Speaker 1: Why Auzzy Media Productions. He sent me back a box
Speaker 1: of chocolates with a note that said, Edith, the day
Speaker 1: that you were willing to come out here with a
Speaker 1: cotton tail attached to your rear end, what I'd like
Speaker 1: to do. That is what I would like to accomplish.
Speaker 1: I would like to be a good actress. Well, it's
Speaker 1: the Neva Believe its sting. I think that you could
Speaker 1: safely call Clark Gable a gold digger. I'm Sean Braswell
Speaker 1: and this is the thread where we unraveled the stories
Speaker 1: behind some of the most important lives and events in history.
Speaker 1: This season, we've connected the stories of five American icons.
Speaker 1: We saw how Hollywood legend Clark Gables star power helped
Speaker 1: launch Las Vegas when his second wife, relaying him, divorced
Speaker 1: him there. It was in Las Vegas that a nineteen
Speaker 1: year old named Norma Jean Doherty later obtained her own
Speaker 1: quickie divorce, enabling her to start her path toward becoming
Speaker 1: the legendary Maryland Monroe. Then, in turn, an unknown magazine
Speaker 1: publisher named Hugh Hefner cashed in on Monroe's fame, using
Speaker 1: her nude image to launch his Playboy Empire. And finally,
Speaker 1: it was in one of Heffner's famous playboy clubs that
Speaker 1: a young reporter named Gloria Steinham first concluded that all
Speaker 1: women are bunnies, an insight that helped launch her career
Speaker 1: as a champion for women's rights. In this final episode
Speaker 1: of the season, we complete our thread by tracing it
Speaker 1: back to its origins in early Hollywood. The same studio
Speaker 1: system that transformed the flawed Clark Gable into a king
Speaker 1: also created a culture of abuse for women that lingers
Speaker 1: to this day, and so we will also bring our
Speaker 1: story full circle back to Steinham, back to me too
Speaker 1: in the modern women's movement. In many ways, this remarkable
Speaker 1: threat is ongoing and still impacts all of us today.
Speaker 1: Clark Gable depended upon a series of wealthy, older, and
Speaker 1: more experienced women to help get his career off the ground,
Speaker 1: but Gable still struggled to make it as an actor.
Speaker 1: When Clark Gable first came to Hollywood, he was in
Speaker 1: a bunch of bit parts and was not successful at all.
Speaker 1: That's Anne Helen Peterson, a senior culture writer for BuzzFeed.
Speaker 1: The men who ran the major Hollywood studios at the
Speaker 1: time frankly did not give a damn about Clark Gable.
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers executive Darryl Zannik reportedly said, quote his ears
Speaker 1: are too big and he looks like an ape. MGM
Speaker 1: head Louis B. Mayer said Gable was quote too elephant
Speaker 1: eared and unattractive to be a leading man. So Gable
Speaker 1: played mostly minor villains and thugs, from an ex con
Speaker 1: turned cowboy in the Painted Desert to a murderous chauffeur
Speaker 1: and night nurse good cat without the proper authority. I
Speaker 1: give it you. I'm Nick the Shore. The women who
Speaker 1: encountered Clark Gable in Hollywood saw is much more than
Speaker 1: a chauffeur, rogue, or scoundrel. This included perhaps the most
Speaker 1: influential woman in Hollywood, Ida Cooverman, was Louis Bimuir secretary E. J. Fleming,
Speaker 1: the author of several books on early Hollywood, and Ida
Speaker 1: Cooverman was responsible for some of the biggest MGM stars.
Speaker 1: Do you remember Ida Koverman from episode five? She was
Speaker 1: the one who handled real Langham gables living girlfriend when
Speaker 1: she came to MGM to demand Gable's hand in marriage.
Speaker 1: The formidable Coverman nicknamed mount Ida, was Louis B. Mayer's
Speaker 1: top administrator, gatekeeper, and protectress. She was also considered by
Speaker 1: many to be the brains behind MGM. She made sure
Speaker 1: that Mayor saw the best scripts, and she hand picked
Speaker 1: many of the studio's top stars. One executive put it
Speaker 1: this way, coverman quote damn near ran the studio. Mg
Speaker 1: m's male leaders could only see Clark Gable's ears. Ida
Speaker 1: Koverman saw a star. One of Gable's first Hollywood films
Speaker 1: was called The Easiest Way. He played a truck driver
Speaker 1: for a laundry business and appeared in only a few scenes.
