Monday, April 13, 2020

Blind Item #5 - Reader Blind Item - Old Hollywood

Many years ago in this biggest of all conflicts, the USA allied itself with this other nation out of necessity.

The leader of that nation was revealed after his death to be a mass murderer on the level of what they were fighting against.

But even worse than him was one of his deputies who was in charge of internal security.  He was a rapist who forced women to sleep with him to save the lives of their relatives whom he had arrested.  He also would kidnap women off the street and keep them in a secret room in his house until they agreed to have sex with him.  He had no compunction about age and often forced himself on underage girls.  Other members of the government were very careful to keep their daughters away from him. Even worse was the fact that girls who said no often ended up being strangled to death and buried in his garden.  Skeletons were found buried under the villa he lived in.

In the years of that conflict and for a short time afterwards until the two nations were at odds with one another, Hollywood made a few films that were very pro this nation.  The leader of the nation tasked the deputy to work with Hollywood directly.

In doing so, the deputy became good friends with two people 1.) This Oscar winning/Oscar nominated A++ director whose films are considered quintessentially American especially the one that takes place during a specific holiday. 2.) This actor who starred in a film set in the country and one of whose most famous roles involved veterans from the big conflict. He was also in several films by this foreign director who acted as a villain on a TV show based on another medium.

During visits to the country, both the director and the actor took advantage of the young girls offered to them by the deputy.  The actor even took part in the strangulation deaths of two of them.

36 comments:

gauloise said...

USA. WW2. Russia, Stalin

Tricia13 said...

Cuba?

MyDogSmiles said...

WW2 and Stalin

gauloise said...

Capra, Wonderful Life

ilaria said...

Russia, Stalin, Frank Capra.

Mah said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
PhillyWilly said...

Capra, Hitchcock, actor??

gauloise said...

Lavrentiy Beria

Head of the NKVD from 1938 to 45.

At Beria's trial in 1953, it became known that he had committed numerous rapes during the years he was NKVD chief. a biographer of Stalin, concluded the information "reveals a sexual predator who used his power to indulge himself in obsessive depravity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavrentiy_Beria

IndieRaga said...

Who's the Bast#rd actor?!

gauloise said...

"Beria was often driven slowly through the streets of Moscow in his armoured Packard limousine. He would point out young women to be detained and escorted to his mansion, where wine and a feast awaited them. After dining, Beria would take the women into his soundproofed office and rape them. Beria's bodyguards reported that their duties included handing each victim a flower bouquet as she left Beria's house. "

PhillyWilly said...

Fredric March actor starred in best years of our lives and Anna karenina

David Andrews said...

Beria/Frank Capra/Dana Andrews (The North Star, Laura)/Otto Preminger (Laura, Batman)

Circle gets the square!

PhillyWilly said...

Good work, @DA. any relation??

gauloise said...

Capra directed the pro Soviet documentary The Battle of Russia (1943)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036629/?ref_=adv_li_tt

PhillyWilly said...

And Andrews was in Best years of Our lives, which is the movie that is being referred to here, I think

gauloise said...

+1 Best years of Our lives, it used actual disabled veterans in roles

David Andrews said...

@Philly Willy: No, sorry, "Uncle Dana" didn't regale me with any sexy strangulation stories in my youth. My mother used to call me "Dana Andrews" to tease me, after I asked, at age 7, if he were related to us.

David Andrews said...

Thanks, @gauloise, for filling in the details.

I wonder where the hell enty got this from.

tinydancer61 said...

GD it! Hollywood is so easily compromised! Now, it's China controlling the message! I refuse to be indoctrinated sooooo....plus most movies suck nowadays so ta-ta. Netflix is one big propaganda machine as well.

missann said...

Capra for the director, no idea about the actor

Melot's Younger Brother said...

Frank Capra, Dana Andrews

Morninglorri said...

Frank Capra
Dana Andrews
Hungary
Otto preminger

Angela said...

Beria is a main figure in The Death of Stalin, released a couple of years ago. The film also shows how he took advantage of young girls, and claimed that the sex was consensual.

And director Otto Preminger wasn't in the TV show Stalag 13. He was the colonel in the film by Billy Wilder called Stalag 17, that the creators of Stalag 17 ripped off. The colonel in Stalag 13 was Werner Klemperer, who was actually the son of Otto Klemperer, a conductor who's left great recordings of Wagner, Beethoven or Mozart.

Morninglorri said...

Otto Preminger was Mr freeze on the Batman tv show.

Gordon Scott said...

Winston Churchill was criticized for praising Stalin during the war. His answer was, "If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons."

At least after the war Churchill stopped. A lot of Hollywood folks did not.

Jim O'Sullivan said...

Looks like we have everybody but Stalin's deputy. I have no good guess. I have a bad guess: Andrey Gromyko.

Studio54 said...

@Jim: Gromyko came later, under Brezhnev.

gauloise said...

The deputy is Beria

David Andrews said...

PhillyWilly, gauloise, and my humble self already nailed it. It's the first time in my life I was right about something, so I have to gloat.

Vita said...

Great job and interestingly disturbing history lesson!

Moonmaid said...

Well I always loved Dana Andrews, and have only read good things about him - he battled alcoholism for years, but was known as a consummate professional and nice guy - so I'm going to say not true on him. I've heard not-so-nice things about Frederich March, how he was known for grabbing actresses on set, including Claudette Colbert:
(from Vanity Fair, April 2010)
Colbert, in real life, was menaced by a wolf in the person of her co-star Fredric March. “Freddie March was the worst womanizer I ever knew,” Colbert told Rex Reed. “His hands had 20 fingers, I swear, and they were always on my ass. I finally said, ‘If you don’t stop I’ll walk right out of the scene and tell Mr. DeMille what you’re doing.’ … So the camera rolled again...Mr. DeMille yelled ‘Action,’ and all of a sudden I felt this hand right around my left cheek and I stopped and walked down to camera and demanded to see Mr. DeMille!” Even when John Engstead was taking publicity shots for the movie, March could not resist fondling her derrière. One photo, “with Freddie’s hand wrapped around my rear end,” Colbert said, found its way into the Police Gazette. “And the caption read, ‘Even if the Marines haven’t landed, Freddie March seems to have the situation well in hand.’” Affronted, she stormed into the studio boss’s office, and as a result, Engstead said, “she was the first star at Paramount to get … approval of her photographs … and it was all my fault.”

Uber Driver said...

The Soviet Union, Stalin and Lavrentiy Beria. He probably killed Stalin himself after doing all his killing when he got scared he would be the next victim of Stalin's paranoia.

Jim O'Sullivan said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jim O'Sullivan said...

I misread the post, which is obviously asserting that Beria was the deputy who worked with Hollywood. But i find it had to believe that Beria, who was busy in Russia plotting to succeed Stalin in the immediate post-war years, would have had time spend in LA. Could he have "worked with Hollywood" from Moscow?

The Moderate said...

Soviet Union/Stalin/Beria...

BRAD PITT said...

director = capra

quintessentially American = capra

one that takes place during a specific holiday = its a wonderful life

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