Hollywood's long ugly history with sexual harassment

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Hollywood's long ugly history with sexual harassment

2017-10-11 12:24 Last Updated At：12:24

For anyone thinking the days of the so-called casting couch were long gone, this past week has been eye-opening. The growing list of women directing allegations at Harvey Weinstein suggests they never left Hollywood. Here's a look at some cases from the past and present.

FIRST MAJOR SEX SCANDAL

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This combination photo shows actress Virginia Rappe in 1921, left, and comedian Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. In the first scandal to shake Hollywood, Arbuckle attended a wild party in San Francisco in 1921 ended in the death of starlet Rappe. Rappe, writhing in pain from a ruptured bladder, accused Arbuckle of raping her. (AP Photo/File)

For anyone thinking the days of the so-called casting couch were long gone, this past week has been eye-opening. The growing list of women directing allegations at Harvey Weinstein suggests they never left Hollywood. Here's a look at some cases from the past and present.

FILE - In this June 21, 1939 file photo, Australian actor Errol Flynn appears at a tennis match in Los Angeles. Flynn conducted a two-year affair with Beverly Aadland, starting when she was 15-year-old. (AP Photo, File)

A TORN DRESS

FILE - In this May 28, 1963 file photo, British actress Joan Collins appears at El Morocco in New York. Collins says she lost out on the lead role in “Cleopatra” because she wouldn't sleep with the studio head. (AP Photo/Matty Zimmerman, File)

'BE NICE TO ME'

FILE - This 1941 file photo shows child actress Shirley Temple. In her memoir “Child Star,” Temple claimed that an MGM producer known to have an “adventuresome casting couch” unzipped his trousers and exposed himself to her during their first meeting in 1940. (AP Photo, File)

AMERICA'S LITTLE DARLING

FILE - In this Sept. 15, 1954 file photo, Marilyn Monroe poses over the updraft of New York subway grating while in character for the filming of "The Seven Year Itch," in New York. (AP Photo/Matty Zimmerman, File)

'OVERCROWDED BROTHEL'

This combination photo showsMetro Goldwyn-Mayer studio head Louis B. Mayer in 1948, left, and singer actress Judy Garland on the set of "The Harvey Girls," in Los Angeles in 1945. (AP Photo/File)

GROPED FOR YEARS

In this combination photo, Samantha Geimer arrives at the premiere of the HBO Documentary "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired" in New York on May 6, 2008, left, and director Roman Polanski appears at the 70th international film festival, in Cannes, France on June 9, 2017. (AP Photo/File)

STILL AT LARGE

FILE - In this Aug. 22, 2017 file photo, Bill Cosby departs after a pretrial hearing in his sexual assault case at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pa. Cosby, the "Cosby Show" star once known as America's Dad, is facing a retrial on charges he drugged and molested a former Temple University employee, at his home in 2004. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

AMERICA'S DAD

FILE- In this May 23, 2017 file photo, Charlize Theron appears at the 70th Anniversary of the film festival in Cannes, southern France. For anyone thinking the days of the so-called casting couch were long gone, this past week has been eye-opening.(Photo by Arthur Mola/Invision/AP, File)

'GOT THE WRONG GIRL'

FILE - In this Feb. 26, 2017 file photo, Casey Affleck arrives at the Oscars in Los Angeles. Two women who worked on Casey Affleck’s film “I’m Still Here” filed sexual harassment lawsuits against him in 2010. Both claims were settled out of court for an undisclosed amount in 2010. Affleck has repeatedly denied the allegations. He went on to win the best actor Oscar for “Manchester by the Sea.” (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)

OSCAR WINNER

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For anyone thinking the days of the so-called casting couch were long gone, this past week has been eye-opening. The growing list of women directing allegations at Harvey Weinstein suggests they never left Hollywood. Here's a look at some cases from the past and present.

A TORN DRESS

'BE NICE TO ME'

AMERICA'S LITTLE DARLING

'OVERCROWDED BROTHEL'

GROPED FOR YEARS

STILL AT LARGE

AMERICA'S DAD

'GOT THE WRONG GIRL'

OSCAR WINNER

In the first scandal to shake Hollywood, the comedian Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle attended a wild party in San Francisco in 1921 that ended in the death of actress Virginia Rappe. Rappe, writhing in pain from a ruptured bladder, accused Arbuckle of raping her. When she died days later, he was charged with murder, which was downgraded to manslaughter. Arbuckle was acquitted after three trials.

A TORN DRESS

Actor Errol Flynn had a two-year affair with Beverly Aadland, starting when she was 15. At the time of the affair Flynn had already been accused — and found not guilty — of the statutory rape of two underage girls in 1942. "I was scared," Aadland wrote in People. "He was just too strong for me. I cried. At one point he tore my dress. Then he carried me off to another room, and I was still carrying on. What was going through my head was, what was I going to tell my mother?"

