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1:09

you must remember this flashback.

1:12

Almost every week this season,

1:14

we're going to rerun an

1:16

older episode of You Must

1:18

Remember this that has some

1:20

relevance to the upcoming new

1:22

episodes of our new season,

1:24

The Old Man is still

1:26

alive. You're about to listen to

1:28

the last flashback of the Old

1:30

Man is still alive. As you probably

1:33

noticed, all season long we've

1:35

released flashback episodes on Fridays.

1:38

This one is coming out on a

1:40

Tuesday instead of a new episode. The

1:42

season finale is going to be a

1:44

two-parter, and the first part will come

1:47

out on Tuesday next week, and the

1:49

second part will come out on Thursday

1:51

two days later. The finale is

1:53

about John Houston, who made movies

1:56

for nearly 50 years and lived

1:58

an extremely eventful life. hence the

2:00

two-parter finale, even though we've already

2:03

done two episodes about specific portions

2:05

of Houston's career in two previous

2:07

seasons. At the beginning of The

2:10

Old Man is still alive. We

2:12

flashed back to an episode dealing

2:14

with Houston during the blacklist. Today,

2:17

we're flashing back even further to

2:19

the episode on Houston's romance with

2:22

Olivia DeHavland during World War II.

2:24

De Haviland gets a brief mention

2:26

in part one of the finale.

2:29

Like many women who were romantically

2:31

involved with Houston, she stayed on

2:33

good terms with him, and he

2:36

tried to woo her again about

2:38

25 years after they broke up

2:41

for the first time. She wasn't

2:43

interested, but as you'll hear next

2:45

week, she did give him a

2:48

bit of advice that changed the

2:50

course of the rest of his

2:52

life. You'll be able to listen

2:55

to both parts of next week's

2:57

finale, wherever you get your podcasts,

2:59

with Part 1 dropping on Tuesday

3:02

and Part 2 on Thursday. or

3:04

24 hours earlier than that, if

3:07

you sign up to our top

3:09

patron tier. Thanks as always for

3:11

listening and supporting the show, and

3:14

I hope you enjoy this final

3:16

Old Man is still alive flashback.

3:27

Welcome to another episode of

3:29

You Must Remember This, the

3:32

podcast dedicated to exploring the

3:34

secret and or forgotten histories

3:36

of Hollywood's first century. Part.

3:38

Part. of the Panoply network.

3:40

I'm your host. Karina Longworth.

3:42

And this is another episode

3:44

in our ongoing series about

3:46

the experiences of famous people

3:48

during times of war or

3:51

Star Wars. Today we're going

3:53

to start to transition from

3:55

talking about the experiences of

3:57

women in Hollywood during World

3:59

War II to talking about

4:01

the experiences of women in

4:03

Hollywood during World War II,

4:05

to talking about the experiences

4:07

during the same era of

4:09

some famous men. will make

4:12

that transition by talking about

4:14

an actress and a director

4:16

who worked together just once

4:18

on a film many involved

4:20

considered to be the nadeer

4:22

of their careers. And yet,

4:24

separately, this actress and director

4:26

have left behind legacies that

4:28

loom large over Hollywood to

4:30

this day. And for a

4:33

few years, they were in

4:35

love with each other. One

4:37

of the few film directors

4:39

who was such a big

4:41

personality that he'd become a

4:43

thinly veiled character in other

4:45

people's novels and movies, John

4:47

Houston took directing assignments in

4:49

far-flung locales just because he

4:52

wanted to visit those places.

4:54

He drank prodigiously and slept

4:56

with virtually every woman he

4:58

ever met, regardless of his

5:00

marital status or hers. He

5:02

had a tendency to overuse

5:04

the phrase, just fine. to

5:06

the point that once, whilst

5:08

walking down Fifth Avenue, New

5:10

York, Houston came across a

5:13

man who had apparently just

5:15

dropped dead in the street.

5:17

Houston knelt down, took the

5:19

corpse's hand, held it for

5:21

a bit, and then said

5:23

to the just arriving paramedics,

5:25

He's going to be just

5:27

fine. He lived both as

5:29

though there was no tomorrow,

5:31

and as if he was

5:34

always mentally a few steps

5:36

ahead of the present. He'd

5:38

throw everything he had at

5:40

a film until he figured

5:42

out what his next film

5:44

would be, and then he'd

5:46

become impatient to move on.

5:48

His close friend and frequent

5:50

collaborator Humphrey Bogart said this

5:52

made Houston murdered. to work

5:55

with for the last three

5:57

weeks of shooting. A similar

5:59

restlessness afflicted his romantic relationships,

6:01

making him absolutely impossible to

6:03

live with once the first

6:05

flush of romance was gone.