Speaker 1: His name is listed last in the credits. The Easiest
Speaker 1: Way was screened before a local test audience. The m
Speaker 1: g M executive who oversaw the film and the test
Speaker 1: screening was Irving Thalberg. He was mostly interested in how
Speaker 1: the audience would react to the film's leading lady. Instead,
Speaker 1: Thalberg witnessed something entirely unexpected. The audience sat upright whenever
Speaker 1: Gable appeared. Afterwards, women kept asking ushers who was that
Speaker 1: handsome laundryman. Thalberg signed Gable to a contract the following day.
Speaker 1: He made sure Gable starred in nine of mg m's
Speaker 1: best films that year, and alongside the studio's biggest female stars.
Speaker 1: Fortune smiled on Clark Gable, but his stardom was no accident.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing, and it's something that even Irving Thalberg
Speaker 1: didn't realize at the time. Clark Gable's breakthrough moment, like
Speaker 1: so many breaks in his life, was orchestrated by a woman,
Speaker 1: in this case, Ida Koverman. She packed the test audience
Speaker 1: with female MGM employees, women who are sure to be
Speaker 1: enthralled by the handsome laundryman. While Ida Koverman identified stars
Speaker 1: like Clark Gable, many of Hollywood's top male executives auditioned
Speaker 1: aspiring female performers on what came to be known as
Speaker 1: the casting couch. For many women, from the lowliest contract
Speaker 1: actress to the biggest star, the so called Golden Age
Speaker 1: of Hollywood could be a guilted nightmare. Shirley Temple was
Speaker 1: a Hollywood megastar. At age six, she became a national
Speaker 1: treasure in a country reeling from the depression. I'm a
Speaker 1: good tip lonely Polish Greek trip to Annie. Temple was
Speaker 1: a child of the studio system, but even the wholesome
Speaker 1: superstar could not avoid the wolves of Hollywood. The twelve
Speaker 1: year old Temple signed her first contract with MGM in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty and went there with her mother to meet
Speaker 1: her new bosses. According to Temple, she and her mother
Speaker 1: were separated when they arrived at the studio's executive suites.
Speaker 1: Studio had Louis B. Mayer escorted her mother to his
Speaker 1: office and left Temple alone with Arthur Freed, a producer
Speaker 1: on the Wizard of Oz. Freed allegedly told Temple I
Speaker 1: have something made for just you. Temple described what happened
Speaker 1: next in her autobiography. She wrote, with his face gaped
Speaker 1: in a smile, he stood up abruptly and executed a
Speaker 1: bizarre flourish of clothing. Temple wrote that the forty four
Speaker 1: year old Freed then pulled his penis out of his pants.
Speaker 1: The young Temple reacted with nervous laughter. Get out, Freed shouted,
Speaker 1: with his pants around his ankles, go on, get out.
Speaker 1: Shirley rejoined her mother and learned that she too had
Speaker 1: had to rush out of the office when Louis B.
Speaker 1: Mayer lunged at her on his couch. As Temple summed
Speaker 1: it up, MGM head quote more than its quota of
Speaker 1: lecturs older men. Hollywood's problem with lectris old men started
Speaker 1: at the very top the studio system consolidated at the
Speaker 1: end of the nineteen twenties, when talkies started to replace
Speaker 1: silent films. The men at the top of a few
Speaker 1: major studios that remained wielded unprecedented power, and they quickly
Speaker 1: learned to abuse it. And the steady influx of aspiring
Speaker 1: actresses that came through their doors and Helen Peterson again,
Speaker 1: Oftentimes we describe these studio heads as like brilliant men
Speaker 1: who guided these studios, and they did that, but then
Speaker 1: they also, you know, wrecked a lot of people's lives.
