THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

One of the most surprising stories about Hollywood's early scandals is that it was briefly front-page news when it came to light in 1937 and then disappeared without a trace. The story focused on a young chorus girl named Patricia Douglas who was raped during a wild party/orgy staged during a sales convention by powerful MGM. Douglas, just 20 at thetime and either naïve or extremely brave, went to court to have justice done. MGM, the most powerful studio in the world, did everything in its power to squelch the case and pay off the witnesses ( including a parking lot attendant who years later admitted his culpability in return for a lifetime pension from Metro ) and the case was dropped. Douglas, who had been branded a harlot by the public disappeared from public view and stunningly, so did the story.

And there the scandal rested until a young writer, David Stenn, who had written two extremely well-received biographies of Clara Bow and Jean Harlow stumbled upon it decades later. He eventually tracked down Douglas, convinced her to talk with him after months of cajoling, and his subsequent, heavily researched piece appeared in Vanity Fair in its 2003 Hollywood issue. Stenn next made a film about the scandal and his search for Douglas called Girl 27. ( The title refers to a list of actresses who were called to attend the party—many of whom, like Douglas, came dressed as cowgirls, thinking they would be extras in a movie. )

Girl 27 debuted in 2007 at Sundance and came out on DVD last fall. It's both a fascinating, eye-opening recounting of the 1937 incident and a deeply personal documentary of the relationship that developed between Stenn and Douglas as they worked together on finally bringing her sad story to light. Ironically, at the time of the scandal and the cover-up, MGM was run by Hollywood's most powerful man, Louis B. Mayer—the man who was also instrumental in creating the Oscars, the movie's symbol of excellence. Like Stenn's movie, this little known fact again speaks to the movie's inherent and unresolved duality.

Windy City Times spoke to Stenn at length about Girl 27.

Windy City Times: Seventy years after this scandal, it's so surprising that no one wrote or talked about this. I mean not even Kenneth Anger, the gay writer, famed for his Hollywood Babylon books seems to have uncovered it.

David Stenn: It shows you how much is out there that hasn't been told; that someone else may stumble upon other stories. There were probably other things that happened that they ( MGM ) probably managed to cover-up successfully. What's so strange to me about this story [ is that ] you can call it a cover-up on one level but, on the other hand, it was a nationwide story at the time. That, to me, almost showed how much more powerful MGM was—that they could suppress a story that had become public.

WCT: How did they do that? Did they threaten editors? Did they scare people off from talking to Patricia Douglas?

DS: I don't think they needed to threaten. MGM was the largest employer in L.A. County and if you look at those old press kits they used to give out they're like mad libs—they'd leave a line where you'd fill in the name of the theater and the date. And I think that there was a real agreement—not just in the movie business but certainly in politics. I mean no one knew how ill John F. Kennedy was during his presidency...

WCT: Right—or Roosevelt was never photographed in his wheelchair and that kind of stuff. So there was a tacit agreement to 'play nice.'

DS: Exactly. It was a different era that way and I think [ there was ] also the idea of rape—which was literally a four-letter word that newspapers would not print. They would not print the word. So there was that element as well of the shame and 'blame the victim' and 'she must have asked for it; she must have done something wrong.' I think all those factors combined made people want to believe the worst about Patricia Douglas and they wanted to believe the best about MGM. I learned that lesson when I was doing the Jean Harlow book because I would call up people to interview them and they'd be very nice and they would say, 'I would love to talk to you but I don't think Mr. Mayer would approve' and I would say, 'Well, Mr. Mayer died in 1957.' [ Laughs ] But it was very much a company mentality. We don't have that today but in a time without Social Security or any kind of employment benefits or health insurance MGM took care of you for life. I mean what they did with that parking lot attendant was what they did with their people and it engendered this lifelong loyalty.

WCT: The mentality of women being used as sex objects is as old Hollywood with that idea of starlets and the casting couch. Did you find in your research for this or your other two books about early Hollywood that this was true for gay men as well? Was there a mirror version of this—attractive men made to have gay sex for movie parts?

DS: That's an interesting question. There are other people that have written more about this that might know better but I found in my research that people were used and they were used by whoever needed to use them for whatever reasons. So, depending on what a director liked … that was well known. I don't think there was necessarily an orientation identification like there is today. So that's why you hear stories about certain actors who did things early in their career to further their career.

WCT: Sure. Like Clark Gable. [ There are strong rumors that Gable allowed himself to be 'serviced' early in his career by director George Cukor and perhaps early film star William Haines. Haines was later released from his MGM contract in large part because of his homosexuality. As for Gable, it has long been speculated that he insisted that Cukor be fired from Gone with the Wind because he was uncomfortable due to his alleged earlier sexual encounter with the director. ]

DSS: Well, that's a famous one. The best place to address that question would actually be the fiction that was written about Hollywood in that period. Like Horace McCoy and James M. Cain and those people. They actually portrayed the industry sort of as it was and they would have those kinds of things. But it's really hard to say. You know, I ran in to that a lot with Paul Bern—Jean Harlow's husband who killed himself—because there were all sorts of questions about who he was sleeping with or wasn't sleeping with or what he did. It's such a different world today. People just didn't talk about those things. I guess I'm just not qualified to answer because you never know, but I think anytime someone has total power over someone else they can exercise it however they choose to. Which really doesn't answer your question—I apologize for that.

WCT: That's okay—it's not so easy to answer. Now, after you wrote the article for Vanity Fair what made you decide to go with a movie instead of another book?