6:07

As Olivia De Haviland learned,

6:09

by the time Houston and

6:11

De Haviland met, Olivia, or

6:14

Livy, as her friends called

6:16

her, had already co-starred in

6:18

the most successful film of

6:20

all time, gone with the

6:22

wind. She was already known

6:24

to have a difficult relationship

6:26

with her younger sister, the

6:28

actress Joan Fontaine, and she

6:30

had already had an affair

6:32

with one of Houston's few

6:35

rivals in the Hollywood masculinity

6:37

sweepstakes, Errol Flynn. After Houston

6:39

and Dhavelin got together, while

6:41

he was off making groundbreaking

6:43

and controversial war documentaries, Livy

6:45

stayed home and waged a

6:47

battle of her own, suing

6:49

Warner Brothers to stop their

6:51

exploitation of her labor. and

6:53

to get out of their

6:56

stranglehold on her future. Join

6:58

us, won't you? For the

7:00

story of Olivia to Haveland

7:02

and John Houston. This episode

7:04

is brought to you by

7:06

Amazon. Sometimes This

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Medical, healthcare just got less painful.

9:28

Houston started drinking more heavily around

9:30

this time, and in 1933, he

9:32

got into a car crash. His

9:34

then-girlfriend, Zita Johann, co-star with Boris

9:37

Karloff in the mummy, was in

9:39

the passenger seat, and her face

9:41

was disfigured in the crash. A

9:43

few months later, Houston crashed his

9:46

car again, this time hitting and

9:48

killing a dancer named Tosca Rulian.

9:50

Houston was exonerated by a grand

9:52

jury. but his dad thought he

9:55

better get out of town for

9:57

a while. So Walter... got him

9:59

a temporary job at Gauman Studios

10:01

in London. After three months, the

10:04

job ended, and John Houston went

10:06

broke. He claimed he was sleeping

10:08

in Hyde Park and would have

10:10

continued this way if he hadn't

10:13

simultaneously won a hundred pounds in

10:15

the Irish lottery and also sold

10:17

a screenplay for 500 pounds. Rather

10:19

than using this windfall for passage

10:22

home, Houston moved on to Paris,

10:24

where he tried to become a

10:26

painter. He gave that up in

10:28

1935, returning to Hollywood to make

10:31

another go at the industry. In

10:33

1937, Houston impulsively married an Irish

10:35

woman he met in Chicago, named

10:37

Leslie, and then he collaborated with

10:40

Howard Koch on the screenplay for

10:42

the Betty Davis film, Jezebel, directed

10:44

by one of Houston's best friends

10:46

in Hollywood, William Weiler. Houston would

10:49

write or co-write five additional films

10:51

over the next few years, including

10:53

the Gary Cooper hit Sergeant York.

10:55

and High Sierra, starring Ida Lapino

10:58

and Humphrey Bogart. The complex characterization

11:00

Houston wrote for Bogart's character, a

11:02

criminal with a heart of gold,

11:04

helped the actor become the star

11:07

that he would soon become by

11:09

showing Bogart doing things that bad

11:11

guys do while connecting to the

11:13

audience like a good guy. Bogart

11:16

would become one of Houston's best

11:18

friends and the star of many

11:20

of his films, and Houston came

11:22

to see Bogart as his kind

11:25

of on-screen alter ego, insisting that

11:27

he cast him over and over

11:29

again. Not because I liked Bogart,

11:31

but because that face and voice

11:34

and figure fitted in with the

11:36

kinds of stories that I like

11:38

to write and make. Houston had

11:40

an unusual clause written into his

11:43

screenwriting contract that would allow him

11:45

to do something almost unheard of

11:47

for a movie writer at that

11:49

time, to pick one of his

11:52

scripts to direct himself. He chose

11:54

the Maltese Falcon, and with it

11:56

managed to make his directorial debut

11:58

in as close to an independent

12:01

spirit as was possible in home.

12:03

in the 1940s. He wrote the

12:05

script himself, cast it with his

12:07

best friend, Bogart, and with one

12:10

of the actresses with whom he

12:12

was sleeping, Mary Astor. He directly

12:14

transcribed the Dashal Hammett novel onto

12:16

the screen wherever possible, with unusually

12:19

little pushback from the censors. The

12:21

film came in on time and

12:23

under budget, made a lot of

12:25

money, and successfully transformed John Houston

12:28

from a screenwriter to a director.

