A history of dieting (and why it’s the worst!)

Fun fact: dieting does not work! Research tell us that the majority of people who diet, don’t only gain back weight, but actually put more weight on than they started with.

And yet, every year millions of us get on that diet band wagon looking for a quick fix. This isn’t a modern thing, it’s a tale as old as time. So let’s look back down the annals of history and try and find out why dieting is so prevalent and what our ancestors used to do (plus there’s some really gnarly dieting techniques here, so if you’ve ever done one of those horrific detox teas, this will make you feel better about your life choices!)

Example of a weight loss advert for Korein, in 1915 the pill was found to contain 60% petroleum and 40% sassafras oil (now banned for consumption in the US due to its toxicity)

In Ancient Greece, it was understood that being overweight contributed to a lot of health issues. Greek physician, Hippocrates, actually wrote in his collection of medical work, the Hippocratic Corpus, that people carrying extra weight may experience conditions like (what we now know as) sleep apnea. He also outlines how bring overweight often means you die earlier and in general when it comes to obesity, the ‘danger is great’.

To combat this Hippocrates advised that Greeks taking on a ‘diaita’ (the Ancient Green term that diet stems from btw) not only make changes to the food they ate, but to their lifestyle as a whole.

Incorporating more exercise, drinking less alcohol and more water and eating lighter meals with a range of fruit and veg. So far so good, in fact, dare I say, it actually sounds kind of smart…

And right there is where Hippocrates health advice falls off a cliff.

You see, Hippocrates also advised:

• ‘Violent exercise; such as running long distances to the point of exhaustion
• Abstaining from sex while trying to lose weight
• sleeping on a plank of wood
• Frequently making yourself vomit

There’s a lot to unpack there. First, let’s all agree that the no sex and whole plank thing are awful ideas. But more importantly, all that advice is not only ill advised but incredibly dangerous!

Hippocrates, you may be the father of modern medicine, but your diet advice is far out of line my friend

Like Hippocrates, a lot of early sources around diet, didn’t call for people to lose weight as a way to look good, but because it was important for their health. 1558’s The art of living long, was written by Venetian merchant, Luigi Cornaro, who had previously been so overweight his health was in jeopardy. Cornaro advocated for a stripping back a diet to the necessary (though he still allowed fourteen ounces of wine a day).

London undertaker turned diet guru, William Banting had a similar story. His obesity had meant he was in and out of hospital, so after losing weight he published ‘A letter on Corpulance‘ in 1863, primarily as a way to flag up why losing weight was healthy and to tell people about the diet he’d used.

This letter blew up (seriously, it basically went viral) and soon Banting’s high fat, high protien and low carb diet was spreading like wildfire. In fact it was so popular that ‘Banting’ became Victorian slang for dieting (as in ‘sorry Fanny, that spotted dick looks great but I’m afraid I’m banting today.‘)

Interestingly Banting is still being flogged to dieters today (though tbh, I wouldn’t recommend as a long term plan) image from Wellcome collection

It’s also in the Victorian era that we start to see a real rise of diets being sold as a necessity to be attractive. Want to achieve that teeny tiny waist? Well girl, don’t just get a corset, get a tape worm!

That’s right. A tape worm. A flat parasitic worm that lives in your gut and can grow up to 25 metres. Yeah, knowingly ingest a pill to get one of those, so you can lose weight.

Victorian beauty standards were harsh, as one Beauty bible, ‘The Ugly Girl Papers‘ (jesus, what a name) put it:

‘It is a woman’s business to be beautiful’

Women were expected to have a healthy appetite and yet also be approperialty thin with a waspish waist. That is a hard balancing act! Made even worse when there were countless advertisements popping up telling you that one magic little pill could make you thin with zero side effects.

But of course there were side effects! It’s a parasitic worm people! One of the biggest issues was getting the tape worm out. You see, tape worms like living in your stomach, its basically an all you can eat buffet for them, so why would they want to leave? But if left in there, things get deadly pretty quickly.

So to coax them out, people had to get a little creative. For example one Dr. Meyers of Sheffield used to lure the tape worm out by inserting a cylinder of food down a patients throat. This actually worked, but unfortunately sometimes his patients had a nasty habit of suffocating to death before the tape worm could be fully removed.

It’s because of incidents like this that the Victorian tape worm fad fell out of fashion. However it still remains a thing! With many desperate dieters heading to dark corners of the internet to buy tape worm pills. In fact on one episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, Khloe Kardashian managed to turn a whole new generation of people onto the parasite pills, with just once sentence! Saying:

‘I’d do anything to get a tape worm’.

Advert for tape worm pills. They be ‘jar packed’ and ‘easy to swallow,’ but they will mess up your insides!

Along with pills containing tape worms, Victorian women looking for a quick diet fix turned to arsenic pills.

Now, in this era, arsenic was used in everything! It was a cleaning aid, an ingredient in soft furnishings, it was used to make bright green fashion accessories and also occasionally used in a little light murder. So naturally some bright business person thought to market it as a diet aid.

