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37 Bits of Hollywood History Most Moviegoers Don’t Know

Film history firsts — from the first motion picture to the first F-bomb in a motion picture

37 Bits of Hollywood History Most Moviegoers Don’t Know

March 11, 2024

It had to start somewhere. And we think you’ll be surprised to learn how long ago some pretty technical movie effects were pulled off. Yes, actors were basically studio property and children were drugged daily, but how else were they supposed to work 18-hour days for months at a time?

As you’ll see below, Hollywood has come a long way while not changing much at all…

37

WHEN YOU WERE A MOVIE STAR, YOUR ENTIRE LIFE BECAME A PERFORMANCE. Classic Hollywood SUCKED Hollywood stars were expected to be wholesome on the screen n - and also out of it. Publicists would cook up your entire public image, and studio fixers covered up any possible scandal. CRACKED.COM — Source

36

ACTORS WERE TURNED INTO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PEOPLE. Classic Hollywood SUCKED Were you, say, a Latina named Margarita Cansino? Well, it sucked for you! Hollywood would use hair dye and electrolysis to transform you into all-American white girl Rita Hayworth. Such things were pretty much standard procedure. CRACKED.COM — Source

35

Classic Hollywood

ACTORS HAD NO SAY IN THEIR OWN CAREERS. Classic Hollymood SUCKED I have never been consulted as to what part I would like to play, Clark Gable said once. I am not paid to think. And don't you even think about turning down a role. That'd get you benched, like it happened to Bette Davis. CRACKED.COM — Source

34

ACTRESSES WERE TORTURED INTO BEING SKINNY. Classic Hollywood SUCKED Just like today, young female stars were expected to be thin. Sometimes they'd be ordered to - even forced to. 14-year-old Judy Garland was kept on a very restricted diet, given diet pills, and reportedly made to smoke an awful lot to suppress her appetite. CRACKED.COM — Source

33

STUDIOS CONTROLLED EVEN THE ACTORS' LOVE LIVES. Classic Hollywood SUCKED Since bombshells were supposed to be single, Jean Harlow was contractually forbidden to marry. Columbia Pictures brought in actual gangsters to stop their star Kim Novak from marrying Sammy Davis, Jr. (a black man, to boot). CRACKED.COM — Source

32

Film Firsts

Historical Firsts in Practical Effects Bear projection: 1930s A staple in filmmaking Literally filming someone in front of a projector, it was first tried by Norman 0. Dawn in 1913, but standardized with a special screen for 1933's King Kong. Fox won a Technical Achievement Oscar for its use in the 1934 film Liliom. CRACKED — Source

31

Historical Firsts in Practical Effects The first full-length 1925 stop-motion animation Stop-motion pioneer Willis O'Brien developed several innovations for The Lost World that are still used today. Не created a technique that joined stop- motion and live-action onscreen at the same time. CRACKED — Source

30

The Green Screen

Historical Firsts in Practical Effects Hg1 Frank Williams: Grandfather 1916 of the green screen 5 Fig.2. 6 Williams' traveling matte system shot actors or vehicles against a black background and isolated them to be placed on other moving images. It could only work in black and white, but is a direct precursor of blue/green screen technology. CRACKED — Source

29

Film Firsts

Historical Firsts in Practical Effects 1909 George Albert Smith patents double exposure Не built his own movie camera and used his newly patented double exposure technique to make a ghost for his 1909 short The Corsican Brothers. CRACKED — Source

28

Film Firsts

Historical Firsts in Practical Effects The earliest known 1902 color film footage British inventors Edward Turner and Frederick Lee produced color motion picture tests of Turner's children playing. Не died before perfecting it, but his work led to Kinemacolor in 1906 (the world's first motion picture in natural colors.) CRACKED — Source

27

Historical Firsts in Practical Effects The first use of miniatures 1899 In the 1899 short film The Windsor Hotel Fire by Albert E. Smith and J. Stewart Blackton, tiny victims fell from miniature cardboard buildings while squirt guns were used as fire hoses. CRACKED — Source

26

Historical Firsts in Practical Effects 1899-1909 Georges Méliès: The father of FX The world's most well-known filmmaker at the time, he was the first to experiment with exposure, split screen, dissolve, superimposition, and reverse shots. Effects in his 1902 film A Trip to the Moon are big bang moments in modern cinema. CRACKED — Source

25

Historical Firsts in Practical Effects The first-ever special effect 1895 Shot at Edison Labs in New Jersey, 1895's Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots was the first film to use a visual effect. They used stop- action for her beheading, and since no one had ever seen special effects, viewers thought they actually killed the actress. CRACKED — Source

24

The F-Word in Movies

CRACKED VULGARITY HISTORY The F-word becomes the norm in movies In 1973, The Exorcist dropped the F-bomb 13 times, but was the highest grossing movie of the year. That same year, Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets dropped it 49 times, and these profitable, well-made films helped the F-word become more acceptable. — Source

23

CRACKED VULGARITY HISTORY - a PORT The first ever X and R ratings Brian De Palma's 1968 film Greetings was slapped with the first ever X rating. Не cut some sexual content to be downgraded to an R rating, but Gordon Flemyng's film The Split was the first ever R rated movie (released one month before Greetings). — Source

22

CRACKED VULGARITY HISTORY The first F-word in film The 1967 British film Ulysses was released in the U.K. and the U.S. Actress Barbara Jefford (who plays Molly Bloom) says, O Lord, I wanted to shout out all sorts of things, f*** or sh** or anything at all only not to look ugly... — Source