'BE NICE TO ME'

Joan Collins says she lost out on the lead role in "Cleopatra" because she wouldn't sleep with the studio head. "I had tested for 'Cleopatra' twice and was the front-runner. He took me into his office and said, 'You really want this part?' And I said, 'Yes. I really do.' 'Well,' he said, 'then all you have to do is be nice to me.' It was a wonderful euphemism in the Sixties for you know what. But I couldn't do that. In fact, I was rather wimpish, burst into tears and rushed out of his office." The role went to Elizabeth Taylor.

AMERICA'S LITTLE DARLING

In her memoir "Child Star," actress Shirley Temple claimed that an MGM producer known to have an "adventuresome casting couch" unzipped his trousers and exposed himself to her during their first meeting in 1940. She was 12. Being innocent of male anatomy, she responded with nervous laughter and he threw her out of his office. Fortunately, she had already signed her contract with MGM.

'OVERCROWDED BROTHEL'

Marilyn Monroe was no stranger to lecherous studio chiefs and filmmakers, and in her memoir, "My Story," she didn't hold back: "I met them all. Phoniness and failure were all over them. Some were vicious and crooked. But they were as near to the movies as you could get. So you sat with them, listening to their lies and schemes. And you saw Hollywood with their eyes — an overcrowded brothel, a merry-go-round with beds for horses."

GROPED FOR YEARS

Judy Garland was pawed and propositioned for sex by studio bigwigs at MGM between the ages of 16 and 20, according to author Gerald Clarke, who wrote "Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland." One of the most notorious harassers was allegedly Louis B. Mayer, the head of the studio. "Mayer would tell her what a wonderful singer she was, and he would say 'you sing from the heart' and then he would place his hand on her left breast," Clarke wrote.

STILL AT LARGE

Filmmaker Roman Polanski pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with Samantha Geimer, then a 13-year-old aspiring actress, during a photo shoot in Los Angeles in 1977. He gave her champagne and Quaaludes. "I didn't want to have sex," Geimer wrote in her memoir, "The Girl." ''But apparently that is what was going to happen." Polanski fled the United States before final sentencing and is still wanted by judicial authorities. He has since faced more rape allegations.

AMERICA'S DAD

Bill Cosby, the "Cosby Show" star once known as America's Dad, is facing a retrial on charges he drugged and molested a former Temple University employee at his home in 2004. He could get 10 years in prison. Cosby has said the encounter was consensual. He is free on $1 million bail. Dozens of additional accusers have come forward, including 13 women whom prosecutors want to call as witnesses to show that they were drugged and violated in similar fashion.

'GOT THE WRONG GIRL'

Charlize Theron was new in Hollywood but knew the warning signs when she went to an audition. "I thought it was a little odd that the audition was on a Saturday night at his house in Los Angeles, but I thought maybe that was normal," she told Marie Claire in 2005. "I go inside and he's offering me a drink, and I'm thinking, 'My god, this acting stuff is very relaxed.' But it soon becomes very clear what the situation was. I was like, 'Not going to happen! Got the wrong girl, buddy!'"

OSCAR WINNER

Two women who worked on Casey Affleck's film "I'm Still Here" filed sexual harassment lawsuits against him in 2010. One woman accused him of crawling into her bed without her consent while she was asleep, while the other woman said Affleck pressured her to stay in his hotel room and "violently" grabbed her arm when she refused. Both claims were settled out of court for an undisclosed amount in 2010. Affleck has repeatedly denied the allegations. He went on to win the best actor Oscar for "Manchester by the Sea."

4/20 grew from humble roots to marijuana's high holiday

2024-04-20 07:58 Last Updated At：08:00

SEATTLE (AP) — Saturday marks marijuana culture’s high holiday, 4/20, when college students gather — at 4:20 p.m. — in clouds of smoke on campus quads and pot shops in legal-weed states thank their customers with discounts.

This year’s edition provides an occasion for activists to reflect on how far their movement has come, with recreational pot now allowed in nearly half the states and the nation’s capital. Many states have instituted “social equity” measures to help communities of color, harmed the most by the drug war, reap financial benefits from legalization. And the White House has shown an openness to marijuana reform.

Here’s a look at 4/20's history:

The origins of the date, and the term “420” generally, were long murky. Some claimed it referred to a police code for marijuana possession or that it derived from Bob Dylan’s “Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35,” with its refrain of “Everybody must get stoned” — 420 being the product of 12 times 35.