But here’s the thing. Not all these pills actually said they contained arsenic. Some just advertised themselves as ‘diet pills’ or simply ‘wonder remedies’.

The pills worked by speeding up the metabolism and actually only contained a small amount of arsenic, that wasn’t enough to kill or do much damage. So whats the big deal? Well, it’s a diet pill. And what do people often do with diet pills? They take more than the advised amount. Which meant a lot of people giving themselves accidental arsenic poisoning.

But those weren’t the only diet pills on the market. There were a lot of options! With names like Dr Gordan’s Elegant pills, Corpu-slim and the very simple, Slim. These also contained incredibly dangerous ingredients, including dinitrophenol, an industrial chemical that can cause blindness, as well as thyroid ‘activating’ chemicals, which often resulted in long term heart issues.

Always trust a crudely drawn before and after image

It wasn’t all diet aids though. Way before Beyonce’s cayenne pepper ‘master cleanse’ and Tracey Andersons’s ‘baby food diet’, there was the Lord Byron diet. The mac daddy of celeb diets.

In 1816 famed poet Lord Byron lived on a thin slice of bread for breakfast, a few biscuits, soda water and copious quantities of cigars to keep the hunger pains at bay. He exercised in layers upon layers of winter coats in an attempt to sweat more and told friends he would rather not exist than ever be ‘fat’.

It’s now almost unanimously agreed on that Byron was suffering from severe anorexia, but in 1816 nobody knew that and so he became a diet icon.

Those desperate to get the pale and thin look sported by the huge pop culture icons that were Byron and his romantic poet set, eagerly took up highly publicised Byron ‘diet’.

The popularity and extreme nature of the diet was so much that it became a big talking point of the era. With Dr George Beard commenting that young women

‘live all their growing girlhood in semi-starvation… (for fear of)…incurring the horror of disciples of Lord Byron’

Lord Byron, painted by Thomas Phillips, 1816 – leader in terrible diets and child abandonment

Along with celeb diets, calorie counting also isn’t new. Sure it’s now moved onto apps, where we can just scan a bar-code and our phones do the rest, but for decades dieting by counting intake has been a thing. In 1918 Lulu Hunt Peters published, ‘Diet and health with key to calories’ and it became the first true bestselling book based solely on a diet.

Those eager to get that flapper thin up and down figure learnt from the book how to count everything that went through their lips. Sustaining themselves on 1,200 a day (or less)

It’s from here on out that we see the boom of diet blockbuster books and lives built entirely around working out if an apple still counts as 90 calories if it’s large.

Meet Lulu Hunt Peters, AKA the reason I spent years mathematically analysing food instead of enjoying it

Around the same time as calorie counting came the cigarette diet. For much of the early to mid 20th century, there weren’t advertising standards around selling cigarettes. So advertisers could say anything and oh boy, they sure did. Cigarettes were touted as everything from good for people with asthma, healthy, to (of course!) an amazing way to lose weight.

And technically, cigarettes are an appetite suppressant. But they also cause major medical issues and will kill you. So you know swings and roundabouts.

Though these health fears (and more stringent advertising rules that came in the 1960’s -thus the first excellent episode of Mad Men-) meant that the trend for smoking to lose weight fell out of fashion, it of course came back.

In the 1960’s the ‘model diet’ advocated smoking and drinking black coffee. And not much else. This lovely one somehow managed to linger in different forms throughout the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s!

Lucky strikes advert demonstrating the definition of subtlety

Now hopefully you’ve spent this whole article saying ‘my god, what was the past doing!?!‘. Which is good, and please never try any of these diet techniques.

But also, think before trying any diet – will this look ridiculous in 50 years? Because I can tell you right now, that diet lollipops, detox teas and 5:2 are all going to be fodder for some future snarky history writer.

So from me (someone who has a long history of hating my body and dieting) let me say this: The only time I have lost weight, sustained it and been happy, was when I:

A) Made gradual healthy lifestyle changes, which in time helped me find exercise I love, amazing food that’s good got my body and a better lifestyle that will hopefully mean I’m around to write random history articles for many years to come

B) Learnt to be OK with the body I have, not the body I hope to have

Hard truth, you can’t wait to be happy. You can’t pin everything on a future hypothetical perfect body. Life is way to short, and like tape worms, cigarettes, and arsenic pills, the diet ‘miracles’ that are popular now, might be messing your body up, making that life even shorter.

This was interesting where can I find out more? Calories and Corsets: A history of dieting over two thousand years, by Louise Foxtrot is a really fantastic read and massively helped with the research for this!

More like this

• A history of women’s underwear
• The insane ways women throughout history dealt with their periods
• Pin Ups: potted history

The forgotten story of the woman who created colour film: Natalie Kalmus

Natalie Kalmus was born in 1882 and has 404 credits on IMDB.

