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The ad was selected out of 1,000 entries, as part of Obama’s “Health Care Reform Video Challenge.”  Ironically, instead of showcasing real people who suffer under the current health-care structure, the judges hand picked an ad that is all showbiz and zero substance.  They chose to go with fake health-care horror stories read by adorable but soppy kid actors — pawns in a political high-stakes game of shocksploitation. These kids obviously don’t have dire health care problems;  they just have showbiz parents who hooked them up with a gig.

Don’t be too surprised — Hollywood has lent Obama an ever-willing hand.  The judges were comprised of a celebrity panel that reads like the Hollywood Squares: Rosario Dawson, musician Will.I.Am., Brandon Routh, Kate Walsh and Olivia Wilde, and raunchy “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane. When you think America’s health-care solutions — you want to call in Seth MacFarlane, right?!

In American politics there is a cardinal rule:  if you must use a personal story to advance an ideology or an issue, be sure it is true.  When a President stands before the public and uses names of real people with real problems to advance an agenda, he makes a point through presenting solid evidence — life lessons.  Reagan did it, Clinton did it, George W. Bush did it… and there’s nothing wrong with it if it is true.

Not only did the Obama team ignore the facts, they ignored any input by average Americans.  When you ask a glitzy Hollywood panel to come up with your health-care message, don’t be surprised if they enlist a reality TV has-been director of stoner movies.   What is surprising in all this is that ads that deal with highly sensitive political messages are normally carefully focus-grouped in front of an audience of regular Americans.  This is done so they have the opportunity to voice their opinions and concerns about vitally important policy decisions.

Apparently, no one at the White House or the DNC were bothered much with grassroots concerns in this case (after all, DNC Chair Tim Kaine was on the judging panel). If they did, they would hear more about the economy — according to the latest Gallup poll 51% think the economy should be the President’s main focus, only 21% said health care. It all begs the question:  if you have to make it all up with actors, what are you really saying?  Perhaps a better question in this case: what are they smoking?

Poll after poll, the United States ranks as the most “God-fearing” nation on the planet. Good on us! Whether you believe in God or not, it’s tough to deny the reality of Christian principles being an intricate part of our country’s historical fabric.

One has to ask themselves however, as arguably the last “Christian nation” around, why were our Founders so adamant about keeping the Feds grimy paws out of our churches?

Most of Europe upheld state religions, yet only 52 percent of its citizens maintain a belief in God.

My home province of Quebec force-fed its people their state-enforced brand of Catholicism for years, yet it now enjoys the title of being the single most un-churched population of the industrialized world. Compare these statistics to the well-over 80% of Americans who believe in God and one can’t help but notice a pattern there.

There’s no doubt that the Founding Fathers were deeply spiritual men (and when I say spiritual, I mean in the Judeo-Christian sense, not in the Disney/Pray-to-colors-of-the-wind type silliness). With that being said, could it be that they wanted to separate church and state, in order to PRESERVE the Christian principles that built this country?

Think about it. When has government successfully forced people to do ANYTHING that they didn’t already want to do? From forced “integration” in Detroit, to putting a tax on a morning breakfast beverage, the results have always been disastrous.

A freedom-saturated environment is conducive to the growth of faith in God. I’m guessing that might be why our Founding Fathers were much more “spirit” rather than “letter of the law” Christians like their English counterparts.

You know who else felt the same way… Jesus.

No, really. Jesus was forthright with his whole “I am the way, the truth and the light” deal (heck he was even crucified for it), but ultimately, the man left the decision up to us.

I guess what I’m wondering now is, if the Son of Man never felt the need to force anything down our throat… Where does our government get off thinking that they can?

Americans don’t want universal health care, we’re getting it. We don’t want Cap and Tax, we’re getting it. If freedom has generally bred positive choices, one would have to wonder what comes of statism. Historically, all signs point towards revolution. Hopefully it doesn’t come to that, even though the muskets would be fun to have.

