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Glamorous Trash: A Celebrity Memoir Podcast
Louise Brooks’ Memoir Lulu in Hollywood (with Mallory O'Meara)
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- [00:01]
Chelsea Devantez
Are you still quoting 30 year old movies? Have you said cool beans in the past 90 days? Do you think Discover isn't widely accepted? If this sounds like you, you're stuck in the past. Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide and every time you make a purchase with your card, you automatically earn cash back. Welcome to the now it pays to Discover. Learn more@discover.com Credit Card Based on the February 2024 Nielsen report, the new McCrispy Strip is here. Dip approved by Ketchup Tangy Barbecue Honey.
- [00:35]
Mallory O'Meara
Mustard, honey mustard, Sprite, McFlurry, Big Mac.
- [00:37]
Chelsea Devantez
Sauce, Double dipped in Buffalo and Ranch.
- [00:39]
Mallory O'Meara
More ranch and creamy chili McCrispy strip.
- [00:42]
Chelsea Devantez
Dip now at McDonald's.
- [00:51]
Mallory O'Meara
Welcome to glamorous Trash. This is a celebrity memoir podcast where we dive into all of the glamour and all of the trash. I'm your host channel Chelsea devontez. I'm a TV writer, comedian, filmmaker, author and sometimes I'm in stuff too. And today we are book clubbing Lulu in Hollywood by the silent film actress Louise Brooks. And this bitch goes in. This is so good. She absolutely ripped Hollywood to pieces in ways I did not know I genuinely needed in my brain to help me process my own life. She spills tea on Humphrey Bogart for an entire chapter. I was really trying to think of a modern comp for Louise Brooks and I think my guest is gonna have one. But it was a little like the Julia Fox, maybe like unafraid, angry, discarded, using her sexuality in the ways she wanted. A little Ashley Judd speaking truth over the desire to fit in. We're gonna get into it all now. This book was first published in 1982. It's made up of a collection of essays that were initially published in the late 1950s. Louise started her career as a dancer in the Ziegfeld Follies where she was noticed by a producer at Paramount Pictures and signed a five year contract. She appeared in movies like Beggars of Life before going to Germany in 1929 to seek out better roles in film. Louise then gained international stardom with performances in Pandora's Box and Diary of a Lost Girl. She eventually retired from acting or was banished. Let's get into it. Self banished. She then worked as an escort and was a recluse living in poverty when film fans in the 1950s began to rediscover her work, which led her to start her writing career. Let's dive in. To be a great actress, you must.
- [02:39]
Chelsea Devantez
Know what you're doing.
- [02:40]
Mallory O'Meara
When I write my little piece, I.
- [02:41]
Chelsea Devantez
Know exactly what I'm doing.
- [02:43]
Mallory O'Meara
When I acted, I hadn't the slightest idea what I was doing. I was simply playing myself, which is the hardest thing in the world to do.
- [02:51]
Chelsea Devantez
You can give most actors any part.
- [02:52]
Mallory O'Meara
In the world and they can play it, but they say be yourself.
- [02:55]
Chelsea Devantez
They get terribly self conscious.
- [02:57]
Mallory O'Meara
But since I never learned to act.
- [02:59]
Chelsea Devantez
I never had any trouble playing myself.
- [03:07]
Mallory O'Meara
Our guest today is Mallory o' Meara, the bestselling author of the lady from the Black Lagoon, Girly Drinks and Girls Make Movies. She also just released the book Daughter of Daring, about Hollywood's first ever stuntwoman. Mallory co hosts the literary podcast Cast Reading Glasses, which they make my favorite merch. I have two of their pieces just in different colors. And she lives in Los Angeles with her two cats. Hi, Mallory.
- [03:32]
Chelsea Devantez
Hello. Thank you so much for having me.
- [03:34]
Mallory O'Meara
Are you kidding me? Thank you so much for being here. I introduced all my guests with the story of how we first met. And we first met in person at the recording of your new Smut podcast a few weeks ago. Yes.
- [03:46]
Chelsea Devantez
What a way to meet Chelsea is to hear whether or not she would have sex with the door.
- [03:50]
Mallory O'Meara
And what was. What was your takeaway? Did you come away being like, yeah, she'd do it?
- [03:54]
Chelsea Devantez
I think. Honestly, I think the takeaway was that we would all do it for the right door in the right situations.
- [03:59]
Mallory O'Meara
You know, that's what I thought my takeaway was. But when I really thought about it, my takeaway was, I don't have the core strength for this.
- [04:06]
Chelsea Devantez
Have you had the right piece of, like, furniture? Like, if you had a high enough ottoman, I think.
- [04:11]
Mallory O'Meara
Oh, that's right. I think I figured out that if I had a sex swing and could.
- [04:15]
Chelsea Devantez
Just like, yes, yes.
- [04:16]
Mallory O'Meara
Just bounce my way into it. Yes. So we read a smutty book about having sex with a door. So please go listen to that podcast. If your ears just perked up and you want to hear more about smut, give us the official plug.
- [04:28]
Chelsea Devantez
So Reading Smut is a book about horny books and the people who love them. So we do two episodes a month. One is a book club episode where Chelsea was our inaugural guest, and we did a book called Unhinged by Vera Valentine. But we'll be doing a new type of smut every month. And then our second episode is more of a culture episode. The one we just released is about why people are so horny for fairies, specifically why fairies are the big, buzzy, hot protagonist now. So it's really all about smut, but also smut culture. It's very fascinating to both Bria and I, my co host, as to, like, why these books are so popular, why they're exploding right now. Why, like, the smartest, most ambitious women we know are reading about fucking fairies. And also in an era where, you know, you could find all the porn you could want on the Internet, why so many women are turning to the written word for their kicks. So the whole culture around smut is very interesting to us. And yeah, it was a very fun way to meet Chelsea because I was like, hi, I've never met you. Now we're gonna have talk about what kind of dor we think we could get inside of us. So it was really. We really dove right in. Just like Louise Brooks does.
- [05:30]
Mallory O'Meara
That's right. Okay, let's talk about how we. Because of course, I said, please come on my podcast. Bria has been on. She covered Elvira's book with me.
- [05:37]
Chelsea Devantez
Such a good.
- [05:38]
Mallory O'Meara
She's, of course, a horror film director as well. So it was perfect. And I wanted you to come on. And you just wrote a book about the first stuntwoman in Hollywood, and did that have crossover with Louise Brooks? Because she writes in this book about, you know, stunts and having a stunt woman. So what brought you to choose Lulu in Hollywood?
- [06:00]
Chelsea Devantez
I mean, it absolutely has a lot of crossover. So when I first started writing Daughter of Daring, it's about Helen Gibson, and she started her career in the 1910s in silent Hollywood. And the book was really supposed to be more of a straightforward biography. But as I started doing my research and realized that there were so many incredible women in early Hollywood, like, the silent era of Hollywood was run by women. The highest paid screenwriter was a woman. There were more female directors working before some people had indoor plumbing than there are today.
- [06:27]
Mallory O'Meara
You know, I don't understand how that's not known. Like, even as you're saying it, my body is, like, not accepting that this is because I just, like, I can't compute, like, what. I know we're going to talk about Louise Brooks, but just real quickly, like, what the fuck happened? Like, how did it switch? Because by the time we're reading Lulu in Hollywood, all the terrible men that we know now are running her life.
