Olive Thomas: The Poisoned Chalice

For the next three episodes Tales of History and Imagination is going Hollywood, with three related - but separate Tales. In 1919, many of the folks who brought America Prohibition of alcohol turned their sights on a new ‘peril’ - the Movie industry. These joyless wowsers were convinced Hollywood was an evil, decadent place that needed shutting down. 

Hollywood took these people seriously, and by 1934 had bound itself to a restrictive morality code. Why did they do so? For one, Tinseltown was rocked by a number of serious scandals in the 1920s. We’re looking at three of the bigger ones in the following weeks, the Fatty Arbuckle case, the murder of William Desmond Taylor - and first, the story of Olive Thomas - Hollywood’s first scandal. 

Sources this week include:

(Sorry all, I’ll fill in later this week)

The blog post of the episode is here.

 

Support the show on Patreon for just $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content.     

Please leave a like and review wherever you listen. The best way you can help support the show is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.

Tales of History and Imagination is on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. The show has a YouTube Channel, largely for Audiogram advertisements. 

Music, writing, narration, mixing normally all yours truly. 

 

 

Simone’s About Me.