Just to give you an idea how incredible that is, Steven Spielberg has 299 IMDB credits, Alfred Hitchcock clocks in at 204 and James Cameron, 151 (come on James, get it together).

So who was Natalie Kalmus and how did this woman, born before the Hollywood boom even existed, rack up such an impressive cinematic CV?

Well, Natalie Kalmus gave us colour film.

Seriously, watch any Technicolor Film from the 1930s and 1940s and you will see her name!

The creation of colour film

Natalie was married to Herbert Kalmus, who was the founder and president of Technicolor. A graduate of MIT, Herbert founded the company with several of his friends in 1914.

Now, Technicolor was far from the first colour film technology maker. From 1909, British born company, Kinemacolor was the market leader, offering Hollywood tech for creating colour film.

Their system transformed black and white film by projecting it through alternating between red and green filters.

An example of an early Kinemacolor film, 1908

As you can see, there is colour, but it’s far from true to life.

Though there was scope for Kinemacolor to evolve, it was never going to move much past the heavy red and green hues.

So Herbert Kalmus and his pals at Technicolor ditched the green red method and spent the next 2 DECADES trying to come up with a better way to make colour film.

Sadly, everything Herbert tried was either ridiculously expensive, needed a ton of experienced people to operate or just didn’t create the desired effect.

But by 1932 Herbert had the system perfected! Essentially this new system worked from start to finish; from using refracted light in the camera to bathing the film strip in coloured dye (this is a really basic description, click here for more detail) 

Finally, colour film was a go! Sadly… nobody wanted it.

The Great Depression had just hit and no one wanted to take a punt on Technicolor and its expensive services. This was not an economy in which to take a gamble!

That is, unless you were Walt Disney…

In 1932 Herbert Kalmus convinced Walt Disney to try out his new tech. Disney agreed, with the caveat he had total animation monopoly on Technicolor until 1935 (classic Disney business move: smart and oh so scary) 

Disney’s Silly Symphonies, Flowers and Trees short, was the first animation by the studio to use Technicolor.

Released in 1933, it was an immediate hit with audiences and critics alike.

The worth of Technicolor had been proved and soon enough all the major studios were desperate to make the move to colour.

Disney’s Silly Symphonies, Flowers and Trees, 1933. Dancing Fauna just casually revolutionising film

The race to make the next hit colour picture sounded one hell of a pay day for Technicolor.

You see, studios couldn’t buy Technicolor equipment outright, they had to rent everything. This massively boosted the companies bottom line.

BUT there was one huge issue:

Quality control

The possibilities of what could be achieved with this level of colour were endless and as such, film makers were chomping at the bit to get to play with this new tech.

They wanted to use all the crayons in the box, at the same time. As anyone who has ever seen a child’s drawing can attest – that is not always a good thing.

But one person stood between directors and the future of film looking like a toddlers psychedelic nightmare doodle.

That person, was Natalie Kalmus.

Meet Natalie and this totally not at all sexist newspaper article about her…

Natalie wanted to ensure that Technicolor lasted as both a company and an industry standard. She believed that colour had the potential to be more than a money grabbing fad. It could totally revolutionise film as an art form.

But that couldn’t happen if film makers were able to just throw the entire kitchen sink at the screen!

So when you hired Technicolor equipment, you also had to hire Natalie Kalmus.

Natalie served as colour supervisor on almost every Technicolor film from 1934 – 1949.

A former art student and passionate art lover, Natalie was the perfect person to steer the future of colour film. Although Herbert Kalmus and Natalie had secretly split by 1922 (though they continued living together) she’d been right there during Technicolor’s decades long inception, often serving as it’s on screen test model.

There was nobody who understood the tech and its artistic capabilities better.

In 1935, Natalie wrote her magnum opus: ‘Colour Consciousness’

Rather than just throwing everything at the screen, Natalie wanted colour to be carefully orchestrated through the film. In the same way that a films score underpins the story, emotions and individual characters, so would colour.

Through Colour Consciousness, Natalie asked the filmmakers working with Technicolor to delve through art history, looking at how these painters used colours to tell their stories.

By doing this, Natalie was hammering home the importance of people’s psychological reaction to specific hues, as well as how good they’d look on screen.

As an example, lets take The

Wizard of Oz. In the film, Dorothy’s shoes aren’t just changed from their original silver, because red will look better!

Yes they pop on that yellow brick road, but they also contrast as the polar opposite to the Wicked Witches uncanny and sinister looking green skin.

The ruby slippers are that particular shade of ruby red because it’s one that creates a feeling of lively fun, rather than just a few shades darker, which can conjure thoughts of blood!

That’s a lot of thought on what’s essentially a prop. But it clearly worked, because decades later, those shoes are still world famous!

Natalie didn’t just boost a stories plot through colour, she also made the whole film a visual feast.

As we have covered, Technicolor was a totally new visual tech and black and white methods for camera, art design, lighting, costuming, and well, everything else would not work here!

