Harvey Weinstein: 'Beautiful Girls' Scribe Scott Rosenberg

Re: 'Beautiful Girls' Scribe Scott Rosenberg On a Complicate

Postby admin » Sun Oct 29, 2017 5:00 am

Weinstein Sues Weinstein Company, Demanding Access to Records
by Brooks Barnes
October 26, 2017

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LOS ANGELES — Weinstein v. Weinstein has commenced.

Harvey Weinstein, who was fired by the studio he had helped found after The New York Times revealed decades of sexual harassment allegations against him, sued the Weinstein Company on Thursday to demand access to records and emails.

The complaint, filed in Delaware Chancery Court, said Mr. Weinstein needed the materials to defend himself. More than 50 women have come forward in recent weeks to accuse Mr. Weinstein of sexual harassment or rape.

“Mr. Weinstein believes that his email account — which is the primary, if not only, account he used during the term of his employment by the company — will contain information exonerating him,” the complaint said.

Mr. Weinstein also wants access to his former email account and other company documents, including his personnel file, to pursue a claim of wrongful termination against the Weinstein Company, according to the complaint. He also wants to pursue legal action against the studio “for mismanagement by leaking confidential company information” — saying that certain news reports about his behavior “could have only come from his personnel file.”

According to the filing, Mr. Weinstein is also seeking the materials to protect his 20 percent ownership stake in the studio by making sure it does not sell itself for a bargain price or make “unjustified settlements” with women who have made allegations against him. “If the board agrees to sell the company for less than it would be worth because of the threat of unsubstantiated or false allegations, Mr. Weinstein will receive less than he should have received,” the complaint said.

Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Weinstein has repeatedly denied “any allegations of nonconsensual sex.”


A representative for the Weinstein Company did not respond to a request for comment.

Last week, the Weinstein Company, known for Oscar-winning films like “The King’s Speech” and “The Artist,” gave Colony Capital a limited period to exclusively pursue the purchase of some or all of the studio’s assets. After a preliminary agreement with Colony for an immediate cash infusion fell through, the Weinstein Company has begun to negotiate with Fortress Investment Group over a $35 million financing package that would provide enough liquidity for the studio to operate into January.
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Re: 'Beautiful Girls' Scribe Scott Rosenberg On a Complicate

Postby admin » Sun Oct 29, 2017 5:13 am

Harvey Weinstein and the Impunity of Powerful Men: For women speaking up about their experiences with harassment and assault, being heard is one kind of power, and being free is another.
by Jia Tolentino
The New Yorker
October 30, 2017 Issue

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Illustration by Tom Bachtell

In 2015, in a hotel hallway in New York, the movie producer Harvey Weinstein insisted that an Italian model named Ambra Battilana Gutierrez come into his room. Gutierrez protested. The previous day, Weinstein had groped her aggressively, and she had returned to see him wearing an N.Y.P.D. wire. “Now you’re embarrassing me,” Weinstein says impatiently on the recording. Men who routinely humiliate women are easily embarrassed. When their targets assert even a sliver of personhood, it registers as a flustering, impermissible offense.

Since the story finally broke—first in the Times and then in a piece by Ronan Farrow, for this magazine—that Weinstein had buried decades of assault and harassment allegations, with the help of settlements and legal threats, more than fifty women have come forward to accuse him of similar acts. In Farrow’s piece, three women allege that they were raped. (Weinstein has acknowledged misbehavior but denied allegations of non-consensual sex.) The once invulnerable producer has been fired from his own company and abandoned by members of his high-profile legal team; his wife is leaving him; the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has rescinded his membership. The N.Y.P.D. has begun an investigation, and women will continue to come forward: the attorney Gloria Allred, who represents one of Weinstein’s accusers, recently described receiving a “tsunami” of calls from women, many of them speaking through tears. Weinstein has been embarrassed again, this time comprehensively.

For years—for centuries—the economic, physical, and cultural subjugation of women has registered as something like white noise. Lately, it appears that we’re starting to hear the tune. What had been a backdrop is now in the foreground; it has become a story with rotating protagonists which never seems to leave the news. In the past few years, women have accused Bill Cosby, Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly, and Donald Trump of serial sexual misconduct. Thanks to the advent of mainstream feminism, these women have been supported, to an unprecedented degree, by much of the media and the public. At the same time, political backlash insures hard limits for this support. Cosby’s reputation was ruined, and Ailes and O’Reilly were pushed out of Fox News; Trump was elected President. The increasing narrative clarity about male power does not always translate to progress. For women, it feels, all at once, shockingly possible, suddenly mandatory, and unusually frustrating to speak up.

We should pay attention to the dynamics that make this progress irregular: not all abusers meet with consequences, and not all women can attain firm ground. Men are still more often held to a standard of consistency than of morality. The liberal Weinstein, the moralizing Cosby, and the family-values-promoting Fox News men were disgraced, in part, because of their hypocrisy; men who never pretended to see women as equals or as worthy of respect can generally just keep on as they were. This is why, a month before the 2016 election, the “Access Hollywood” tape didn’t sink Trump’s candidacy: pussy-grabbing did not conflict with the image of a Presidential candidate who stalked his female opponent on the debate stage, and who once reportedly said of women, “You have to treat ’em like shit.” Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon was charged in 1996 with spousal abuse, and that didn’t pose much of a problem for him, either; anyone drawn to Bannon’s brand of brutal dominance politics is perhaps unlikely to disown him for grabbing his wife’s neck and pulling her into a car, as she alleged. (The case was later dismissed.)

Other forms of recourse may be possible: after Trump called his accusers liars, one of them, Summer Zervos, a former “Apprentice” contestant, sued him for defamation, with Allred’s help. As part of that suit, Zervos’s lawyers recently subpoenaed the Trump campaign for a wide range of documents relating to his treatment of women. But there are significant constituencies in America who are not yet interested in holding men accountable for abusive behavior. And there are still huge swaths of women—the poor, the queer, the undocumented—who can’t count on the security that feminism has conferred on its wealthier, whiter adherents, or trust that their victimization would even become news.

Nevertheless, the hunger for and possibility of solidarity among women beckons. In the past week, women have been posting their experiences of assault and harassment on social media with the hashtag #MeToo. We might listen to and lament the horrific stories being shared, and also wonder: Whom, exactly, are we reminding that women are treated as second class? Meanwhile, symbolic advancement often obscures real losses. The recent cultural gains of popular feminism were won just when male politicians were rolling back reproductive rights across the country. The overdue rush of sympathy for women’s ordinary encumbrances comes shortly after the Department of Education reversed Obama-era guidelines on college sexual-assault investigations, and Congress allowed the Children’s Health Insurance Program to expire. On October 3rd, the House passed a ban on abortion after twenty weeks. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said that “virtually all” Republicans in the Senate support the legislation.

Being heard is one kind of power, and being free is another. We have undervalued women’s speech for so long that we run the risk of overburdening it. Speech, right now, is just the flag that marks the battle. The gains won by women are limited to those who can demand them. Individual takedowns and #MeToo stories will likely affect the workings of circles that pay lip service to the cause of gender equality, but they do not yet threaten the structural impunity of powerful men as a group.