21

CRACKED VULGARITY HISTORY The first audible curse words in film The 1929 Paramount film Glorifying the American Girl has the first curse words in cinema history. They say damn six times, and jackass twice. — Source

20

The first to credit the full crew. 1977 CRACKED.COM George Lucas decided to list every last crew member in the Star Wars final credit crawl. Before that, only department heads would get their moment in the limelight. — Source

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19

The Toll of the Sea

The first movie filmed in color. 1922 CRACKED.COM There are color films that predate this one, but they all required post-production coloring processes. The Toll of the Sea was the first movie actually filmed in color. — Source

18

The first full frontal nudity. 1916 CRACKED.COM Annette Kellermann was an Australian swimmer who broke barriers by wearing a scandalous one-piece bathing suit (instead of pantaloons). She later had a robust, nautical-themed film career, including her nude turn in A Daughter of the Gods. — Source

17

The first movie studio. 1893 CRACKED.COM Thomas Edison's New Jersey studio, The Black Maria, was built for about $600 to produce short films for the Kinetoscope. — Source

16

The first copyrighted motion picture. 1894 CRACKED.COM W.K. Dickson copyrighted Fred Ott's Sneeze, a 5-second film of Thomas Edison's assistant snorting some sketchy 1800's stimulant and then, spoiler alert, sneezing. — Source

15

The first motion picture. 1885 GRAGKED.COM Louis Le Prince, aka The Zaddy of Cinematography, was the first to film a moving sequence on a film-like strip with a single lense camera. — Source

14

The first karate fight. 1962 CRACKED.COM Frank Sinatra has the honor of inciting the first-ever karate fight in American cinema in The Manchurian Candidate. It looks exactly like a man who is horny for a living pretending to get beat up. — Source

13

Island in the Sun

The first interracial kiss. 1957 CRACKED.COME Although it was highly controversial, Island in the Sun, a film about interracial romance, was also a box office success. — Source

12

The first PG-13 rating. 1984 CRACKED.COM Even though it clocked in at 134 acts of violence per hour (Guinness counted), Red Dawn was the first film to officially find itself between PG and R. — Source

11

CGI

The first CGI. 1973 CRACKED.COM We get to see through the eyes of an evil robot in a scene in Westworld, and it's... boring. The motif was inspired by the first images of the surface of Mars. — Source

10

The first $100 million movie. 1975 CRACKED.COM Jaws was one of the first films to be released nationwide, all at once, instead of slowly rolled out across the country. That helped it crush the barrier and score $260 million on its first run. — Source

9

HOLLYWOOD STARS WERE MANUFACTURED PRODUCTS. Classic Hollymood SUCKED Talent scouts hunted for promising performers (chosen more on looks than any other consideration). Those were then trained, groomed, and given a complete persona, according to which roles they were expected to play. CRACKED.COM — Source

8

Hollywood History

CHILD ABUSE WAS COMMON. Classic Hollymood SUCKED F в С Shirley Temple is the rare child star who didn't grow up into a messed-up adult, but that wasn't because of Hollywood's lack of trying. She was only three when she was in sexually suggestive short movies - and when she misbehaved on set, she was forced to sit on a block of ice. CRACKED.COM — Source

7

STUDIOS FORCED THEATERS TO BUY MOVIES THEY DIDN'T WANT. Classic Hollywood SUCKED You wanted the newest hit for your theater? Then you had to buy it in a pack with a lot of other movies (that weren't even made yet), with no assurance those wouldn't turn out to be crap no one would pay to see. This practice of block booking was banned in 1948. CRACKED.COM — Source

6

Old Hollywood

AFRICAN-AMERICAN ACTORS HAD IT EVEN WORSE THAN OTHERS. Classic Hollywood SUCKED ARABIA SEPIT FC2 ACROSEMENT When Hattie McDaniel won an Oscar for Gone with the Wind, she couldn't sit with her white co-stars - in fact, she was lucky to be allowed in the ceremony at all. And even with her family connections, Lena Horne struggled to get parts, because she refused to play maids. CRACKED.COM — Source

5

THE OSCARS WERE CREATED AS AN ANTI- UNION MOVE. Classic Hollywood SUCKED MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer was very much against his workers unionizing, so he created the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to take the place of unions. The award show was a PR move to legitimize the institution. CRACKED.COM — Source

4

FORCED ABORTIONS WERE ALL THE RAGE. Classic Hollywood SUCKED Abortion was illegal in the 1930s, but female movie stars kept getting them - because studios mandated them. Fixers would arrange for appendectomies and other phony hospital treatments, to keep their actresses box office value. CRACKED.COM — Source

3

CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD WAS RUN BY HARVEY WEINSTEIN TYPES. Classic Hollymood SUCKED Studio execs, agents, and filmmakers were very powerful men, and would often abuse that power. Sexual harassment was rampant - and unlike today, there wasn't the slightest chance the perpetrators would ever face consequences. CRACKED.COM — Source

2

CHILDREN WERE DRUGGED TO PERFORM IN MOVIES. Classic Hollymood SUCKED Teens Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland were made to work 18 hours a day, six days a week. They were given amphetamines to keep up with that frantic pace (and then sleeping pills to calm them down at night). CRACKED.COM — Source

1

Old Hollywood

STUDIOS PRETTY MUCH OWNED THE ACTORS. Classic Hollywood SUCKED Actors could only work for the studio they were under contract with - and the contracts were long term. Often, however, studios would lend each other stars - sometimes as a way to punish the actor for defying their masters. CRACKED.COM — Source

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