Today's Blind Items- Altered History-Old Hollywood Blind Item
This permanent A list mostly movie actress created a legend for herself that she maintained throughout her career. When she first began giving interviews her story and background was quite different than what became the story she and her people crafted. She always told about her struggles growing up and how she performed for money as a dancer. She said they were groups of people and it is how she managed to survive and live and put food on her table. That is not exactly how it happened. Our actress actually earned money by sleeping with men and started at the bottom and then worked her way up as a teen to the most powerful person in her country at the time. He ensured her protection. He also ensured her survival.
Crawford
ReplyDeleteSophia Loren?
ReplyDeleteOoops sorry did not see "her country" Sofia Loren
ReplyDeleteSophia Loren?
ReplyDeleteAudrey Hepburn
ReplyDeleteAn actress who was the most powerful person in her country has to be someone not American.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely Rita Hayworth.
ReplyDeleteRita was a US birn citizen
DeleteYep sandybrook got it. But this goes in hand with the BI reveal about her and her sister being prostitutes.
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ReplyDeleteWasn't this already a blind?
ReplyDeleteA young Sophia Loren must have been a highly marketable hooker.
ReplyDeleteSorta matches the other blind thought to be Sophia.
ReplyDeleteMarilyn Monroe
ReplyDelete@Sandy - it's not the actress who was the most powerful but the person she sold herself to - at least that's how I read it.
ReplyDeleteIf it is Sofia isn't this old news?
Could be Violet but its still Sophia. Either way, she either screwed the most powerful man or she was the most powerful person, or both.
ReplyDeleteI thought it would have been Mussolini but he was assassinated when she was 11. Unless she is alot older than her resume has her listed as.
ReplyDeleteJust to be different, Marlene Dietrich was a chorus girl.
ReplyDeleteI'm leaning more towards Dietrich, the story with Loren is her Grandma was her pimp during the war when she was a child. Her Director husband was one of the Johns.
ReplyDeleteThe story with Hayworth is her parents had a vaudville act, her mom was a Zeigfield girl, when Rita got older she became her Dad's partner in the act & in the bedroom.
ReplyDeleteThey have had so many Prime Ministers it doesn't even pay to try and figure out who it was (unless it was the Pope!)
ReplyDeleteTopper, Marlene was my first thought.
ReplyDeleteI considered Rita Hayworth, but she danced with her father, they were a team and that's well-documented, not a story made up later.
The mention of "protection" and survival certainly gives this a WWII era-1930s-40s feel to it.
Luise Rainer
ReplyDeleteAudrey was dancer before she came to Hollywood....
ReplyDeleteWhats their a blind about Sophia Loren's mother and grandmother pimping her out?
ReplyDeleteJust read Audrey's wikipedia bio and this does sound like it could be her.
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ReplyDeleteEvita
ReplyDelete@Topper: I like your Dietrich guess. My guess for the guy is Paul von Hindenberg, Reichspräsident (President, or Head of State) of Germany from 1925-1934. Not to be confused with Hitler, who was Chancellor of Germany (Head of Gov't) under him (a far, far weaker position, at that time).
ReplyDeletePVH may have protected MD from scandal regarding her very liberated personal life. Not sure how much the rising Nazi presence would have been a threat to her while she was in Germany. She did a hell of a lot to support the Allied war effort, including performing for the troops on the front lines. That must have pissed off Hitler. Of course, by then, PVH was already dead.
Hedy Lamarr
ReplyDeleteIt's not Hedy, it's Hedley!
Delete@DommyMommy: "It's Hedley!" ;-)
ReplyDeleteActually, after reading her Wikipedia, I think I want to switch my guess from Dietrich to her. Lamarr was Jewish and rubbed elbows with some very powerful people as an up-and-coming actress. Her "survival" absolutely could have been on the line.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr
Hedy could work for this also.
ReplyDeleteI believe there had been a blind here about Loren, but I've heard it before also. When she was a child during the war Loren's grandmother would allow men to have sex with her & her sister. It supposed to be the real reason why she had such trouble with her pregancies. I remember seeing an interview with her on 60 Mins, that she spoke about her life, inlcuding her miscarrages & my Mom told me the story.
ReplyDeletePretty sure it's Sophia and Mussolini. It's been known for some years that Sophia and her sister were pimped out in their youth by their mother.
ReplyDelete@Harry...I agree. Sophia had a movie one time about her life story and being super poor growing up. No mention of the prostitution.
ReplyDeleteDietrich for sure!! She started as a dancer went into acting.
ReplyDelete+1 Dietrich and Hitler. you have to sleep with a bunch of ita prime ministers in 10 years... at least till Berlusconi. after was easier: only one bj/actress
DeleteJoan Crawford / Pepsi guy
ReplyDeleteAudrey started as a ballet student but due to the war she could never catch up on her training. She started acting in England and was spotted in the South of France by Colette ( when she was doing a small part in a film) who wanted her for Gigi which she then played on Broadway…the rest is history…
ReplyDeleteThe family had money most of it gone after the war…her dad was Irish..
Rita Hayworth.
ReplyDeleteRita Hayworth's father took her across the border to Mexico to dance at nightspots before she took off in Hollywood.
ReplyDeleteI think Sophia's sister married a relative of Mussolini's....