- [06:50]
Chelsea Devantez
They sure are.
- [06:51]
Mallory O'Meara
So what happened?
- [06:52]
Chelsea Devantez
So the very, very long story, very, very short, is that when the film industry began, it was so new that it was sort of divorced from any sort of masculine traditions. Basically, it was such a new industry that the patriarchy hadn't had a chance to infiltrate it yet. So it was just that it wasn't regulated There were no laws, so women just sort of poured in there. Los Angeles was the only boom town in the entire western half of the United States that had more women than men. And because there was no hierarchy, because there was no traditions, because there were no laws, people could kind of just like get into the industry. There was no gatekeeping and you can move around. There's not a lot of industries, especially nowadays, where you could just start and I mean, if you wanted to be an editor back then and you were a director, you could move over. If you were a director who wanted to be a screenwriter, if you were an actor who wanted to be a director, everything was just so much more fluid because there was no. But also more importantly, big business hadn't gotten into Hollywood yet. It was not regulated or run like a corporation. So it was kind of very loosey goosey. And when there was nobody telling them they couldn't do it, women just got in into Hollywood. And the key that really surprised me was that the entire film industry was built on female audiences as well. So in order to get.
- [08:08]
Mallory O'Meara
Sorry, this is so upsetting.
- [08:09]
Chelsea Devantez
I know, it's very infuriating. That's my, my whole career is just being pissed off. Film started out as like Nickelodeon's were just sort of like, they were like saloons. It was sort of like a low class entertainment because, you know, you would sit in a dark, stinky room with no air conditioning and like, it just wasn't like where, quote, proper people went to go. And so when the industry started developing and people wanted to make theaters and wanted to, you know, make it really a big thing, they thought, well, how do we class up this joint? We get women in seats. So they, I mean, there were theaters that were giving away free tickets to women. There were, that had daycare centers, they would do big giveaways. They would give away dresses and dinner sets and whole hams trying to get women and wives and like get female audiences in. But what they didn't count on is that women fell in love with movies because it was a form of escapism for them. So all of a sudden all of.
- [08:58]
Mallory O'Meara
These much like fucking fairies.
- [09:00]
Chelsea Devantez
Yes. Honestly, that's sort of. It really comes around. That's it. And so in order to attract these female audiences, filmmakers made movies that attracted women. So it became a big cycle where women fell in love with the movies because they were seeing themselves on the big screen and they had this beautiful moment of escapism. But also they were the ones who started to make female centric movies and female Filmmakers popular. So all of a sudden, all these new female filmmakers, the actors, the writers, the directors, had huge star power. So they used that power to start their own production companies, tell their own stories people don't believe. Like, back in the 1910s, there were, like, four huge movies about abortion. Dorothy Arsener was an out lesbian filmmaker making a movie about open marriages and how terrible marriage is for women. It was so progressive back. I mean, again, like, there was. It wasn't a magical feminist utopia. There was also a lot of shitty racial stuff.
- [09:54]
Mallory O'Meara
It was just better than it was today, which sucks, because that was over 110 years ago.
- [10:00]
Chelsea Devantez
Yes, yes.
- [10:00]
Mallory O'Meara
Two quick thoughts. When you're describing, like, theaters with the daycare and they give away dresses, I think you're describing my business plan for glamorous trash.
- [10:10]
Chelsea Devantez
I mean, it worked back then. There's no reason why you can't go back to it now.
- [10:14]
Mallory O'Meara
Listen, I. I would love to. And the second thing it made me think of is this joke I used to have that I. I don't even know if I told it because I don't think I cracked it. Where tattoo artists and chefs, like, it's this big, like, masculine thing, because the moment men go into it, it's no longer drawing. It's fucking tattooing a koi fish.
- [10:33]
Chelsea Devantez
Yep.
- [10:33]
Mallory O'Meara
And when women are cook, men cook. It's like knives and butter is life.
- [10:38]
Chelsea Devantez
Yeah. Women are cooks and men are chefs.
- [10:40]
Mallory O'Meara
Exactly. Okay, so you brought the book Lulu in Hollywood to this podcast, which I have to say, I do not think this would have made it on this podcast had the right guest. You not introduced me to it, because I really. I don't know, it just has never made its way to me. And it has such an artistic, cool cover. Very important is that it is a collection of essays, so it is not a memoir. This won't be a. This isn't us covering her full life.
- [11:07]
Chelsea Devantez
Story because she's too busy talking.
- [11:10]
Mallory O'Meara
Yeah, she's too busy talking. But also, she wrote her memoir. It was called Naked on My Goat, and she decided it was too salacious and would burn too many bridges, that she put that in the fire, which.
- [11:22]
Chelsea Devantez
Is nuts, because this book talks so much that I am dying to know what the book that she thought talked too much had inside of it.
- [11:30]
Mallory O'Meara
Yeah. I was like, that's crazy. The one thing I'll say, and we'll get to it in the end, is that I think obviously, like many people, much more comfortable talking shit about other people than about herself. And I imagine her memoir talked about.
- [11:42]
Chelsea Devantez
Herself it's an interesting collection because there's one essay in here that is just a straight about her. And then she goes, all right, well, that's enough. And then the rest of the essays in the collection are about other people.
- [11:51]
Mallory O'Meara
A hundred percent. I did skip the intro because I really don't like being told what a book is before I read. I want to enjoy the book.
- [11:58]
Chelsea Devantez
I do the same thing. I don't read intros.
- [11:59]
Mallory O'Meara
Yeah, I will go back and read the intro afterwards if the book is written in such a way. And that is what I did, because he did give away all the stuff. So I'm glad I skipped it. Yeah. That's when I realized, like, okay, that's why this memoir is so weird, because it's really not about her, which is very fun. However, she wrote a paragraph at the very beginning about her family, to which I said, holy shit. Like, it's very odd to read about a Woke family in 1871 or in 1950 to be writing in any sort of progressive way. It was just surprising to me. Let me read it. The Brooks family were poor English farmers who came to America on a merchant ship. At the end of the 18th century. They settled in the mountainous northeastern part of Tennessee. During the Civil War, they fought against the slaveholders who owned plantations in western Tennessee. In 1871, my great grandfather, John Brooks, with his son Martin and Martin's young family journeyed by covered wagon 1,000 miles across Tennessee, Arkansas. The government let them have 160 acres of land near the village of Burden. And she said the Pawnee and Cherokee Indians had already been driven into a reservation in the Oklahoma Territory to the south, while the last of the Plains Indians were then fighting hopelessly against the United States army in Calvary, which soon swept their survivors west into Colorado. Furthermore, by 1875, the Indian subsistence, the millions of buffalo had been slaughtered by the white hunters. Thereafter, homesteaders poured in. I said, yes, I don't normally like going back to your great grandfather's story, but historically, I don't know. I found her extremely woke in this book. I know it's a weird word to.
- [13:41]
Chelsea Devantez
Use, but her whole book is like that. And it was very surprising. And that's. I mean, it's something that I really. I was. I love and I was very excited to explore in this book, is that we have an idea of what women and people in general were like a hundred years ago. And she kind of kicks all of those expectations directly in the face.
