring one.

• 49:56Kate Lister?

  With nice jewels as well, I remember that one.

• 49:59Speaker 04

  What is it with you guys in England not talking about Harry? I mean, he was a psycho.

• 50:06Kate Lister?

  He was. He was a complete maniac. There's absolutely no two ways about it. Yeah, just an awful, awful fat serial killer who just, there's no defending him at all. He's hideous.

• 50:17Speaker 04

  I mean, he almost, he almost killed Catherine Parr.

• 50:20Kate Lister?

  Yep, he did. Lucky, any of them lucky to have got out alive, quite frankly. He was beyond hideous. He has no friends on this show, quite frankly.

• 50:28Speaker 04

  Good, good. That's good.

• 50:30Kate Lister?

  If people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?

• 50:33Speaker 04

  Well, I'm the film critic emeritus of the Chronicle, but I'm still in the San Francisco Chronicle. I have a column called Ask Mick LaSalle comes out every Sunday. You can look for it. I have a few books out there if you're interested, but yeah, I could be found, but mostly in print. You could just, you know, Google my name, you can, you'll get a bunch of stuff will pop up.

• 50:52Kate Lister?

  Well, thank you so much for, for popping up here. You've been marvelous.

• 50:56Speaker 04

  Oh, thank you. It's just an absolute pleasure to meet you.

• 51:02Kate Lister?

  Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Mick for joining us. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like, review and follow along, whatever it is you get your podcasts. Coming up, we will be finding out the truth about superstar of early Hollywood, Charlie Chaplin. And if you would like us to explore a subject or if you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at [email protected]. This podcast was edited by Tim Arstall and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick. Join me again, Betwixt Sheets, The History of Sex, Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.

• 51:39Speaker 01

  In Our Time is a world-class seminar every week. Why was Jeremy a lonely snail? What were lines doing in York in the third century? I'm Misha Glennie and every week I'm joined by expert guests to explore the ideas that shape our world.

• 51:55Speaker 02

  It's one of the first times really that you consistently see someone painting teeth. I know that sounds bonkers.

• 51:59Speaker 03

  If I was going to define mathematics, I would say it's the study of structure.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  In Our Time, listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Tea or coffee? Love a cup of tea.