Speaker 1: The studio head set the tone for a culture of
Speaker 1: abuse that soon became endemic to their organizations. The casting
Speaker 1: coach culture has been a problem as long as movies
Speaker 1: have been made E. J. Fleming. If girls wanted into
Speaker 1: the movies, they had to sleep with men. It was
Speaker 1: that simple. They didn't have an option, and they had
Speaker 1: to sleep with the men at every level, cameraman, directors,
Speaker 1: writers like today, everyone knew about it, and people whispered
Speaker 1: about it. And if you didn't want to do it,
Speaker 1: and you like Usually the sentiment passed along was like,
Speaker 1: shut up and do it. If that's if you want
Speaker 1: a career in Hollywood, this is what you have to do.
Speaker 1: And even after you had paid the price to establish
Speaker 1: yourself in Hollywood as an actress, the studio bosses still
Speaker 1: had leverage over you. If the female stars rebelled in
Speaker 1: any sort of way, whether that was refusing sexual favors
Speaker 1: or anything else, they would just stick them in shoot movies.
Speaker 1: Some of the biggest defenders or names we've already mentioned
Speaker 1: this season. First Louis B. Mayer, the head of MGM,
Speaker 1: who was so instrumental to Clark Gables Rise and so
Speaker 1: solicitous towards Shirley Temple's mother. Mayor had a hard one
Speaker 1: reputation as a guard and of the public morality in Hollywood.
Speaker 1: Someone who made wholesome, quality motion pictures, he was no
Speaker 1: different than any of the other studio heads. The truth
Speaker 1: was he was a notorious abuser from his earliest days.
Speaker 1: The very first meaning he had with an actress, he
Speaker 1: would tell her be nice to me, and I'll be
Speaker 1: nice to you. Each studio had a steady supply of
Speaker 1: what were known as six month option girls, young starletts
Speaker 1: that the executives passed around like candy. In episode three,
Speaker 1: we told the story of Harry Cone, the chief of
Speaker 1: Columbia Pictures, who fired Marilyn Monroe when she would not
Speaker 1: join him on his yacht. He reportedly kept a private
Speaker 1: room next to his office for his casting sessions, and
Speaker 1: Darryl's Annek, the head of production at Warner Brothers, who
Speaker 1: thought Clark Gable resembled an ape. Zannick, built the casting
Speaker 1: couch into his daily routine. The entire place shut down
Speaker 1: at four o'clock and from four to four thirty no
Speaker 1: decisions were made because every single day, at four o'clock,
Speaker 1: one of the contract actresses was brought to a back
Speaker 1: entrance to his office to have sex with Darrel's Anneck.
Speaker 1: The only actress who ever said no was Betty Grabel.
Speaker 1: The first time she was brought to his office, he
Speaker 1: walked up to her and she looked at it. She
Speaker 1: looked at him and said, that's beautiful, Darrell. You can
Speaker 1: put that away now. Darryl's Annek, Louis By Mayer and
Speaker 1: other studio bosses were the original wolves of Hollywood, says
Speaker 1: fleming women had little power against them. Rarely a woman
Speaker 1: fought back, and if she did, the studio fixers went
Speaker 1: into overdrive. Case in point, the story of Patricia Douglas,
Speaker 1: the lowly twenty year old dancer who took on Hollywood's
Speaker 1: biggest studio at the height of its power. MGM and
Speaker 1: Louis B. Mayer had a lot to celebrate. In ninety seven.
Speaker 1: The depression said most of the studio's rivals into bankruptcy
Speaker 1: or receivership, but MGM was rolling in profits thanks to
Speaker 1: its stable of film star as an innovative sales team,
Speaker 1: and so Mayor decided to throw a studio party to
Speaker 1: end all studio parties at MGM's annual sales convention E J. Fleming.
Speaker 1: They brought three hundred distributors, theater owners and film salesman
Speaker 1: to the studio from all over the country for a
Speaker 1: five day boondoggle at the studio and Helen Peterson again.