As an even bigger point, I think that the systematic removal of our individual liberties is not only anti-American … it’s Anti-Christian. Ask yourself not only how the Founding Fathers would feel about the current administrations diametric opposition to their original intentions for our country, but what would Jesus think? It sounds gimmicky I’m sure, but when you get to pondering, it can be a real trip.

Of course, whenever I find myself still in doubt I ask: What would Sean Penn do?

The Health Reform Video Challenge, launched by Obama’s Organizing for America in September, is a contest “to make the best 30-second ad showing why the President’s plan for reform is so critical.” The winning video, selected by a list of Hollywood elites and Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe, will be the basis for a new television ad that will air across the country delivering a clear message to viewers – children will die if health care reform is not passed. The secondary message is only one Defcon level lower on the fear-o-meter – the parents of sick or injured children will go bankrupt or lose their houses for even the simplest of injuries.

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Using children to pluck at the heartstrings of the electorate and further a political agenda is nothing new, but it shifts into the land of Disgustopia when our young are exploited to distort the truth or spread outright falsehoods. The winning video opens with a young boy stating, “A year from now I’ll break my leg and my parents will have to sell our house because we couldn’t afford health care.”

This statement is designed to instill broad fear and disseminate the idea that anyone, even a family faced with the common injury of a broken leg, is susceptible to being thrust from their homes as a consequence of being uninsured. The odds of needing to sell your home to pay for the cost of a broken leg are so remote that it borders on preposterous to use it as an example of why we need reform. House closing costs in almost every scenario would exceed the medical bill, yet this is the video that the President’s organization has selected to justify the need for reform. It’s much easier to sell health care reform if our system is so fractured that a broken leg can expel a family out from under the safety of their roof.

The power of fear to induce submission is one that few can avoid. In researching the twenty finalists for this piece I even found myself second-guessing my position on the health care reform debate. Such is the power of good propaganda.

We have an innate affinity towards altruism. It is a reality of the human condition that Big Government knows and exploits, without conscience, if the means justify its ends. Fear is Big Gov’s most useful tool for expansion. The mounting growth of entitlement programs provides clear evidence of our inability to tame this altruistic affinity.

The power of using children as propaganda tools can also be seen during the last “historic” health care reform debated in our country, a case study that also provides a clear example of the phenomenon of “mission creep” that the current reform bill will surely experience in the long run.

In the wake of their failed attempt to overhaul the health care system in 1993, the Clinton Administration looked for a smaller, targeted initiative that could get bipartisan support. After examining several options in separate efforts, both the First Lady Hillary Clinton and Senator Ted Kennedy came to the conclusion that expanding health care insurance to children of the “working poor” would be the most politically popular route. This insight gave rise to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, better known as SCHIP.

SCHIP was signed into law by President Clinton in August of 1997 with the goal of insuring up to 5 million kids whose parents made too much money for Medicaid but could still not afford health insurance. After the first year of the program nearly 1 million children were enrolled.

Flash forward to January of 2009. “Either you are for kids or not for kids,” was the rallying cry of Democratic Senator Max Baucus in the push to expand funding of SCHIP. Similar rhetoric brought 40 House and 9 Senate Republicans over to the majority, and the Democratic controlled Congress presented to President Obama a bill that increased SCHIP funding by over $30 billion – in essence doubling the budget of the program.

SCHIP, which was intended to provide health insurance to the 5 million children of the “working poor”, has the ring of a morally sound program. An argument using children as the beneficiaries is a powerful message that few politicians can counter. But here’s the kicker, the Obama Administration’s SCHIP funding expanded eligibility to children in families earning $84,800 – that’s almost 400% of the poverty income level for a family of four. In some states families with incomes over $100,000 become eligible due to “income disregards” that allow for deductions such as rent, mortgages, and heating bills among others.

The expansion also has the goal of insuring 11 million children by the year 2013. That is over double the goal of the initial bill. Its also been argued by Republican lawmakers that over half of the newly eligible children already have insurance, which means they will be driven away from private insurance into the government sponsored program, piling on more of a burden to our system. That is the textbook definition of mission creep, a program’s expanding well beyond its original intent.