There was a lot of scope to get things wrong! Seriously, if colour film isn’t done right it has the capability to make some people actually feel physically ill (kind of like how 3D films did a couple of years ago…)

NOT ON NATALIE’S WATCH! 

So once more Natalie looked to art for inspiration and taught entire crews how to change their work to match this new tech.

She showed Art Departments how mix of warm and dark tones to make previously flat sets look deep. Lighting crews how ow to use shadow and coloured lighting together. And schooled directors in working within in a specific palette to create a colour scheme that didn’t detract but rather worked harmoniously to tell the story.

This is why the advent of colour films gives us these gloriously detailed sets. Sumptuous costuming and the first use of colour coding to set a character or mood.

If this sounds like big deal, it’s because it is. All of this is a HUGE part of the foundation for film making as we know it today. 

An example of Natalie’s work on 1948s The Red Shoes. Seriously, go watch this film, it’s just bloody fantastic and every single shot is piece of art in itself

BUT not all of Hollywood’s power players were down with Natalie and her new techniques.

Much of this was due to the old boys club not loving the fact that a woman was coming onto their set and having a say.

Add to that the fact that Natalie had no problem entering a shouting match with Hollywood’s leading male directors, and you have a powder keg just waiting to explode.

Thus, Natalie was loathed by the vast majority of the filmmakers she worked with.

David O Selznick was so riled up by Natalie that he actually tried to have Gone With The Wind shot in black and white, just to get her off his set!

Another film maker, Allan Dwan later summed up his opinion on Natalie:

‘Natalie Kalmus is a bitch’ 

Mighty big words you’re throwing about there Allan…

But, did all this hate deter Natalie?

Nope!

Instead of shying away, she built up a huge department of colour supervising specialists and led the charge of colour film-making.

Natalie had a direct hand in almost every colour film made for over a decade. THAT’S HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS OF FILMS!

It’s very much because of Natalie, her techniques and her work that Technicolor was a success. It didn’t die out as a fad, but proved colour was key to making films. Not only bringing in crowds but becoming a vital tool in making GREAT cinema.

This meant that studios were happy to continue paying more money to make colour pictures over black and white, during economic low periods like WW2.

Thus, Natalie Kalmus is arguably the reason that colour cinema sustained.

A classic example of Natalie’s work, quite literally taking film from black and white to colour

So then, if Natalie Kalmus is so great then why did she stop working and why haven’t we heard of her?

Well for 2 reasons:

1. The old boys club finally won

By the late 1940s, Natalie had pissed too many of Hollywood’s powerful men. She started to be removed from sets, gradually working less and less as rumours of her ‘hysterical’ outbursts spread.

This was exasperated by:

     2. Her alimony case against Herbert Kalmus

Though Natalie and Herbert split in the early 1920s, their breakup was pretty amicable, they even continued living together! All was well, until the 1940s, when Herbert decided to remarry. Essentially kicking Natalie out.

So she went to court in pursuit of alimony.

After all, Herbert was  a very rich man and much of that wealth was thanks to Natalie. She wanted what was hers.

Sadly the courts didn’t agree and Natalie’s case was thrown out of court. Upon the news, she broke down, begging the judge for ‘justice’.

As she sobbed, photographers snapped away and soon enough this was all over town:

Los Angeles Times article detailing Natalie Kalmus ‘hysteria’ in court.

After the fallout of the trial and the ongoing rumours of her ‘hysterical’ nature, Herbert stripped Natalie of her job at Technicolor.

Natalie never recovered from this career blow and she didn’t work in film again.

She died quietly in 1965, mostly forgotten by the industry she helped build.

But Natalie’s film legacy lives on. Her work is the building blocks for modern Hollywood. So next time you watch a colour film, be it Singing In The Rain, Gone with Wind, The Red Shoes, or the latest blockbuster, thank Natalie Kalmus.

This was interesting, where can I find out more? Well, there’s nobody better than the woman herself to show you how enduring Natalie Kalmus work is. So I suggest you check it her amazing, Colour Consciousness, which you can do, for free, HERE.

Come up and seize me sometime: the arrest of Mae West

Mae West was arrested for -what else – sex. BUT not the sex you’re thinking about… Sex the play

You see, long before Mae West was lighting up Hollywood, with her trademark heavy innuendo, she was in New York, trapped in a brutal battle with the law, fighting to promote equality, freedom of speech and,of course, sex.

So let’s jump into the arrest, incarceration and surprising rebirth of, Mae West:

1959 article on Mae West’s arrest

By the 1920s Mae West was a theatrical veteran. Now in her thirties, she’d trod boards across New York, learning her craft from burlesque acts, musicians, dramatic actors and everyone in between.

Yet, though her name was known, Mae had never actually had a big break. As she delved further into the years after the big 3-0, younger models started taking what, until then, had always been Mae’s roles. It was starting to look like her dream of a big break was never going to happen.

BUT Mae West wasn’t the kind of woman that would go down without a fight. So she decided to make her own big break.