Speaker 1: MGM brought in a bunch of basically big wigs within
Speaker 1: the company who were showing the films, you know, the
Speaker 1: exhibitors of the films, and through a huge party with
Speaker 1: a ton of booze, and then employed a bunch of women,
Speaker 1: you know, aspiring starlets as arm candy, Essentially, Patricia Douglas
Speaker 1: was one of the young women who answered what appeared
Speaker 1: to be a routine casting call. Patricia Douglas was a
Speaker 1: beautiful twenty year old girl who lived in Hollywood with
Speaker 1: her mother. Patricia went to a convent school. She was
Speaker 1: very religious and like many young women, she had no
Speaker 1: idea what she was getting into. For the promise of
Speaker 1: seven dollars and fifty cents and a hot meal, m
Speaker 1: Louis By Mayor greeted MGMs honored male guests when they
Speaker 1: arrived at the train station amid much fanfare, and he
Speaker 1: had dozens of beautiful women with him for the occasion.
Speaker 1: Meyer welcomed him by saying, all these lovely girls are
Speaker 1: here to show you how we feel about you. They'll
Speaker 1: give you anything you want. That basically set the tone
Speaker 1: for the week. The highlight of the week was a
Speaker 1: Western themed party at a remote ranch outside of town.
Speaker 1: Five cases of Scotch and champagne were brought in for
Speaker 1: three hundred men. The invitations read, it will be a
Speaker 1: stag affair out in the wild and wooly West, where
Speaker 1: men or men. MGM outfitted Douglas and the other women
Speaker 1: and bolero jackets, short swede skirts, black boots, and cowboy hats.
Speaker 1: They were placed on a bus and driven out of town.
Speaker 1: According to Douglas, many believed that they were going to
Speaker 1: a film shoot. When got to the ranch, they realized
Speaker 1: there were no lights and no cameras, just hundreds of
Speaker 1: drunk salesmen. The women had to fend for themselves. They
Speaker 1: were basically trapped there. There were obviously no telephones, there
Speaker 1: were no taxis. By midnight, the party was out of control.
Speaker 1: Douglas claimed that she was pursued by a pudgy thirty
Speaker 1: six year old bachelor from Chicago named David Ross. She
Speaker 1: rebuffed his advances and Ross grew violent. Sometime after midnight,
Speaker 1: he dragged her into the parking lot, threw her in
Speaker 1: a car, beat her badly, and raped her. According to Douglas,
Speaker 1: she started to black out from the alcohol that Ross
Speaker 1: and a couple of friends forced down her throat. Earlier
Speaker 1: in the evening, Ross slap Douglas and yelled cooperate. I
Speaker 1: want you awake. The parking lot attendant happened to find
Speaker 1: her about an hour later, and he grabbed one of
Speaker 1: the Culver City police that were working the event, and
Speaker 1: they threw her in a car and took her to
Speaker 1: the hospital across the street. The hospital was basically MGM's
Speaker 1: private hospital, and the head doctor was known as the
Speaker 1: Studio Family Doctor. The doctor claimed to find no signs
Speaker 1: of intercourse. Douglas was driven home in a studio car.
Speaker 1: No crime report was ever filed. Douglas tried to tell
Speaker 1: MGM what had happened to her, but the studio ignored her,
Speaker 1: so did the Los Angeles district attorney, who was a
Speaker 1: close friend of Louis B. Mayor. So Douglas got a lawyer,
Speaker 1: then filed a lawsuit against David Ross, Eddie Mannix and others.
Speaker 1: She wasn't after money, rather, as Douglas, who died in
Speaker 1: two thousand and three, later said, quote, I just wanted
Speaker 1: to be vindicated, to hear someone say you can't do
Speaker 1: that to a woman. What Patricia Douglas did was completely unprecedented,
Speaker 1: in part because it was so public. You know, some
Speaker 1: women had tried to, you know, maybe protest internally, but
Speaker 1: they never would go public with something like a rape charge.
Speaker 1: Mayor in the studio had a squeaky clean image to uphold,
Speaker 1: and just the news of the wild stag party. Let
Speaker 1: alone a potential rape would be enough to send the
Speaker 1: company stockholders into a frenzy. You know. It was just
Speaker 1: bad news all around, and so they squashed the case.
