The MGM Brothel

1 year ago

145

Hollywood History Hollywood Documentary Hollywood Scandal

Film studio MGM had a brothel on their lot in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. This brothel, managed at a distance by Louis B. Mayer (1884-1957) and his "fixer" Eddie Mannix (1891-1963), involved celebrity lookalike women. The brothel included a madam, down and out actress Billie Bennett (1874-1951). In autobiographical writings by MGM director Garson Kanin, who passed away in 1999, details of the brothel were revealed.

Sources:

https://thelifeandtimesofhollywood.com/garson-kanins-ode-billie-bennett-madam-of-louis-b-mayer-mgms-look-a-like-call-girls/

E. J. Fleming, The Fixers (2004)

Romans 2:17-29

#mgm #mgmbrothel #oldhollywood #oldhollywoodmystery #oldhollywoodmysteries #goldenhollywood #louisbmayer #billiebennett #garsonkanin #eddiemannix #thefixers #mgmfixer

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TreblyClef
1 year ago

There could be some of the ancient "plunder the shiksa goddess" idea behind Mayer's side business, kinda like the '90s show The Nanny talks about a few times, where she was always trying to set up Jewish boys so they could get the shiksa daughter's trust fund. Supposedly comedy but with a sharp edge of truth But it's just as likely that they just provided the ladies that were attractive to the clientele i.e. ladies that they actually wanted. Gable for example famously disliked Garbo and flatly refused ever to work with or even be around Hepburn. Cary Grant was basically forced to work across from her, except for Philadelphia Story, a film which Hepburn paid for and which he did purely and only for the $100,000 up front plus 10% of the gross, and he, too, flatly refused to work with her ever again (for 25 years). It's truly difficult to picture any man actually desiring Hepburn - certainly I've never met anyone who found her appealing. Whereas Joan Crawford, Ginger Rogers, Jean Harlow, Myrna Loy were HOT AF

1 like
- RadioWhoPoo
  1 year ago
  
  Very interesting. When we dive into the Talmud to determine its impression of Gentile women and the Virgin Mary, we find: ""Mary was a whore: Jesus (Balaam) was an evil man." (Sanhedrin 106a &b, p.725). "Jesus was a magician and a fool. Mary was an adulteress". (Shabbath 104b, p.504). "
  
  1 like
  - TreblyClef
    1 year ago
    
    hmm. I'd never heard that hepburn was jewish. I looked around on a few sites that do the research for Hebrew heritage, and still came up empty. Stephanie Zimbalist claims a very distant kinship with Hepburn, but her Jewish roots come much later... it's off by 7 generations. I'm a bit skeptical that the old studio moguls were anything other than what they were, uptight zillionaires living in a free world (although I've never condoned abusing women in any way and nor has my family). If a woman decides to accept a man's offer, that is a private affair. Prostitution is what it is; it would not entirely surprise me if Kanin was putting quotes around names of ladies who weren't "acting" at Mae's but instead were the actresses themselves. Rumors have swirled since the 1920s about Jean Harlow for example, and Crawford was factually blackmailed by her brother for her entire life with the lewd films she made before she was a star. Screen tests were usually passed around among the studio chiefs and they were kept completely private. Who knows? Maybe they had their own version of pornhub. In her memoirs, Ginger Rogers is explicit about how she avoided Harry Cohn's advances. You know how athletic she was; she basically outran him in his office, and only got him to stop when she threatened to tell his wife. It's telling that even though Ginger was a workaholic, she never worked at Columbia until after Cohn was dead. It's known that Jean Arthur and Rita Hayworth were treated appallingly by that evil man.
    
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