- [14:00]
Mallory O'Meara
That is what really elevated my life. I'm already doing the book deal test in the beginning, but it really elevated my life to get all the gross fucked up details of golden era Hollywood. There aren't in the books. Even when they do include them, they are not what Louise is talking about.
- [14:18]
Chelsea Devantez
No.
- [14:19]
Mallory O'Meara
Which really, you know, we'll get into it in a second. Okay, we're going to take a quick break right now and we'll be right back. Team Omz My mom texted me a selfie and she said I need makeup help. And I said good, because now I know what I'm getting you. For Mother's day I got her a bunch of products from Thrive Cosmetics. Let me just tell you what I got her. The brilliant eye brightener, the deluxe mini liquid volumizer mascara. I also got her the instant brow fix and two lip filler long wearing plumping lip liners. I cannot recommend these products more. They're vegan, they're cruelty free and Thrive Cosmetics donates to causes that really matter with every single purchase. If you just get one product, get the brilliant eye brightener Mini in Stella Champagne Shimmer is my favorite shade. You're gonna change your eye game. It also has over 40,000 five star reviews, so don't just take my word for it. Discover your new trusty favorite from Thrive Cosme Luxury Beauty that gives back. You can get an exclusive 20 off your first order at thrivecosmetics.com glamorous that's Thrive Cosmetics. C A U S e M E T-I C S.com glamorous for 20% off your first order. Go celebrate your tea momsy. And also get some for yourself. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much.
- [15:42]
Chelsea Devantez
Please, for the love of everything good.
- [15:43]
Mallory O'Meara
In this world, stop with Mint.
- [15:45]
Chelsea Devantez
You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying.
- [15:50]
Mallory O'Meara
No judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment. Anyway, give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full terms@mintmobile.com okay, let's dive back into the episode. Okay, I also need to read her lifelong curse. Okay, she says this. Oh yes, in her lifelong curse, she's talking about the Fitzgeralds, which made me want to go and watch the Christina Ricci Zelda series. Was it called Z?
- [16:29]
Chelsea Devantez
Yeah.
- [16:30]
Mallory O'Meara
Is that good? Should I go back and watch that?
- [16:32]
Chelsea Devantez
I haven't seen it.
- [16:33]
Mallory O'Meara
Okay, I'm gonna listen. Cookies weigh in. She said, here I must confess to a lifelong curse. In December 1940, Scott Fitzgerald touched it when he wrote to his daughter, Scotty. Zelda is tragically brilliant in all matters except that of central importance. She has failed as a social creature. On first meeting ERNEST HEMINGWAY In 1925, Zelda called him bogus. Hemingway retaliated by publicizing her as crazy and Scott as a destructive drunk, and with the result that they were banished by their friends, the Gerald Murphys, and consequently by the rest of the social colony on the French Riviera. A year later, my friend Townsend Martin, a screenwriter at Paramount who had gone to Princeton with Fitzgerald and who spent a part of each summer in Paris, gave me my first insight into the herd mentality of high society. Returning from France, he declared the conduct of his previously adored Fitzgerald, he said, it has become too outrageous, and went on to say, nobody sees them anymore. This really put the Fitzgerald into context for me. But also talk some on the elites, which I love.
- [17:41]
Chelsea Devantez
The last line of that paragraph I'm going to read because it's one of my favorite and it really tells you a lot about her. She's definitely the. Louise Briggs is the sort of person that's like, she's so spiky and so prickly, but very proud of it. And I can't tell if she was always just proud of it or it was something that she's legitimately bad at. And in order to, like, protect herself and make herself feel okay about it, she's like, well, only the coolest people can talk to me anyways, because I'm so. The quote is. And so I have remained in cruel pursuit of truth and excellence, an inhumane executioner of the bogus, an abomination to all but those few who have overcome their aversion to truth in order to free whatever is good in them. Oh, my God, that is such an insane thing to say about yourself.
- [18:31]
Mallory O'Meara
Yeah. And she's basically saying, because I wouldn't people please and kiss ass and I speak truth to power, I was banished and failed in Hollywood.
- [18:42]
Chelsea Devantez
Yes. Although there's a quote that I had seen in my research for my last book that made me sort of fall in love with her. Is that when she was asked why she didn't make it in Hollywood, she said, I like to drink and fuck too much. So I think it's a little bit of both.
- [18:56]
Mallory O'Meara
Yeah. I definitely found her to be an unreliable narrator in her own essay collection where she would tell this side of stories that was like, can you Believe he said that. And then in another nook and cranny, it's like, okay, but you did fuck him though, right?
- [19:11]
Chelsea Devantez
Because.
- [19:11]
Mallory O'Meara
Did you skip that part? It's. You kind of made it out like he made it up.
- [19:14]
Chelsea Devantez
Yeah, she, she, she very quickly is like jumping past that fact. Like a through line through this book is that people are always sort of talking about how much she. And then in other parts of the book, she sort of like brushes past. She's like, oh, yeah, well, I did fuck that person, and I didn't fuck that person. And yeah, I fucked him too. And you're kind of like, wait, wait, what? Like, okay, yeah, because you told this.
- [19:33]
Mallory O'Meara
Story like, that you didn't have sex with. Yeah, yeah. I will say to her, like, did she always have this quality or is it something that she began when people bristled from it? She said, when she was a child in dance school, quote, I decided right then on stage that I would never smile unless I felt like it.
- [19:52]
Chelsea Devantez
That's some bad bitch shit right there, though.
- [19:54]
Mallory O'Meara
It really is. So maybe it is a part of her. And she had an unusual upbringing that her mom raised her own siblings. So when her mom got married, she said, listen, whatever brats come out of me, they can take care of themselves. Like, I'm not doing it. I'm going to play piano and read. And so she really was left to her own devices. She read a lot. She felt like everyone entertainment was an idiot and didn't read books, and so she just wouldn't talk to them at all.
- [20:17]
Chelsea Devantez
I kind of do love that about her, though.
- [20:19]
Mallory O'Meara
Yeah, I really went back and forth with her. Let's talk about one of those stories with men. So when she is filming Beggars of Life, her co star, who she refers to as Dick, has this night where she knows he doesn't like her, but he invites her for a drink.
- [20:41]
Chelsea Devantez
This is such a weird scene. This is one of those scenes where I was like, girl, I think you're leaving out some context that you don't want people to know.
- [20:47]
Mallory O'Meara
Yes, exactly. But then, like, as he's talking, she's like, he's telling the history of this person. I know, but my heroes don't advocate for the abuse of women. So, like, I don't agree with what he's saying. And even just that sentence again, it's 1950. When she's writing this, I'm like, this is cool as shit. But then he gets very drunk and he says, dick's jaw muscles twitched as he hunched closer to me. To deliver his monologue. It sure is too bad about your getting a divorce from a swell guy like Eddie Sutherland. And a swell director, he said. Now that you're not his wife anymore, everybody expects Paramount to fire you. They don't know you're a pet of the front office. He paused for a philosophic sigh. Funny thing. I've been working at Paramount for three years. A damned fine actor, too. And I make a stinking $400 a week while you ride around in your damn Lincoln Town Car with its damn black satin finish. Why, you can't even act. You're not even good looking. You're a lousy actress and your eyes too close together. Having concluded his curse upon me and my Lincoln Town Car, Dick stood up and snatched away his bottle of whiskey and swaggered from the lobby. I said, did Dick reincarnate as my sketch director?