But the prevailing explanation is that it started in the 1970s with a group of bell-bottomed buddies from San Rafael High School, in California's Marin County north of San Francisco, who called themselves “the Waldos.” A friend’s brother was afraid of getting busted for a patch of cannabis he was growing in the woods at nearby Point Reyes, so he drew a map and gave the teens permission to harvest the crop, the story goes.

During fall 1971, at 4:20 p.m., just after classes and football practice, the group would meet up at the school’s statue of chemist Louis Pasteur, smoke a joint and head out to search for the weed patch. They never did find it, but their private lexicon — “420 Louie” and later just “420” — would take on a life of its own.

The Waldos saved postmarked letters and other artifacts from the 1970s referencing “420,” which they now keep in a bank vault, and when the Oxford English Dictionary added the term in 2017, it cited some of those documents as the earliest recorded uses.

A brother of one of the Waldos was a close friend of Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh, as Lesh once confirmed in an interview with the Huffington Post, now HuffPost. The Waldos began hanging out in the band’s circle and the slang spread.

Fast-forward to the early 1990s: Steve Bloom, a reporter for the cannabis magazine High Times, was at a Dead show when he was handed a flyer urging people to “meet at 4:20 on 4/20 for 420-ing in Marin County at the Bolinas Ridge sunset spot on Mt. Tamalpais.” High Times published it.

“It’s a phenomenon,” one of the Waldos, Steve Capper, now 69, once told The Associated Press. “Most things die within a couple years, but this just goes on and on. It’s not like someday somebody’s going to say, ‘OK, Cannabis New Year’s is on June 23rd now.’”

While the Waldos came up with the term, the people who made the flier distributed at the Dead show — and effectively turned 4/20 into a holiday — remain unknown.

With weed, naturally.

Some celebrations are bigger than others: The Mile High 420 Festival in Denver, for example, typically draws thousands and describes itself as the largest free 4/20 event in the world. Hippie Hill in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park has also attracted massive crowds, but the gathering was canceled this year, with organizers citing a lack of financial sponsorship and city budget cuts.

College quads and statehouse lawns are also known for drawing 4/20 celebrations, with the University of Colorado Boulder historically among the largest, though not so much since administrators banned the annual smokeout over a decade ago.

Some breweries make beers that are 420-themed, but not laced, including SweetWater Brewing in Atlanta, which is throwing a 420 music festival this weekend and whose founders went to the University of Colorado.

Lagunitas Brewing in Petaluma, California, releases its “Waldos’ Special Ale” every year on 4/20 in partnership with the term’s coiners. That's where the Waldos will be this Saturday to sample the beer, for which they picked out “hops that smell and taste like the dankest marijuana,” one Waldo, Dave Reddix, said via email.

4/20 has also become a big industry event, with vendors gathering to try each other's wares.

The number of states allowing recreational marijuana has grown to 24 after recent legalization campaigns succeeded in Ohio, Minnesota and Delaware. Fourteen more states allow it for medical purposes, including Kentucky, where medical marijuana legislation that passed last year will take effect in 2025. Additional states permit only products with low THC, marijuana's main psychoactive ingredient, for certain medical conditions.

But marijuana is still illegal under federal law. It is listed with drugs such as heroin under Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, meaning it has no federally accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.

The Biden administration, however, has taken some steps toward marijuana reform. The president has pardoned thousands of people who were convicted of “simple possession” on federal land and in the District of Columbia.

The Department of Health and Human Services last year recommended to the Drug Enforcement Administration that marijuana be reclassified as Schedule III, which would affirm its medical use under federal law.

According to a Gallup poll last fall, 70% of adults support legalization, the highest level yet recorded by the polling firm and more than double the roughly 30% who backed it in 2000.

Vivian McPeak, who helped found Seattle's Hempfest more than three decades ago, reflected on the extent to which the marijuana industry has evolved during his lifetime.

“It's surreal to drive by stores that are selling cannabis,” he said. “A lot of people laughed at us, saying, ‘This will never happen.’”

McPeak described 4/20 these days as a “mixed bag.” Despite the legalization movement's progress, many smaller growers are struggling to compete against large producers, he said, and many Americans are still behind bars for weed convictions.

“We can celebrate the victories that we've had, and we can also strategize and organize to further the cause,” he said. “Despite the kind of complacency that some people might feel, we still got work to do. We've got to keep burning that shoe leather until we get everybody out of jails and prisons.”

For the Waldos, 4/20 signifies above all else a good time.

“We’re not political. We’re jokesters,” Capper has said. “But there was a time that we can’t forget, when it was secret, furtive. ... The energy of the time was more charged, more exciting in a certain way.

“I’m not saying that’s all good — it’s not good they were putting people in jail,” he continued. “You wouldn’t want to go back there.”

Associated Press writer Claire Rush contributed from Portland, Oregon.