In 2014, after the death of Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri, the burgeoning Black Lives Matter movement helped make the long-festering problem of police violence against black Americans, already highly visible to a part of the population, an urgent matter for many who hadn’t been forced to pay attention before. But the country as a whole divided along predictable lines, and progress on the issue is, three years later, difficult to discern. On one side, the moral weight is crushing, the energy vital and sincere. On the other side, there is disavowal and retrenchment. Between those poles are plenty of people who would rather we just talked about something else. This type of problem always narrows to an unavoidable point. The exploitation of power does not stop once we consolidate the narrative of exploitation. A genuine challenge to the hierarchy of power will have to come from those who have it.

This article appears in the print edition of the October 30, 2017, issue, with the headline “Limits of Power.”
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Re: 'Beautiful Girls' Scribe Scott Rosenberg On a Complicate

Postby admin » Sun Oct 29, 2017 7:12 am

Asia Argento Tweets List of Harvey Weinstein Accusers: The actress has accused Weinstein of rape
by Ashley Boucher
October 28, 2017 @ 10:38 AM

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Asia Argento, one of dozens of women who have accused Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment, assault or rape, tweeted out a list of all the accusers. Argento said Weinstein raped her when she was 21 years old.

“This is the list of all the 82 women who were sexually assaulted/raped/molested by #HarveyWeinstein. We,the victims, have compiled this list,” she tweeted Saturday morning.

The list includes others who have been outspoken about Weinstein’s alleged harassment and assault, like Rose McGowan, Gwyneth Paltrow, Claire Forlani and Zoe Brock. It lists each woman’s name, when the alleged incident occurred and what happened.

Asia Argento ✔@AsiaArgento
This is the list of all the 82 women who were sexually assaulted/raped/molested by #HarveyWeinstein. We,the victims, have compiled this list
7:56 AM - Oct 28, 2017


Argento’s boyfriend, Anthony Bourdain, slammed Quentin Tarantino for “complicity” with Harvey Weinstein at the end of a Q&A session at the Produced By NY conference Saturday. He was speaking about a deal he and his partners, Lydia Tenaglia and Chris Collins, turned down because of the person offering it.

Bourdain said they decided the deal “would have been a slow-acting poison that would have nibbled away at our souls until we ended up like Quentin Tarantino, looking back at a life of complicity, shame and compromise.”

When asked if his mention of Tarantino was “meant in the context of the Weinstein scandal,” he replied “one might think.”
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Re: 'Beautiful Girls' Scribe Scott Rosenberg On a Complicate

Postby admin » Sun Oct 29, 2017 7:34 am

Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie and Others Say Weinstein Harassed Them: “This way of treating women ends now,” Ms. Paltrow said as she and other actresses accused the producer of casting-couch abuses.
by Jodi Kanto and Rachel Abrams
October 10, 2017

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Gwyneth Paltrow said very few people knew about Harvey Weinstein’s advances on her more than 20 years ago. “I was expected to keep the secret,” she said. Credit Geordie Wood for The New York Times

When Gwyneth Paltrow was 22 years old, she got a role that would take her from actress to star: The film producer Harvey Weinstein hired her for the lead in the Jane Austen adaptation “Emma.” Before shooting began, he summoned her to his suite at the Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel for a work meeting that began uneventfully.

It ended with Mr. Weinstein placing his hands on her and suggesting they head to the bedroom for massages, she said.

“I was a kid, I was signed up, I was petrified,” she said in an interview, publicly disclosing that she was sexually harassed by the man who ignited her career and later helped her win an Academy Award.

She refused his advances, she said, and confided in Brad Pitt, her boyfriend at the time. Mr. Pitt confronted Mr. Weinstein, and soon after, the producer warned her not to tell anyone else about his come-on. “I thought he was going to fire me,” she said.


Rosanna Arquette, a star of “Pulp Fiction,” has a similar account of Mr. Weinstein’s behavior, as does Judith Godrèche, a leading French actress. So does Angelina Jolie, who said that during the release of “Playing by Heart” in the late 1990s, he made unwanted advances on her in a hotel room, which she rejected.

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Angelina Jolie said that in the late 1990s, she rejected Mr. Weinstein’s unwanted advances in a hotel room. Credit Stefan Rousseau — WPA Pool/Getty Images

“I had a bad experience with Harvey Weinstein in my youth, and as a result, chose never to work with him again and warn others when they did,” Ms. Jolie said in an email. “This behavior towards women in any field, any country is unacceptable.”

A New York Times investigation last week chronicled a hidden history of sexual harassment allegations against Mr. Weinstein and settlements he paid, often involving former employees, over three decades up to 2015. By Sunday evening, his entertainment company fired him.

On Tuesday, The New Yorker published a report that included multiple allegations of sexual assault, including forced oral and vaginal sex. The article also included accounts of sexual harassment going back to the 1990s, with women describing how intimidating Mr. Weinstein was.

Several days ago, additional actresses began sharing with The Times on-the-record stories of casting-couch abuses. Their accounts hint at the sweep of Mr. Weinstein’s alleged harassment, targeting women on the way to stardom, those who had barely acted and others in between. Fantasies that the public eagerly watched onscreen, the women recounted, sometimes masked the dark experiences of those performing in them.

FAA: Hi. Boston Center TMU [Traffic Management Unit], we have a problem here. We have a hijacked aircraft headed towards New York, and we need you guys to, we need someone to scramble some F-16s or something up there, help us out.

NEADS: [Staff Sergeant Jeremy Powell, Air National Guard] Is this real-world or exercise?

FAA: No, this is not an exercise, not a test. (9/11 commission report 20)

-- 9/11 Synthetic Terror Made in USA, by Webster Griffin Tarpley


The encounters they recalled followed a similar narrative: First, they said, Mr. Weinstein lured them to a private place to discuss films, scripts or even Oscar campaigns. Then, the women contend, he variously tried to initiate massages, touched them inappropriately, took off his clothes or offered them explicit work-for-sex deals.

In a statement on Tuesday, his spokeswoman, Sallie Hofmeister, said: “Any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied by Mr. Weinstein. Mr. Weinstein has further confirmed that there were never any acts of retaliation against any women for refusing his advances. He will not be available for further comments, as he is taking the time to focus on his family, on getting counseling and rebuilding his life.”

Even in an industry in which sexual harassment has long persisted, Mr. Weinstein stands out, according to the actresses and current and former employees of the film companies he ran, Miramax and the Weinstein Company. He had an elaborate system reliant on the cooperation of others: Assistants often booked the meetings, arranged the hotel rooms and sometimes even delivered the talent, then disappeared, the actresses and employees recounted. They described how some of Mr. Weinstein’s executives and assistants then found them agents and jobs or hushed actresses who were upset.

His alleged behavior became something of a Hollywood open secret: When the comedian Seth MacFarlane announced Oscar nominees in 2013, he joked, “Congratulations, you five ladies no longer have to pretend to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein.”
The audience laughed. According to a 2015 memo by a former Weinstein Company executive that The Times previously disclosed, the misconduct continued.

More established actresses were fearful of speaking out because they had work; less established ones were scared because they did not. “This is Harvey Weinstein,” Katherine Kendall, who appeared in the film “Swingers” and television roles, remembers telling herself after an encounter in which she said Mr. Weinstein undressed and chased her around a living room. Telling others meant “I’ll never work again and no one is going to care or believe me,” she reasoned at the time, she said in a recent interview.

Ms. Paltrow, 45, is now an entrepreneur, no longer dependent on securing her next acting role. But she emphasized how much more vulnerable she felt at 22, when Mr. Weinstein had just signed her up for a star-making part. On a trip to Los Angeles, she received a schedule from her agents for the hotel meeting with Mr. Weinstein.

