If you were given a magic pen to rewrite the history of cinema, which chapter would you choose?
In Hollywood, which is currently airing on Netflix, producer Ryan Murphy chose Hollywood in the 1940s.
This isn't the first time he's made a Hollywood story. In 2017, he curated a film about the love-hate relationship between Joan Crawford and Betty Davis.
Three years ago, he chose to follow the true historical narrative. This time, he made a drastic adaptation of the combination of virtual and real, so that a large number of fictional characters and a small number of real characters appeared in the same time and space, playing a parallel universe.
Spoiler Warning!
As can be seen with the naked eye, the choreographer has made changes to some key historical facts, such as: in the 1940s, there were female CEOs in the blockbuster studios, and black gay screenwriters were valued.
The change of the last episode is even more "brain hole", the results of the 20th Oscar in 1948 were greatly modified: movie star Locke Hudson walked the red carpet with his black boyfriend, black screenwriters issued a statement after winning the award, black actress won the Oscar, Chinese actress Huang Liushuang won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress...
Let's take a closer look at the partial list of winners of the 20th Academy Awards compared to the list of the adaptation of "Hollywood":
Partial winners of the 20th Academy Awards
Best Picture: The Gentleman's Agreement
Best Director: Ilya Kazan, "Gentleman's Pact"
Best Actress: Lolitaire Young, "Peasant Girl"
Best Supporting Actress: Cylleister Holm, "Gentleman's Agreement"
Best Screenplay: "Dream Street"
Hollywood revised some of the winners
Best Picture: Meg
Best Director: Raymond Ainslie, "Meg"
Best Actress: Camille Washington, "Meg"
Best Supporting Actress: Huang Liushuang,"Meg"
Best Screenplay: Archie Coleman, "Meg"
I have to say that this list of "Hollywood" is mixed with a lot of producers' private goods (racial discrimination, gender equality, etc.). In fact, these "modified" good wishes have not yet been fully realized in today's Hollywood.
Although the brain-hole adaptation of "Hollywood" is one of the features of the show. However, likes and dislikes are the same cause, and some fans are quite puzzled and even disgusted. For example, although Locke Hudson's sexuality is an open secret in the circle, he has never appeared at the awards ceremony with his black boyfriend, so why did the screenwriter make such changes to real people and facts?
It all starts with the show's producer/director/writer Ryan Murphy.
Producer Ryan Murphy
Ryan Murphy, as a gay film and television producer who has come out in Hollywood, has single-handedly planned "Glee", "American Horror Story", "American Crime Story" and other acclaimed works.
He considers his hollywood path lucky, but people in history who are more talented than him have never been given such an opportunity.
I think the saddest thing in the world is the unrecognized potential. At the Oscar ceremony in the play, those talented and cautious young people get the results they want.
But everyone knows very well that in real life, there are a lot of young people like this, they have never been successful, many people are unknown, and this contrast makes people feel terrible.
In the 1940s, group performances outside the studio
The "horror" revealed in "Hollywood" does not only refer to the difference between dreams and reality. It also bluntly reveals the cost of the "vanguard" in fighting secular prejudices.
There is a scene in the play, it is a film company, because the use of black actresses to pick up the beam to play the heroine, was surrounded by the crowd demonstration, scolding and grinning. Not only that, but radical racists also put burning cross threats on the doorstep of black actresses.
It's ridiculous to think about. The play is set in the 1940s, and more than 70 years have passed. Nowadays, if people are dissatisfied with the casting of a drama, they can at most brush a star on social platforms and vent their private anger. But in that year, it will affect a person's normal life.
It can be seen that Ryan Murphy is much luckier than the gay filmmakers of the last century, at least he is not afraid to disclose his sexual orientation, and he can even boldly shoot works like "Hollywood" to speak out for his peers of different races and sexual orientations.
"Hollywood" took more than 20 years from conception to broadcast. Why do you have to make this scene? Ryan Murphy put it this way:
Those who are in high positions of power, if they can bravely take a step forward at a critical moment in history, then a lot of progressive things will come decades earlier, which is the central idea of my "Hollywood".
In the play, he did use the combination of virtual and real to make some key figures in the history of American cinema take a step forward.
Next, we may wish to take a closer look at what historical facts "Hollywood" "tampered with".
NO.1 Regarding yellow willow cream, how many points are true and how many points are false?
