Prepare to see the Golden Age of Hollywood in a completely different light. This video uncovers the uncomfortable and dark side of classic movies by exposing the Old Hollywood stars who were openly racist. We are delving into the documented history, quotes, and actions of controversial celebrities you might have once admired.
From the beliefs of legends like John Wayne to other icons of classic film, we are revealing the Hollywood secrets and scandals that have been glossed over for decades. This is a critical look at Hollywood history and the troubling views held by some of its biggest names.
🔔 SUBSCRIBE for more deep dives into Hollywood's hidden history.
👍 LIKE the video if you believe in uncovering the whole truth.
💬 COMMENT below which star's history shocked you the most.
#hollywoodhistory #classicmovies #hollywoodscandals #documentary #goldenageofhollywood
#oldhollywood
From the beliefs of legends like John Wayne to other icons of classic film, we are revealing the Hollywood secrets and scandals that have been glossed over for decades. This is a critical look at Hollywood history and the troubling views held by some of its biggest names.
🔔 SUBSCRIBE for more deep dives into Hollywood's hidden history.
👍 LIKE the video if you believe in uncovering the whole truth.
💬 COMMENT below which star's history shocked you the most.
#hollywoodhistory #classicmovies #hollywoodscandals #documentary #goldenageofhollywood
#oldhollywood
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00:00Okay, let's unpack this because when you really dig into the research, you know, the articles, the historical analyses, all of it, that shimmering image of Hollywood, old Hollywood, even today, it's hiding this like decades long, really organized history of racial exclusion or letting people in, but only in very specific, often demeaning ways.
00:20That's absolutely the core thing the sources bring out. The entertainment industry wasn't just sort of mirroring America's racial problems. It was actively building those structures. So our mission today is to follow that evidence, track how racism in Hollywood evolved. It goes from really overt, you know, unapologetic stuff in the golden age to this incredibly subtle, almost hidden systemic control that's running things behind the scenes now.
00:43Yeah, and we've looked at analyses covering specific huge names, the horrible use of things like blackface, the really vital rise of independent African American cinema as a response. And like you said, those modern structural issues that decide who tells the stories and how they get told.
01:00What really jumped out at me looking through all this was how many truly beloved Hollywood figures actively use their power to make white supremacy seem normal. Let's start right there, maybe back in the golden age. We're talking about icons who weren't just, you know, passively going along with things. They were actively pushing racist ideas or practices. And I think for a lot of people, the biggest shock is seeing Walt Disney's name pop up here.
01:24It's fascinating, isn't it? Because the sources show how Hollywood's early power players deliberately use their most cherished icons, you know, the symbol of American fantasy, American goodness, as actual spokespeople for keeping people out.
01:38He's me.
01:38The guy creating literal dream worlds. Well, the records show he actively refused to hire black animators.
01:43And it wasn't just hiring, right? It was the content itself, the company putting its weight behind racist stories, like specifically releasing Song of the South in 1946.
01:52Civil rights groups were immediately condemning it because it painted this picture of slavery as what was the, quote, friendly and simple.
02:00Exactly. Friendly and simple, basically erasing massive historical trauma and broadcasting that sanitized version globally.
02:07That decision really set a tone.
02:09It did. And then you've got this sheer bluntness of someone like John Wayne, the ultimate American hero on screen for so many.
02:16Yeah. The sources highlight that infamous 1971 interview where he just flat out said, I believe in white supremacy.
02:23It's still shocking to hear. He was such a massive star.
02:26How did the industry, even after the Civil Rights Act passed, basically protect him when he was being so publicly outspoken about this?
02:32Was there like any real pushback document?
02:34Almost none. According to these analyses, he was just too big, too profitable, too culturally embedded to really challenge.
02:41He openly fought against the civil rights movement, argued Native Americans didn't deserve their land, and he wasn't shy about it.
02:47He knew his status kept Hollywood mostly white and shut down stories that challenged his view.
02:52That's power operating right out in the open.
02:55And it wasn't limited to the men, the big male stars. We see it with leading ladies, too.
03:00Vivian Leigh, Scarlett O'Hara herself, defending Gone with the Wind's portrayal of slavery as peaceful and kind.
03:07And there were reports, right, that she used racist language off set, avoided black stagehands.
03:12Yes, that's documented.
03:13Yeah.
03:14And this kind of systemic avoidance meant that even when you saw these seemingly progressive partnerships on screen, the roles were incredibly rigid.