There was no reason to suspect anything untoward, because “it’s on the fax, it’s from C.A.A.,” she said, referring to Creative Artists Agency, which represented her.

When Mr. Weinstein tried to massage her and invited her into the bedroom, she immediately left, she said, and remembers feeling stunned as she drove away. “I thought you were my Uncle Harvey,” she recalled thinking, explaining that she had seen him as a mentor.

After she told Mr. Pitt about the episode, he approached Mr. Weinstein at a theater premiere and told him never to touch Ms. Paltrow again. Mr. Pitt confirmed the account to The Times through a representative.

Soon after, Mr. Weinstein called Ms. Paltrow and berated her for discussing the episode, she said. (She said she also told a few friends, family members and her agent.) “He screamed at me for a long time,” she said, once again fearing she could lose the role in “Emma.” “It was brutal.” But she stood her ground, she said, and insisted that he put the relationship back on professional footing.


Even as Ms. Paltrow became known as the “first lady of Miramax” and won an Oscar for “Shakespeare in Love” in 1999, very few people knew about Mr. Weinstein’s advances. “I was expected to keep the secret,” she said.

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In 1999, Ms. Paltrow won an Oscar for her role in “Shakespeare in Love,” a film produced by Mr. Weinstein, center. Credit Monica Almeida/The New York Times

Like several of the other women interviewed for this article, she felt she had to suppress the experience. She praised Mr. Weinstein publicly, posed for pictures with him and played the glowing star to his powerful producer. Yet their work relationship grew rockier over the years, she said, and she distanced herself. “He was alternately generous and supportive and championing, and punitive and bullying,” she said.

Now, with the process of tallying the size and scope of Mr. Weinstein’s abuse allegations underway, Ms. Paltrow and others said they wanted to support women who had already come forward and help those in similar situations feel less alone.

“We’re at a point in time when women need to send a clear message that this is over,” Ms. Paltrow said. “This way of treating women ends now.”

Tomi-Ann Roberts

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Tomi-Ann Roberts, now a psychology professor, said Mr. Weinstein harassed her in 1984, when she was an aspiring actress. Today she researches sexual objectification, an interest she traces back in part to that encounter. Credit Mark Reis for The New York Times

Detached from feelings of love, then, sex is reserved for "dirty" women. Prostitutes, the other half of the "Madonna-whore" equation, meet this job requirement. However, so do all women whom he perceives as beneath his wife. In Bill Clinton's case, that includes subordinates, volunteers, interns, "white trash," and any other casual acquaintance who happens to be female. Interestingly, other women who nurture him or otherwise behave maternally toward him might also be "Madonna" figures and, therefore, sexually off-limits. This might explain why Clinton apparently never victimized the very beautiful Nancy Hernreich, who actually spoke baby-talk to him.

By all accounts, Bill never developed feelings of love or affection for the women he engaged sexually, but universally objectified women in these relationships. As governor of Arkansas, for example, "Clinton would spot a woman he wanted and, in an incredibly dehumanizing way, would send a bodyguard to bring her to him," Levin says. "Clinton began trying to control women by objectifying them ... [and] did not attempt to establish any type of a relationship with these women, nor did he even engage in the niceties of seduction. Rather, he chose to further degrade them by simply exposing himself and asking for oral sex." [106]

Clinton's own words validate his sexual objectification of women. After a long affair and supposedly loving friendship with Gennifer Flowers, Clinton said of her in 1992, "What does that whore think she's doing to me? She's a fucking slut." [107] Even in a reference to Ted Kennedy's car accident at Chappaquiddick, Clinton said, "He couldn't get a whore across a bridge." [108]

Apparently, calling us "bimbos" was putting it nicely! That degrading term was just for public consumption.

Providing further evidence of Bill's opinions about women, Arkansas trooper L.D. Brown gave a deposition in 1997, describing Clinton's "womanizing" as Arkansas's governor. Paula Jones's attorney asked Brown, "You said that Clinton's extramarital sexual partners were 'purely to be graded, purely to be chased, dominated, conquered.' What did you mean by that?"

"Well, grading, as degrading as it may sound, is something that he and I both would do," the trooper admitted. "Pretty much every pretty woman that we would see, eight, nine, ten, seven, six, whatever."

"Well, you're saying that as far as Clinton was concerned," Paula's attorney asked, "they were purely to be graded, chased, dominated, and conquered?"

"Well, in the sense of a game, in the sense ... that any of these people that I'm talking about, say, Jane Doe 2, it was not a love relationship. It was a sexual relationship alone." [109]

According to Dr. Levin, "The sex addict ... views others as existing only to serve him." Specifically speaking of Clinton, Levin adds, "He does not even appear to care about the other person's feelings at all. Time and time again, Clinton has shown total disregard for the women as people and has treated them as objects." [110] As further evidence of this, Juanita, Paula, and I all observed that Clinton seemed emotionally detached from what he did to us and, eventually, even Monica realized this about her "affair" with Clinton.

While Bill Clinton has demonstrated his view that all women -- except, of course, his wife -- are whores, Hillary evidently shares this opinion. According to Christopher Andersen, rather than expressing anger at her husband about the women, Hillary said to Betsey Wright, "These women are all trash. Nobody is going to believe them," she said. [111] Another time, she said to president-elect Clinton, "What the fuck do you think you're doing? I know who that whore is. Get her out of here." [112]

-- Target: Caught in the Crosshairs of Bill and Hillary Clinton, by Kathleen Willey


In 1984, when Tomi-Ann Roberts was a 20-year-old college junior, she waited tables in New York one summer and hoped to start an acting career. Mr. Weinstein, one of her customers, urged her to audition for a movie that he and his brother were planning to direct. He sent scripts, then asked her to meet him where he was staying so they could discuss the film, she said in an email and a telephone interview.

When she arrived, he was nude in the bathtub, she recalled. He told her that she would give a much better audition if she were comfortable “getting naked in front of him,” too, because the character she might play would have a topless scene.

If she could not bare her breasts in private, she would not be able to do it on film, Ms. Roberts recalled Mr. Weinstein saying. (Asta Roberts, her mother, said in an interview that Ms. Roberts told her the story shortly after the episode.)

Ms. Roberts remembers apologizing on the way out, telling Mr. Weinstein that she was too prudish to go along. Later, she felt that he had manipulated her by feigning professional interest in her, and she doubted that she had ever been under serious consideration. “I was nobody! How had I ever thought otherwise?” she asked.


Today she is a psychology professor at Colorado College, researching sexual objectification, an interest she traces back in part to that long-ago encounter. She said that over the years she had had trouble watching Mr. Weinstein’s films. With a new release, “I would always ask, is it a Miramax movie?”

Rosanna Arquette

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In the early 1990s, Mr. Weinstein asked Rosanna Arquette to stop by a hotel in Beverly Hills to pick up a script. “I’m not that girl,” she remembers telling him after he asked her for a massage. Credit Maarten de Boer/Getty Images

In the early 1990s, Mr. Weinstein asked Rosanna Arquette to stop by the Beverly Hills Hotel to pick up a script for a role.

Born into a family of actors, Ms. Arquette had already starred in a hit film, “Desperately Seeking Susan,” and “New York Stories,” and would go on to perform in films including “Crash” and television shows ranging from “Ray Donovan” to “Girls.” (Her account also appeared in The New Yorker.)