Left: Huang Liushuang, Right: Yang Yahui's appearance in the play
When it comes to Chinese actresses in Hollywood, young audiences may be familiar with Liu Yuling, Wen Mingna or Okafina, who just won the Golden Globes.
In fact, as early as the 1920s, Huang Liushuang became the first Hollywood Chinese actress with an international reputation, and the first Chinese actor to stay on the Walk of Fame.
Huang Liushuang's career is long and rich, and her acting career spans silent films, sound films, TV series, stage plays and radio dramas, but she is a distorted oriental image in the eyes of Western audiences, and she can only play the role of an opium prostitute or an evil Oriental woman, and it is difficult to get a fair performance opportunity.
"Hollywood" highlighted the fact that Huang Liushuang failed to act in "The Land" that year.
The play showed Huang Liushuang's excellent performance in the audition, but the film company felt that choosing a Chinese actor would not have a box office, and later let the German white actress Louise Reiner play the heroine.
As a result, Louise Reiner won the Oscar for "The Land", and Huang Liushuang could only secretly hurt himself on the side.
In the episode, Huang Liushuang was secretly hurt at Oscar
The loss of Huang Liushuang and "The Earth" is real.
Adapted from Pearl Buck's novel of the same name, "The Earth" won the Pulitzer Prize (1932) and the Nobel Prize in Literature (1938), and is the most representative work of chinese novels written by Westerners in the 20th century.
In 1935, when MGM was preparing for "The Land", it did not choose Yellow Willow Cream, which disappointed her quite. The following year, Huang Liushuang returned to China to study Chinese culture in the Middle Chinese and learn Peking Opera with Mei Lanfang.
Louise Reiner's model in The Land
"Hollywood" uses the combination of virtual and real to make up for the regret of Huang Liushuang.
In the second half of the play, director Raymond invited Huang Liushuang to play a supporting actress in "Meg" and let her win the 20th Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Huang Liushuang in the play delivered an acceptance speech on the stage. Probably, it also said the voice of many Chinese actors in Hollywood:
As the first Chinese actor to win an Oscar, he won the award not for playing the yellow race and showing the beauty of the East, but for playing a woman, a woman with flesh and blood.
The "fictional" scene of Huang Liushuang in "Hollywood" is also related to a movie "Shanghai Angel".
In the second episode of the show, a newcomer director came to hope that Huang Liushuang could join his new film "Shanghai Angel". However, the project was later rejected by the film company, who still thought that finding Asians to play would affect the box office.
So, what was the situation of the yellow willow cream of that year? What the hell is she doing?
In fact, during World War II, Huang Liushuang had faded out of the film and television circle, focusing on supporting China's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, and only resumed her acting career after the war. The film project of "Shanghai Angel" in the series does not exist. However, the film should allude to Huang Liushuang's 1937 "Shanghai Daughter".
Unfortunately, Huang Liushuang has not been nominated for an Oscar in her lifetime. Not only that, in real life, no Chinese actor has ever won an Oscar in the acting category.
Yellow willow cream
It is worth mentioning that the Chinese actor who plays Huang Liushuang in the series is called Yang Yahui.
The 46-year-old was born in Taiwan to Chinese parents. She has struggled in Hollywood for many years, appeared in the American drama "Edge of Crisis" and "Life and Death Sniper", and also performed in "Nixon Biography", "Love Return to Alabama", "Double Storey Apartment", and was nominated for the best actress at the 42nd Golden Horse Awards with "Face" directed by Wu Siwei.
Yang Yahui said that in the current Hollywood, Chinese actresses are still an invisible minority. This time playing Huang Liushuang, she also hopes that everyone can understand huang liushuang's achievements and hope that Hollywood can correct this mistake.
Yang Yahui
No.2 The heroine is a combination of black actresses
Camille Washington
Camille Washington, played by Laura Harrell, is the female number one in Hollywood, a completely fictional character.
In the play, she is a contracted actor of the "Ace" film company. Although she is talented, she has been circling around in the role of a maid because of "racial issues", and can only say some well-designed funny lines, which makes her quite depressed.
With the help of her boyfriend and director Raymond and black screenwriter Archie, she starred as the lead actress in the movie "Meg" and won the 20th Academy Award for Best Actress. But in real history, it was 54 years before Harley Berry achieved that goal.