Speaker 1: Enter Eddie Mannix and Howard Strickling, the two head fixers
Speaker 1: at MGM that we learned about last episode. Mannix and
Speaker 1: Strickling went to work right away. There were newspaper stories
Speaker 1: about a woman who was assaulted at a party, but
Speaker 1: m JAM was never named as the studio. The newspaper
Speaker 1: whitewashing was just the start. MGM actually hired Pinkerton detectives
Speaker 1: to dig up dirt on Patricia, but they had a
Speaker 1: problem because they found out that she was a virgin
Speaker 1: who never drank. When blaming the victim didn't pan out,
Speaker 1: says Swimming. The fixers fixed other things, including the memories
Speaker 1: of key witnesses. Only two of the one and thirty
Speaker 1: women even admitted that the party was wild. The parking
Speaker 1: attendant also lost his memory. The attendants family later said
Speaker 1: that he was given a for life at MGM anywhere
Speaker 1: he wanted. Patricia Douglas's lawsuit was eventually dismissed as MGM
Speaker 1: fix her. Eddie Mannix reportedly put it quote, we had
Speaker 1: her killed. I think one of the tragedies is that
Speaker 1: the very story of what she did and the way
Speaker 1: that she stood up to MGM is largely lost and
Speaker 1: even today it's not part of the story that we
Speaker 1: really talked about um, in part because MGM was so
Speaker 1: effective in burying it and making sure that it didn't
Speaker 1: become part of the narrative of the studio or classic Hollywood,
Speaker 1: or how women resisted the way that they were treated
Speaker 1: at the time. Douglas's ordeal was rediscovered near the end
Speaker 1: of her life by a reporter. She agreed to share
Speaker 1: her story with the world once again. Why this is
Speaker 1: how Douglas put it. When I die, the truth dies
Speaker 1: with me, and that means those bastards win. Yeah. This
Speaker 1: brings us to the end of our trip back through time.
Speaker 1: We've now pulled on a thread that connects the lives
Speaker 1: of Gloria Steinem, Hugh Hefner, Marilyn Monroe, Las Vegas, and
Speaker 1: Clark Gable, one that runs from the pages of Miss
Speaker 1: magazine to the casting couches of early Hollywood. But this
Speaker 1: thread does not exist in isolation. Up next, we bring
Speaker 1: our story full circle. The lives and events we've heard
Speaker 1: about this season are part of a much larger arc
Speaker 1: of history, stepping stones to a far greater story, one
Speaker 1: that we are all a part of, and thanks in
Speaker 1: no small measure to Gloria steinem Pollywood was a man's
Speaker 1: world from the start, an embow wants of power that
Speaker 1: allowed a culture of sexual harassment and discrimination to thrive.
Speaker 1: Of course, that is not at all how Hollywood has
Speaker 1: perceived from the outside. And Helen Peterson again, there was
Speaker 1: this real facade that was very carefully cultivated and maintained
Speaker 1: that Hollywood was an incredibly moral place where only moral
Speaker 1: things happened, and occasionally something would pop through that really
Speaker 1: like spoke truth to that lie, like what happened to
Speaker 1: Patricia Douglas, but it was quickly papered over. And you know,
Speaker 1: this really worked until the nineteen fifties and the disintegration
Speaker 1: of the studio and star system. But the abuse continued
Speaker 1: even after the studio system broke down. Thousands of women
Speaker 1: endured the harassment and few spoke up for decades. The
Speaker 1: history of women in Hollywood has been a history of silence,
Speaker 1: and Peterson says this silence made it easier for Hollywood
Speaker 1: to lie to itself. What has interested in me most
Speaker 1: about the revelations around Weinstein and around me too, and
Speaker 1: why I think it is shaken Hollywood so profoundly is
Speaker 1: that it really believed itself to be a progressive place
Speaker 1: where something like this, something that belongs in the echelons
Speaker 1: of like classic Hollywood, could never happen. And some things
Speaker 1: have not changed so much over the years, says E. J. Fleming.