12:30

and sometimes a writer-director. His ambitions

12:32

may or may not have been

12:34

honorable. According to one of his

12:37

biographers, when asked why he wanted

12:39

to direct, Houston answered, Because the

12:41

director gets to fuck the star.

12:43

He later refined his position. If

12:46

the actress is beautiful, screw her.

12:48

If she isn't, she presents her

12:50

with a valuable painting. She will

12:52

not understand. Born

12:55

in Tokyo in 1916, she had been

12:57

working since she was 18, having landed

13:00

the part of Hermia in Max Reinhart's

13:02

Hollywood Bowl production of a Midsummer Night's

13:04

Dream, and from there she was signed

13:07

to a contract by Warner Brothers, and

13:09

given the female lead opposite Errol Flynn

13:11

in Captain Blood. Her persona was of

13:14

a sweet-natured beauty and something of a

13:16

goody two-shoes. Most of the time, it

13:18

seemed like she was slaughtered into Errol

13:21

Flynn movies so that the girls dragged

13:23

on dates by their boyfriends by their

13:25

boyfriends by their boyfriends by their boyfriends

13:28

by their boyfriends by their boyfriends, wouldn't

13:30

spend the entire movie totally bored. In

13:32

1939, her relationship with Warner Brothers started

13:35

to sour. She had been loaned out

13:37

by her home studio to star in

13:39

David O'Snecks Gone With The Wind, and

13:42

that film had given De Haviland her

13:44

first opportunity to show that she could

13:46

do more than look pretty in four

13:49

or five close-ups punctuating a boy's adventure

13:51

yarn. When she came back from the

13:53

Gone With a Windshoot, as if to

13:56

put her in her place, Jack Warner

13:58

cast her in the private lives of

14:00

Elizabeth and Essex as Betty Davis. This

14:02

is Lady in Waiting, putting Olivia's name

14:05

below the title and pairing Davis with

14:07

Olivia's usual on-screen love, Errol Flynn. I

14:09

got so bored, she said later, so

14:12

bored that it just got me

14:14

to the point where I

14:16

nearly had a nervous breakdown.

14:19

She also started suffering physical

14:21

ailments, headaches, swollen legs, that

14:23

she attributed to her unhappiness

14:26

starring in bad movies. Meanwhile,

14:28

her sister Joan Fontaine, whose

14:30

acting prowess Livy thought little

14:32

of, was getting good parts

14:34

from her studio chief, David

14:36

O'Sellsnick. But Jack Warner's philosophy

14:38

was that if it wasn't

14:40

broke, and it wasn't broke, all

14:42

of Dauville's films made money, then

14:45

there was no reason to fix

14:47

it. So Livy continued, co-starring and

14:50

Errol Flynn films, and after years

14:52

of rejecting his advances, she began

14:54

seeing Flynn outside of the studio,

14:57

too. But both of those things were

14:59

about to change. In this Our

15:01

Life was supposed to be just

15:04

another day at the studio.

15:06

The film was built around

15:08

a sister rivalry that in

15:10

some ways echoed Olivia's relationship

15:13

with her own sister. On

15:15

screen, Betty Davis had the

15:17

meaty role of bad girl

15:19

to Olivia's mousey good sister.

15:21

Before the action of the

15:24

film even really gets going.

15:26

Betty has stolen Olivia's husband,

15:28

driven the guide to suicide,

15:30

and moved back into the

15:33

family mansion. When Betty kills

15:35

a child in a drunk

15:37

driving accident, she frames the black

15:39

son of the family's cook, a

15:42

good boy who's studying to become

15:44

a lawyer for the crime. Ultimately,

15:46

found out and fleeing the police,

15:48

Betty Davis crashes her car again,

15:51

and this time she dies. Clearly,

15:53

once again, it was Betty Davis.

15:55

and not Olivia to Havland, who

15:57

had everything to do in this

15:59

movie. And yet, somehow,

16:01

Olivia started getting all

16:04

the close-ups. Olivia later

16:07

said, the relationship between

16:09

a director and an

16:11

actress is almost sexual.

16:14

It's the most intimate

16:16

kind of collaboration.

16:18

It's a unique

16:20

experience. She certainly had

16:23

a unique experience with

16:25

the director of In This Our

16:27

Life. It was his second assignment

16:30

behind the camera, after the Maltese

16:32

Falcon, and it was something of

16:34

a promotion for him. A prestige

16:37

project based on a best-selling novel

16:39

full of Warner Brothers' biggest stars.