At the reception desk, she was told to head upstairs, which she found odd.

Mr. Weinstein was in a white bathrobe, complaining of neck pain and asking for a massage, according to Ms. Arquette and Maria Smith, a friend she told soon afterward. Ms. Arquette said she tried to recommend a professional masseuse, but Mr. Weinstein grabbed her hand and pulled it toward his crotch. She immediately drew away, she said.

He boasted about the famous actresses he had supposedly slept with — a common element of his come-on, according to several other women who had encounters with Mr. Weinstein. “Rosanna, you’re making a big mistake,” he responded, she said.

She refused. “I’m not that girl,” she recalled telling him on the way out. “I will never be that girl.


The part went to someone else, and Mr. Weinstein’s representative pointed out that he did not produce the movie. Later, Ms. Arquette was in the Miramax film “Pulp Fiction” but said she avoided Mr. Weinstein.

Katherine Kendall

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The actress Katherine Kendall said that Mr. Weinstein harassed her in his apartment in 1993. “He literally chased me,” she said. “He wouldn’t let me pass him to get to the door.” Credit Emily Berl for The New York Times

“Welcome to the Miramax family,” Mr. Weinstein told Katherine Kendall in 1993, she said. She was 23, and about that time he was selling his small movie company to Disney, which supplied the cash that would turn it into a cultural force.

After a meeting set up by her agent, he gave her scripts, including for the film “Beautiful Girls,” and invited her to a screening, which turned out to be a solo trip with Mr. Weinstein to a cinema near Lincoln Center in Manhattan. Afterward, he asked if they could swing by his apartment to pick something up.

Ms. Kendall said she was nervous, but it was daytime, and she relaxed when she saw pictures of his wife on the wall. “He’s keeping it professional, he makes me a drink, we talk about movies and art and books for about an hour,” she recalled. “I thought: He’s taking me seriously.”

He went to the bathroom, came back in a robe and asked her to give him a massage, she said. “Everybody does it,” he said, according to Ms. Kendall, and mentioned a famous model’s name. She refused; he left the room, and returned nude, she said.

“He literally chased me,” she said. “He wouldn’t let me pass him to get to the door.”

Ms. Kendall said his advances had a bargaining quality: He asked if she would at least show her breasts, if nothing else.

She said no to all of it, she recounted. “I just thought to myself: I can’t believe you’re doing this to me. I’m so offended — we just had a meeting,” she said. (Her mother, Kay Kendall, said in a brief interview that her daughter told her the story at the time.)


Ms. Kendall appeared in the film “Swingers,” distributed (but not produced) by Miramax, and has worked on and off as an actor since then. But she said the episode had dampened her enthusiasm for the business.

“If this is what it takes, I can’t do it,” she said.

Judith Godrèche

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In 1996, the French actress Judith Godrèche said she was invited up to Mr. Weinstein’s suite, where he asked to give her a massage. After she said no, she recalled, he argued that casual massages were an American custom. Credit Jeff Vespa/WireImage, via Getty Images

When Mr. Weinstein invited Judith Godrèche to breakfast at the Cannes Film Festival in 1996, she had no idea who he was. At 24, she was already a star in France, and a new film she was in, “Ridicule,” was opening the festival. He had just acquired the movie and said he wanted to discuss it.

They had breakfast at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc, joined by a female Miramax executive. After the executive left, Mr. Weinstein invited Ms. Godrèche up to his suite to see the view, and to discuss the film’s marketing and even an Oscar campaign, she said in an interview.

“I was so naïve and unprepared,” she said.

Upstairs, he asked to give her a massage, Ms. Godrèche said. She said no. He argued that casual massages were an American custom — he gave them to his secretary all the time, Ms. Godrèche recalled him saying.

“The next thing I know, he’s pressing against me and pulling off my sweater,” she said. She pulled away and left the suite. (Alain Godrèche, her father, said in an interview that his daughter told him about the episode the next morning.)

Seeking advice, she later called the female Miramax executive, who told her not to say anything, lest she hurt the film’s release. “They put my face on the poster,” she said.

“This is Miramax,” she said. “You can’t say anything.”

Since then, Ms. Godrèche has starred in films in France and the United States. Like Ms. Paltrow, she felt she had to maintain a rapport with Mr. Weinstein, and sent him friendly emails inquiring about party invitations and potential work. “I tried to negotiate the situation over the years, and negotiate with myself and pretend it kind of never happened,” she said.

“I wish I’d had someone to talk to, to say, ‘How do you deal with this?’”

Dawn Dunning

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After refusing a sexual advance, Dawn Dunning said, she was told by Mr. Weinstein: “You’ll never make it in this business. This is how the business works.” Credit Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times

In 2003, Dawn Dunning was doing small acting gigs, attending design school and waitressing in a nightclub where she met Mr. Weinstein.

The 24-year-old was wary, but Mr. Weinstein was friendly, professional and supportive, she said, offering her a screen test at Miramax, inviting her to lunch and dinner to talk about films and even giving her and her boyfriend tickets to see “The Producers” on Broadway.

Then his assistant invited her to a meal with Mr. Weinstein at a Manhattan hotel. Ms. Dunning headed to the restaurant, where she was told that Mr. Weinstein’s earlier meeting was running late, so she should head up to his suite.

There was no meeting. Mr. Weinstein was in a bathrobe, behind a coffee table covered with papers.

He told her they were contracts for his next three films, according to Ms. Dunning. But she could only sign them on a condition: She would have to have three-way sex with him.

Ms. Dunning said that she laughed, assuming he was joking, and that Mr. Weinstein grew angry.

“You’ll never make it in this business,” she said he told her. “This is how the business works.”

Ms. Dunning fled, she said, and when the assistant called her the next day, she hung up. She told her father, Rick Dunning, of the episode within a few months, he said in an interview.


“I was like: Maybe this is how the business works,” she said. She left acting soon after and became a costume designer.

Ellen Gabler contributed reporting.
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Re: 'Beautiful Girls' Scribe Scott Rosenberg On a Complicate

Postby admin » Sun Oct 29, 2017 9:36 pm

Some Hollywood Jews Tried To Molest Shirley Temple
by Luke Ford
May 24, 2016

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When Catholic priests molest kids, it is always pointed out that they are Catholic priests. When Hollywood Jews and rabbis molest, their identities should be pointed out too.

Shirley Temple writes in her book Child Star: An Autobiography of multiple incidents in which Hollywood Jews tried to molest her.

Jews not only dominate Hollywood, but also the pornography industry. They are not always the paragon of holiness that the Torah instructs.

At 11 years old, Shirley met with with the Jewish producer, Arthur Freed, at MGM. He pulled his putz out:

“I have something made for just you,” he continued, fumbling in his lap. “You’ll be my new star!” That phrase had last been used when I was three years old in “Kid in Hollywood.”

Obviously, Freed did not believe in preliminaries. With his face gaped in a smile, he stood up abruptly and executed a bizarre flourish of clothing. Having thought of him as a producer rather than exhibitor, I sat bolt upright. Guarded personal exposure by both brothers and Father had maintained me in relatively pristine innocence. Not twelve years old, I still had little appreciation for masculine versatility and so dramatic was the leap between schoolgirl speculation and Freed’s bedazzling exposure that I reacted with nervous laughter.

Disdain or terror he might have expected, but not the insult of humor.

“Get out!” he shouted, unmindful of his disarray, imperiously pointing to the closed door. “Go on, get out!”