Mae started writing plays, and after knocking out a couple of practice pieces under the pseudonym, Jane Mast, she wrote what she knew would be her ticket to the big time. This being Mae West, the play was -of course- titled:

 

SEX

Like she’d have called it anything else…

Sex follows the ups and downs of sex worker, Margy LaMont. When writing her, Mae West was adamant that Margy would be totally different to other sex workers that had previously been portrayed on stage.

Margy is funny, likeable and smart as hell; more importantly, at no point in the play does she need saving, nor does she repent; instead she pushes back against the idea that her work as a sex worker somehow makes her lesser.

Naturally, there was only one actress Mae West had in mind for this plum part: Mae West.

And so, in April 1926 (thanks to a donation by her Mum) Sex opened in New York.

Posters for the shows included strap lines like :

‘SEX WITH MAE WEST’

Because, you know, subtlety.

A late run poster for Sex

Sadly for Mae, Sex was not met with favourable reviews.

Not only was the shows subject seen as obscenity of the highest order, the shows star made things worse by adding race into the mix.

Mae West had insisted that Sex include what was then known as ‘black music’. This combined with the shows scandalous stance on gender and sexuality, was just too much. And sex soon proved the perfect breeding ground for a powder keg of riotous fury.

BUT nothing seemed able to stop Sex. Despite the constant bad press, audiences kept coming. In a year where New York’s other big plays included work by the likes of Noel Coward, it was Mae Wests little Sex engine that could, that outlasted them all.

Truer words were never spoken

Sex wasn’t the only show Mae was running. Inspired by her friends, many of whom were LGBT+ and often forced to keep their sexuality and relationships hidden, Mae wrote her next play, Drag.

Drag’s hero, Rolly Kingsbury, is a closeted man who is stuck in a loveless marriage, and has to put up with arguably the worst family in the world; his Dad is a homophobic judge and his Father in Law is a conversion therapy pioneer (I told you they were the worst family ever)

Drag looks at Rolly’s use of his wife as a ‘beard’, his secret relationships with men and his family’s horror that Rolly could ever be one of ‘them.’

Oh, and the whole thing ends in a HUGE drag ball before *spoiler* Rolly is killed, which his Dad (a judge remember) covers up as a suicide, for fear of having Rolly’s sexuality discovered and the family’s honour tainted by homosexuality.

Yeah. I think we can all agree that this play was just a tad controversial for the 1920s (*cough* understatement of the year *cough*)

Thank God, Drag gets semi-regular reprisals, because it sounds like an amazing ride that I need to get on!

But the plot wasn’t enough for Mae. You see with Drag , Mae wanted to do something never done before. She wanted to cast LGBT+ actors.

This was theatrical treason.

You see, allowing anyone on the LGBT+ spectrum to perform on stage was actually banned by the actors union at this time.

But you know by now that a little thing like that wasn’t going to stop Mae.

So she set up open auditions in a gay bar in Greenwich Village, ensuring she got the cast she wanted; casually going against every rule in the book to do so.

Drag opened out of town in January 1927, to packed out houses
….until it was shut down after 2 weeks

Fricking no fun 1927

After Drag, The Society for the Prevention of Vice and other groups against obscenity, were out for Mae’s blood.

First a play on sex workers and freedom of sexuality AND THEN a play that promoted open homosexuality?!?!? It simply wouldn’t stand, Mae West and her corrupting plays HAD TO GO!

The axe fell in February 1927, just 1 month after Drag debuted. The police stormed Sex, carrying out a mass arrest of Mae and her company before completely shutting the play down.

Front page of the New York Daily Mirror

BUT those that thought arresting Mae West on obscenity charges and the threat of prison time would put an end to her, were about to be proved veeeery wrong.

Mae decided that rather than her demise, her arrest was going to be her making.

So she rocked up to court in the most amazing outfits, gave every interview going, wrote articles, signed autographs and made sure everything she said and did in court got headlines.

At one point the judge point blank asked Mae:
‘Miss West, are you trying to show contempt for this court?’
To which she innocently responded:
‘On the contrary, your Honor, I was doin’ my best to conceal it.’

Mae during her Sec trial, just casually wearing a stoll to court

After successfully turning her arrest and subsequent trial into one long press call, Mae was sentenced to 10 days in prison. So naturally Mae transformed what had been a press call into a press tour.

She arrived at New York’s Welfare Island (now Roosevelt island) in a limo, wearing a spectacular outfit.

Once inside and behind bars, Mae made herself comfy. She befriended the other inmates, as well as the staff, even dining with the Warden and his wife.

Of course she leaked all of this to the press, including the little tidbit that she ensured that under her prison uniform was the finest silk underwear.

Mae also took the opportunity to highlight how shitty the treatment of New York’s women prisoners were. Keen to make it clear that though she was dining with the warden, everyone else was treated like dirt. She then put money where her mouth was, donating to actually help make things better inside.