16:41

It was really not my kind of

16:43

picture at all, he said later. More of

16:46

a soap opera. But here was a chance to

16:48

work in the big time. So I did it,

16:50

because it was good for my career. Ball's.

16:52

Once you never do anything, that's good

16:54

for one's career. Every time I'd done

16:57

that, I'd fallen right on my ass.

16:59

If Houston was knocked on his

17:01

ass during the production of

17:03

In This Our Life, the movie

17:05

wasn't entirely to blame. From the

17:07

moment he and Livy De Havelyn

17:10

first saw each other, they couldn't

17:12

keep their eyes off of one

17:14

another. Houston liked to Havelin because,

17:17

in contrast to her sweet as

17:19

Piper Sona, she was actually ballsy.

17:21

When she wanted something, she asked

17:24

for it. even demanded it, and

17:26

she wanted John Houston. She was

17:28

fascinated by his knowledge of literature

17:31

and painting, and she shared his

17:33

romanticism, but he also gave her

17:35

a project to fix. She said

17:37

later, I always felt that John

17:40

was ridden by witches, and that

17:42

if I could only know the

17:44

names of these witches, perhaps I

17:46

could help him. He seemed to

17:48

be pursued by something destructive. Her

17:51

desire to help him. Her desire

17:53

to help him. slash her undisguised

17:55

intensity of feeling for him, may

17:57

have been in the long run

17:59

the worst. way for Olivia to

18:01

try to warm her way into Houston's

18:03

heart. John Houston was a hunter. He

18:05

didn't like it when women were too

18:08

available. The more a woman showed her

18:10

love for him, the more he was

18:12

likely to look for love elsewhere. As

18:15

Houston once said about himself, trouble with

18:17

me is that I am forever and

18:19

eternally bored. If I'm threading with boredom,

18:22

why I'll run like a hair. But

18:27

in the short term, Houston was

18:29

so drawn to Olivia that the

18:31

dailies blatantly favored her over Betty

18:34

Davis, whom Houston had apparently declined

18:36

to direct altogether, and who was

18:38

giving an oversized, completely unmodulated performance

18:41

as a result. Jack Warner figured

18:43

out what was going on pretty

18:45

quickly, and he called Houston into

18:48

his office for a talking too.

18:50

Houston claimed he was getting from

18:52

Davis the exact performance he wanted.

18:55

He thought Betty Davis had, as

18:57

he put it, a demon within

18:59

her which threatens to break out

19:02

and eat everybody. Studio confused it

19:04

with overacting. Over their objections, I

19:06

let the demon go. Since he

19:08

got nowhere trying to discipline the

19:11

director, Warner then invited both Betty

19:13

and Olivia to a screening room

19:15

and made them watch some daily

19:18

so that they could both see

19:20

how Houston's hard on for Olivia

19:22

was ruining the film. Sufficiently baited.

19:25

Betty went ballistic and Houston was

19:27

forced to do reshoots. After filming

19:29

in this Our Life, De Havland

19:32

refused to report for a screen

19:34

test opposite Errol Flynn for a

19:36

film called Saratoga Trunk, and she

19:39

was forcibly removed from the film

19:41

by Warner Brothers. De Havland has

19:43

never talked about this, but one

19:46

of her biographers insists she had

19:48

a sudden, mysterious falling out with

19:50

Flynn. Maybe, after working with and

19:53

falling in love with Houston, she

19:55

just didn't want to play second

19:57

fiddle to Robin Hood yet again.

20:02

At the 1942 Oscars, De Havland,

20:04

who was nominated for a film

20:06

called Hold Back the Dawn, put

20:08

on a good show in a

20:10

bad situation. When her sister slash

20:12

friend Amy Fontaine, who had starred

20:15

in Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion, beat Livy

20:17

in the Best Actress category, Olivia

20:19

put on a rousing show with

20:21

support, shouting, We have got it,

20:23

when Joan's name was called. John

20:25

Houston, nominated for two awards himself

20:28

for writing Sergeant York in the

20:30

Maltese Falcon and the Maltese Falcon.

20:32

showed up with his wife, but

20:34

reportedly spent the night blowing kisses

20:36

to Olivia across the room. Everyone

20:38

in Hollywood knew that Houston was

20:41

spending every night at Olivia's Los

20:43

Felis home. John Houston's wife included.

20:45

Tabloids took Livy's side in the

20:47

affair, breathlessly proclaiming that John's marriage

20:49

was all but legally through and

20:51

predicting that Olivia would be the

20:53

third Mrs. Houston soon enough. This

20:56

is certainly what Livy thought was

20:58

going to happen. What Houston thought

21:00

was going to happen isn't clear.