DS: The thing that made me make every decision—the motivating factor for every decision—was Patricia Douglas. Because she was elderly and her health was not good and I was concerned that if this was a book it wouldn't be published in time for her to see it happen and I wanted her to have vindication before she passed away. I wanted her to see that the world had become a different place and that she would be praised instead of pilloried for what she had done in 1937. So to get it in the magazine right away like that was really important because I wanted her to see it. That was really the reason.

WCT: Once you found her there was obviously a long period of time where she kept hanging up on you. How long did that go on?

DS: The first thing she did was pretend that she was someone else. She pretended that she was her caretaker. So we had months of me talking to this person about Patricia Douglas who was Patricia Douglas and sometimes she would slip and say 'I' when she was still trying to say 'she.' Then at a certain point she said, 'You know I'm her' and I said, 'Yes, but if you're more comfortable … ' It went on for a long time. It was in stages. At first she pretended she was her caretaker, then she admitted that she was herself.

WCT: Was she ever like, 'If you don't stop calling me, I'm going to call the police?'

DS: No—that was the irony. If she called anyone or told anyone she was afraid they would find out. 'This guy is calling me because he wants to do a book on me.' 'Well, ma'am, why would he want to do a book on you?' What she used to say to me, which made me feel way worse was, 'Please leave me alone I'm an old woman. I'm a sick, old woman. Please let me die with my secret.'

WCT: So why didn't you?

DS: I would hang up the phone and I would feel like a monster.

WCT: I would guess. You know, you've taken a lot of hits from reviewers for being merciless and not letting up on her.

DS: Well, it was obsessive and that was just what you needed to be, because she needed to understand that someone was never going to give up because she didn't trust and the only way to earn her trust was total commitment.

WCT: Well, that's the other thing that I wanted to ask you about, because there have been reviews that have called you out for appearing in the movie and sort of sullying the film because of it.

DS: I was not prepared for that because I'm barely in it but obviously I'm in it too much for some people.

WCT: Well, it seems that the last half after she comes in and tells her story—

DS: I'm gone.

WCT: You are gone by that point?

DS: I'm gone.

WCT: Okay. But it doesn't feel like it. It feels like it, I guess, because the relationship between the two of you—almost like a grandmother, grandson sort of thing—seems to take over the film. It's very sweet, I have to tell you.

DS: Thank you for noticing that because to me there is a love story there. Normally, you know, you do a story and it's work and then maybe once in a career you come across a situation where you become personally involved in a really profound way. I felt a great responsibility to her because I felt like if I don't do this nobody will. Then this person will die alone and they will die feeling ashamed of themselves. It was very strange to encounter her at the beginning because she had no sense of her own achievement or importance. None. She didn't see herself as a hero. She didn't see herself as someone who had done anything special or unique or courageous and then along comes this person who picks up a phone and says, 'I know who you are and no one else alive does and I think what you did is amazing.' So first there's that fear of, 'My God, he knows my secret' and there's that instant intimacy and then there's that real distrust. My goal was to convince her that she had made a difference and that she had done something really admirable.

WCT: Did you ever consider that it would not be healthy for her emotionally to bring this back out?

DS: I did all the time. I mean it was like trauma recovery therapy and I'm not qualified to do that.

WCT: So what compelled you to keep at it?

DS: Well, I was just about to answer that and your earlier question which is every time I felt like a monster, every time I felt like I was pushing too hard, I would remember what she had done in 1937 when she was so young and I would think to myself, 'This is who she is. You don't change. This is her character. I really believe that some part of her wants vindication. I believe it.' She sits at home all day and she thinks about this—she admitted it—and I think some part of her hoped against hope that some way, somehow the truth would come out. And that turned out to be true but at a certain point, yeah, you're right—you're just going on your gut.

WCT: So the two of you had the same ethics, which is very interesting. Where does that come from for you?

DS: You're very perceptive. You're picking up on all that stuff. Her explanation for it was we're both Aries. That's what she used to say—'You're an Aries and I'm an Aries.' I don't know where it comes from. I think you're kind of born with that but this idea of seeing injustice … we were similar that way because her motivator, she said, was she didn't ever want this to happen to anybody else. She never wanted another girl to go through what she went through and that's why she went public because she wanted to expose the parties. My thing was I didn't want her to have to feel so alone and unloved because what she had done was turn her life achievement into her life's shame.

WCT: So did she find some peace? When you brought her the Vanity Fair article, for example?

DS: Yes, and this is what was so amazing about that: The article came out and then there were a lot of letters and I asked Vanity Fair if I could show her the letters and they're not allowed to because they're written to the magazine so they can't share them outside. I said, 'Well, can I at least read some of them to her?' and they said, 'Yes' and I took like 30 of the best ones—and they were from men, women, young, old, whatever—and I read them to her and she said, 'Thank you. I can go now'. And she died the next day.

WCT: Good heavens …

DS: I mean you can't make this stuff up. It just gives me chills. She was waiting. So I think like when you think, 'Well, maybe it's not true. Maybe it's all made up' and at a certain point you believe the person. I found myself very dedicated to her.

WCT: So getting back to your next project—a movie script for Martin Scorsese—you're not doing another Hollywood book. You've lifted the veil on the Golden Age of film. Has all your research into film history sullied your view of those days?

DS: Not at all. I just finished a magazine piece that has to do with that period—the 1920s—that involves race, that involves 'passing.' I just love detective work. I love research. I never really romanticized old Hollywood. I love researching that period just because it's such a goldmine if you want to play detective, because it's an industry built on illusion. They really didn't have anything to do but invent people and invent stories and all that, so I like exposing the truth—but not necessarily in a muckraking way because just how the business works is really fascinating.