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You Must Remember This

You Must Remember This

By: Karina Longworth
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About this listen

 You Must Remember This is a storytelling podcast exploring the secret and/or forgotten histories of Hollywood’s first century. It’s the brainchild and passion project of Karina Longworth (founder of Cinematical.com, former film critic for LA Weekly), who writes, narrates, records and edits each episode. It is a heavily-researched work of creative nonfiction: navigating through conflicting reports, mythology, and institutionalized spin, Karina tries to sort out what really happened behind the films, stars and scandals of the 20th century.2020 Karina Longworth Art
Episodes
  • 2: Frank Sinatra in Outer Space

    2: Frank Sinatra in Outer Space
    Apr 16 2014
    Welcome to the second episode of You Must Remember This, the podcast devoted to exploring the secret and or/forgotten histories of Hollywood’s first century. Today, we look back to 1979, when — while the music world was full of punk and post-disco coke rock, and the movie world was making the transition from the “New Hollywood” of the ’70s into the blockbuster age — Frank Sinatra recorded Trilogy: Past, Present and Future, a triple album with one disc each devoted to big band standards (“The Past”); covers from “the rock era” including Billy Joel and Beatles songs and also “Theme from New York, New York” (“The Present”); and, most amazingly, a 40 minute song cycle about life, love, death and visiting outer space (“The Future”). We’ll take a look at how and why “The Future” was made, and theorize as to why it’s fallen into the dustbin of pop cultural history. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    34 mins
  • 3: Happy 110th Birthday, Val Lewton

    3: Happy 110th Birthday, Val Lewton
    May 7 2014
    A Very Special Halloween Episode! The writer-producer Val Lewton produced and ghost-wrote 11 films in just three years as head of the horror unit at RKO, many of which — Cat People, I Walked With A Zombie, The Curse of the Cat People, The Body Snatcher — were huge hits, helping to keep the troubled studio afloat in the early 1940s, and becoming influential genre film classics. Lewton died super young, but he crammed an enormous amount of life into his 46 years. Before establishing his unique style of horror at RKO, he was a publicist and a terrible journalist; he published at least a dozen books (including at least two porno novels, one of which he was very proud of), and through his career-making apprenticeship with David O. Selznick, collaborated with Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, and countless other classical Hollywood luminaries. Today — which would have been Lewton’s 110th birthday, if not for his untimely death in 1951 — we take a look back at his life and career, break down his groundbreaking aesthetic, and ask and answer an incredibly reductive question: did Hollywood kill Val Lewton? To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    40 mins
  • 4: (The Printing of) the Legend of Frances Farmer

    4: (The Printing of) the Legend of Frances Farmer
    May 27 2014
    During the last year of his life, Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain was obsessed with Frances Farmer, an actress from his hometown of Seattle who died in 1970. Farmer’s beauty and unique screen presence made her a star, but her no-bullshit ballsiness made her a pariah — and a target of the hostile media — in 1930s Hollywood. Farmer’s career went down the tubes in the 1940s when a couple of incidents of inconvenient drunkenness led to her being committed to an insane asylum by her own mother, and given a lobotomy. Or, so Cobain and his wife, Courtney Love, frequently told journalists while Cobain was promoting In Utero, the Nirvana album that includes Cobain’s tribute to the actress, “Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle” (Love also claimed to have been married to Cobain whilst wearing a dress once owned by Farmer, and the couple named their daughter Frances, although that was likely at least co-inspired by Frances McKee of The Vaselines). Unbeknownst to them, the notion that Farmer was lobotomized was a fiction invented by a biographer with ties to Scientology, a lie which was then dramatized in an Oscar-nominated, Mel Brooks-produced movie which helped to make Jessica Lange a star. By the time Kurt and Courtney were championing Farmer as a proto-punk martyr in the 1990s, the legend of Frances Farmer as patron saint of…well, women like Courtney Love, had been printed so many times that it had swallowed up the truth of Farmer’s experience, and loomed much larger than her actual body of movie work. Today we’ll explore how, and why, that legend got printed, and try to explain how Frances Farmer became the patron saint of beautiful, bright, potentially batshit women whose self-destruction can be traced back to their signing of a studio contract. We have special guest stars! Nora Zehetner (Brick, Grey’s Anatomy, Mad Men and most recently IFC’s Maron) played Frances Farmer; Brian Clark played Kurt Cobain, and Noah Segan IS Rex Reed. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    36 mins
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Featured Article: Roll Out the Red Carpet for 2023's Award Season Listening Recommendations


Awards season is now upon us, with some of cinema's most gifted directors, actors, cinematographers, screenwriters, composers, costume and VFX artists, and beyond being rightly recognized for their talents and contributions to art and film over the past year. Here are some listening recommendations to keep you company while you place your bets on those winner brackets and plan that Best Picture-themed charcuterie board for your awards night soiree.

Featured Article Roll Out the Red Carpet for 2023's Award Season Listening Recommendations
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An incredible storyteller with exhaustive context. Karina will string you along for hours and hours about Hollywood’s impact on history and vice versa.

An incredible history lesson

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I am so glad I discovered this podcast and will actually watch or rewatch movies before listening to an episode. The narrator is extremely expert on the subject and I love her takes. The only issue, and it's a significant one, is her bizarre overpronunciation of consonants. At first, I thought maybe she lived abroad since that was what happened to me temporarily after living and teaching in France for several years. However, I've heard her in recent interviews and she sounds "normal". Because the overpronunciation of her t's are the most jarring, it's definitely hard to keep hearing her say "erotic eighties"! Karina, please stop doing this! Otherwise, I love everything about this. 😀

Wonderful podcast

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In defense of Karina's clear enunciation. Her voice is purrrrfect.
More importantly, her content is fun, mixing gossipy goodness with actual research. She brought me straight back to 1989 with her most recent episode.

BEST PODCAST EVER

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Love this podcast!!!! Helps me get my workday started . It is very informative and entertaining

Awesome

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These stories are framed within the sociological backdrop of the times giving them great depth. Start with the season on Charles Manson, it's thorough and fascinating as are all of the seasons

Engaging Stories that are more than Juicy Gossip

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Love hearing about the old stars and movies. Favorites are about the silent film era.

Super fun

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I was very disappointed not to be able to get through even one episode because the material is all so interesting. The stilted manner, exaggerated pronunciations and plodding reading actually make The Rat Pack sound dull!

Narrator impossible to listen too

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