Throughout, Mae continued to hustle. Transforming what should have been her downfall into her long sought after big break; seriously I cannot understate how much she was smashing this! Bitch was taking busted up lemons and turning them into champagne!

By the time Mae West walked out of those prison gates she was an American Icon.

Moral of the story thus far – do not try to mess with the West!

Pretty much as soon as her days in the jail house were over, Mae was back at work, creating a new play.

The Pleasure Man was essentially a re-do of Drag. However in an effort to prevent another shut down, Mae turned the shows lead into a straight guy… though she made sure that the shows epic drag ball remained.

The play had its Broadway debut on 1 October 1928.
As soon as the curtain fell, the entire cast was arrested.

Despite the arrest of the entire cast, a matinee performance was allowed the next day.

Once more the police flooded the theatre; one of the drag queens performing managing to squeeze in a speech on police oppression, before the arrests started up again.

As the cast were dragged away, the police were met with a wave of boos from a crowd that had formed outside the theatre.

Two members of The Pleasure Man cast during their arrest

At The Pleasure Man trial, Mae and her cast were accused of:

‘unlawfully, wickedly and scandalously, for lucre and gain, produce, present and exhibit and display the said exhibition, show and entertainment to the sight and view of divers and many people, all to the great offence of public decency’

Mae West defended her work to the end; eventually seeing the charges dropped. However the fight had cost Mae $60,000 (that’s just under $1million today!)

Mae West with some of The Pleasure Man company

By 1930, the trials were over and Mae West had turned to Hollywood. Thanks to her constant work, she was now one of the most in demand actors in the world.

Mae West would become one of cinemas longest standing icons, known for her heavily innuendo laced jokes, as much as she was her business smarts; even becoming one of America’s highest earning individuals.

But Mae’s fight for equality, for alternative lifestyles to be explored and celebrated and for taboos to be dropped, has been forgotten. And that’s a damn shame, because as Mae West would say:

 

‘Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often’

This was interesting where can I find out more? You should definitely read Mae’s plays! Sex, Drag and The Pleasure Man are all in print (link here) and as the plays are still performed, you might even be able to find a performance near you (let us know if you do!!!) 

 

4 unheard of Old Hollywood Christmas films guaranteed to fill you with festive Cheer!

It’s officially the run up to Christmas, and you know what that means:

Time to bust out all of the old school Christmas films!!! 

There’s just one problem though. All the true old school Christmas classics kind of have to be saved until Christmas Eve (it’s festive law). So without the It’s A Wonderful Life’s of the world, if you want a black and white film fix, you’re stuck with the 1938 version of Christmas Carol (which is a classic and all, but it’s not the right version of Christmas Carol…)

Truly the only adaptation of Victorian literature that matters

But suffer no longer! I’ve gathered four of the best old (we’re talking released in 1945 or earlier!) films, that you probably haven’t seen. All are fun and most importantly batshit enough to keep you entertained no matter what level of turkey based food coma you’re in.

So crack open the wine and prepare to mock and love these films in equal measure!

1 – The Shop Around The Corner, 1940

Watch It Because… truly nothing says Christmas like Jimmy Stewart in a suicidal Christmas film!

What’s it about? Set in Budapest, Hungary (as nifty a way for the film studio to seem Euro positive during WW2) the film follows a group of shop-workers; specifically Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullivan, who can’t stand each other… but *gasp* they are actually secretly falling in love with each other as anonymous pen pals!

Please don’t judge this film by the nightmare painting of Jimmy Stewart

What makes it so good? If you haven’t guessed yet, 1990s classic, You’ve Got Mail is based on this. BUT the original has two major bonuses over the remake:

1. The romance is waaaay off: Seriously, the romance here is less ‘I bet they have really good angry sex’ and more ‘I bet they have a lot of angry sex followed by crying’. The hatred between these two is real! They should in no way be together and if it doesn’t end in divorce within a year, I’ll eat my santa hat.

‘I probably wouldn’t have shouted at you so much…probably’

2. It’s festive AS F!! Set in snow capped Hungary with a Christmas Eve kissing session thrown in for good measure, this film is all kinds of cosy!

Plus it also stars Frank Morgan AKA the wizard of oz!

Look at this guy, his face just screams cosy Christmas!

What’s the downside? Well *spoiler alert* er…The Wizard tries to kill himself. Frank Morgan plays the shop’s owner, who through the course of the film starts off fine, then suspects his wife of having an affair, has a breakdown and attempts suicide.

Yeeeeah…maybe not one for the kids

Don’t worry though, two days after his suicide attempt the Wizard is back at the shop and everyone just kind of glosses over what happened…making this the ultimate Christmas film for everyone with a massively dysfunctional family.

Where can I watch it? It’s available to rent for not very much at all on Amazon (included in some Prime packages), YouTube and Google Play.

2 – Christmas in Connecticut, 1945

Watch This Because… this screwball comedy with a female lead, somehow manages to both be WAY ahead of its time and yet somehow really outdated…it’s quite an impressive feat!

