Hitchcock

Grace Kelly (Dead Blondes Episode 11) /  by Karina Longworth

Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts.

The quintessential “Hitchcock blonde,” Grace Kelly had an apparently charmed life. Her movies were mostly hits, her performances were largely well-reviewed, and she won an Oscar against stiff competition. Then she literally married a prince. Was it all as perfect as it seemed? Today we’ll explore Kelly’s public and private life (and the rumors that the two things were very different), her working relationship with Hitchcock, her Oscar-winning performance in The Country Girl, the royal marriage that took her away from Hollywood and Kelly’s very specific spin on blonde sexuality.

Show notes:

Sources:

High Society: The Life of Grace Kelly by Donald Spoto

Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and His Leading Ladies by Donald Spoto

Grace Kelly: The Secret Life of a Princess by James Spada

Credits:

This episode was edited by Sam Dingman, and produced by Karina Longworth with the assistance of Lindsey D. Schoenholtz. Our logo was designed by Teddy Blanks.

Dorothy Parker (The Blacklist Episode #3) /  by Karina Longworth

Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts.

Columnist, poet and celebrated Algonquin Roundtable wit Dorothy Parker spent years in Hollywood, working as a screenwriter in partnership with her second husband, Alan Campbell, and contributing to important films such as the original A Star is Born and Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur. Much to the surprise of many of her closest friends, beginning in the late 1920s Parker became increasingly drawn to socialist causes. Parker’s political calling was merely socially problematic before World War II, when Parker spearheaded the formation of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League; after the war, when Parker’s name was named before HUAC, her political convictions killed her Hollywood career at its peak.

Algonquin Round Table

Show notes:

Here is a list of published sources that the entire season draws from:

The Red and the Blacklist: An Intimate Memoir of a Hollywood Expatriate by Norma Barzman

Dalton Trumbo: Blacklisted Hollywood Radical by Larry Ceplair and Christopher Trumbo

Trumbo: A biography of the Oscar-winning screenwriter who broke the Hollywood blacklist by Bruce Cook

When Hollywood Was Right: How Movie Stars, Studio Moguls, and Big Business Remade American Politics by Donald T. Critchlow

Odd Man Out: A Memoir of the Hollywood Ten by Edward Dmytryk

City of Nets by Otto Friedrich

Hollywood Radical, Or How I Learned to Love the Blacklist by Bernard Gordon

I Said Yes to Everything by Lee Grant

Army of Phantoms: American Movies and the Making of the Cold War by J. Hoberman

Naming Names by Victor S. Navasky

Sources specific to this episode:

Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This? by Marion Meade

The Portable Dorothy Parker

Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick by David Thomson

“Dorothy Parker: Hemingway Really Hated Her!” by Jennifer Wright on The Gloss

This episode includes clips from A Star is Born (1937) and Saboteur.

The scene excerpted from Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle.

Parker’s poem “Women: A Hate Song” was read by Carol Monda.