# The Casting Couch: Overblown Myth? Harsh Reality? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 9, 2007, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-casting-couch-overblown-myth-harsh-reality/429383 "2007-12-09T15:28:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![HelloKitty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ecccb3/32.png) [@HelloKitty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HelloKitty)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2007, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-casting-couch-overblown-myth-harsh-reality/429383/41 "2007-12-10T16:21:16Z")
Again, this is the music rather than the acting business but I recently read this expose in Vanity Fair about [Lou Pearlman](http://www.vanityfair.com/fame/features/2007/11/pearlman200711) the disgusting Svengali of Backstreet Boys and InSync fame. I knew about the bands suing Pearlman for royalties and to be released from their contracts, etc. Was unaware of the casting couch aspects. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2007, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-casting-couch-overblown-myth-harsh-reality/429383/42 "2007-12-10T17:20:24Z")
[QUOTE=Otto] Somewhere in my porn stash I have an interview with former star Ryan Idol who, oddly, claims that he got into gay porn when he couldn’t get legitimate acting work because he refused to submit to the casting couch. He then goes on to claim that Tom Cruise _did_. [/QUOTE] Gay porn eh? That doesn’t sound like it’s sweatening the deal. > [@Exapno Mapcase](#): > > Is there a casting couch scene in Entourage? I haven’t seen the whole series, but I’ve seen enough to know that if casting couches were still common there’s no way they wouldn’t reference it somehow. Ari tells Lloyd to “entertain” a gay director who is interested in him so they can land him as a client. Later, Ari feels guilty and rescues him before anything happens. The show is filled with references to various actors and studio employees sleeping with each other on and off set. I’m sure the practice is common in an industry where everyone is young, rich, powerful and aggressive (and a little flakey). Hell, it’s common in my industry and I work for a consulting firm full of accountants, lawyers and computer nerds. I don’t think it’s out of the realm of imagination in envision aspiring starlets offering blowjobs for bit parts (no punn intended) in B movies. But why risk a sexual harassment suit when you can just call some high priced callgirl? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2007, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-casting-couch-overblown-myth-harsh-reality/429383/43 "2007-12-10T17:27:13Z")
> [@](#): > > Winger is Jewish, and Jewish actresses have historically been taboo as love interests in Hollywood. Is this a whoosh? Or should I list all the Jewish actresses who’ve been love interests from Theda Bara and Mae West up through Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman? ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2007, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-casting-couch-overblown-myth-harsh-reality/429383/44 "2007-12-10T17:55:02Z")
[QUOTE=Shamozzle] I believe Sharon Stone once said: “You can only sleep your way to the middle.” [/QUOTE] I dunno. Are Nancy Allen, Linda Hamilton and Amy Irving exempt from this requirement because they got the gold ring? ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2007, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-casting-couch-overblown-myth-harsh-reality/429383/45 "2007-12-10T18:51:45Z")
[QUOTE=Little Nemo] Is this a whoosh? Or should I list all the Jewish actresses who’ve been love interests from Theda Bara and Mae West up through Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman? [/QUOTE] [OT]Mae West? I did not know that.[/OT] Anyway, back on topic, I don’t know if it’s a whoosh but it could’ve been just Simpson’s own predilection for women. However, even if it wasn’t, he was still a first-class jerkwad for saying that about Debra Winger (no wonder so many of his movies are unwatchable). (Also, I didn’t think it was possible but I agree even more with Robert Altman’s assessment of Simpson when he died.) ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2007, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-casting-couch-overblown-myth-harsh-reality/429383/46 "2007-12-10T19:18:07Z")
[QUOTE=NDP] [OT]Mae West? I did not know that.[/OT] [/QUOTE] Mary Jane West was a good Irish girl, named after her Irish-born grandmother. Yes, I know that Wiki lists her as Jewish. Not apparently true. [The Religious Affiliation of Actress Mae West](http://www.adherents.com/people/pw/Mae_West.html) > [@](#): > > Jill Watts, Mae West: An Icon in Black and White, Oxford University Press: New York, NY (2001) > [page 7] Sometime in the late 1880s… Jack was sidetracked from his ambitions [as a boxer] by a young German immigrant, Matilda Delker. Known by her friends as Tillie, she was the daughter of Christina and Jacob Delker, who were married in Germany in 1864. She as born in 1870, probably in Wurttemberg… She arrived in the United States in 1882… Several factors probably compelled the Delkers to leave Germany… Anti-Semitism may have driven them out–Mae had even the most discerning observers convinced that her mother was Jewish–but by the time the Delkers reached America, they were Lutherans. It is more likely that they were drawn to the United States by economic success enjoyed by relatives… Arguing that Mae West must have been Jewish because of the possibility - unproven - that her mother was born Jewish before changing her religion is way too close to the canard that Judaism is a race rather than a religion. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-casting-couch-overblown-myth-harsh-reality/429383/47 "2008-03-12T20:41:16Z")