21:02

But soon enough, war got in

21:04

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at Green light.com/Spotify Spotify. At

26:03

the very first court hearing on

26:05

November 4th, 1943, Olivia took the

26:07

witness stand. Warner Brothers' attorney got

26:10

up in her face, accusing her

26:12

of having an attitude problem, and

26:15

even suggesting an open court that

26:17

she had rejected one of the

26:19

movies assigned to her for reasons

26:22

having to do with an illicit

26:24

affair. The defense claimed Olivia had

26:27

come back from her gone-with-the-wind loan-out

26:29

with her nose in the air,

26:31

and that suddenly nothing was good

26:34

enough for her. Olivia denied this,

26:36

although in some sense it's sort

26:39

of accurate. Gone with the

26:41

wind had made her conscious of

26:43

the fact that the properties being

26:45

offered to her by her home

26:48

studio were pretty much garbage. As

26:50

she put it, I cannot, after

26:53

gone-with-the-the-wind, do something I don't believe

26:55

in. The thing is, because a

26:57

star's staying power was dependent on

27:00

their box office viability, not wanting

27:02

to star in garbage wasn't

27:04

snobbery, it was self-preservation. The court

27:07

ruled in Olivia's favor, declaring that

27:09

state law limited contracts to seven

27:11

calendar years, not seven years cobbled

27:14

together over a decade or more

27:16

via a studio's self-serving creative accounting.

27:19

Unable to fathom a change in

27:21

their working and hiring methods this

27:23

radical, Warner Brothers appealed and in

27:26

so doing blacklisted every studio

27:28

in town from hiring to Havland.

27:30

Unable to work, to Havland went

27:33

on USO tours. On her second

27:35

day entertaining troops in Fiji, she

27:37

caught a fever and ended up

27:40

spending six weeks in a military

27:42

hospital recuperating from viral pneumonia. Meanwhile,

27:45

John had been shipped out to

27:47

the Aleutian Islands in the Bering

27:49

Sea between Russia and Alaska to

27:52

lead a crew making a

27:54

documentary about the effort to build

27:56

a base for air combat on

27:59

an island called Adak. Adak was

28:01

an extremely desolate island. outpost, often

28:03

completely shrouded in fog. The soldiers

28:06

there had nothing to do but

28:08

take B24s on practice runs and

28:11

wait for orders. There was a

28:13

lot of crushing boredom punctuated by

28:15

fleeting terror. On Houston's first

28:18

flight in a B24, the brakes

28:20

failed and the plane was forced

28:22

to crash land on a wet

28:25

runway. As soon as the plane

28:27

finally stopped, someone shouted, But

28:30

the pilot had been knocked

28:32

unconscious in the crash and

28:34

Houston wanted to film it.

28:36

I remember trying to get

28:38

a shot and saying to

28:40

myself, good man Houston, nerves

28:42

of steel. But just as

28:44

I was congratulating myself, I

28:46

began to shake uncontrollably. I

28:48

put the camera down and

28:50

ran. And the bombs didn't

28:52

even go off. Houston

28:56

would try to capture this emotional

28:58

seesaw between seemingly endless waiting and

29:00

sudden threats of death in his

29:03

film Report from the Illutions. In

29:05

late 1942, Houston and his footage

29:07

were sent to New York's Astoria

29:10

Studios for editing. And there, while

29:12

still married, and still carrying on

29:14

enough of a relationship with Livy

29:17

to convince her that he'd come

29:19

back and marry her, Houston began

29:21

a number of affairs with other

29:24

women. The most significant was with

29:26

Marietta Fitzgerald, who many have suggested

29:29

was the only woman Houston ever

29:31

really loved, perhaps because she never

29:33

demanded that Houston marry her. In

29:36

fact, she didn't want to divorce

29:38

her own husband. There was also

29:40

Lenny Lynn, an actress who remembered

29:43

Houston, mournfully showing off pictures of

29:45

Olivia, and Doris Lily, a gossip

29:47

columnist and girl about town, who

29:50

was one of Truman Capote's inspirations

29:52

for Breakfast at Tiffany's. Doris Lily

29:54

admitted that she initially went after

29:57

Houston because she knew about his

29:59

relationship with Olivia to Havland. Doris

30:01

said, quote, I wanted to get

30:04

what she got. And then there

30:06

was an unnamed Canadian woman, a

30:09

journalist who Houston was about to

30:11

invite on a weekend trip to

30:13

Scotland, until one night at dinner

30:16

she launched into an anti-Semitic tirade

30:18

about how maybe Hitler was a

30:20

little bit extreme. But really, wouldn't

30:23

it be better for the whole

30:25

world if he did round up

30:27

all the Jews and blow them

30:30

up? John Houston let her finish.