Camille Washington's award-winning moments in the play
In fact, in Hollywood in the 1940s, it was difficult for black actresses to achieve anything like Camille Washington. But there are still people who have come close to this achievement. Producer Ryan Murphy said camille's role was a mixture of black actresses Lena Horn and Dorothy Dandridge.
Camille Washington, Lena Horn and Dorothy Dandridge
Lena Horn first appeared on the screen in 1938 and signed a film contract with MGM, becoming the first black actress to sign a long-term contract with Hollywood, playing a leading role or supporting role in films such as "Heaven's Cottage" and "Song and Dance".
Dorothy rose to fame in the late 1940s, and in 1954, Carmen Jones earned her a 27th Oscar nomination, but lost that year to Grace Kelly, who starred in Country Girl.
Lena Horn and Dorothy Dandridge, the problems they encountered early in their careers, as they did in the series Hollywood. Either only appeared in "racial films" dedicated to the Southern market, or only as black maids, and sometimes even without a signature.
NO.3 Locke Hudson and the Agent's "Secret In the Closet"
Above: The real Locke Hudson and agent Henry Wilson Below: The characters of the duo in "Hollywood"
Jack Pickkin plays Locke Hudson, one of the protagonists of "Hollywood", and the role is quite heavy. What's more, the character has a real archetype.
In the series, he begins as a gay man and meets black gay screenwriter Archie Coleman (played by Jeremy Pope) at the gas station.
Later, he signed up for Henry Wilson, the agent played by Jim Parsons, who gave him the stage name Locke Hudson. Agents not only used their power to PUA him, but also often sexually harassed him, arranged for him to please the gay executives in Hollywood, and even forced him to change his teeth.
In the play, at the 1948 Oscars, Locke Hudson plucked up the courage to walk the red carpet with her boyfriend.
Because of exposing his sexual orientation, he was discriminated against by the media and the public, and never got an offer from the studio again, until his agent decided to start a film about gay men.
In the episode, Locke Hudson and her black boyfriend walk the red carpet
The historical Locke Hudson was one of the Hollywood idol male stars of the 1950s and 60s. He is indeed gay, but most of the time, he hides his sexuality.
To quell public suspicions about his sexuality, he married the agent's female secretary, Felice Gates, in 1955 and divorced three years later.
Locke Hudson
Although Elizabeth Taylor, Susan St. Joan James, and Carol Burnett, who had worked with him, knew that Locke Hudson was gay, he never openly admitted it.
It wasn't until 1985, when Locke Hudson became one of the first public figures to disclose his AIDS, that his sexuality became public.
Locke Hudson only appeared in films in 1949, so it is unlikely that he would appear at the 1948 Academy Awards in the show. However, he changed his teeth at the request of his agent, which is true.
In the play, Jim Parsons plays agent Henry Wilson, showing the dark side of Hollywood.
In the eyes of producer Ryan Murphy, Henry Wilson was the Harvey Weinstein of that era, the absolute demon. In real life, Hudson has always wanted to leave the agent, but Henry has a good relationship with the Hollywood executives and even has inextricable ties to the mafia. Those who want to leave him must worry about the future of their careers, but also worry about their safety.
The play also shows the relationship between Henry and the underworld. For example, there is a scene where Henry, in order to suppress the prostitution scandal of a male artist, directly finds the underworld to beat the gossip reporter to the point that he can't take care of himself.
Henry was vicious
NO.4 Meg is not made up out of thin air
Filming "play within a play" "Meg" is the main thread of the plot of "Hollywood".
"Meg" is the story of an actress who commits suicide under the "Hollywood sign", and the characters in the play are making various efforts around the filming and release of the film.
To be clear, Meg is fictional, but the events behind it have really happened in history.
In 1932, 24-year-old actress Pegger Entvester jumped off the H sign of a Hollywood lamp because of her career development.
Peg Entvester
Originally a Broadway stage actress, Peg came to Los Angeles to develop her film career in the 1920s and 1930s. But the film industry is much more difficult than the stage field, and it took a lot of time to work in David C. Lee. O. Selznick's "Thirteen Women" won a role.
She believed the film could change her destiny, but the character she played had homosexual tendencies and was eventually cut entirely. Devastating professional blows left her devastated, and she eventually chose to commit suicide at the Hollywood sign. She wrote in her suicide note: "I was scared, I was a coward and I was sorry for everything. If I had done this earlier, it would have been a lot less painful. ”
In the play, gay black screenwriter Archie Coleman based on this incident and wrote the screenplay for the film "Peg". Later, in order to cooperate with the black actress Camille, the name of the script was changed to "Meg".