The MOST  acting ever captured on one film poster

What’s it about? Barbara Stynwyck plays a career gal writer whose homemaking column has transformed her into the 1940s Martha Stewart.

The only problem? She can’t even make toast!

But when her boss forces her to host a (cute) military hero at her (imaginary) farm for Christmas, Barbara has no choice to make her homemaking fantasy life a reality. Cue much screwball comedy, fake babies, kitchen mishaps and a love triangle.

The film also contains some of the best/worst double entendres ever committed to film.

So what makes it so good? Well not to be this person…but Barbara’s wardrobe is pretty great. Plus *spoiler ahead* Barbara doesn’t magically become great at homemaking or ditch writing to become a wife. By the end she gets a promotion and gets off with the guy who is totally fine with the fact she can’t cook, clean or change a baby (but he can!)

So what’s the downsides? Well the film is a bit all over the place. Luckily it’s a truly old school screwball comedy so it gets away with it. However, I’d recommend tucking into some mulled wine and creating a Christmas in Connecticut drinking game to get you through the more nonsensical bits.

Where can I watch it? Available on Youtube, Amazon Prime and Google Play.

3 – It happened on fifth avenue, 1947 

Watch It Because… It’s the most screwed over Christmas film in history. It lost it’s director to It’s a Wonderful Life and was beaten to Oscar Glory by Miracle on 34th Street. Basically it had zero luck!

Now finally re-released after decades in the wilderness, this sweet (and weirdly socialist) movie looks set to make an iconic Christmas comeback!

What’s it about? A rich businessman leaves his plush pad vacant whilst he is out of town over Christmas. Except it’s not empty…because a homeless man has broken in and set up a fancy temporary home there!

Said homeless man invites round his mates, including a a newly homeless war vet and a young female drifter, who turns out to be the real home owners daughter and she’s just pretending to be homeless (bit of a twat move but there we go)

Soon the rich homeowner comes back (now pretending to be homeless, because why not) and learns that about human plight, compassion and to use his wealth to help others.

I can’t point out who here is actually homeless and who is a prick pretending to be

What’s good? It’s basically a very socialist Christmas! Honestly, one of the story lines involves a group of homeless veterans trying to fund their plan to build mass affordable housing. The film couldn’t be more humanist and socialist if it tried!

The downside? Good luck watching this if you live outside the USA. For real, there is literally no way to watch it legally and that’s super bloody frustrating!

Where can I watch it?  Well if your in the US, you can rent it for a pittance on YouTube, Amazon or Google Play. Not in the US… happy streaming!

4 – Meet me in St Louis, 1944

Watch It Because… nothing says Christmas quite like Judy motherfucking Garland.(And although apparently this is on in America constantly over Christmas,the same cannot be said for the UK) 

What’s it about? The film spends a year following the Smith family, a middle class family at the turn of the century. From spring to winter, we watch as the family are torn apart, pull back together again and generally learn all about family values and love etc etc.

Presenting the most camp and loud poster to ever grace the world

Whats good? It’s generally a cracking musical. You have fun numbers, ear worms a plenty and of course – Miss Judy Garland.

On a festive note, the film contains the classic song: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. Arguably one of the most under appreciated festive numbers around. Now – For those who don’t know…Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas is the perfect mix of both melancholic and hopeful. During Meet Me in St Louis it’s sang right after this happens:Why yes, that is an emotional little girl murdering a snowman with what looks like a gun.

Judy Garlands character sings ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ to soothe her upset sister (following snowman decapitation gate) With the songs lyrics reminding us that no matter how bad things are right now, things will get better. But until then, if we band together with those we love we can ‘muddle through somehow.’ 

My god doesn’t that seem like the end of year anthem 2019 needs? 

Where I can watch it? Again, Amazon, YouTube and Google Play have it for less than a cup of coffee. If you live in the UK it is also on SkyCinema

The death of Marilyn – bought to you by the male gaze!

 

In 36 years Marilyn Monroe achieved a kind of fame that had never been seen before. Gone was Norma Jean and in her place was the myth of Marilyn Monroe; unprecedented, unparalleled and unbreakable.

Seriously, even death couldn’t stop the juggernaut that was Monroe!

It’s now 55 years on from her death and Marilyn’s finger prints are still all over our everyday life, from lipstick lines to shitty faux inspirational Facebook quote posts. But Marilyn’s impact is so much more than that!!

You see, Marilyn’s legacy is bigger than you, me, or her….it’s what it is to be a woman.

The Marilyn Meat Market

Marilyn Monroe died at home on the 5^th August 1962. Immediately paparazzi swarmed her house, desperate to get that hot body bag shot – now I’m not saying Paps are scum bags…but here’s what one was over heard saying:

‘I’m just as sorry as the next fellow about Marilyn Monroe. But as long as she had to do it, what a break she did it in August.’ 