- [21:55]
Chelsea Devantez
Something that I really love is how well she shows male insecurities, especially during this time. I mean, women generally were paid more than men, both in front of and behind the camera. And there were a lot of guys who were not okay with it. So even though I do think there's some context she's leaving out of this, it's very interesting for her to show how angry that makes men when I say reincarnated.
- [22:17]
Mallory O'Meara
It's just. I've just. There's a specific type of anger when a man has not fulfilled his creative capabilities and feels wronged by the world and how he wields that towards the woman standing next to him.
- [22:30]
Chelsea Devantez
This is a specific type of LA guy to date is the LA guy who has been out here for a really long time, but hasn't made it yet and is so bitter, but refuses to admit that he's bitter that it's such a specific type of guy. And she talks about it so beautifully.
- [22:46]
Mallory O'Meara
So beautifully. And listen, that type of guy also lives in Chicago.
- [22:50]
Chelsea Devantez
So I mean, that type of guy really lives everywhere. You can't get a guy like that in his 20s. They're in their 30s and 40s. They're like, they have to ferment a little bit.
- [22:59]
Mallory O'Meara
The dream's gotta wither enough to get that exact.
- [23:03]
Chelsea Devantez
They gotta really get desperate and lonely and sad.
- [23:05]
Mallory O'Meara
Whereas, like, when women streams wither and they're treated unfairly, it just processes differently. It's not that like women aren't bitter about their own dreams, but it doesn't specifically go, I need to go on a date with him again and take it out on him personally.
- [23:17]
Chelsea Devantez
Yes. I don't need. I don't need to have bad sex about this, you know?
- [23:20]
Mallory O'Meara
Yeah, exactly. So the context she's leaving out is if she is dating or sleeping with the people on this set in any way, because it's the same set. There's another guy in the movie named Harvey, and he saunters over to her, and he says, I've got something to ask you. Holding the door shut with one hand, while his other hand held my arm, he said, I guess, you know, my job depends on my health. Naming a high film executive whom I'd never met, he went on, everybody knows you're his girl, and he has syphilis. And what I want to know is, do you have syphilis? Which wouldn't matter unless she had slept with Harvey. But she's not included that, so it kind of sounds like some psychopath coming up to her being like, I heard you slept with this guy who she doesn't know, and I heard you have syphilis. I'd like to know about it. And then there's, like, another guy on set, and he gets injured, and they're like, oh, well, he's your boyfriend. And she's like, my boyfriend? Like, he's not. Not what? He's not my boyfriend. They're like, well, he thinks he is. And after his injury, he comes to her room, and she feels bad for him because he's been hurt. And then he makes a move on her, and she says, too astonished to be angry, I shoved him away, saying, are you trying to make love to me? Why not? He said, furiously jumping up and backing away to the door to make his exit. You go to bed with everyone else. Why not me?
- [24:42]
Chelsea Devantez
Again, you can tell that she's trying to write around a few things. And it's interesting to see a woman that is so scathing in so many other ways definitely still has a little bit of internalized shame about her sexual exploits because she's writing around them. But it. Like, she does write about this male insecurity. So, I mean, every. Every woman listening to the show who has men has had these experiences with guys that are like, well, you slept with him, but why would you sleep with me? Yeah, it's. It's such a thing.
- [25:10]
Mallory O'Meara
And I wish she had written the specifics, but let me. Let me take a guess. I'm purely guessing, but my feelings are she did sleep with Harvey and had a thing with him. And then because men are pieces of. They were like, well, then we should all her. Because Harvey had a girlfriend at the time, and. And so she was like being a mistress. And then he gave the rumors about her having syphilis. And then all the guys were like, I should have a go, and treated her like because of this affair. However, she didn't tell us any of that. So it kind of just sounds like, I don't know. Now here's a moment to bring up something else she didn't write about, which is her affair with Charlie Chaplin.
- [25:43]
Chelsea Devantez
Yes. Which I personally hate. Charlie Chaplin. I have a vendetta against this man.
- [25:48]
Mallory O'Meara
Please share a little bit of your vendett.
- [25:51]
Chelsea Devantez
So there's a woman named Mabel Norman, and she was a very, very, very, very famous comedian in the silent era. She was one of the most successful comedians of the time. And she is the one who, quote, like discovered Charlie Chaplin. She convinced the studio that she was working with, which was keystone, to have him be in her movies. His Tramp character, the first time he ever did that was in her series of comedy films. And she was like, she was a master of physical comedy. It was called New Comedy. It was like very violent, very physical. It was very, very different than the comedy that had been happening in the previous era. In the Victorian era. I think Mabel Norman was the first person to ever like, throw a pie at somebody's face, like, love her. She was amazing. And she fought for Charlie Chaplin. She really, really developed him. But then as soon as he started getting famous, of course he started treating her like shit and not listening to her. He started claiming director credit on movies that they had made, even though he wasn't the director. He just started treating her like garbage. And so I personally hate Charlie Chaplin. Wow.
- [26:50]
Mallory O'Meara
Okay. Yeah. This, listen, none of it's surprising.
- [26:53]
Chelsea Devantez
So he didn't deserve Louise Brooks. Okay.
- [26:56]
Mallory O'Meara
Yeah. And he, I believe he's married at the time, of course, and it's a three month affair. Yes. So a cookie DM'd me another page of a biography of Louise Brooks in which she had told someone that Charlie Chaplin, to protect himself from syphilis, had covered his dick in iodine.
- [27:11]
Chelsea Devantez
Very sexy.
- [27:12]
Mallory O'Meara
Very sexy. And then he comes out to sleep with Louise and another actress, Peggy, who is there, and he just has this like, like floppy, bright red penis that's covered in iodine. So sexy.
- [27:25]
Chelsea Devantez
So do you think he shaved his pubes to, to look like the mustache too? Do you think they matched?
- [27:31]
Mallory O'Meara
Oh, my gosh. How dare you?
- [27:35]
Chelsea Devantez
Yeah.
- [27:35]
Mallory O'Meara
And I mean, obviously she's being shamed into this complex with her own sexuality. It's just she has broken free of so many things that she no longer has shame about that. You wish she had broken through that one as well. But a huge chapter in the book that I. I'm gonna skip a lot of it. But basically she has this friend named Pepe.
- [27:55]
Chelsea Devantez
Oh my God. Okay, I'm glad this is the one that you picked because I have so many thoughts about this chapter. It's very fascinating to me.
- [28:02]
Mallory O'Meara
In my note, it's like, ask Mallory everything. So let me just give everyone the setup, which is that she writes this sentence. She said, why have I never thought to write about Pepe? I asked myself. And the answer came back to mock me. Because she wasn't a success. She was a failure in Hollywood. I went to my bookshelves and pulled out an old dictionary whose fly leaves were pasted with typewritten quotations and found this line. For a man remains of consequence not so far as he leaves something behind him, but so far as he acts and enjoys and rouses others to action and enjoyment. And that is Pepe for her. And she goes on, she has this huge chapter about Pepe who is a lesbian.