Shirley’s mother got similar treatment from Louis B. Mayer in the other room:

Mother and I were en route home before I spilled my executive-suite saga. Expecting her to be startled or angry on my behalf, I was surprised when she had her own tale to tell. Not only had Freed cut a figure, so had Mayer.

Ushering Mother to an overstuffed couch, Mayer returned behind his desk and mounted a long-legged chair, a vanity which gave him increased stature while seated. Wiping his eyeglasses on a silk handkerchief, he recounted how admiringly he regarded her. Every child should be so lucky to have such a mother, he purred, a real mother, yet someone sexy and refined. Usually solemn, his eyes glinted. Surely she could recognize real sincerity when she saw it. Never forget, he continued, at MGM we are a family. We take care of our own.

Slipping down off his chair, he approached the sofa and sank down beside her, uttering a contented sigh.

Surely she was the most unique mother in the world, he said. Someone who should be a star in her own right. He grasped her hand, pulling her toward him.

Mayer’s opinion of his personal prowess was rumored to be overblown, but not the power of his office. Reluctant to test either, Mother picked up her purse and retreated out the door, walking backwards.


Her autobiography contains many such stories.

Hardly the mogul he aspired to be or sometimes chose to pose, Wizard shoveled compliments in my direction, covering everything from appealing looks to yet-unrealized dramatic potential. Toward midnight the group thinned out and he offered to walk me to my own compartment. Only two ways to go on this train, he laughed, and I’m going yours.

As I turned in my opened doorway to say good night, he roughly shoved me back inside and slammed the door shut. In one hulking maneuver he toppled me onto the bunk previously made up by the car porter. The swiftness of his attack shocked me from my head to my high-heeled pumps, one of which fell off. his breath was heavy with a sickly aroma of whiskey, and with his free hand he was fumbling at his clothing.

Good God! I thought. I’m going to be raped!

“Look, I’m going to be a big executive,” he said. “We’re going to have to get along.” He held up both palms in a gesture of inevitability. “What I had in mind was just a workplace formality.”

“It may be in your contract, but not mine.”

“Sex is like a glass of water,” he went on, using the clinical tones of a doctor diagnosing an affliction. “You get thirsty, you drink. You want sex, you have it.”

… After dinner, as we prepared to depart, I went upstairs alone to retrieve my coat from his wife’s bedroom. The Wizard followed, stepping softly. Just as I was lifting my wrap from her bed, he suddenly seized me from behind. With a quick twist, he spun me around and backwards on top of the piled fur coats.

For a second time I found myself an unwilling entry in a wrestling match. Exasperating and abusive though it was to me, his actions disgraced his charming wife, only steps away with her guests, and was a gross effrontery to my husband. Yelling “Murder” would have further inflamed a dangerous situation. Pushing up on his chin with both hands, I flexed a knee and struck with all my might, a blow which proved that microsecond lust can be switched off as quickly as on.


Her encounter with George Jessel:

We were standing a pace apart, eyeball to eyeball. In one swift movement he opened his trousers and, with a sudden reach, encircled me with one arm, his face, droopy and baggy-eyed, looming directly into mine. I could feel his other hand groping to lift my shirt. Hard on the heels of the Wizard, this new assault seemed unreal, but little could I do but thrust my right knee upward into his groin. A blow enthusiastically pointed for his chin, it effectively knocked us apart. Pain, disgust, and hate flickered across his face, but I felt no mercy. More and more the adult movie business seemed populated with a bunch of copulating tomcats.
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Re: 'Beautiful Girls' Scribe Scott Rosenberg On a Complicate

Postby admin » Sun Oct 29, 2017 9:37 pm

Shirley Temple's Fantastic Grim Life of Sexual Derangement and Pizazz!
by Caity Weaver
02/11/14

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There are three ingredients needed to make a perfect obituary: a peculiar life, an anticipated death (hence: ample time to write the thing), and at least one story about tap dancing. So you knew going in that the New York Times obituary of Shirley Temple Black, who many people were sad to learn had died Monday night (but also, briefly, happy and surprised to learn had been alive up to that point), was going to be sensational.

Like a precocious Depression-era child dancing with a black man on down the stairs of a pretend house, it did not disappoint.

There were details you might expect, like a brief survey of the various horrible ways in which the parents of Shirley's characters were killed in her films, so that she could emerge a plucky orphan (suicide, plane crash, shipwreck, hit by a car while carrying her birthday cake, etc.), and a funny anecdote about how Shirley's 12th birthday party was marked by her discovery of the fact she was actually 13 (her mother realized early on that while a 6 year old who can do the rumba is really something, a 7 year old who can do the rumba is just kind of blah).

But, like all of the greatest obituaries, there were also a few surprises. For instance, even if you already knew that, the year she turned 4, Shirley appeared as a cutie sexy adorable sensual baby in what the Times describes as "a series of sexually suggestive one-reel shorts" titled "Baby Burlesks" (like this one), you might be surprised to learn that Shirley and her fellow professional toddlers were disciplined by being forced to sit on a block of ice in a windowless box:

When any of the two dozen children in "Baby Burlesks" misbehaved, they were locked in a windowless sound box with only a block of ice on which to sit. "So far as I can tell, the black box did no lasting damage to my psyche," Mrs. Black wrote in "Child Star." "Its lesson of life, however, was profound and unforgettable. Time is money. Wasted time means wasted money means trouble."

Then there was the time the novelist Graham Greene was sued by her studio for libel, after he decried Shirley's "mature suggestiveness" and "well-shaped and desirable little body" in a negative review of her film "Wee Willie Winkie." (Greene had previously speculated that the actress was a 50-year-old dwarf pretending to be a child.)

Years later, a meeting with an MGM producer culminated in his exposing his genitals to a 12-year-old Shirley (and then banishing her from his sight).

On her first visit to MGM, Mrs. Black wrote in her autobiography, the producer Arthur Freed unzipped his trousers and exposed himself to her. Being innocent of male anatomy, she responded by giggling, and he threw her out of his office.

Temple became engaged to her second husband, Charles Alden Black, 12 days after meeting him, the same year she officially retired from showbusiness (at age 22). She said that J. Edgar Hoover's lap was the most comfortable she ever sat on. In later life, she served as the U.S. ambassador to Ghana and to Czechoslovakia. Her first real film contract (two weeks; $150 per; with Fox) stipulated that she provide her own tap shoes.

It was a pretty good obit.
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Re: 'Beautiful Girls' Scribe Scott Rosenberg On a Complicate

Postby admin » Sun Oct 29, 2017 9:53 pm

The casting couch: Hollywood’s dirty secret
by Sarah Blake and Marea Donnelly
The Daily Telegraph
October 13, 2017 6:00am

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Marilyn Monroe in the Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow garden.

The term casting couch has been around so long it almost seems quaint.

It tells of a young performer — almost always a woman — who sexually “auditions” for a role, almost always with a powerful older man.

Joan Collins wrote that she missed out on the title role in 1963s Cleopatra, which went to Elizabeth Taylor, because she wouldn’t sleep with the boss of the studio.

The worst offender was MGM chief Louis B. Mayer


“I had tested for Cleopatra twice and was the frontrunner. 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 ’60s for you know what,” she said.

“But I couldn’t do that. In fact, I was rather wimpish, burst into tears and rushed out of his office.”