Here’s the point that we must understand – we cannot let propaganda prey on man’s primitive altruistic instinct in such a way that we burden our system to the point of collapse. Our entitlement programs, including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, already account for more than 40% of federal spending! If we keep on the path of endless entitlement expansion we will see a depression the likes of which we have never seen before. That is not a play on the emotion of fear – just an unavoidable law of nature.

Yes we need change to our health care system. The costs of private plans are growing and there are people falling through the cracks due to catastrophic ailments that are of no fault of their own. We need targeted reform that tackles these problems. But what we don’t need is President endorsed propaganda that exploits children and is designed to scare the electorate into submission with distorted information.

Reuters:

“Hollywood studios are now thinking twice about splurging on A-list movie stars and costly productions in reaction to the poor economy, but also because of the surprising success of recent films with unknown actors. …

“Last weekend, comic actor Jim Carrey’s “A Christmas Carol” became the latest celebrity-driven movie to stumble at box offices, opening to a lower-than-expected $30 million.

“Aside from Jim Carrey and “Carol,” which cost at least $175 million, A-listers who suffered box office flops recently have included Bruce Willis (”Surrogates”), Adam Sandler (”Funny People”), Will Ferrell (”Land of the Lost”), Eddie Murphy (”Imagine That”) and Julia Roberts (”Duplicity”).

“‘The (major movie) machine didn’t fly last summer, if you look at the movies and the names, they were not star-driven movies, they really weren’t,’ said Peter Guber, chairman of Mandalay Entertainment and former head of Sony Pictures.

“Hollywood insiders say A-listers currently are having trouble with salary demands in the $15 million range or participation approaching 20 percent of gross profits — deals that were once somewhat common for top talent. Instead, they are being asked to take less money upfront and greater compensation only if a film breaks even.”

You can read the full article here.

For months now, the major studios have been waging all-out war against technology companies that are developing devices that offer consumers the ability to watch their DVDs on their own computers and televisions under circumstances that give them maximum flexibility.  Heaven only knows how much the studios have paid in fees in order to have their legal surrogates wage a war of words and briefs against relatively small companies like RealNetworks and Kaleidescape that are trying to fill this market niche.  RealNetworks has been hit particularly hard by the aggressive court action lodged against it by the studios. 

Why is Hollywood beating up so badly on RealNetworks?  What sin did this company commit that has caused such legal violence to be visited on it?  Was it pirating Hollywood movies?  Was it committing a fraud on consumers by advertising something it did not deliver?  Was it perhaps handmaiden to a Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme?  To the Hollywood studios, it was something much scarier – allowing consumers to exercise their “Fair Use” rights.  

What RealNetworks did that landed it on Hollywood’s Black List, was to have the audacity to listen to the market and give consumers something they wanted at a time when Hollywood was not growing to meet the needs of these same consumers. RealNetworks had figured out that consumers wanted the capability to store their own DVDs on their own laptops and home computers, so they could then watch them at their leisure and without having to load each one into the computer every time they wanted to play it.  Based on its market research, RealNetworks then developed a product that would do just what the consumer desired, while also protecting the studios’ rights – the RealDVD system.  Unlike the ubiquitous assortment of illegal DVD rippers than can be located with a simple Google search on the Internet, RealDVD is the only product that allows consumers to save copies of their own, legally-purchased DVDs to their computers while also preventing people from burning copies.  While this would seem to be the likely start of a beautiful friendship between RealNetworks and the movie moguls, it unfortunately was just the beginning of Real’s troubles with the Hollywood studios.  

For more than a year now, RealNetworks has been fighting an expensive and difficult defensive action in federal court in San Francisco, as the major studios seek to permanently stop it from marketing its RealDVD product.  In fact, last August, the judge presiding over the case temporarily enjoined the company from selling its product. 