Speaker 1: The casting couch problem never really went away. The men
Speaker 1: in authority in Hollywood, the writers, the directors, the producers,
Speaker 1: they never stopped leveraging that position, and they are still
Speaker 1: surrounded by enablers and fixers. The similarities between what Harvey
Speaker 1: Weinstein did and what the fixers at MGM did they're
Speaker 1: incredibly striking. And that's instructive because it shows, like, you know,
Speaker 1: we thought we were way beyond all that sort of
Speaker 1: cover up, all that sort of vile manipulation of women,
Speaker 1: all of the complicity of all these other people involved
Speaker 1: that made this sort of exploitation impossible, But we're not.
Speaker 1: Sexual harassment has of course been pervasive beyond the world
Speaker 1: of Hollywood, but for a long time, there wasn't even
Speaker 1: a word for it, Gloria Steinham. The term sexual harassment
Speaker 1: was invented by women, young women at Cornell University who
Speaker 1: are trying to describe what happened to them on summer jobs.
Speaker 1: Steinen was no stranger to the experience herself. She endured
Speaker 1: all manner of sexist barbs and harassment long before she
Speaker 1: would undercover as a playboy bunny or as ridicule in
Speaker 1: Screw magazine. This is Gloria Steinen biographer Patricia Marcelo again
Speaker 1: from episode one. That's just how it was. Sexual harassment
Speaker 1: wasn't a thing, that was just a way of life,
Speaker 1: and she said that herself. Um in fact, she said exactly,
Speaker 1: sexual harassment is about power. When one is brave to
Speaker 1: assert themselves and tell a story, then other women will
Speaker 1: be too. The young dancer Patricia Douglas was brave enough
Speaker 1: to tell her story, so was Marilyn Monroe, and starting
Speaker 1: with her Expose a Bunny's Tale, Gloria Steinhum learned not
Speaker 1: just to tell her own story, but also the stories
Speaker 1: of other women, and to make sure that as many
Speaker 1: people as possible heard those stories. Because we grow up
Speaker 1: in this culture which is to whatever degree racist and
Speaker 1: sexist and infected with class. We kind of think it's
Speaker 1: normal because we don't know anything else. So until we
Speaker 1: start to talk to each other and and affirm that
Speaker 1: we are not alone in our in our experiences or objections,
Speaker 1: it is an easy and understandable thing to remain silent,
Speaker 1: to live in fear of powerful men. But as the
Speaker 1: Me Too movement has demonstrated, it is also a powerful
Speaker 1: thing to know you are not alone. Anne Helen Peterson,
Speaker 1: I think that there is change coming, and I feel
Speaker 1: much more optimistic than I did not even that long ago.
Speaker 1: Patricia Marcello agrees, So I think that, um, you know,
Speaker 1: things like that Screw magazine article or long past, we
Speaker 1: won't ever, ever, ever see anything like that again, especially
Speaker 1: in light of what's going on today. Because of what
Speaker 1: has happened in recent months, in recent decades, we can
Speaker 1: be hopeful that things are changing in Hollywood and beyond
Speaker 1: because of all the women who were brave enough to
Speaker 1: fight back when there was next to nothing to be
Speaker 1: gained from doing so. Because of Patricia Douglas, because of
Speaker 1: Marilyn Monroe, and perhaps most importantly, because of Gloria Steinham,
Speaker 1: We're at a remarkable moment in history with the rise
Speaker 1: of the Me Too movement. Like many things, this is
Speaker 1: progressive and now it has reached a tipping point so
Speaker 1: that women are being believed for the first time in
Speaker 1: my life. Tipping points in history rarely happen by accident, though.
Speaker 1: They need trailblazers, those who are willing to be the
Speaker 1: first ones over the ramparts, the first ones on the
Speaker 1: protest lines, People like Gloria stein You know, she was
Speaker 1: just a troublemaker, um, and they really came down on
Speaker 1: her so bad that she almost left the scene. But she,
Speaker 1: being the strong woman that she is, didn't. She hung
Speaker 1: in there and she just kept pushing until you know,
Speaker 1: things changed. Thank God for that. Gloria Steinen was not
Speaker 1: just a troublemaker and a trailblazer. She was an organizer,
Speaker 1: a catalyst. Often that is what tipping points require above
Speaker 1: all else, someone who can bring people together, and in
Speaker 1: an era before social media and the information age, that
Speaker 1: meant someone willing to hit the road, someone willing to
Speaker 1: ride the bus and live out of a suitcase, someone
Speaker 1: willing to listen to thousands of individual women's stories, someone
Speaker 1: who can tell you that you are not alone, that
Speaker 1: you're not crazy. But it wasn't until the women's movement
Speaker 1: came along and people began to gather in living rooms
Speaker 1: and school gyms and cafete areas and factories and talk
Speaker 1: to each other as they are talking to each other
Speaker 1: now about sexual harassment and realizing that we were not crazy,
Speaker 1: the system was crazy, that we had a right to
Speaker 1: be treated equally and paid equally, and to be physically safe.