The most famous sex symbol of all, Marilyn Monroe, talked scathingly in her memoir My Story about her encounters with lecherous filmmakers and studio chiefs, saying they treated Hollywood as “an overcrowded brothel”.

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Metro Goldwyn-Mayer studio head Louis B. Mayer in 1948 and singer/actress Judy Garland, who he reportedly molested as a teenager. Pic: AP.

“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,” she wrote.

“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.”

Studio boss Darryl Zanuck, who groomed a young Norma Jeane Baker into Marilyn, also had a reputation for interviewing starstruck young hopefuls wearing only his dressing gown. He was notoriously “in conference” with aspiring actors every day between 4pm and 4.30pm.

Other Hollywood pioneers considered “notorious lechers” include Harry Cohn, who had held casting sessions for Columbia Pictures from 1919 to the 1950s, MGM fixer Eddie Mannix and his assistant Benny Thau, named as owning “the busiest casting couch in Hollywood”.

The worst offender was MGM chief Louis B. Mayer, according to author Gerald Clark. Mayer, who preferred family movies, would fondle Judy Garland’s breasts as the 16-year-old sat on his lap.

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Child star Shirley Temple had a producer expose himself to her aged 11. Pic: AP.

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Lesley-Anne Down was harassed when she went to Hollywood.

Child-star Shirley Temple described her shock when MGM producer Arthur Freed exposed himself during a meeting with her in 1941, when she was 11, shortly after she signed with that studio.

Film mogul Howard Hughes was noted for affairs with Ava Gardner, Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis and Ginger Rogers, but also had a “secret” house near his home to conduct interviews with would-be starlets.

The infamous case of filmmaker Roman Polanski, who pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with then-13-year-old aspiring actor Samantha Geimer, has still not been fully resolved. Polanski plied Geimer with champagne and the drug Quaaludes during a 1977 LA photo shoot.

Polanski fled the US before sentencing and is still wanted by judicial authorities.

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Fugitive director Roman Polanski. Pic: AFP PHOTO / VALERY HACHE.

British actor Lesley-Anne Down described arriving in Hollywood in 1975 aged 21, when a film executive invited her to share popcorn from a box, where she felt his erect penis.

She said: “If 1 per cent of what was being perpetrated on actresses back then was punished, the entire male film industry would have been in jail for a minimum of 12 years.”

In 2013 actress Thandie Newton revealed at age18 she had a screen test with a director and a female casting director. The director asked “to sit with my legs apart – the camera was positioned where it could see up my skirt – to put my leg over the arm of the chair”, then read dialogue and imagine “how it felt to be made love to by this person”.

In 2009, Transformers star Megan Fox said leading film directors made sexual propositions while casting for film roles.

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Roman Polanski rape victim Samantha Jane Gailey aged 13 in a suggestive picture taken by the director.

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Actress Thandie Newton has spoken of being taken advantage of by casting directors, aged 18.

Some argue harassment of women is endemic in films as so much of the industry is based on the fact that sex sells.

“Sexual harassment in Hollywood has a history as long as that of the industry itself: the industry was built, in part, on female harassment behind the scenes, female objectification in front of the cameras, with the use of celebrity gossip to both titillate and forewarn about the so-called ‘casting couch’,” says Redlands University’s Kathleen Feeley.

Although Weinstein’s unmasking has created shockwaves, any lasting change will be hard fought.

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Marilyn was a victim of casting couch Holywood. Pic: Cecil Beaton.
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Re: 'Beautiful Girls' Scribe Scott Rosenberg On a Complicate

Postby admin » Sun Oct 29, 2017 10:03 pm

Shirley Temple: the superstar who had her childhood destroyed by Hollywood
by Michael Thornton
Last updated at 23:04 18 April 2008

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Shirley Temple: The child superstar turns 80 on Wednesday

Within the exclusive, highly-priced residential enclave of Woodside in Northern California, the family and friends of a widowed great-grandmother will gather next week to celebrate her birthday.

She is known locally as Mrs Black, and today she keeps the lowest of profiles. Since the death three years ago of her husband, whom she calls "the love of my life," she has retired into virtual silence.

Her public outings now are rare, but on the few occasions when she does emerge from her secluded, Spanish-style home, passers-by often turn round in the street and look back at her with puzzled curiosity.

There is something about her unusually bright eyes and dimpled smile that makes them feel as if they know her well.

And almost certainly they do, for once she was the most famous person in the world. She has not stepped in front of a movie camera for close on 60 years, yet the local delivery office in Woodside is expecting sackloads of fan mail next week.

It will come from every corner of the globe to salute the fact that on Wednesday, Mrs Black - better known as Shirley Temple - the most popular and idolised child star of all time and a former United States ambassador, will be 80.

Movie fame is possibly the most transient of all acquisitions. It can fade with alarming speed once those cameras have stopped turning. The astonishing thing about Shirley Temple is that even people like myself, who were not born when she was the world's number one box-office star, know all about her.

The other day, a five-year-old girl sang me the words that Temple so memorably delivered in the film Bright Eyes, 74 years ago: "On the good ship Lollipop/It's a sweet trip to a candy shop/Where bon-bons play/On the sunny beach of Peppermint Bay."

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Early Fame: At seven with a Shirley Temple doll

I was astonished. "But how do you know that?" I asked. The child regarded me with utter scorn. "I've got the DVD, silly," she replied.

The story of how a curly-headed six-year-old tot saved a major Hollywood studio from financial ruin is like something out of a Harry Potter book.

The saga begins in the Californian resort of Santa Monica on April 23, 1928, when Shirley Jane Temple was born, the third child of George Temple, afterwards a Californian branch bank manager, and his wife Gertrude.

Mrs Temple was a thwarted dancer who had grown too tall to become a ballerina. Like many other mothers in those days, she channelled her frustrated ambitions into her daughter.

At the age of three, Shirley was enrolled at the Ethel Meglin Dance Studios in Hollywood, where she was spotted by two talent scouts from a minor studio, Educational Films, which churned out one-reel "Poverty Row" shorts.

Struck by Shirley's engaging personality, Educational signed her to a two-year contract for 26 short films, at $50 a week. Eight of these were part of a series entitled Baby Burlesks, which Shirley would later describe as "a cynical exploitation of our childish innocence," that "occasionally were racist or sexist."

The regime at Educational Studios was infantile slave labour. Rehearsals would mean two weeks without pay. Each film was then shot at lightning speed in two days. For playing the lead, Shirley received just $10 a day.

For any child who misbehaved, there was the sinister black "punishment box," containing only a large block of ice, in which the obstreperous infant would be forcibly confined to "cool off."

Shirley was put into this box several times, was once forced to work the day after undergoing an operation to pierce her ear-drum and on another occasion to dance on a badly injured foot.

When Educational Films filed for bankruptcy, George Temple astutely bought up his daughter's contract for a mere $25.

At the age of five, Shirley's big break arrived when the songwriter Jay Gorney, composer of Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?, invited her to audition at Fox Film Corporation on December 7, 1933, for a new film, Stand Up And Cheer.

"Sparkle, Shirley, sparkle!" urged her mother, and the producers were so captivated as she performed the audition song Baby Take A Bow that she was signed up for a year at $150 a week, with an option for a further seven years, plus $25 a week for her mother.

After playing Spencer Tracy's daughter in Now I'll Tell, Fox loaned her out to Paramount for the lead in Little Miss Marker at $1,000 a week - more than six times what she was being paid by Fox.

