Historic Hollywood scandals were mired in filth, debauchery, and depravity. Some scandals are timeless: The Fatty Arbuckle trial, the Black Dahlia, and the Sharon Tate murder are still well-known decades after they occurred. Others, however, have faded into obscurity, even though the public indulged in their salaciousness during their heyday.
10. Birth Of The Coogan Act
Hollywood has a sordid relationship with child actors. They often fall victim to the people they trust the most—their parents. Many of these parents treat their children's wages as their own personal piggy bank. Famous child actors like Macaulay Culkin, Gary Coleman, and Shirley Temple all had their fortunes squandered by their parents, but none were more affected than Jackie Coogan.
Best known today as the original Uncle Fester, Coogan was a successful child actor. However, when he turned 21, he discovered that the roughly $4 million he had earned was gone, spent by his mother and stepfather. Not only that, but his mother flat-out said that the money was theirs and Jackie would never receive a cent.
Coogan took his parents to court but only received $125,000. The trial was highly publicized and led to the California Child Actor's Bill, commonly known as the Coogan Act.
9. Death Of Superman
The movie Hail, Caesar! presents Eddie Mannix, a highly influential person from Hollywood's Golden Age. Officially, he was an executive at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). In reality, he was a fixer whose job was to keep scandals out of the papers.
The biggest scandal that Mannix was associated with was from his personal life—the suspicious death of his wife's lover, actor George Reeves. He was television's first Superman, and he had an affair with Toni Mannix for years. In 1959, during a party at his house, Reeves went upstairs and shot himself in the head.
That was the official story. Many believed that Eddie Mannix had a role in Reeves's death. Others suspected Leonore Lemmon, Reeves's fiancee. As recently as 1999, Hollywood publicist Edward Lozzi stirred the pot again when he claimed that Toni Mannix confessed on her deathbed to arranging George Reeves's murder.
8. The Madams Of Hollywood
The public was shocked in the 1990s by the revelations of Heidi Fleiss, the "Hollywood Madam" who had some of the silver screen's greatest stars as her clients. However, the business has been around for a long time.
During the 1930s, Lee Francis ran the "most famous brothel in California," the Hacienda Arms Apartments on the Sunset Strip. Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, and Errol Flynn were some of her biggest customers. Police were well-compensated to look the other way.
When Francis was eventually arrested, she was replaced by Ann Forrester. Forrester was succeeded by Brenda Allen, who became Hollywood's top madam during the 1940s. It was her 1948 arrest that finally shook up the LAPD and led to several high-profile resignations. Journalists revealed that Allen was not only paying off cops but that Sergeant Elmer Jackson was her business partner and lover.
7. Mae West As Jane Mast
Mae West was one of Hollywood's first sex symbols, known for her sexual persona. West often found herself at odds with women's associations, religious groups, and state censors. Interestingly, her biggest controversies came years before West landed her first movie role.
By the time Mae West starred in her first movie in 1932, she was already a prolific playwright and stage actress. She wrote under the pen name, Jane Mast. In 1927, she wrote and performed a play titled Sex. This got her arrested on obscenity charges, and West was fined $500 and sentenced to 10 days in jail. The next year, she wrote The Drag, which got her arrested again.