Speaker 1: It can be hard to quantify the impact of an
Speaker 1: organizer and influencer like Steinhem in the abstract, but it's
Speaker 1: there in the story of every individual whose life she
Speaker 1: has touched. Patricia Marcello again, well, I know what it's
Speaker 1: meant for me. Um. I came up through the ranks, um,
Speaker 1: you know, starting out as a twentysomething girl out of college. Um.
Speaker 1: And I was offered receptionist jobs and secretary jobs, and
Speaker 1: you know, secretary teacher mother. Um, you know those nurse
Speaker 1: Those jobs were what women did, and I didn't want
Speaker 1: to do that. It was difficult. Then when she started this,
Speaker 1: it was impossible. Um. Now things are much different, things
Speaker 1: are different, and in some ways that makes our thread
Speaker 1: all the more incredible. The story of Gloria Steinham stretches
Speaker 1: back into some unusual places, from the Playboy clubs to
Speaker 1: the casting couches of early Hollywood, places you'd never expect
Speaker 1: to give birth to a feminist icon. Think about it,
Speaker 1: Studio executives green light the career of Clark Gable, a
Speaker 1: chronic womanizer, and one of the historical fruits of that
Speaker 1: decision is the woman who will lead a revolution that
Speaker 1: could bring about the end of that corrupt, de humanizing system.
Speaker 1: Call it irony, call it fate, or perhaps even better,
Speaker 1: call it what Gloria Steinham does. This is the upside
Speaker 1: of the downside. This is an outpouring of energy and
Speaker 1: true democracy like I have never seen in my very
Speaker 1: long life. That's Gloria stein at last year's Women's March
Speaker 1: in Washington, d C. That march and the Me Too
Speaker 1: movement are part of a longer fight for women's liberation.
Speaker 1: It's the same movement. I mean, it's a It's a
Speaker 1: continuation of the consciousness that says, you know, now I
Speaker 1: can speak my experience and be believed. It happened to
Speaker 1: me too, me too. It happened to me too, And
Speaker 1: it happened to me too. This is my story and
Speaker 1: to those who would dare try and silence us. We
Speaker 1: offer you two words times up. So where then does
Speaker 1: our thread go from here? From Steinham, Well, that's up
Speaker 1: to all of us. I've never seen in my life,
Speaker 1: never ever have I seen this level of activism. So
Speaker 1: will it be enough? We don't know, but um but
Speaker 1: we just have to keep doing whatever we can. Every day.
Speaker 1: I can keep why, I can't keep why? Oh one
Speaker 1: moment right, I can't keep by. The Thread is produced
Speaker 1: by Libby Coleman and me Sean Braswell. Chris Hoff engineered
Speaker 1: our show special thanks to Cindy Carpi and Tracy Moran
Speaker 1: and James Watkins. This episode features demonstrators from the Seen
Speaker 1: Women's March performing a song by Milk called I Can't
Speaker 1: Keep Quiet. To learn more about the Thread, visit Aussie
Speaker 1: dot com, Slash the thread all one word, and make
Speaker 1: sure to subscribe to the Thread on Apple Podcasts. Checks
Speaker 1: out at Aussie dot com. We're on Twitter and Facebook.
Speaker 1: If you love surprising, engaging stories from history, look no
Speaker 1: further than the flashback section of Ausy dot Com. That's
Speaker 1: oz Y dot com. Thanks for listening and stay tuned
Speaker 1: for more interconnected stories from history with season three of
Speaker 1: the threat coming See why no