NO.5 Vivien Leigh's mental problems
Left: Vivien Leigh, right: Vivien Leigh in Hollywood
Fei Wenli, played by Katie McGuinness, should be the "top stream" in "Hollywood".
She starred in Gone with the Wind and The Blue Bridge, and was already a superstar in the late 1940s. "Hollywood" presents her true side behind the screen: she suddenly has a nervous breakdown at George Cook's dinner party, and finally the pimp at the gas station, Orney, arrives and gets some comfort.
Vivien Leigh's anxious moments in the play
Historically, in the late 1940s, Vivien Leigh's health was getting worse and worse, with precursors to schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, in today's medical terms, where moods oscillated between depression and hyperactivity.
In the play, Vivien Leigh rehearsed with pimps in a script called "Desire StreetCar", which was a classic of her collaboration with Marlon Brando in 1951.
NO.6 The first black actress to win an Oscar
Left: Heidi McDaniel herself, Right: Heidi McDaniel in the play
Viewers who have seen "Gone with the Wind" should know that Heidi McDaniel, who played the maid, became the first black actress to win an Oscar for best supporting actress because of this role. In the "Hollywood" series, this real person also appears, played by Quinn Latifa.
In the play, Heidi becomes the mentor of the heroine Camille.
She taught Camille to lash out at white discrimination against blacks, and to be tough when it was time to be tough. For example, he said that he was turned away from attending the Oscars because of racial segregation, and hoped that Camille would have the courage to sit in the first row when he attended the Oscars.
Heidi became Camille's mentor
Camille Washington is a fictional character, and the story between her and Heidi McDaniel naturally doesn't exist.
However, heidi's inability to enter the Oscars that year is true. The 12th Oscars were held at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, which was racially segregated and she was given special care before entering the hotel. Before the results of the award were announced, she could only sit at a small table in the back row of the scene.
NO.7 The sexual orientation of George Cook, director of Gone with the Wind
Left: George Cook, Right: George Cook in the play
In addition to presenting the chaotic relationship between the agent and the actor, "Hollywood" also arranged for George Cook (played by Daniel London), the director of "Gone with the Wind", to attend the mysterious party of "a lot of handsome guys together".
George Cook is one of America's most prominent directors, having been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director five times and won best director in 1965 for The Lady. His films can often become the masterpieces of female stars. Catherine Hepburn, Vivien Leigh, Greta Garbo, Ingrid Bergman and Audrey Hepburn have all acted in his plays. There are eight actresses who were nominated for the Oscar for Best Actress for starring in his films.
The director of "Gone with the Wind" was George Cook at the beginning, and his dismissal from the crew has various theories in Hollywood circles, the first is that George Cook knew that Clark Gable was gay before he was forced to leave, and the second is that Clark Gable felt that George Cook was too feminine and forced the studio to fire the other party.
NO.8 Ultimate Easter Egg - Secrets of the Gas Station
Gold Point Gas Station Guy
"Hollywood" is not shy about the unspoken rules of the American film industry in the 1940s, and the largest bridge is the "Golden Point Gas Station" where the actor David Cohenswirt works, a sex trade transit station under the guise of a gas station.
Many Hollywood celebrities come here to "cheer up". Just say the code "Dreamland" and you can take away a handsome cheerer and do something shameful.
Dylan McDermott plays Ernie, the chief pimp of the gas station, and this bridge section is not a story made up by Ryan Murphy, but has historical evidence.
Ernie and his gas station
A man named Scotty Bowles, who mentioned in his autobiography My Adventures in Hollywood and the Mysterious Lives of Celebrities, was in the pimp business at a gas station on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles after World War II.
Big stars such as Gary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, betty Davis and other big stars have all been patronized. This gas station offers both trades between the opposite sex and between the same sexes.
Scotty mentions Katherine Hepburn, Gary Grant, George Cook, etc
Even more shocking is that after Bowers' death in 2019, he was certified by Hollywood as an honorary figure in the LGBTQ community, which also means that Gary Grant, Katherine Hepburn and Betty Davis may really have a connection to this group.
Taken together, Ryan Murphy did revise some historical facts in Hollywood. But real history may be more jaw-dropping than the story adaptation.
Partial source: Interview with Ryan Murphy by Bazar magazine and Time Magazine
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