- [28:42]
Chelsea Devantez
Yes. So Pepe is her friend. Louise Brooks was friends with Marian Davies, who was a film star of the time. She was also very, very famously William Randolph Hearst's mistress. And through that friendship, which is very interesting when you read the book, because it doesn't seem like her and Marian Davies actually are friends. She does not write about Marion Davies very nicely, but because they, they knew each other. Louise Brooks became friends with Marion Davies niece who is a writer and a lesbian. And I can. This was maybe my peppy. Yes, I love this chapter. It's my favorite of the whole book because I think it is kind of beautiful to be like, hey, this was my friend and she fucked up and did not do well at this. But I still think she's worthy of writing about especially because she really writes a lot about the injustices that happened about how, you know, it was sort of a double edged sword to be Marion Davies niece because, you know, she had access to all of these things, but also she was sort of looked over and everyone assumed that everything that she did was just because of Marianne Davies and William Randolph Hearst. And her death was very tragic, her life was very tragic. And she's shit talking all of the girlfriends that she had because she thinks that all these girlfriends that she had only was with her because of, you know, the Marion Davies and William Randolph Hearst connection. And it's a kind of a beautiful chapter, even though it is sort of like, oh wow, you are still shit talking your friend, sort of damning with praise. But it is beautiful. Like, we don't hear. We don't hear these stories ever.
- [30:05]
Mallory O'Meara
Yeah, I think that's tapping on. What was so incredible about this book is exactly how she writes about failure. And she gives failure the grandiosity that most Hollywood books only give the success stories.
- [30:19]
Chelsea Devantez
Yes.
- [30:19]
Mallory O'Meara
Where they'll tell the ups and downs of a success story, but what about the ups and downs of a failure story? And Pepe dies by suicide. And I think she blames a lot of that on Marian. And so I thought what was interesting too is that the only ways we learn about Louise Brooks own marriage and divorce to Eddie Sutherland is in the Pepe chapter.
- [30:41]
Chelsea Devantez
Yes. Which is fair. Again, it's very roundabout. It's very strange.
- [30:44]
Mallory O'Meara
Very roundabout. And it's via Pepe's reaction to her divorce, which is really that she's her bestie, she's her ride or die. She's like this guy, let's go, let's go to court. And like she's getting divorced from him and she's like, I hate him. And she decided to send a telegram to him. This is like, hey, girl, give me your phone. Let me send the text for you. You.
- [31:07]
Chelsea Devantez
It's the old timey version of breaking up with someone via text message. Imagine getting broken up with via telegram. That's so cold.
- [31:14]
Mallory O'Meara
I mean, I think it's exactly like a text message or a post it. No, I mean, and her. This is the best part. She's. She sat down with the secretary and composed the telegram to him. So Pepe writes, you are now free to diddle with little or no compunction and signed it with my name.
- [31:34]
Chelsea Devantez
That is a true bestie, though.
- [31:36]
Mallory O'Meara
True bestie, true. Ride or die.
- [31:37]
Chelsea Devantez
You are now free to diddle. Is. I hope I go through a terrible breakup just so I could use that, because that's gold.
- [31:44]
Mallory O'Meara
You are now free to diddle. Yeah, you're right. It's a text message with witnesses because the secretary has to be present for the writing and a secretary is present for the reception. And then whoever hands it to you.
- [31:53]
Chelsea Devantez
Oh, yeah. I mean, it's a text message with staff. Like, it is like the most grandiose way of breaking up with someone. It's so beautiful. But again, the story is so lovely and it's very rare, I think, especially for the time to get an essay about your queer friend where she's not. It takes you a little bit to figure out that Pepe is a lesbian because she writes about it. So she treats it with Such a blase manner. That's very refreshing. It's almost not as interesting to Louise that she's a lesbian as the fact that she was a failure.
- [32:27]
Mallory O'Meara
That is so true. Even though her being a lesbian is key to part of why they don't let her succeed. It's like a huge, like them find. Like them society finding out, like, wait, you are a lesbian? And, like, making her pay for it is like, a big part of her failure. But, like, that's when you. That's when you find out she's lesbian. When Louise is like, oh, and then they used it against her.
- [32:47]
Chelsea Devantez
Yes. It's just. It's really not the point of this whole essay. It would be so easy for her to be like, well, look at me. I'm so progressive with all of my gay friends. And it's just, like, not what the essay's about at all. It's really about the inner workings of Hollywood. And if you've ever. If you work in the film industry and you've ever been frustrated about the clicks and just, like, how it's so much. It's almost about everything but your talent. And you read this and you're like, oh, it's always been like this, you.
- [33:12]
Mallory O'Meara
Know, And I think that's what has been refreshing, because we've all known that Hollywood is a terror town, and that's because it always has been. However, the specific ways in which it terrorizes you have not been written about the way she does. So, you know, the casting couch, the unfairness, the eating disorders thrust upon women, the way women are treated, all of that has been known. But she adds an extra. I don't know, an extra bedroom of the ways it sucks, which is exactly the ways it sucks. Now that has been left out of golden Hollywood history. Okay, my favorite chapter is the Humphrey Bogart actually sucks chapter.
- [33:49]
Chelsea Devantez
Oh, my God, I loved that so much. She is like, oh, I'm. Oh, this beloved film icon, and I'm going to tear him to shreds.
- [33:58]
Mallory O'Meara
Okay, this feels like a good time to take a quick break.
- [34:03]
Chelsea Devantez
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Mallory O'Meara
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Mallory O'Meara
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Chelsea Devantez
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Mallory O'Meara
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Chelsea Devantez
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Mallory O'Meara
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- [34:33]
Mallory O'Meara
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Chelsea Devantez
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Mallory O'Meara
Free trial@greenlight.com Spotify greenlight.com Spotify okay, welcome back. Let's continue the conversation. I would not have enjoyed this as much if we had not read Lauren Bacall's memoir recently on this podcast. And reading this chapter finally made Lauren's memoir make sense.
- [35:22]
Chelsea Devantez
Oh, interesting.
- [35:23]
Mallory O'Meara
I was like, this memoir is sad, but it's being portrayed as like me and Humphrey's great life. And I'm like, I don't. Something's off. And this gave the answers. So let's begin to read. In the years since Humphrey Bogart's death in 1957, biographers catering to the Bogey cult have transformed him into a cinematic saint. Saint Bogart, in whom I can find scarcely a trace of the Humphrey I first knew in 1924 or the bogey I last saw in 1943. The earliest strokes in the biographer's portraits are those that paint him as a loner, a man of self determination who makes all his own decisions with regard for nothing beyond immediate satisfaction. Such a description will not do for a 20th century film star in Hollywood. Being myself, a born loner who was temporarily deflected from the hermit's path by a career in theater and filmed, I can categorically state that in Bogart's time there was no other occupation in the world that so closely resembled enslavement as the career of a film star. He had self determination only in this he might or he might not sign a film contract.