Her co-star in that film, Adolphe Menjou, confessed: "This child frightens me. She knows all the tricks." The director got her to cry on cue by telling the terrified Shirley that her mother had been "kidnapped by an ugly man, all green with blood-red eyes" - and then kept his cameras turning.

By the end of the film, Paramount knew that a star had been born, and offered Fox $50,000 to buy Temple's contract outright. Fox, knowing it was on to a good thing, refused.

Little Miss Marker became a smash-hit, packing cinemas all over America. Now that Shirley had quadrupled her family's income, the Temples moved to a bigger house. A housekeeper was hired and a full-time secretary to deal with more than 4,000 fan letters a week.

Business at George Temple's bank boomed. Mothers queued to meet the father of Hollywood's newest sensation. One lady even offered Temple a "stud fee" to father "another Shirley."

When Shirley's next film, Baby Take A Bow, premiered to massive business, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed: "As long as our country has Shirley Temple, we will be all right."

In Britain, the two young Princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret, were avid Temple fans. (In exile, the former King Edward VIII and his American mistress Wallis Simpson, in acid references to the Royal Family, always referred to the Princess Elizabeth as "Shirley Temple" and to her mother, Queen Elizabeth, later the Queen Mother, as "Mrs Temple Senior."

Temple made eight films in 1934, including Bright Eyes, which marked her passage from stardom to superstardom. At the year's end she had entered the list of the world's top ten money-making stars at number eight.

By the following year she had risen to the top of the list, and for four consecutive years she remained the world's number one box-office star, pushing Clark Gable into second place.

Fox, which had owed $42million and teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, came out of the red entirely thanks to a six-year-old child.

After a protracted legal dispute, Temple's salary at Fox was increased more than six-fold, with her mother now receiving $250 a week. For each film completed, there was also a $15,000 bonus placed in trust for her, later more than doubling to $35,000.

In all this time, however, all the world's highest earning child actually saw of her salary was $13 a month in pocket money.

Not all the world fell in love with this ringleted, dimpled, singing and dancing doll, though. The novelist Graham Greene, reviewing Captain January, found the film "a little depraved," adding: "Some of her popularity seems to rest on a coquetry quite as mature as Miss [Claudette] Colbert's and on an oddly precocious body as voluptuous in grey flannel trousers as Miss Dietrich's."

Greene, who had elsewhere referred to Temple as "a 50-year-old dwarf," went a great deal further in his review of Wee Willie Winkie: "Her admirers - middle-aged men and clergymen - respond to her dubious coquetry, to the sight of her well-shaped and desirable little body, packed with enormous vitality, only because the safety curtain of story and dialogue drops between their intelligence and their desire."

Twentieth Century-Fox (as it was by this time known) promptly sued.

Greene and his publisher, the magazine Night And Day, were subsequently obliged to pay £3,500 in damages to the studio and to Temple, referred to by Greene as "that little bitch."

While Greene's insinuations were snide, there were others who also felt that the presentation of Temple sometimes lacked taste. In Curly Top, for example, she appeared as a naked cupid, smeared from head to toe in gold paint, causing the film to be banned in Denmark for "corruption."

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-- In Curly Top, for example, she appeared as a naked cupid, smeared from head to toe in gold paint, causing the film to be banned in Denmark for "corruption."


After four consecutive years as the queen of the box-office, Temple's career finally faltered in 1939. She lost the lead in The Wizard Of Oz to Judy Garland after Fox refused to loan her to MGM.

Fox rushed her into their own Technicolor fantasy, The Blue Bird, which flopped so badly that it was taken off within days of its opening.

Her fee was now $300,000 per film, and Fox, realising that her childhood appeal was waning, agreed to let her parents buy up the rest of her contract. She moved to MGM, but their two vehicles for her, Kathleen in 1941 and Miss Annie Rooney in 1942, were both failures.

David O. Selznick signed her to a seven-year contract, but in the first three films he produced for her - Since You Went Away, I'll Be Seeing You and Kiss And Tell - Temple came across as just a typical Hollywood teenager. The impish and beguiling tot had vanished.

In 1945, at the age of 17, she married John Agar, a sergeant in the U.S. Army Air Corps, who became an actor. Their daughter, Linda Susan, was born in 1948, but the marriage swiftly disintegrated owing to his chronic drinking and serial infidelity.

Temple continued to star in films, including The Bachelor And The Bobby-Soxer with Cary Grant, and John Ford's classic western Fort Apache co-starring John Wayne and Henry Fonda, in which her husband, John Agar, made his screen debut.

Temple's Selznick contract and screen career petered out ignominiously with four unremarkable films that received devastating reviews. The court evidence in Temple's messy divorce from Agar seemed to remove what was left of the gloss on her stardom - how he had brought different woman back to the house while she was pregnant, and how once he came home so drunk and abusive that she had fled the house in terror.

On holiday in Honolulu in 1950 she met and fell in love with California businessman Charles Alden Black, nine years her senior, who confessed that he had never seen one of her films. They were married in December of that year. Their son Charles Jr. was born in 1952 and their daughter Lori in 1954.

In 1958 Temple made a comeback on television in the series Shirley Temple's Storybook, followed by a further series, Shirley Temple Theatre, in 1961.

In 1967 she unsuccessfully ran for Congress on a platform supporting America's involvement in the Vietnam War. In 1969 President Richard Nixon appointed her as United States representative to the 24th General Assembly of the United Nations.

Then, in 1972, she discovered a lump on her left breast which proved to be malignant, and underwent a mastectomy. Afterwards, she "reached up to feel the void. It was an amputation, and I faced it."

With characteristic courage, she went public on her illness, becoming one of the first female celebrities to admit to breast cancer, which brought her 50,000 letters of support.

In 1974 she was appointed United States Ambassador to Ghana, and in 1976 became America's first female Chief of Protocol at the White House.

A decade later the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented her with a full-sized Oscar to replace the miniature one she had been given 50 years earlier. She dedicated it to her late mother.

Shirley was devastated when, on August 4, 2005, her husband died from myelodysplastic syndrome (a bone marrow disease) at the age of 86, after almost 55 years of marriage.

Touchingly, she kept Charles's voice on their answering machine. "I don't ever want to erase it," she said.

In 2006, Temple received the Screen Actors Guild's Lifetime Achievement Award for having "lived the most remarkable life, as the brilliant performer the world came to know when she was just a child to the dedicated public servant who has served her country both at home and abroad for 30 years."

These claims do not seem excessive. This was one child star who did not self-destruct through booze, drugs or sex, who kept faith with the public, loved her country and justly became the world-wide cinematic legend and American icon that she remains today.

Her own assessment of her career is modest. "I class myself with Rin Tin Tin," she said once. "At the end of the Depression, people were perhaps looking for something to cheer themselves up. They fell in love with a dog and a little girl. It won't happen again."

And it hasn't. No child star since has ever won more than a fraction of the fame and popularity that Shirley Temple achieved.

The calendar may tell us that she is 80 on Wednesday. Yet to an entire generation that grew up with her, as well as to the children of today who buy her DVDs by the thousand, she will always be that bright-eyed, curly-haired little girl.
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Re: 'Beautiful Girls' Scribe Scott Rosenberg On a Complicate

Postby admin » Mon Oct 30, 2017 9:09 pm

Harvey Weinstein Allegedly Threatened to 'Destroy' Bond Star Eva Green After She Refused His Sexual Advances
by Peter Mikelbank@PMIKELBANK
People.com
October 13, 2017 AT 9:24PM EDT

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The mother of actress Eva Green says the James Bond actress was targeted by Harvey Weinstein.