Rather than licking its wounds and moving to other products, RealNetworks is determined to fight this assault on competition and free enterprise.  Just this week, for example, it formally appealed the August 11, 2009 order issued against it by U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Patel.  Ayn Rand would be pleased with RealNetworks’ attitude. 

What neither Ayn Rand nor any free market advocate would understand, is the manner in which the studios are proceeding against RealNetworks.  It makes no sense from a business standpoint, and if anything shows that the movie industry is destined to make many of the same mistakes that the music industry made.  Consider that DVD sales are down significantly in the current slow economic climate.  Would it not make sense for Hollywood studios to take steps to encourage consumers to buy DVDS?  And, insofar as offering a product that makes it easier for consumers to record, store and view their DVDs would cause them to purchase more DVDs, why would the studios fight tooth-and-nail against a company whose goals are essentially the same as Hollywood’s? 

Perhaps because at least one of those major studios – Disney – is developing its own technology to make it easier for consumers to digitally store and view movies?  In a recent interview, for example, Disney chief exec Bob Iger indicated his company would shortly begin marketing its “Keychest” system that would do just those things. 

Even the DVD rental industry, which is fighting its own battles with the Hollywood studios, understands that DVD sales generate significantly more income for the studios than do rentals. Yet those very same studios that are taking steps to increase sales of their movies and limit rentals, are tone deaf to the work of companies like RealNetworks, whose product also would encourage sales of these silver discs.  

Hollywood, which continues to toy with the idea of bringing Ayn Rand’s free market opus, Atlas Shrugged, to the silver screen, would be well-served to actually read and digest the novel’s admonition to use if not embrace the forces of the market place, rather than oppose the very forces that could help it.  Such a tactic would be in the industry’s “enlightened self interest,” and it would benefit all concerned.  Unfortunately, the moguls who head the studios apparently don’t have time for such lessons

It’s my guess that a majority of those involved with the NEA — even those few who are talented — are always eager to roll over for left-wing politicians.  Partly it’s because they are so hungry for attention and partly because they lack anything resembling a moral compass. 

Allow me to give you a few notable examples of the way that people who earn their living in the areas of art and entertainment can voluntarily blind themselves to those matters that have moral implications.  Just recently, we got to watch a swarm of Hollywood retards climbing all over themselves in a rush to defend Roman Polanski, a piece of Euro-trash who confessed to having sex with a 13-year-old child.  All sorts of big name, small brain, celebrities lined up to sign petitions on his behalf.  By attesting to his character, they merely confirmed that they lacked any themselves. 

Hollywood is the place where the members of the Motion Picture Academy were once so angry at producer Jack Warner for casting Audrey Hepburn, instead of Julie Andrews, in “My Fair Lady,” that they refused to even nominate Ms. Hepburn for her terrific performance as Eliza Doolittle.  However, proving, as usual, that they shouldn’t be allowed to vote even when politics aren’t involved, these lunkheads then gave the 1964 Oscar for Best Picture to “My Fair Lady,” which enabled the very same Jack Warner to stride onstage to thunderous applause. 

Then there was the matter of Cliff Robertson and David Begelman.  When Robertson, an Oscar-winning actor, discovered that Begelman, the head of Columbia Pictures, had forged his signature on a $10,000 check, he blew the whistle.  After a police investigation, it turned out that Begelman had been financing his gambling habit with a lot of other people’s money, including Judy Garland, whom he had blackmailed.  The upshot was that Robertson had his acting career short-circuited, whereas Begelman, who was only sentenced to community service, was then hired to run MGM. 

Shortly after the scandal occurred, I happened to be having lunch with my agent in a restaurant loaded with Hollywood types.  When Begelman entered, there was such a flurry of people competing for his attention, you could have mistaken them for a covey of Cardinals vying to smooch the Pope’s ring. 

