Today's Blind Items - Left For Dead - Old Hollywood

It was the part of a lifetime. Every actress in the world wanted to nab the role. It was a franchise when there not that many franchises to go around back in the early days of Hollywood. Our actress was probably A list during the franchise. Prior to that, she did this and that but never was a huge star. When she landed the role in the franchise, the movies had been going on for years. She was a replacement for someone who didn't want the role when offered after a few year absence for an actress in the role.

Our actress loved the role. It took up most of her time. She was either prepping for the role or shooting the role or publicizing the role before the whole thing started again. Once a year the studio cranked them out like clockwork. The first few were great. Then, the actor who played the lead had enough and a replacement was found.

The replacement was an up and coming actor who had a distinguished military career in WW2. He had been injured and that injury in the head made him susceptible to very big mood swings. He and our actress never really clicked. He assumed because he was the lead that she would want to sleep with him and didn't understand why she didn't.

After the film wrapped there was a party. At the party, the lead actor slipped the actress a drug. To her death, she was still not sure how he slipped the drug in her drink. She says she never was distracted. In any event, the next thing she knew she was on a bed inside a set on the studio lot and she was being beaten by the actor and raped. She said it lasted for almost 24 hours and that he would alternate beating her and raping her. When he finally punched her one last time, she blacked out. She woke up in a hospital.

She had broken bones all over her body. She had internal bleeding. She had huge clumps of her hair missing from her head. Doctors said she could have died if she hadn't been found. The studio wrote her a very very large check to stay quiet. She never acted in anything again after that movie. The world never had any idea why she would just walk away from acting or such a long running franchise.

There were several more installments made of the franchise. Each had a different actress. No actress lasted longer than one movie. The studio kept a close eye on the actor and tried to never leave him alone with his lead actress but inevitably they would get groped or assaulted, if not raped and the studio would write a check and they would stay quiet. It is interesting to me that the studio just didn't find a new lead actor but apparently he was popular and they decided checks to women was just something built into the cost of production.