30:32

And then he said, are the

30:34

blackest bitch I've ever encountered. The

30:37

Canadian gal walked out and went

30:39

on to file a complaint to

30:42

the American ambassador, claiming Officer John

30:44

Houston had unduly insulted her. An

30:46

investigation was launched and ended with

30:49

the ambassador concluding that the Canadian

30:51

gal was probably a Nazi spy,

30:53

and that Houston had done nothing

30:56

wrong. at least at the time,

30:58

was Houston's involvement in staging or

31:00

recreating footage for two war documentaries?

31:03

Staging aspects of the war that

31:05

were too dangerous to film live

31:07

was apparently a fairly commonplace thing

31:10

during World War II, to the

31:12

point that an officer named James

31:14

Fachni wrote a memo which was

31:17

later retracted under protest from Houston,

31:19

accusing enlisted filmmakers like Houston of,

31:22

quote, attempting to reenact the war

31:24

on a Hollywood scale. What's interesting

31:26

is that Houston fully acknowledged his

31:29

participation in one incident of reenactment.

31:31

but not the other. The first

31:33

incident took place right after he

31:36

returned from the illusions, when President

31:38

Roosevelt asked the signal corps to

31:40

show him footage of the invasion

31:43

of North Africa. That footage didn't

31:45

exist. It had been lost when

31:47

the ship carrying the film had

31:50

been sunk. But no one wanted

31:52

FDR to find out the only

31:54

footage of the invasion had been

31:57

lost, so the decision was made

31:59

to assign Houston and Frank Capra.

32:02

to recreate the lost footage. They

32:04

staged an entire battle with the

32:06

Mojave Desert and Orlando Florida substituting

32:09

for Tunisia. Houston came clean about

32:11

this in his autobiography, An Open

32:13

Book, in which he called the

32:16

project, quote, So transparently false, I

32:18

hated to have anything to do

32:20

with it. Houston didn't come clean

32:23

about the other incident. John

32:25

Houston officially directed three war documentaries,

32:27

and the second, The Battle of

32:30

San Pietro, was almost completely staged

32:32

for the camera, long after the

32:34

actual battle was over. In October

32:36

1943, Houston traveled to the Italian

32:39

town of the title, and he

32:41

and his crew filmed the carnage

32:43

of a horrible fight, which so

32:45

depleted the Allied forces that thousands

32:47

of reinforcements had to be sent

32:50

to replace the dead. There's one

32:52

shot in the film where the

32:54

camera jostles as the cinematographer ducks

32:56

to avoid real mortar fire. Houston

32:59

spent two dangerous days in San

33:01

Pietro and then went to Naples

33:03

to drink with Humphrey Bogart who

33:05

was there entertaining the troops. Houston

33:08

returned to San Pietro months later

33:10

with a shooting script and using

33:12

real soldiers and residents of San

33:14

Pietro as his actors. attempted to

33:16

recreate a battle that had been

33:19

declared too dangerous for him to

33:21

film while it was happening. The

33:23

film has a title card at

33:25

the very end, noting that, quote,

33:28

for the purpose of continuity, a

33:30

few of these scenes were shot

33:32

before or after the actual battle.

33:34

Whatever continuity is supposed to mean

33:37

in this case. But in his

33:39

autobiography, Houston says nothing about the

33:41

San Pietro reenactments. Instead, he writes

33:43

boastfully about how the film was

33:45

protested by army brass, who thought

33:48

it was not too fake-looking, but

33:50

actually too visceral that it would

33:52

dissuade young men from joining up.