- [36:38]
Chelsea Devantez
I mean, it's so brutal, but I mean this was the 1950s and the 1940s were the heyday of the, of the seven year contract. It almost sounds like a fantasy novel where the princess is trapped in a tower. This was a time period where the studio that you worked for owned you and they could make you look however you want. There's all sorts of wild rumors and legends like, you know, studios would track your period and if, if you got into a relationship with someone and the studio didn't like them, they would break you up. You know, they would make you date people that you didn't like. I mean, they just completely controlled your life and was a wild time.
- [37:12]
Mallory O'Meara
Yeah. And especially the way they treated children in those times and was even worse. And I. It was. Yeah, they owned your entire life. That's.
- [37:21]
Chelsea Devantez
Yeah. Just give this 10 year old a bunch of cocaine and send him out. Send him out on set him out to tap dance. Yeah, he'll have a grand old time. And that's so interesting to me that this is the period that is known as the golden age of Hollywood. Because it's so awful. It was so awful for the people working it. I mean, there, of course there are amazing movies, but they are very. A lot of them are very cookie cutter. To me, it was Louise Brooks's time, you know, silent era Hollywood, when things were a little nuts. That's the golden era of Hollywood to me. That's when like, you know, so many amazing things were happening by this time. Everything. This is when corporate, the court, like in the 1930s, after the Great Depression happened and Hollywood almost collapsed financially, Wall street came in and all these Wall street investors came to Hollywood and they started running these studios, like corporations. And that's why women were ultimately completely pushed out. Because these East Coast Wall street dudes could not imagine trusting women with being a director, trusting them with finances. And so all of the people of color, the queer filmmakers, all the women, everybody was pushed out. And that's what started, quote, this golden age of Hollywood. And I can't. It's like one of those things, you know, what has been seen cannot be unseen. Like, I can't look at these movies, you know, some of these really incredible golden age, you know, Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, all these movies, I can't. I can't look at them with that nostalgia. To me, they're so tainted.
- [38:46]
Mallory O'Meara
That's so well said. And it's why it's necessary to have Louise here in the corner being like, y' all. That is not what it felt like. Like, stop lying.
- [38:57]
Chelsea Devantez
Yes. It's so romanticized and it just should not be.
- [39:01]
Mallory O'Meara
Yeah. And I think it's extremely important to note that she feels run out of Hollywood, Driven out of Hollywood. Self banished. They banished her. Obviously there's a gray area that exists in between of like, you know, did she stop working because she wanted to or because they stopped giving her jobs? And she goes on to work as an escort to be kept by wealthy men to do sex work. She is living in a really tiny, decrepit apartment in poverty when cinephiles find her old films and start talking about what a phenomenal actress she is. And only then does she start writing these essays that are published where they're like, wait, Louise has some to say about cinema.
- [39:48]
Chelsea Devantez
And she's good at saying it. She's a great, phenomenal.
- [39:51]
Mallory O'Meara
She's a phenomenal writer. Like there were. It's not like this could be written now is a marker of great writing. However, I found the thought so many thoughts in this were so progressive and so forward thinking that they could be surprising to people now. And they were written years ago and so by her. But it's worth noting how far Hollywood had driven her into madness and sadness and poverty. And like, the off chance that like, she may have never given these thoughts because they were never welcomed.
- [40:21]
Chelsea Devantez
Her career really had three wins because first she, you know, she was in Holly. She started out as a dancer, went to Hollywood because. Cause during that time, a lot of people don't realize the Hollywood we think of now is in Los Angeles. But the American film industry really was on the east coast for the first few years. And that's where she started. She was a dancer in New York. She got involved in these movies that were being shot in New York and New Jersey. And then when the film industry moved to Los Angeles, she went over there. But it never seemed like she was super happy. And so one of the essays talks about how it seemed like she was also. When they were firing her at Paramount, she was also kind of ready to leave. And she took this job from this filmmaker that was shooting this movie in Germany called pen, Dora's Box, which I will say if you have a Criterion subscription, you can watch it. I went and watched it and it's really cool. There's interviews with. I think she's in her 80s. There's an interview with her. It's just like a little documentary. Just her talking about the movie and talking about her work. It's really, really cool, especially after reading this book. But she went and had like success in Germany for a while. She shot a bunch of films over there. They're incredible. Like, she looks amazing. But there's so many stories like this of women who, like, came so close and did so many cool things and were so amazing and then lost it all. And that was it. And the fact that she had the talent. I don't think she would have gotten this sort of revitalization of her career if she wasn't such a great writer. If she wrote one. If she wrote one article for them and it was like, fine, they would have been like, oh, pat her on the head. That's cool. We trotted Louise Brooks out for all the cinephiles and now let's put her back. But she was so talented, she almost made them reconsider her.
- [41:54]
Mallory O'Meara
Absolutely. There's half this book where I'm like, oh, hilarious. You want to talk shit on the people who fucked you over and you are willing to just like gossip and name names. And that is half of this where they're like, I'm sorry, Humphrey Bogart did what? And then the other half is like, she's a brilliantly talented writer and thinker. And it was the mapping I needed for now because there's so many incredible women right now. I can think of where we are watching it it in real time and have watched it in real time. Even just thinking about. And I would need to double check all of this. But even just when I read in memoirs, like when I remember that American Psycho was directed and written by a woman.
- [42:35]
Chelsea Devantez
Yep.
- [42:36]
Mallory O'Meara
And that she had so many male screenwriters had tried to adapt that book and failed. And like, she succeeded. And it's this incredible iconic movie, but I can't off the top of my name 10 other great films of hers because they never allowed her to have that career that she deserved.
- [42:53]
Chelsea Devantez
No.
- [42:54]
Mallory O'Meara
And I. And that's the kind of type of crime I'm talking about. It's like where you get it and you do it and yet still they just won't fucking let you proceed. And yeah, it's Mary Heron who. Who directed American Psycho. And it's just like, why isn't she our Spielberg? And obviously she had it in her. If this is a systemic problem and it's happening to like, can you think of other female directors that like. Like off the top of your head.
- [43:15]
Chelsea Devantez
There's a zillion of them. But I mean, think about Mary, like Mary Haron. The reason why all, like all these male screenwriters could not make American Psycho is they wanted to play it straight. And Mary Heron realizes that masculinity is funny and she made it a satire. And that's why it's. Why it's such an iconic movie. But she hasn't really made that much sense. And there, I mean, there's so many amazing female filmmakers that made, especially in the 80s and 90s, made like one incredible movie. The one that I'm thinking off the top of my head is Donna Deitch, who wrote and directed a movie called Desert Hearts, which is like, really known as the first great lesbian movie. It's such an incredible movie. It's about this woman who goes like back in the day when it was really hard to get a divorce and you had to go to a state that had divorced.
- [44:00]
Mallory O'Meara
Had like a no fault divorce.
- [44:01]
Chelsea Devantez
Yes. So she stays at this hotel specifically made for that purpose in Nevada. And while she's there, she falls in love with this woman and doesn't know what to do. It's such an amazing movie.
- [44:11]
Mallory O'Meara
Wait, what's the movie called again?
- [44:12]
Chelsea Devantez
Desert Hearts.