Oh cool, so you’re the biggest wanker ever then. via giphy

But this wasn’t new…Marilyn had always been free game. After arriving in Hollywood, she posed naked for $50, with the understanding the pictures would never be printed (and that she now had money to eat- hooray!)

Flash forward to 1953; the nudes are sold without Marilyn’s knowledge to one Hugh Hefner, who uses them to launch his new magazine Playboy… Classy.

But it wasn’t just Mr Hefner skeezing it up, incredibly explicit pictures of Marilyn –obvs taken without her permission – were not rare. Photographers tried to get up the skirt shots all the time!

Even the most iconic image of Marilyn, was a cheap paparazzi photo op.

Not a still from The Seven Year Itch, but a publicity op for punters to get a shot up Marilyn’s skirt (see creep with a camera behind…)

As Marilyn put it:

“My popularity seems almost entirely a masculine phenomenon.”

And it was. Unlike other female stars of the era, most of Marilyn’s media cuttings came directly from men. Similarly, the majority of books written about her have male authors.

The most obvious reason for this would be the kind of woman that Marilyn portrayed. A breathy mix of woman and child; malleable and rescue-able in equal measure.

Perhaps its this lack of on screen autonomy that is the reason that the media took so many more liberties with Marilyn than they did with her peers.. and 55 years on from her death, they continue to do so!

Those naked Playboy pictures still get paraded about every time Playboy has an anniversary. Private photos of Marilyn constantly go up for auction (to then be featured in celeb gossip magazines)

AND in February 2017 tabloids reached never before seen heights of bullshittery when they released images that ‘proved’ a woman who had been dead for 50+ years, had at some point possibly been ‘secretly pregnant’.

Actual Daily Mail headline…

As with any tabloid starlet, it’s Marilyn’s body that she is most known for. With journalists in both 1950’s America and 2017’s America desperate to know just how she gets that body (see an August 2017 Buzzfeed piece which tests modern audiences against Marilyn’s daily routine, as told by a 1952 magazine.)

But why are we still so obsessed with Marilyn’s ass, tits and well….more.

I didn’t even know neck measurements were a thing..

Well two key reasons:

• Marilyn was crazy beautiful!

• Marilyn died crazy young!

Really, Marilyn’s story is one as old as Hollywood: Beautiful woman. Dies young. Sad times all around. The end right?

Well…no. See Marilyn’s death is different. Because much like her life, it was made to revolve around men

Thats right, I’m about to get on my little feminism high horse!  

As with much of the literature we have on her life, the majority of writing on Marilyn’s death was written by men. Most of her obituaries were written by men (focusing on her sexuality, emotional damage, female form and love life) and the majority of theories surrounding her death are too written by men!

Here are just a few of the common theories around why/how Marilyn died:

• Assassinated by John F Kennedy
• Assassinated by Bobby Kennedy
• Killed by the CIA/FBI to pressurize the Kennedys
• Murdered by the CIA because Marilyn knew the truth about aliens!!!

Bar the whole aliens thing (and the obvious fact that Marilyn died from an overdose and none of the above…) all the prominent theories surrounding Marilyn’s death revolve around her relationships with men and her role as a sex bomb (literally in this case…)

These theories work to fit Marilyn into a specific narrative, emphasising her tragic femininity and sexual willingness.

Basically… it’s the plot of a film noir; attractive but damaged dame gets killed because she had sex with the wrong guy.

Same. But stay with me, it gets less bleak!

It seems strange that a figure so integral to how we see femininity, wasn’t addressed by women. But don’t worry, thats all changing!

In 1986, Glora Stienham released a biography, Marilyn, re-exmaining how we see Ms Monroe.

From there, it’s only been up and up. There’s been a huge turn in how historians view Marilyn and in the last 20 years more Marilyn books books than ever have been written by women. Huuuuuuge win!!

Thats right Hermione! More books to read!!! 

So what can we expect to see in this brave new dawn of Marilyn’s tale? 

Well expect more research into Marilyn’s political views (…aside from which Kennedy brother was hotter…le sigh)

Marilyn’s political views really let her working class roots shine through. She was a founding member of the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy and an elected member of the liberal caucus.

She was also open about her support of communism in Cuba and to be honest it is a bloody wonder she wasn’t bought up on that!!

Not only this, but Marilyn was an ardent supporter of civil rights.

She personally fought for Ella Fitzgerald to perform at whites only hot spot, The Morecambe Club. Arguing that Ella be allowed a regular spot and offering to sit front row for each performance (bringing the club and Ella tons of publicity!)

Ella personally credited this with getting her out of small time jazz clubs and getting her career in the mainstream. The two women remained friends until Marilyn’s death.

Ella and Marilyn at The Morecambe Club

We’ve barley scratched the surface of who history’s most infamous blonde bombshell was, and I know I can’t wait to find out more!

This was really interesting, where can I find out more? Theres tons of really cracking books, but I’d suggest checking out Gloria Stienham’s book, Marilyn (she also has a couple of online essays on Marilyn that you can read for free!)

Now if you will excuse me…