33:54

One general said that the problem

33:57

was that the film could be

33:59

interpreted as being anti-war. And Houston

34:01

said, or Houston says he said,

34:03

gentlemen, if I ever make anything

34:06

other than an anti-war film, I

34:08

hope you take me out and

34:10

shoot me. Hey

34:18

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34:20

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35:15

Whether or not he filmed all

35:17

of it as it was really

35:19

happening, Houston had been close enough

35:22

to enough real death and destruction

35:24

in Italy, that by the time

35:26

he once again returned to New

35:28

York for editing, he was verifiably

35:31

emotionally disturbed. He started carrying a

35:33

pistol, and when he couldn't sleep,

35:35

he would walk around Central Park

35:37

in the middle of the night

35:40

with it. Secretly hopeful that some

35:42

hapless bastard would try to jump

35:44

me. Emotionally, I was still in

35:46

Italy in the combat zone. I

35:49

couldn't sneak, because there were no

35:51

guns going. And then, he heard

35:53

that Ray Scott, one of the

35:55

cameraman who had shot the documentary

35:58

in the Illutions, and had his

36:00

own trouble adjusting to... civilian life,

36:02

had been locked up in a

36:04

psychiatric facility after getting caught drunkenly

36:07

shooting his gun in the air

36:09

when he was supposed to be

36:11

on guard duty. Houston went to

36:13

visit him and managed to talk

36:16

the powers that be out of

36:18

giving Scott electroshock treatments. As the

36:20

war was ending, Houston was asked

36:22

to make a film about the

36:25

treatment the veterans were getting at

36:27

psychiatric facilities. In Let There Be

36:29

Light, the best and most cinematic

36:32

of Houston's war documentaries, the director

36:34

follows a single group of patients

36:36

through their eight weeks of inpatient

36:38

treatment, and he documents the use

36:41

of hypnosis. drugs and group therapy

36:43

to cure psychosomatic ailments like limb

36:45

paralysis, tremors, and stuttering. This film

36:47

has a title card insisting that

36:50

no reenactments were used. But as

36:52

with the Battle of San Pietro,

36:54

the army thought the film would

36:56

be bad for business. And before

36:59

the first scheduled screening of Let

37:01

There Be Light, at MoMA in

37:03

New York, The print was confiscated.

37:05

It went unseen until 1980, when

37:08

the MPAA's Jack Valenti successfully lobbied

37:10

for its release. By the fall

37:12

of 1943, Olivia was hearing plenty

37:14

of stories about John's exploits away

37:17

from her. Mutual friends would confide

37:19

in her that they'd been out

37:21

drinking with John in London, and

37:23

at the beginning of the night

37:26

he'd be all like, I can't

37:28

live without Olivia. But then by

37:30

closing time, he'd be carried out

37:32

of the bar dead drunk by

37:35

another woman. He was also constantly

37:37

in the New York papers, photographed

37:39

out and about with Doris Lily.

37:41

He expected total fidelity from Olivia,

37:44

but he couldn't even be discreet

37:46

about his dalliances in return. As

37:48

Livy put it, he had no

37:50

self-discipline, and he didn't have much

37:53

taste either. So

37:55

eventually, Olivia started a counter

37:57

affair of her own with

38:00

major... Joseph McKeon of the

38:02

Army Air Corps. This was

38:04

a tabloid dream. Hollywood's lily

38:06

white beauty known for her

38:08

on-screen romances with movies swashbuckler,

38:10

Errol Flynn, moving on to

38:12

a real-life hero. In 1945,

38:14

McKeon was shot down over

38:17

Germany and returned to Hollywood

38:19

for his recovery. His relationship

38:21

with Livy continued throughout the

38:23

war, but she repeatedly refused

38:25

to marry him. Perhaps because

38:27

she was holding out for

38:29

John. Warner Brothers spent nearly

38:31

two years appealing Livy's suit.

38:34

Finally, in February 1945, the

38:36

California Supreme Court upheld the

38:38

initial decision. Warner Brothers now

38:40

had no recourse. They and

38:42

all of the studios who

38:44

had used suspensions to control

38:46

their talent had lost. Olivia

38:48

Devlin was finally free and

38:51

the law had been clarified.

38:53

Seven years was seven years,

38:55

period. This became known as

38:57

the Devlin decision and it's

38:59

still in effect and invoked

39:01

today. Two months after the

39:03

court decision, Houston's wife Leslie

39:06

finally filed for divorce. He

39:08

was now free to marry,

39:10

but his relationship with Olivia

39:12

had frittered away. It seems

39:14

as though she had just

39:16

grown tired of waiting for

39:18

him to come back to

39:20

her. Then in late April

39:23

1945, at a party at

39:25

David Salznick's house, Errol Flynn

39:27

and John Houston got into

39:29

one of Hollywood histories most

39:31

infamous drunken fist fights. There's

39:33

much dispute as to how

39:35

or why this fight started.

39:37

Doris Lily, the young socialite

39:40

who liked to Havland, had

39:42

dated both Flynn and Houston,

39:44

insists that they were fighting

39:46

over her. Errol Flynn's wife

39:48

claims that Houston, who had

39:50

returned from Italy not long

39:52

earlier and was still suffering,

39:54

some kind of undiagnosed PTSD,

39:57

had said something snarky about

39:59

Flynn's lack of military service.

