Hollywood: Single BEds and Double Standards (1980)
**** (out of 4)
Third film in the documentary series takes a look at how quickly Hollywood fell to its knees and almost crumbled after a notorious scandal that ripped through front pages across the country. The documentary starts off showing Charles Chaplin and Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle as they're described as one of the most loved men and the other the most despised. We then get a brief bio of Arbuckle, which quickly turns to September 1921 when actress Virginia Rappe was killed at a party thrown by Arbuckle and even though he was obviously innocent of any crime, the newspapers ran stories of a brutal rape and murder. Arbuckle would face three juries and finally be found innocent but it was too late as his career was over and Hollywood was threatened as moral folks across the country got tired of this "sin town". To keep their doors open, the studios hired Will Hays to head the Motion Picture Producers Association, which called for a morality clause but in reality the double standards were thicker than they were before the Arbuckle case. Of the three episodes so far, this here is clearly the best of the bunch as it's still amazing to here the details about the Arbuckle case and see how certain newspapers pretty much made up anything they wanted and after he was found innocent these same newspapers would pretty much just hide the story. It's also interesting because a lot of people of today think the out of control behaviors in Hollywood are something new but this here shows that the drinking, drugs and sex were going on from the very beginning. The documentary also focuses on the many young girls who came to Hollywood to become stars but often found themselves working as prostitutes. We even get a few clips from a stag film, JAZZ BABIES, that features some of these young women who didn't make it big. There's no doubt this era was one of the most fascinating in the history of Hollywood and these 54-minutes do a terrific job at giving you a rundown of everything. Fans of silent films will certainly want to check this out as will those just interested in seeing the (early) dark side of Hollywood.