Hope the mods don’t mind that I’m bumping this thread, but I just saw something too irresistible not to add. I referenced _Dirty Movies: An Illustrated History of the Stag Film, 1915-1970_ by Al Di Lauro and Gerald Rabkin in [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=459488), and let’s face it, that’s a book you have to flip through once you open it. The book shows a series of images from a 1924 stag film titled “The Casting Couch.” There’s no doubt that the reference was exactly the same then as it is today. An ad is placed in the classifieds casting actresses for “moving pictures”. When one shows up, the director pulls up her dress and a title card reads, “Say! I came here for a part, not to do that!” But she goes home and reads a book, How to Become a Movie Star. "The Casting Director is an important man, " it reads. “If you win him over he will give you a break, and that is what any girl is waiting for.” She returns and tells him, “I have changed my mind. I will do anything you wish.” After she sucks and fucks him, a big smile on her face, he gives her a contract to sign. “Moral: - The only way to become a star is to get under a good director and work your way up.” 84 years and nothing has changed. ---
**Author:** ![Wee\_Bairn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/90db22/32.png) [@Wee\_Bairn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wee_Bairn)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-casting-couch-overblown-myth-harsh-reality/429383/48 "2008-03-12T21:19:56Z")
Barbara Payton admitted IIRC that she slept with Jimmy Cagney’s brother to get the role in Kiss Tommorow Goodbye. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-casting-couch-overblown-myth-harsh-reality/429383/49 "2008-03-12T21:47:09Z")
"What casting couch, Honey? That was the **part!"** ---
**Author:** ![NajaNivea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/22d042/32.png) [@NajaNivea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NajaNivea)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-casting-couch-overblown-myth-harsh-reality/429383/50 "2008-03-12T23:18:35Z")
[QUOTE=Rick] I will swear that I once read that when Marylin Monroe got her first leading role, she told a friend that she had just given her last blowjob to get a part. [/QUOTE] It’s a possibly apocryphal story, told by Norman Mailer about the signing of her first lucrative contract with Twentieth Century Fox. The quote usually reads either “well, that’s the last cock I’ll ever have to suck” or “that’s the last cock I eat”. Chuck Klosterman discusses the story in _Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto_. A [Google Books](http://books.google.com/books?id=AHekpO_OM0oC&pg=PA77&lpg=PA77&dq=marilyn+monroe+%22that's+the+last+cock+i+eat%22+mailer&source=web&ots=gr6Yvjwjhs&sig=RTxSDiLkYTeiqxplq0buVz2topk&hl=en) excerpt can be seen at that link. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2008, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-casting-couch-overblown-myth-harsh-reality/429383/51 "2008-03-13T00:09:00Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] "What casting couch, Honey? That was the **part!"** [/QUOTE] > [@](#): > > 12-09-2007 01:54 PM > > > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > > > “What casting couch, honey? That was the part!” > > > > – good title for a porn film Good grief, man, it’s not that funny a joke! :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2008, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-casting-couch-overblown-myth-harsh-reality/429383/52 "2008-03-13T02:48:56Z")
In an interview back in the 1970s Marilyn Chambers, a commercial actress as well as a porn star, (she was on the Ivory Snow box) said that to get advertisements that including residuals paid many times what she could earn in porn she sucked a lot more cock than she ever did in a X-rated movie. ---
**Author:** ![Oslo\_Ostragoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a9a28c/32.png) [@Oslo\_Ostragoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oslo_Ostragoth)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2008, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-casting-couch-overblown-myth-harsh-reality/429383/53 "2008-03-13T04:58:14Z")
[QUOTE=Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor] I wish **Eve** was around. [/QUOTE] Is **Eve** on hiatus? ---
**Author:** ![Oslo\_Ostragoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a9a28c/32.png) [@Oslo\_Ostragoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oslo_Ostragoth)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2008, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-casting-couch-overblown-myth-harsh-reality/429383/54 "2008-03-13T05:05:41Z")
[QUOTE=Bill Door] In an interview back in the 1970s Marilyn Chambers, a commercial actress as well as a porn star, (she was on the Ivory Snow box) said that to get advertisements that including residuals paid many times what she could earn in porn she sucked a lot more cock than she ever did in a X-rated movie. [/QUOTE] :eek: :eek: :eek: ---
