(no subject)

[theweaselking]

Quoth College Callgirl:

It was 1937 when Patricia Douglas was brutally raped at an MGM studio party.

She was part of a group of 100 chorus girls for MGM who were called for what they believed was a film shoot, outfitted in skimpy cowgirl outfits, and lined up to await the flood of MGM salesmen on a hospitality weekend for which they had been promised that anything they wanted was available to them, anything at all. Many of the girls were teenagers. Patricia Douglas was 20 years old, a virgin who didn’t drink, but who loved to dance. She wasn’t interested in wild partying, or in the open bar.

And she certainly wasn’t interested in any of the groping, lecherous MGM employees primed to treat the pretty young ladies as party favors. The party was soon out of control; women appealed to waiters and male bathroom attendants to help them fend off unwelcome advances, and David Ross and another man held Patricia Douglas’s nose and poured a glass of scotch and champagne into her mouth. When she ran outside to vomit, David Ross followed.

There he raped her in a parked car, slapping her throughout to keep her from blacking out. A parking attendant finally heard her screams and saw Ross run away, a testimony he made and later rescinded in exchange for a lifetime job at MGM. Douglas was taken away in an ambulance, to be treated by an MGM doctor who gave her a cold-water douche to wash away the evidence. When she made the anachronistically gusty move to press charges, her lawyer failed to show up in court on three separate occasions. Newspapers trashed her as a tramp and a liar, and published her real name, photographs, and address while identifying MGM only as a “local film studio.”

It gets worse.

Comments

[torrain.livejournal.com]

*is utterly not surprised*

Yes, well, "[p]rehaps throwing bricks insert: "assault and rape" is not the best way to stop prostitution but it certainly does communicate that prehaps prostitution is not a wise career choice", and what a sad oversight that it didn't happen to a *real* prostitute--

--I need to go vomit, now.

(For the sake of clarity: Yes, I am quoting someone who said something reprehensible. No, I'm not attributing the quote, because I live in the faint hope that they were suffering from a brain spasm when they typed it, and if they weren't they don't deserve the attention.)

[sanityimpaired.livejournal.com]

I think about a similar crime in a modern context, and I expect a very different response. This may be naivete on my part.

I picture the same crime being done against a known prostitute, and the clock rolls right back again. *Sigh*

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

Why would you not just hire prostitutes?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

#1: "Where are you going to find 100 prostitutes who look as good as chorus girls on short notice?"
#2: "Why bother, they have chorus girls, and this is MGM. Those girls will do *anything* to be in show business."

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

*sigh*

[leighdb.livejournal.com]

Dude. And you know that's just the tip of the iceberg.

[paoconnell.livejournal.com]

Dig up the book, "Hollywood Babylon" sometime. It's all about various film studio scandals, IIRC (I remember the Fatty Arbuckle incident specifically). I don't think the MGM incident above made it into that book, however.

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

What is wrong with these people? Or rather, why are these people so obviously and seriously lacking in any human sense of responsibility or empathy? I mean, there were slave owners who treated their "property" better, and there are farmers who treat their livestock better than this!