03:21Think about Shirley Temple dancing with Bilbo Jangles Robinson.
03:24Yeah, those scenes are famous.
03:25They are. And they seem sweet on the surface, right?
03:27But the underlying message was always clear.
03:30Robinson was the helper, the servant, maybe a charming novelty, never an equal.
03:34It just hammered home that idea. Black people were helpers, not the heroes of the story.
03:38It's just jarring how recent all that open, casual exclusion really is.
03:43So if we shift from who got hired to how people were portrayed, the most visible, I guess, and maybe most vicious form of racism on screen was that systematic use of makeup and caricature.
03:55You know, blackface and yellowface.
03:56And it's so important to remember, Hollywood didn't invent these things.
03:59It just perfected mass producing them for a huge audience.
04:02The analyses trace blackface way back like 1700s even, but it really took off with Thomas Starkmouth Rice's Jim Crow character in the 1830s.
04:11And the purpose was always, always explicitly to humiliate, to dehumanize, to mock black culture for white entertainment.
04:19And Hollywood just ran with it. No hesitation.
04:21It was a massive hit with white audiences basically baked into early cinema.
04:26Al Jolson and the Jazz Singer in 1927.
04:29That wasn't just one scene.
04:30It was a cultural moment that said, OK, this race is practice.
04:33It's central to this new movie thing.
04:35Absolutely.
04:36And that permission, that cultural, OK, extended to yellowface too.
04:40White actors using makeup, exaggerated accents to play East Asian characters.
04:45Probably the most infamous example that still gets talked about is Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's.
04:50The fake teeth, the eye makeup, that ridiculous accent.
04:53Just grotesque.
04:54And what's so revealing about the power dynamic there is the total lack of accountability, right?
04:59The sources mention Rooney, years later, just refused to apologize, said he meant no harm.
05:03Exactly.
05:04That I meant no harm defense, that refusal to take responsibility was everywhere.
05:07That is, sir.
05:08Fred Astaire, I mean a dance genius who completely changed movie musicals, used blackface in swing time.
05:14He tried to frame it as a tribute to another dancer.
05:16Oh, right.
05:17I read that.
05:18Yeah.
05:18But like Rooney, never really apologized or reckoned with the offense it caused.
05:23When figures that powerful stay silent or make excuses, it validates the practice for everyone else for decades.
05:29So, OK, if the mainstream was so dominated by white supremacy, how did black creators even begin to push back?
05:35Our sources point out that early attempts to even get into the main system were often just shut down.
05:41Like Sam Lucas in 1914, he had a lead role in Uncle Tom's Cabin, but it was deliberately kept out of the mainstream because of racism.
05:48And that's oppression.
05:49That constant blocking actually became the spark for resistance.
05:53This is where you see the incredibly important history of African-American cinema, what they called race films, starting up outside the Hollywood system.
05:59We're talking roughly 1915 through the 1950s.
06:02This wasn't just indie filmmaking.
06:04It was survival.
06:05It was defiance.
06:06These were pioneers creating a whole separate space where black stories could actually be told with some dignity, some agency.
06:13People like Oscar Macho.
06:14I mean, the man made 45 films by 1948.
06:18Films that were directly countering those narratives pushed by Disney and Wayne.
06:21Giants.
06:22Absolute giants.
06:24And it wasn't only directors.
06:25You had producers like Maria P. Williams, who made Flames of Wrath back in 1923.
06:29She's a perfect example of the huge financial and artistic risks black creators had to take just to control their own stories because the mainstream offered nothing but exclusion.
06:38So the first real crack in that mainstream wall that came later was Sidney Poitier, right?
06:44First black actor to win the Best Actor Oscar, 1963.
06:47And he took roles like in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.
06:51That directly reflected the painful reality of the time, just how hard it was for black people trying to integrate into white society.
06:58But here's where the sources get really interesting, digging into the sort of white complicity behind even a film that seemed progressive like that.
07:06Okay, so the movie was hailed as groundbreaking, right?
07:08But the sources reveal the stars, Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, were actually personally pretty uncomfortable with the whole topic.
07:15Really? Even Hepburn and Tracy?
07:16Yeah.
07:17They deliberately avoided pushing for any deeper, maybe more uncomfortable conversations about race in interviews on the set.
07:24They basically kept the story safe, palatable for white audiences.
07:29Wow.
07:30So even when you finally have a black actor breaking through, winning an Oscar, the white gatekeepers, the stars themselves, are making sure the story doesn't push too hard.