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2008, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-casting-couch-overblown-myth-harsh-reality/429383/55 "2008-03-13T05:52:41Z")
[QUOTE=Wendell Wagner] Some things I’ve read seem to say that it was often assumed that any actress was a “loose woman.” [/QUOTE] BLACKADDER: Gentlemen, I’ve come with a proposition. MOSSOP: How dare you, sir. You think, just because we’re actors, we sleep with everyone! BLACKADDER: I think, being actors, you’re lucky to sleep with anyone. ---
**Author:** ![chrisk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@chrisk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chrisk)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2008, 10:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-casting-couch-overblown-myth-harsh-reality/429383/56 "2008-03-13T10:05:03Z")
There’s something a bit icky about a **Zombie Casting Couch thread!** 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2008, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-casting-couch-overblown-myth-harsh-reality/429383/57 "2008-03-13T15:37:01Z")
[QUOTE=Bill Door] In an interview back in the 1970s Marilyn Chambers, a commercial actress as well as a porn star, (she was on the Ivory Snow box) said that to get advertisements that including residuals paid many times what she could earn in porn she sucked a lot more cock than she ever did in a X-rated movie. [/QUOTE] Well, maybe. I’m not saying that sex was never demanded of actresses to get get jobs doing commercials. I’m sure it happened. But I also know that in the 1970s, every interview with a porn star had a ritual statement about how mainsteam society was sicker than porn, that porn consisted of one big happy family, and that sex was like beautiful man and everybody should over their hangups. Chambers was living with Chuck Traynor from 1975 on, and she immediately started saying almost exactly the same things that Linda Lovelace said in interviews while she was living with Traynor earlier in the 1970s, things Lovelace totally repudiated after getting out of porn. (And who knows which set were true.) It’s obvious that they were coached in what to say with interviewers. Any relation to real life was purely coincidental. Most things that most actors say in public interviews about their business are lies intended to give the public what they want to hear. That goes double for porn. There aren’t too many good sources for more realistic information about porn. [The Other Hollywood : The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry, by Legs McNeil and Jennifer Osborne](http://www.amazon.com/Other-Hollywood-Uncensored-History-Industry/dp/B000EGEYVG/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205422330&sr=1-1) is a deeply flawed book, but it contains many interviews of porn stars conducted in the 1990s that gets to the reality of the life and the business in the 1970s. You have to look closely to tell which are later interviews and which are cut and pasted from earlier sources, though. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2008, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-casting-couch-overblown-myth-harsh-reality/429383/58 "2008-03-13T22:56:50Z")
[QUOTE=Oslo Ostragoth] Is **Eve** on hiatus? [/QUOTE] Last I checked, yes. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2008, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-casting-couch-overblown-myth-harsh-reality/429383/59 "2008-03-14T00:39:34Z")
[QUOTE=Rick] I will swear that I once read that when Marylin Monroe got her first leading role, she told a friend that she had just given her last blowjob to get a part. [/QUOTE] James Bacon related this story in [Hollywood Is A 4-Letter Town](http://www.amazon.com/Hollywood-four-letter-James-Bacon/dp/B000VZS25Y/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205455075&sr=8-1). ---
**Author:** ![RTA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b4bc9f/32.png) [@RTA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTA)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2008, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-casting-couch-overblown-myth-harsh-reality/429383/60 "2008-03-14T00:46:06Z")
[QUOTE=NajaNivea] It’s a possibly apocryphal story, told by Norman Mailer about the signing of her first lucrative contract with Twentieth Century Fox. The quote usually reads either “well, that’s the last cock I’ll ever have to suck” or “that’s the last cock I eat”. Chuck Klosterman discusses the story in Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto. [/QUOTE] Anthony Summers’ 1985 biography of Marilyn says that was her reaction to being asked how she felt about getting married to Joe DiMaggio - “I have sucked my last cock.” Mailer was vague on the details and later said “one can better ask about which Hollywood star it has not been told”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-casting-couch-overblown-myth-harsh-reality/429383.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-casting-couch-overblown-myth-harsh-reality/429383.md?page=4)