- [44:14]
Mallory O'Meara
Desert Hearts.
- [44:14]
Chelsea Devantez
Okay. It's like, it's available for streaming. Please watch it. It's so great. But like after this movie came out, like someone should have given her a blank fucking check. And I don't think, I don't think she ever made another movie after that.
- [44:24]
Mallory O'Meara
Yeah, and you know what I just thought of Penelope Spheris, who did Wayne's World.
- [44:28]
Chelsea Devantez
I was gonna say Penelope. Oh my God, she's made so many amazing movies. Like why would she, why did she not have a residency somewhere?
- [44:35]
Mallory O'Meara
100%. And again, it's because systemically booted out. Even when you hand them a major blockbuster, a major win, it's almost as if that's why they're like, quick, get rid of her now. So yes, to bring this back into Louise Brooks, I want to read some more Humphrey Bogart drama. So she talks about how Humphrey Bogart's marriages, all of them are how he became a star. And his first marriage is the one who got him into theater. When he failed out, the second marriage got him back in. And then she writes Humphrey was playing a college boy being snatched by middle aged Mary Boland while off stage in the Bronx, the year old Lauren Bacall lay in her cradle waiting for Bogey to snatch her 20 years later as wife number four.
- [45:27]
Chelsea Devantez
Just brutal.
- [45:30]
Mallory O'Meara
Thank you. She was a baby. She was a little, little baby child actress. And they are thought of as like Humphrey and Lauren in the golden age. It's like she was 20.
- [45:39]
Chelsea Devantez
Yeah.
- [45:40]
Mallory O'Meara
Disgusting old dude. Then she said Humphrey, according to his biographers, had an amazing number of recreations. He played golf, tennis, bridge, chess, he sailed, he read books. Except on one occasion. The only thing I ever saw him do was sit drinking and talking with people.
- [46:00]
Chelsea Devantez
I mean, it's obviously, it's so fun to read all this talking, but it's also kind of great and it feels so barbed from her and like it's aimed so specifically at him because this is all the stuff that people are accusing her of, you know, like fucking her way to the top and you know, pretending that she's Somebody she's not. But Humphrey Bogart, one of the greatest stars of the era. That's all he was, you know?
- [46:21]
Mallory O'Meara
Yes. Yeah. And she's like, here's how incredible he was acting in parts when he wasn't. He was a great artist, but, like, don't make him up to be all these things that he wasn't. Because, again, I was too. And it didn't matter because I was a woman. She has one Barb in there where she's like, Humphrey just sort of fell into relationships. Like, you needed to already be there. You needed to already exist. He needed to know that you were in. And then he would, like, look up from his drink and be like you there. Which better describes how he and Lauren Bacall got together than how Lauren described it. And she says Humphrey one time was like, louise, how about you? Because she said, no. He was like, fuck you. And then it's incredible, because in the Lauren Bacall memoir, she's like, I met Humphrey when he had a crazy wife named Mayo. Which dream name for a character, Mayo. They're calling her Mayo. I mean, her name was Mayo. Anyways, it's like Mayo the alcoholic. Mayo the. The haggard. You know, like the haggard witch he had to deal with at home. Who, you know, he. He was in prison with. And Lauren freed him. Meanwhile, Louise tells the story of the night Mayo and Humphrey get together. And I'm gonna read it so good. She said that she's at a party at someone's house. And she said, that night, instead of having our usual talk and laughter, we became an audience galvanized by a scene of the most passionate love played out between Mayo and Humphrey. Without so much as a touch of hands, Mayo moved restlessly to the phonograph and put on an old Argentine tango. Adios, muchacha. She got up and danced. The dance began as a burlesque, with Humphrey throwing her about and glaring lustfully into her eyes. Gradually, however, her exquisitely persuasive body began to roll his movements. And they danced in the falling arcs. The slow recoveries and the voluptuous pauses of the true tango. The spell was broken by a maid who announced that Mayo's husband had telephoned to say he was on his way to the house. Humphrey sprang from the sofa to whisk her away. But wait. She had taken off her slippers to dance. And now none of them could be found. Everyone searched for it except for me. And that must aroused Humphrey's suspicions. Because quite suddenly, he lunged at me with the most hideous face. Rasping God damn you, Louise. Tell us where you hid Mayo's slipper. Fortunately, at this moment, this other guy she was dancing with stretched up and, like, finds her slipper, like, in the ceiling. And then she and Humphrey, like, go away to and, like.
- [48:46]
Chelsea Devantez
Which is kind of romantic.
- [48:49]
Mallory O'Meara
Is it, Mallory?
- [48:50]
Chelsea Devantez
I mean, it's better than other versions that they were just dancing together and they were so horny about each other that they didn't know what to do.
- [48:58]
Mallory O'Meara
Yeah, I'm trying to read it, and it's like, I think she was dancing for him with another man, and he was, like, being cuck danced and then. But it was, like, clear that he was gonna fuck her that night. It's the old hard to farts.
- [49:08]
Chelsea Devantez
The old cuck dance.
- [49:09]
Mallory O'Meara
The old cuck dance. Well, now it's time for the end of the book, where she writes an epilogue, which is perfect for this podcast. And the title of it is why I will Never Write My Memoirs. And she starts it with, the trouble with us, said Grant Clark to me in 1930, is that we are too degenerate for one part of Hollywood and not degenerate for another mother. And she talks about him for most of it. Then she writes at the very end, she's kind of just talking about all these other people. And the last paragraph of her epilogue is, I am too unwilling to write the sexual truth that would make my life worth reading. I cannot unbuckle the Bible Belt. That is why I will never write my memoirs.
- [49:48]
Chelsea Devantez
That is one of my favorite lines in the whole book. I cannot unbuckle. The Bible belt is a banger.
- [49:54]
Mallory O'Meara
And you. There's no way to understand a human in this life if they do not also share their sex, the sexual part of their life, whatever it may be. And I'm not willing to share mine. So you will never know me. Goodbye.
- [50:05]
Chelsea Devantez
Like, what a mic drop. Oh, my God. Especially with all this. Again, with all the stuff that she shares in this book. You're like, what the.
- [50:12]
Mallory O'Meara
Is she not saying a hundred percent what went in that incinerator? Okay, it is time for the book to. First question. We will both answer all three questions. Was the author vulnerable in the sharing of her truth?
- [50:25]
Chelsea Devantez
Yes, but clearly not enough. But it is. I agree with you that it does feel like an unreliable narrator situation. The vulnerability that she gives to us does feel very practiced. Like she's used to giving people enough that they think that they know her a little bit, but the real truth is hidden beneath that. That other vulnerability.
- [50:44]
Mallory O'Meara
Completely agree. I'm a no on her I think she's. She was so terrorized by trying to exist in entertainment that her vulnerability has been locked away for most of her life. Second question. Was it entertaining to read?
- [50:58]
Chelsea Devantez
Oh, yes. Oh my God, it's. And it was also, it was so interesting to see a memoir and essays through other people. And I don't think I've ever really read a memoir or something that was memoir shaped. That was telling someone trying to tell their own story through the drama of other people.
- [51:15]
Mallory O'Meara
Yeah, really. Specifically about other people more than about her herself. Yes, I agreed.
