Hedda Hopper is most notorious these days, however, for helping fan the flames of hysteria and Communist witch hunts during the 1950s, which was bleakly recalled in last year’s Trumbo where she was played by Helen Mirren.

Hollywood Screenwriters Are Communists!

Speaking of Trumbo, the hardships and travails introduced to the City of Angels after the formation of HUAC were lightly poked fun at in Hail, Caesar! During the 1940s and ‘50s, the U.S. House of Representatives went on a witch hunt in Hollywood for subversive elements and Bolshevik sympathies. Of course, this just led to the infamous Hollywood Blacklist where a lot of good people, including the initial “Hollywood Ten” (of which screenwriter Dalton Trumbo was a member) got blackballed after serving prison sentences in contempt of Congress.

It’s a disgraceful chapter in Hollywood history that was enabled by people like Hedda Hopper and John Wayne, however in Hail, Caesar! the absurdity of such fears was mocked when it was revealed that in this fictional world, HUAC and Joseph McCarthy were right! Every screenwriter in town is apparently a no-good commie, trying to brainwash the public with his scripts—and smuggling hundreds of thousands of American dollars to Communist spies like Burt Gurney. Unfortunately, the Coens’ joke felt a bit underserved and lacked a full punch-line beyond the inherent silliness of this illuminati-esque conspiracy occurring off the shores of Malibu.

Scarlett Johansson’s Pregnancy Scheme is Straight out of the Loretta Young Playbook

Loretta Young began acting when she was only a child. Working in Hollywood for over 25 years, she appeared in dozens of pictures and was nominated for an Oscar twice (and she won one of them). Yet, she might be most remembered for how she had Clark Gable’s child out-of-wedlock… and the extremes she and MGM then went to hide that fact.

Having already seen one marriage annulled before working with Clark Gable on The Call of the Wild (1935), Young’s Catholic guilt did not stop her from having an affair with the then-married Gable. After becoming pregnant, she and the studio concocted an extravagant narrative, much like the one Scarlett Johansson’s DeAnne Moran almost goes through with in Hail, Caesar!, in which Young flew to England to rest from a “childhood” condition. Giving her interviews from bed and under the covers, Young hid her pregnancy as best she could. After the child was born, and named Judy, Young secretly lived with her daughter in Venice Beach until the babe was 19 months old. At this point, the daughter was transferred to the St. Elizabeth’s orphanage outside of California. Young’s mother subsequently picked up the girl the next day, and Young announced to Louella Parsons (small world, ain’t it?) that she was adopting this randomly lucky girl.