Crisis in Hollywood

Also courtesy of the new Google News Archive,

The First Hollywood Drug Scandal,
As Big as Mel

Posted Monday, Sep. 13, 1948
Last week the baleful word marijuana* was on every Hollywood tongue. The most self-conscious city of a self-conscious nation was in for a first-rate scandal, and it hated and feared every whisper of it.

Shortly after midnight, two detectives, who had been listening outside a rudely furnished three-room shack in Laurel Canyon, just back of Hollywood, fumbled at the kitchen door. Dancer Vickie Evans, hearing them, opened it from the inside. In the living room with the hostess, a pert blonde movie starlet named Lila Leeds, and Robin Ford, a scared real-estate man, the cops found big, sleepy-eyed Cinemactor Robert Mitchum. The handsome $3,000-a-week screen hero hastily tried to get rid of a cigarette that turned out to be marijuana. A detective found other "reefers" on Mitchum, Ford and Miss Leeds.

That was the story the arresting officers told popeyed reporters when they hauled the quartet to the Los Angeles county jail. A star of the first magnitude and an idol of organized bobby-soxers who call themselves the "Bob Mitchum Droolettes," the 31-year-old actor talked his head off in a mixture of remorse and forced humor:

"Well, this is the bitter end of everything—my career, my home, my marriage. Sure, I've been smoking marijuana since I was a kid. I guess I always knew I'd get caught. My [estranged] wife and kids are on their way out here now. The stage was set for a big reconciliation. Ha! With that temper of hers, she'll turn right around and head back East . . . How does marijuana affect you? Well, try it yourself some time . . ."

The Menace. Later in the day, all Hollywood began to share Mitchum's hang over. The press all over the U.S. was screaming "dope" scandal and hinting broadly that more sensations were to come. Clearly, a serious industrial crisis was in the making. The problem was much bigger than salvaging a valuable property named Mitchum, who had been nursed to stardom since he clicked with moviegoers in G.I. Joe. It was even bigger than protecting some $5,000,000 riding on three unreleased Mitchum films.

The industry's tight-lipped leaders began to remind each other that Hollywood's laboriously contrived self-portrait was once again in danger of looking like a comic strip—and an ugly one. For years, the world's best pressagents have been plugging the theme that Hollywood is a typical American town, a wholesome little community populated by "just folks": a lot of them better-than-average-looking, to be sure, but hardworking, sober, law-abiding, family-loving. This picture of the town, while true as far as it goes, glosses over the fact that under the klieg-lit, high-pressure, high-paid strains peculiar to Hollywood, some of its supertense citizens sometimes volatilize and take to drink, adultery or dope. The movie industry, beset last week on every side by box-office woes, heckling from Washington and quotas from Britain, trembled to think that the old bogey of Hollywood's marrow-bone wickedness might be revived.

So the big bosses took over the Mitchum case fast. The garrulous actor, his fellow partygoers, and even the arresting officers fell suddenly mum. Studio press-agents whispered "confidentially" that the case looked like a frame-up. With Mitchum out on $1,000 bail and brooding in silence, statements began to rumble smoothly out of the front offices.

David O. Selznick, who shares Mitchum's contract with RKO, called on the American people for "fair play": ".. . We urgently request the press, the industry and the public to withhold . . . judgment until [the] facts are known . . ."

The Happy Ending? Speaking for the whole industry, MGM's Dore Schary, formerly Mitchum's boss at RKO, pleaded with the public not to "indict the entire working personnel of 32,000 well-disciplined and clean-living American citizens." A widespread use of narcotics in the industry? "Shocking, capricious and untrue."

Trouble-shooting Criminal Lawyer Jerry Geisler,* retained for the actor, chimed in: "There are peculiar circumstances . . . surrounding the raid . . . [Mitchum's] many friends have expressed the ... opinion he will be cleared."

And what would Mitchum's wife do? (During his talking jag, Mitchum had blamed their separation on his marijuana smoking.) On her way to California with the children, Jimmie, 7, and Chris, 5, she had heard the news in Las Vegas, and announced that she was undecided. By the time she reached Hollywood, she told newsmen that she would "stand by" Bob. Next day, to an obbligato of clicking shutters, the Mitchums posed in Hollywood's traditional happy-home embrace. Bob wore his screen-lover expression. Hollywood anxiously hoped that a public which (it thinks) likes and expects happy endings would soon forget the whole thing.


* Marijuana, a drug made from Indian hemp, is sometimes grown furtively on vacant city lots. Medical research has been unable to find positive evidence that it is habit-forming, but it has its constant users. It is said to produce a state of exhilaration in which time seems to move slowly.

* Who successfully defended Errol Flynn on a charge of statutory rape and Charlie Chaplin on a Mann Act charge.