40:01

But most reports contend that

40:03

Flynn started it by saying

40:05

something insulting to Houston about

40:07

Olivia. In his no doubt

40:09

exaggerated account of the incident,

40:11

Houston contends that in response

40:14

to Flynn's comment, whatever it

40:16

was, he said, That's a

40:18

why. And even if it

40:20

weren't a lie, only a

40:22

son of a bitch would

40:24

repeat it. Both men fancied

40:26

themselves to be boxers, so

40:28

it didn't take much for

40:31

a disagreement to get physical.

40:33

The odds were not in

40:35

Houston's favor. Flynn had 25

40:37

pounds on him, and of

40:39

the two contenders, Houston was

40:41

the drunker man by far.

40:43

Flynn's blows kept landing, and

40:45

Houston kept falling down. But

40:48

the fight went on for

40:50

a full hour, and eventually,

40:52

Houston rallied. In the end,

40:54

Flynn went straight to the

40:56

hospital, and Houston passed out.

40:58

He woke up the next

41:00

morning and realized that a

41:03

ring on Flynn's hand had

41:05

ripped his face to shreds,

41:07

and so he went to

41:09

a different hospital than when

41:11

Flynn was in, in an

41:13

effort to avoid photographers. But

41:15

it was useless. In the

41:17

next morning's papers, the news

41:20

that Mussolini had been assassinated

41:22

was pushed to page two.

41:24

John Houston's face was on

41:26

the cover. He was pushed

41:28

off the next day by

41:30

reports of Hitler's suicide. While

41:32

working on Let There Be

41:34

Light, Houston asked Marietta Fitzgerald

41:37

to marry him, but she

41:39

said no. A few months

41:41

later, at a dinner party,

41:43

Houston met Olivia's friend and

41:45

gone with the wind co-star,

41:47

Evelyn Keys. And in August

41:49

1946, the pair had too

41:51

many martinis at dinner one

41:54

night and ended up getting

41:56

married that very evening in

41:58

Las Vegas. Completely. Coincidentally, I'm

42:00

sure, that very same month,

42:02

Olivia suddenly married the guy

42:04

she was dating at the

42:06

time, writer Marcus Goodrich. Houston

42:08

attempted to rekindle their romance

42:11

several times over the years,

42:13

but Olivia couldn't buy in

42:15

again. She knew too well

42:17

how it would go. She

42:19

later said, he was a

42:21

man I wanted to marry,

42:23

and knowing him was a

42:25

powerful experience. when I thought

42:28

I would never get over.

42:30

I watched him bring great

42:32

destruction into the lives of

42:34

other women. Maybe he was

42:36

the great love of my

42:38

life. Yes, he probably was.

42:48

After the war, John Houston

42:50

focused almost chiefly on using

42:52

Hollywood fiction films to document

42:54

the experiences of men in

42:56

the midst of dangerous situations.

42:58

Of course, this description applies

43:01

rather neatly to movies like

43:03

The Treasure of the Sierra

43:05

Madre, Moby Dick, and The

43:07

Man Who Would Be King,

43:09

but it could also apply

43:12

to, say, the African Queen,

43:14

or even Annie, movies in

43:16

which one danger faced by

43:18

men... is represented by women

43:20

and children. The danger is

43:22

that they could ask the

43:25

men to give up their

43:27

dangerous lives. Ryan Johnson who

43:29

played John Houston. Today's episode

43:31

was written, edited, and narrated

43:33

by Karina Longworth. That's me.

43:35

You can find more information

43:38

about this episode and other

43:40

episodes on our website. You

43:42

must remember this. podcast.com. If

43:44

you like the If

43:46

you like

43:49

the podcast, please

43:51

tell your

43:53

friends any way

43:55

that you

43:57

can you tell

43:59

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44:02

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44:04

us on reviewing us

44:06

on You can

44:08

also follow

44:10

us on also follow

44:13

us on Twitter at We'll

44:15

be back next week

44:17

with another tale from the

44:19

with another tale forgotten histories of

44:21

Hollywood's first century. of Good

44:24

night. first century. Good

44:26

night. eyes

44:29

anymore when

44:31

I kiss lips.

44:35

There's no

44:37

There's no

44:39

tenderness

44:42

like before

44:44

in

44:47

your fingertips.

44:49

tears. You're trying

44:52

trying hard not

44:55

to show it.

44:57

Baby. But

45:00

baby. Baby.

45:03

Oh baby, I

45:05

know it. it.