Podcast
You Must Remember This
Hosted by Karina Longworth · EN
You Must Remember This is a storytelling podcast exploring the secret and/or forgotten histories of Hollywood’s first century. It’s the brainchild and passion project of Karina Longworth (founder of Cinematical.com, former film critic for LA Weekly), who writes, narrates, records and edits each episode. It is a heavily-researched work of creative nonfiction: navigating through conflicting reports, mythology, and institutionalized spin, Karina tries to sort out what really happened behind the films, stars and scandals of the 20th century.
18episodes
Episodes
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Your Next Listen: Talking Pictures
1w ago00:59:52Tap to summarizeIf you're a fan of You Must Remember This, we think you'll also enjoy Talking Pictures, a podcast from TCM and HBO Max. On this episode, Oscar-nominated actress Rosie Perez sits down with host Ben Mankiewicz to discuss the films that shaped her career—Do the Right Thing and Fearless—as well as early favorites like Saturday Night Fever and Double Indemnity. She reflects on building a career in an industry that didn’t readily accept her for who she is, and speaks candidly about being raised in a strict Catholic home for girls. In the Super 8 segment, she tells Ben about an amazing boxing story she’d love to see on the big screen.Listen to Talking Pictures wherever you get your podcasts, or watch on HBO Max
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Presenting Cautionary Tales | Lights, Camera, Tax Break
May 23, 202500:40:18Tap to summarizeIf you like You Must Remember This, you might also enjoy Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford, a podcast about stories of historic human error, catastrophes, and heists, and the lessons we can learn from such mishaps. In this episode of Cautionary Tales, Tim examines what happens when the bright lights of Hollywood collide with the far less glamorous world of tax evasion. When Ernest Borgnine was cast as the lead in the 1955 romantic drama, Marty, he thought it was his big break. But he soon discovered Marty was not exactly a dream gig. Listen to Cautionary Tales every Friday wherever you get your podcasts.
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Welcome to Hollywoodland: John Waters: Subversion, Shock, and the Ultimate Outsider
May 2, 202500:34:40Tap to summarizeIf you’ve finished all episodes of The Old Man is Still Alive, I’ve got another treat for you from Jake Brennan at Hollywoodland. Have a listen to this episode of Hollywoodland about John Waters, from his beginnings in X-rated art films to cult classics like Hairspray and Crybaby, as he created and cultivated his own peculiar niche in film while nurturing a legendary troupe of players who became a family of outcasts.
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John Huston, Part Two: 1975-1987 (The Old Man is Still Alive, Part 15)
Apr 24, 202500:53:29Tap to summarizeIn part two of our season finale, we explore the final decade of John Huston’s life and career. As he was slowly dying of emphysema and undergoing massive turmoil in his personal life, Huston continued to work almost compulsively on both passion projects (The Man Who Would Be King, Wise Blood, Under the Volcano) and paycheck gigs (Annie). His career ended, fittingly, with two collaborations with the next generation of Hustons, Prizzi’s Honor and The Dead.
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John Huston, Part One: 1966-1974 (The Old Man is Still Alive, Part 14)
Apr 22, 202500:49:11Tap to summarizeThis series began with the story of a director who wrote his autobiography to secure his place in history after his career had gone down the drain. It ends with the story of a man who wrote his autobiography as a “dead man walking”...and then continued to make movies for another half a decade, until the literal last breath left his body. Hollywood’s original “nepo baby” director, John Huston was never a conventional studio system stalwart, and in some respects he was able to go with the flow of changing times a lot better than some of his contemporaries. In part one of our two-part season finale we’ll talk about his flight from Hollywood to Ireland, literally playing God, Huston’s long fallow period in the late 60s, Anjelica Huston’s misbegotten film debut, Huston’s reinvention in the New Hollywood era and the health crisis that almost ended it all.
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Flashback: John Huston and Olivia de Havilland
Apr 15, 202500:42:28Tap to summarizeThis episode was originally released on March 3, 2015. Listen to help prep for the next episode of our new season, The Old Man is Still Alive.She was the raven-haired beauty whose lily-white persona was forged by her supporting roles in Gone With the Wind and several Errol Flynn swashbucklers. He was the real-life swashbuckler, the heroic lover/drinker/fighter whose directorial debut The Maltese Falcon, was an enormous success. They met when Huston directed de Havilland in his second film, In This Our Life, and began an affair which would continue, on and off, through the decade, as he joined the Army and made several controversial documentaries exposing dark aspects of the war experience, and as she waged a war of her own, taking Warner Brothers to court to challenge the indentured servitude of the star contract system. De Havilland’s lawsuit went all the way to the California Supreme Court, and had massive implications on the future of labor in Hollywood and beyond.
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Stanley Donen 1967-1984 (The Old Man is Still Alive, Part 13)
Apr 8, 202501:15:36Tap to summarizeHow does an artist once perceived to be ahead of his time fall behind the times? The choreographer/director of Golden Age classics like Singin’ the Rain and Funny Face left Hollywood for all the 60s and the first half of the 70s, perfecting a certain brand of sophisticated comedy/romance abroad with films like Charade, Bedazzled and Two for the Road. His rough Hollywood re-entry was marked by exercises in nostalgia for eras gone by (Lucky Lady, a movie about Prohibition Era gangsters starring Burt Reynolds and Liza Minnelli; the 1930s spoof Movie Movie) and attempts to give audiences of the 80s what it was assumed they wanted (the sci-fi debacle Saturn 3, the sex comedy Blame it on Rio).
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Flashback: The End of Louis B. Mayer
Apr 4, 202500:50:38Tap to summarizeThis episode was originally released on December 22, 2015. Listen to help prep for the next episode of our new season, The Old Man is Still Alive.In the 1940s, Louis B. Mayer was the highest paid man in America, one of the first celebrity CEOs and the figurehead of what for most Americans was the most glamorous industry on Earth. In 1951, Mayer was fired from the studio that bore his name. What happened -- to Mayer, and to movies on the whole -- to hasten the end of the golden era of Hollywood?
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George Cukor 1960-1981 (The Old Man is Still Alive, Part 12)
Apr 1, 202501:10:03Tap to summarizeGeorge Cukor had always experimented within his relatively broad lane, often finding nuanced ways to explore women’s lives, including their sex lives, under the constraints of the Production Code. But after winning the best Director Oscar for Best Picture-winner My Fair Lady in 1964, Cukor’s career slowed down considerably, and as the 60s turned into the 70s and both gender roles and the movies went through massive changes, Cukor was still making the same kinds of things he would have made at the peak of the studio system, regarding which he adopted an extremely defensive stance. Then, suddenly, in 1981, with Rich and Famous, Cukor caught up with the sexual revolution – a decade too late.
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Flashback: Marilyn Monroe – The End
Mar 28, 202500:48:13Tap to summarizeThis episode was originally released on March 21, 2017. Listen to help prep for the next episode of our new season, The Old Man is Still Alive.How did a star whose persona seemed to be all about childlike joy and eternally vibrant sexuality die, single and childless, at the age of 36? In fact, the circumstances of Marilyn Monroe’s death are confusing and disputed. In this episode we will explore the last five years of her life, including the demise of her relationship with Arthur Miller, the troubled making of The Misfits, and Marilyn’s aborted final film, and try to sort out the various facts and conspiracy theories surrounding her death.
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