ReplyDeleteHatton Mussolini loved to have sex in his military long black boots. And had quite a big groupie club. as far as Im concerned, in that time, was a must have...
ReplyDeleteI could see this being Dietrich. I read the biography that her daughter wrote and she was all about creating the illusion. She did entertain the troops during the war and she felt that to improve morale was to let them have her..She was NOT picky about who she slept with.
ReplyDeleteHer daughter tells how she designed this undergarment that made her look fabulous and the reason was because she had horridly droopy breasts. She never let the men see her naked in the light ever.
Hedy Lamar was incredibly smart and actually an inventor that created frequency hopping now used in mobile communications. You can thank (or damn) Hedy for your cell phone. She was also thought to be a spy for the US against the Germans.
I'm not sure about A list legend, aside from a strong cult following, but I'll suggest Maria Montez. The Dominican Republic under Trujillo was a very dangerous place and, given his hands on approach to rape, "protection" was definitely required.
ReplyDeleteSaying dancing rather than prostitution? Hardly a legend, barely a lie. It's a euphemism, and was probably completely understood except by the rubes.
ReplyDeleteWhomever it was, we shouldn't condemn her for it--she did whatever she had to do in order to survive. I just wish she hadn't had to go that far...
ReplyDeleteYou all are killing me! Marilyn Monroe slept with the "most powerful person in her country at the time". She was not killed until after he was. In a bio show about her it talks about how she slept her way to Hollywood.
ReplyDeleteLOL, this could really be a few people. This was a common career path in Europe in the 20th century.
ReplyDeleteLoren would fit. As she grew up in the very hard times of the post-war Italy.
And her family(grandmother
& mother) ran a "pub" during those times. That was a catch-all euphemism for den of any and all illegality at the time. And it was very popular with US GIs, which tells you it was a tame little beer house. Sophia worked there, claiming she waited tables. (As a 12-15 years old, in a rough GI bar? Um, okay then I have a bridge in Brooklyn for you...)
Plus by 14/15 Sophia was a hit in the Miss Italia pageant. And that's when she became a national sensation.
And her marriage to Carlo Ponti has always been fishy. He was so much older, and she eventually had more mainstream power, and her own wealth. And she was documented to have been in love with several actual fitting matches, some leading men (Cary Grant most famously). Who had money, power, etc themselves. But she would never leave Ponti for them.
Yet, they stayed married until his death. He had "connections" that simply were un-matchable.
And that whole "the most powerful person in her country" thing? Well, the answer to that riddle may lay somewhere in story behind the fact that her sister married the son of Mussolini- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Maria_Villani_Scicolone
If your sister married a Mussolini, you're family obviously knew some powerful people in 1940s Italy.
Sorry, that's *wasn't* a tame little beer house.
ReplyDeleteI hate my grammar mistakes. Blogger needs an edit button.
Audrey Hepburn.
ReplyDeleteWas gonna say Sophia Loren, but unless she was a prostitute when she was under 10 years old, it can't be her. Going with Hedy Lamarr.
ReplyDeleteOr Audrey Hepburn. She danced to earn money for the Dutch resistance during WW2. Who knows who the most powerful man in the country was, though...
ReplyDeleteTo be different, Grace Kelly. Hitchcock said she was a skank and she married into a royal family in Europe.... Just saying'.
ReplyDeleteAlas, I think this is Audrey Hepburn. Sophia Loren always maintained that she "waited tables" and never claimed to have danced. Hepburn said she spent the war "secretly danc[ing] for groups of people to collect money for the Dutch resistance".
ReplyDeleteAudrey, her mother and her widowed aunt lived with her grandfather, who'd had all his money and many of his possessions confiscated by the Germans as punishment for his non-collaboration. Her uncle was a executed in retaliation for an act of sabotage by the resistance, one of her half-brothers was sent to a German labour camp and the other went into hiding, and Audrey was living under a pseudonym to hide her British citizenship - she was vulnerable.
The most powerful man in the Netherlands 1940-45 (when Audrey was aged 11-16) was the Nazi Arthur Seyss-Inquart.
Whoever it was, and yes I concur it was most likely a WWII young woman, later actress, people need to keep it in perspective. War in your country means survival at all costs. I only say this to reassure any victim of their times and situation that even though we weren't born yet, we can try and empathize and we will not shave her head and write "whore" across their bare exposed breasts as they are paraded down the street such as what happened at the end of the war.
ReplyDeleteWhoever this is, it would surely make a fantastic autobiography, so I am guessing whomever it is is probably dead. Deitrich and Lamar fit. And if Lamar was Jewish, that guy who "ensured" her survival probably made sure she didn't end up on a "list" somewhere.
ReplyDeleteFreeman, Monroe died a year and a half before Kennedy was killed. It was in all the papers. It was also on Mad Men.
ReplyDeleteDietrich.
ReplyDeleteSophia Loren?
ReplyDeleteRita Hayworth and her father?
ReplyDeleteFrom Wiki: born Margarita Carmen Cansino; October 17, 1918 – May 14, 1987
Glad for the confirmation that one of Loren's sisters married into the Mussolini family.
And it's HEDLEY!!!
Nancy Regan? Evita?
ReplyDeleteLucy
ReplyDelete