- [51:20]
Chelsea Devantez
I agree.
- [51:21]
Mallory O'Meara
Very entertaining. She's a brilliant writer. Final question. Did reading this book elevate your life in any way?
- [51:27]
Chelsea Devantez
Yes, I really think that this is an important type of book to be reading right now, especially. Especially in this current political climate. There's this idea that conservatives are always trying to pedal that, you know, we need to get back to an America where women were demure and everyone and everything was so conservative and wholesome and there was not a lot of stuff, sex. When the reality is back then, women were fucking wild. These women in Hollywood, women everywhere were fucking, were having affairs, were queer. Like, it. I just feels like it's so important for us to all be reminded of that, that this is how people have always been. And it really, it really felt wonderful to read that right now. And it felt like, yeah, it did something in my life.
- [52:09]
Mallory O'Meara
I, I totally agree. It was a political mapping. I really needed that time. They are talking about literally never existed. They're like, let's go back to a time that is imaginative. It didn't exist then. It'll. It doesn't exist now. It will never exist in the future. You will never, ever live in a time period where women were demure and everyone was happy and no queer people exist. That's never happened before. It'll never happen in the future. So you for thinking it can. I want to read the quote that elevated my life much more selfish to me. But also this podcast. She said the Hollywood literary code, which requires authors and publishers to substitute the names of celebrities for the lesser known names of the originators of jokes and anecdotes, increasingly distorts film history. Soon only the author's names will distinguish one memoir from another. And she was pointing out all of the gig labor behind your famous comedians, your famous bits, your famous, famous quotes being like, yes, it was all, you know, Cary Grant. And it's like, no, it wasn't. W.C. fields made all his jokes. No, he didn't. This one thing that happened to at a Bar to this famous guy. No, it happened to someone else. And that is the truth of Hollywood right now.
- [53:20]
Chelsea Devantez
Yes, 100%. Can I share my. The quote that elevated my life, that was my favorite quote. This book is so highlighted for me. It's in the Humphrey Bogart chapter that she calls Humphrey and Bogey, which is very cute. It's from the scene where they're firing her from Paramount and they're arguing about it. And this film executive that's firing her, he says, that's what we're paying you for. Your time was the harsh comment of the front office. You mean my life? I said to myself, and I think that's ties into what you're saying, that people don't realize that all of the time that goes into all of this, even failed projects, it's your fucking life, you know?
- [53:51]
Mallory O'Meara
Oh, Mallory, you just. Yeah, I. I think of times and, and you know this, but for anyone who doesn't like when you are working on a. A television show that you were developing, you could, from the moment you sell it to the moment you hear it's not gonna go. It could be a lot longer than this, but I've had ones that were three years, not to mention coming up for it on your own happened before.
- [54:17]
Chelsea Devantez
The sell date years of your life you'll never get back.
- [54:21]
Mallory O'Meara
I have a movie that almost goes and almost doesn't go. And we've been doing it for six years and. And yeah, it's like, oh, it's just the process. Or this happens to everybody. And you're like, that was my life. That was three years of my life waiting and talking and notes and waiting and talking and notes and notes and revisions and revisions until you don't resemble the thing you even like.
- [54:42]
Chelsea Devantez
And meetings and calls and emails. I think that's what I loved about Louise Brooks. And even though she's so scathing and so prickly, this is a weirdly working class book that I feel like you don't get a lot about in Hollywood writing is. It just. It feels. She writes about this industry in a way that is so. Yeah, it's so working class. Like she's really cognizant of the time and the effort and like how. And the nepotism and how all of that works. And yeah, it was a very surprisingly refreshing, progressive thing to read.
- [55:12]
Mallory O'Meara
And you know what I'm realizing is that the golden age of streaming and the golden age of TV is just what we were in. And that is why this memoir feels so pressing to this moment. Because it was this streaming boom. It was like all these TV shows and now you have these dire circumstances with the industry collapse, with the strikes, with the tariff bully in the White House. And she lived in that era of like, I was a movie star, I was in several movies. Now I have literally nothing and must flee. And I think that is the era we're in now. Which again, is from that quote, unquote, golden age where everything was also garbage.
- [55:50]
Chelsea Devantez
Yep. And it's. Yeah. I highly recommend this book. It was not a book I expected to enjoy as much as I did.
- [55:57]
Mallory O'Meara
Same. And the COVID is beautiful. Makes a beautiful coffee table book.
- [56:00]
Chelsea Devantez
We never talked about her hair. She's had that same haircut since she was a kid.
- [56:03]
Mallory O'Meara
So amazing helmet hair. The tiny little bangs and the little helmet crop. I will also. I found this picture of her from school on Wikipedia that is so haunting. Right now it is on the glamorous trash Instagram and I'll make sure to repost it, but she has the same bob, but it's not curled against.
- [56:18]
Chelsea Devantez
Oh, wait, I know that picture you're talking about.
- [56:21]
Mallory O'Meara
It's this. It's this triangle and when you see it, you go, so this is a witch. Witch from day one.
- [56:26]
Chelsea Devantez
It's like that picture of you when you're a teenager and you can see the look you're going for, but you don't have the products. You don't have the product knowledge yet. You're like, oh, I see the vision. But you did not know how to use a hair dryer yet.
- [56:37]
Mallory O'Meara
So, yeah, giant triangle head. Mallory, tell everyone where they can find you, follow you, support your work, buy your book, all of it.
- [56:44]
Chelsea Devantez
You can go to Malloryomera.com for all my stuff. I'm usually only on Instagram, although I'm trying to be on Blue Sky a little bit more. But you can find my podcast. Wherever you find podcasts, you can find my books wherever you find books. I am doing a bunch of daughter of daring events over the next month. So if you are in Southern California or I think I'm doing the east coast this summer. But if you want to hear me talk more about cool ladies in old Hollywood, that's. That's a good place to do it.
- [57:06]
Mallory O'Meara
Thank you so much for being our guest. Thank you for bringing this book into my life.
- [57:10]
Chelsea Devantez
Thank you for having me. This was a blast.
- [57:14]
Mallory O'Meara
A huge thank you to our podcast producer, Christina Lopez Lopez, our executive producer, Jordan Moncada, our sound engineer, Marcus Hamm, and our amazing associate producer, Jaron Padre. I also want to let you know that if you love audiobooks but you want to support independent bookstores, go to Libro fm, where it is easy to download audiobooks and support local bookshops. And right now you get two Libro FM audiobooks for the price of one with your first month of membership using code Trash. That's right, Trash T R A S H. Two audiobooks for the price of one at Libro fm. And if you have questions, go to the Patreon Chat Lounge and I will see you there. This episode is brought to you by Disney's Lilo and Stitch, only in theaters this Friday. A reimagining of Disney's animated classic, Lilo and Stitch is the wildly funny and.
- [58:05]
Chelsea Devantez
Touching story of a lonely Hawaiian girl.
- [58:08]
Mallory O'Meara
Lilo, and the fugitive alien Stitch, who.
- [58:11]
Chelsea Devantez
Helps to mend her broken family.
- [58:13]
Mallory O'Meara
Lilo and Stitch crashes into theaters this Friday. Rated pg. Get tickets now.