On Friday, Green’s mother, French actress Marlene Jobert, told Europe 1 radio that her daughter was also “sexually harassed” by the movie mogul for two years.

“My daughter Eva was the victim of this horrible man …” the 76-year old star said, adding she was speaking on her daughter’s behalf.

“At the time, I was truly horrified, so scandalized that I wanted to do something but my daughter said ‘Absolutely Not! You do not know the evil he is capable of.’“

While her daughter has resisted speaking out personally since allegations concerning Weinstein have arisen, Jobert said she was motivated to “add another testimony because it isn’t possible that this guy goes unpunished. This odious character must be prosecuted.”


Green, star of Penny Dreadful, was targeted by Weinstein during 2010-11, Jobert said. To escape confrontation, Green tried not to reply. “She was intimidated, this guy had so much power, power over all cinema! He must have put obstacles in her way because he was so vexed?

“It was difficult, took time to recover, she prefers to forget and not talk about it today.”

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STEPHANE REIX/FOR PICTURE/CORBIS VIA GETTY

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NEILSON BARNARD/GETTY IMAGES FOR SAMSUNG

Until her retirement in the ’90s, Jobert was a much sought after star who had played opposite Belmondo, Depardieu and Charles Bronson. Speaking to the news radio station, she described Weinstein “as tenacious, he insisted for several months, every time he was in Paris, he called.”

Jobert stressed that Weinstein’s approach was “a professional rendezvous” with the offer of a starring role.

“Under the pretext of a professional appointment, he’d given her a script with a beautiful key role it. And as his office was also in his hotel suite, they’d go up and then … He promised her, like the others that he’d favorize their careers in exchange for sexual favors.”

“Eva managed to escape him but he threatened to destroy her professionally,” her mother explained. “Because if the ‘BIG PIG’ had been outed by a victim, for revenge he would forbid [directors] to select them. That’s a brutal reaction to take on a young actress because it was putting themselves in danger of being scratched off casting lists.”

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-- Angie Everhart


Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Angie Everhart told her own story on KLOS radio Friday, saying Weinstein once masturbated in front of her while they were both on a boat at the Venice Film Festival years ago.

“I had just arrived and I was sleeping, I was in my bed,” she said. “I wake up and Harvey is standing above my bed. That alone is frightening.”

She continues, “All of a sudden he takes his pants down and starts doing his stuff. He’s blocking the door. I can’t get out and he — I don’t know how to say this on the radio, but he finishes on the carpet of the floor.”

Everhart said Weinstein warned her against telling anyone what had occurred, but when she did she was ignored.

“Nobody wanted to do anything about it because everyone was terrified of Harvey,” she said.


Last week, eight women — including actress Ashley Judd — spoke out against Weinstein in a New York Times report, accusing him of sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior. The paper also reported that Weinstein reached private settlements with eight women, including actress Rose McGowan. McGowan has since said she was raped [by] the movie mogul.

Weinstein has since been fired from his former studio, The Weinstein Company, and wife Georgina Chapman announced she’s leaving him.

Following the NYT report about the allegations, Weinstein said in a statement that he was working with therapists and planned to “deal with this issue head-on.”

On Tuesday, the The New Yorker revealed — among 13 different women’s accounts of alleged sexual harassment, assault or rape — that the mogul allegedly forcibly performed oral sex on Italian actress Asia Argento two decades ago. Actresses Mira Sorvino and Rosanna Arquette also claimed that after rejecting Weinstein’s unwanted advances, they were removed from or kept from being hired for projects.

On Tuesday, Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie and several other women added their own accounts of alleged mistreatment, and more than two dozen women have now come forward.

“Any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied by Mr. Weinstein,” a spokesperson for the movie mogul has said.

On Thursday, PEOPLE reported that Weinstein checked into a luxury resort in Arizona after jetting out of Los Angeles on Wednesday. The source said the movie mogul was staying at the five-star hotel (which boasts a spa and golf course) because “he doesn’t want to go [to] a place where he can’t use his cell phone.”

“His team set him up at a secure place to get him the help he needs — he knows and wants help,” said another source close to the situation.
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Re: 'Beautiful Girls' Scribe Scott Rosenberg On a Complicate

Postby admin » Mon Oct 30, 2017 9:30 pm

Eva Green left 'shocked and disgusted' after 'pushing off' Harvey Weinstein
'He promised them, like everyone, to promote their career in exchange for sexual favours,' alleges Bond actor's mother
by Maya Oppenheim @mayaoppenheim
16 October 2017 14:45

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Eva Green has claimed she was forced to “push off” disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein and was left feeling “shocked and disgusted”.

The Bond actor, who appeared in Casino Royale, is the latest woman to accuse one of Hollywood’s most powerful producers of sexual harassment.

Green’s allegations come after her mother claimed her daughter attempted to dodge his advances but alleged he threatened to destroy her career in response.

During a radio interview, Marlene Jobert said Green was targeted by Weinstein between 2010 and 2011 in Paris. She accused the acclaimed producer of being a “horrible man” who told her daughter he would help her build her career in return for sexual favours.

Speaking to Europe 1 radio in French, she said: "My daughter Eva was a victim of this horrible man ... he is tenacious, he insisted over the course of several months, from the moment he arrived in Paris, he would start calling her.

"She didn't respond ... she was a little bit intimidated, this guy had so much power. The power over all cinema. He stuck so many sticks in her wheels, because he was angry.

"It's difficult, (she) took a long time to recover, she preferred to forget and not to talk about it anymore."

She recalled the way Weinstein approached her daughter, saying: "He was with Eva the way he was with all the others, with the same modus operandi: under the pretext of a professional rendez-vous, with a scenario for him to give out, with a great role at stake.

"And as his office was also in his hotel suite, he asked them to come up and then, great ... He promised them, like everyone, to promote their career in exchange for sexual favours."

Green, who has starred in independent films Cracks, Womb, and Perfect Sense, issued a later statement to Variety, saying: "I met him for a business meeting in Paris at which he behaved inappropriately and I had to push him off.

She continued: "I got away without it going further, but the experience left me shocked and disgusted."

Green said she chose not to discuss the alleged incident before because she was keen to maintain her privacy but has now been inspired by the chorus of women coming forward to accuse Weinstein. She applauded the “great bravery” of women for speaking out and argued it was important to come to terms with the fact this behaviour is pervasive and not simply linked to the entertainment industry.

“The exploitation of power is ubiquitous. This behaviour is unacceptable and needs to be eliminated,” she said.

Green had appeared in Sin City which the disgraced media mogul had been involved.

The Weinstein fallout erupted last week when The New York Times published an bombshell story about Weinstein's numerous settlements with women and included Ashley Judd accusing Weinstein of sexual harassment. This was followed by a similarly explosive 10-month investigative piece in The New Yorker that included three women who accused him of rape.

More than 40 women have accused the Hollywood A-lister of sexual misconduct. He is now the subject of criminal investigations on both sides of the Atlantic and has been fired from his namesake company.

Weinstein denies any accusations of nonconsensual sex. "Any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied by Mr Weinstein. Mr Weinstein has further confirmed that there were never any acts of retaliation against any women for refusing his advances," his spokesperson told The Independent in a statement.
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