07:38It's like conditional acceptance.
07:41That's a perfect way to put it.
07:42Conditional acceptance.
07:43And that shift from outright exclusion to conditional acceptance, and then finally to systemic control.
07:49That's the crucial pivot.
07:50Once the really obvious stuff like blackface became unacceptable, the race's structure didn't vanish.
07:56It just adapted.
07:57It learned to hide better, you know, hide in the contracts, in the budgets.
08:00We saw that adaptation really clearly in the 70s, right?
08:03During the blaxploitation era, roughly 71 to 79.
08:06It's so ironic because on the surface, it looked like progress.
08:09Films were black audiences.
08:11Black casts.
08:12But who was making them?
08:13Overwhelmingly white directors and white producers.
08:16They saw a new market, a chance to cash in on black stories and black culture for huge profits without actually giving up control.
08:24This wasn't just like poor taste.
08:25It was a calculated business move.
08:27White execs figured out they could mine black cultural cool for money without ever handing over the director's chair or the lion's share of the profits.
08:36Junius Griffin, who was heading the NAACP's Hollywood branch then, called it out early.
08:41He said the issue wasn't necessarily the genre itself, but that black people weren't producing them, weren't controlling the money.
08:49And that exploitation directly fueled a countermovement, the L.A. Rebellion.
08:53This came out of UCLA's film school, mostly between the 60s and 80s.
08:57Black filmmakers consciously trying to build an anti-Hollywood alternative.
09:01They faced a lot of resistance.
09:03No, huge pushback, funding difficulties, controversies.
09:06But they kept at it.
09:06And you got breakthroughs like Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust in 1991.
09:10That was one of the first features from that movement to get real nationwide distribution.
09:14It proved audiences wanted these authentic black controlled stories.
09:18But the industry, the main Hollywood system, it had a new strategy by then to deal with that kind of competition, didn't it?
09:24The sort of illusion of equality.
09:26Precisely.
09:27You neutralize the threat of independent black success by bringing the successful black talent into the system with offers they can't refuse.
09:35Like Eddie Murphy, right after Hollywood Shuffle blew up, scout him, sign him to a huge deal.
09:40That way, the existing white financial structure stays in charge.
09:44It still ultimately wins by absorbing the competition.
09:47And you can still see the results of that underlying control today in some pretty disturbing ways.
09:52There's research finding that black characters are way more likely to be killed off first in Hollywood movies.
09:57And that trend actually got worse after the 1990s.
09:59It's a measurable bias.
10:01Yeah.
10:01And think about how Africa is still portrayed so often in films.
10:05It's either this dangerous, chaotic place or it's completely untouched by civilization, like some kind of primitive theme park.
10:12It just keeps reinforcing these really harmful, simplistic stereotypes for millions globally.
10:17And ultimately, like we said before, it all just boils down to control.
10:22Even when you see black actors, headlining movies or black producers listed in the credits, the sources confirm that the major decisions, the big budget choices, the final cut, how it gets distributed, often still have to get signed off by white executives first.
10:36That whole thing with Cat Williams calling Kevin Hart an industry puppet.
10:40Would be cause to stir.
10:40Yeah, but putting the personalities aside, the core argument Williams was making wasn't really personal.
10:47It illustrated that point perfectly.
10:49Fame and money in Hollywood don't automatically equal creative freedom or real control.
10:54It might just mean you have a longer leash, but someone else is still holding it.
10:58Usually the established white financial structure.
11:01So wrapping this all up, what does this whole history tell us?
11:04Hollywood's journey isn't some straight line towards diversity and inclusion.
11:07It's more like a progression from open, blatant racism by its biggest stars to a really complex, systemic setup today where white control over funding, distribution and the final story remains largely intact, even when they're casting black leads or handing out Oscars.
11:24Right.
11:24And the key thing for you, the listener, to maybe take away is that surface level success, you know, the big roles, the awards, the cultural visibility doesn't necessarily mean there's real equality or freedom behind the camera.
11:37It might just mean the system got better at incorporating diversity for profit without giving up that fundamental control.
11:44Which leaves us with a pretty important question, something for you to think about.
11:47If Hollywood is still operating under this kind of deep seated systemic control where the power structure ultimately decides which stories are safe enough, which voices get amplified.
11:58How does that lack of genuine freedom, that lack of control for creators of color end up shaping the stories, the histories, the cultural narratives that you consume every single day?
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