It’s not just actors, directors and producers, who act like dopes.  Consider writer Norman Mailer.  Perhaps because he was the fellow who once tried to settle a domestic dispute by stabbing the second of his six wives, Jack Abbott, who was serving time for bank robbery and murder, decided he’d be the ideal pen pal.  Mailer became so enamored of Abbott’s writing, he not only used his considerable influence to get Abbott’s book, “In the Belly of the Beast,” published, but got this career criminal paroled.  In New York, quite naturally, Abbott became the toast of the literati crowd, but only for a little while because six weeks after his release, Abbott stabbed 22-year-old Richard Adan to death. 

Saving the best for last brings us to Leni Riefenstahl.  In Berlin, in the 30s, as in Hollywood at any time, it wasn’t what you knew but who you knew, and Leni was a chum of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda.  Think of him as the head of Germany’s NEA.  It was Herr Goebbels who helped get her the opportunity to make “Triumph of the Will” and “Olympia,” a couple of over-wrought “documentaries” dedicated to hyping the Third Reich. 

After the end of World War II and for the remaining half of her 101 years, American and European cineastes — the same twerps who do cartwheels over Michael Moore’s propaganda flicks — showered her with honors and acclaim.  This in spite of the fact that although she claimed she wasn’t a Nazi and would barely have recognized Hitler if she’d tripped over him, had said, “To me, Hitler is the greatest man who ever lived.  He truly is without fault, so simple and at the same time possessed of masculine strength.”  Sort of sounds like Chris Matthews going on about Obama or Oliver Stone mooning over Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro, doesn’t it? 

In 1993, Riefenstahl had the gall to deny that she deliberately attempted to create pro-Nazi propaganda.  For good measure, she claimed she was disgusted that “Triumph of the Will” was used in such a way.  It was reminiscent of Captain Renault’s shock upon discovering that gambling was taking place in the backroom at Rick’s, all the while pocketing his winnings. 

Having seen her most famous films, I can assure you that unless you cut the movies up into a million little slivers of celluloid and used them for toothpicks, there was no other conceivable use for them except as Nazi propaganda. 

Moreover, in 1934, Riefenstahl said that “Mein Kampf” had made a tremendous impression on her. “I became a confirmed National Socialist after reading the very first page.  I felt a man who could write such a book should undoubtedly lead Germany.  I felt very happy that such a man had come.” 

She was so impressed with the book that she wrote the author a fan letter.  The letter led to a meeting.  The meeting led to her directing “Victory of Faith,” a movie about the fifth Nazi Party rally at Nuremberg.  So much for her claim that she really only knew Hitler from his photos. 

In fact, for someone who spent so many years churning out propaganda films, she was rather inept when it came to lying.  For instance, on one occasion she claimed that she was totally unaware that concentration camps even existed, while another time she swore that she only worked for the Nazis because Goebbels had threatened to send her to a concentration camp if she didn’t cooperate. 

Frankly, what confounds me is why she wasted even a single second lying about her past.  I mean, even if she had been good at it, why bother?  After all, sensible and moral people never believed her self-serving malarkey; and, as for the celebrity crowd, they simply didn’t care.  They never do.

“The mainstream Hollywood crowd, an apologist group that enjoys traveling to Taliban-run countries such as Iran spreading their holier-than-thou “cultural understanding” of rogue regimes, has been effectively censored by Moslem clerics. Filmmaker Roland Emmerich chose not to blow up the Kaaba at Mecca in his film 2012 for fear of a fatwa (death sentence issued by Moslem clerics) being placed on his head.

“Yet, in 2005, actor Sean Penn went to cover a so-called Islamic Republic “election” wanting Americans to visit Iran and become familiar with its culture. In March 2009, director Phil Alden Robinson found that Iranians were not very different; and actress Annette Bening (surely with a headscarf given Iran’s brutal enforcement of hijab) hoped her trip to Iran would jump start a bridge between the U.S. and the mullahs in Tehran.

“These frivolous, superficial entertainers turned international political experts, who cause socio-political damages beyond the limits of this article for their misguided trips to imprisoned societies, are now censored in their own free societies by the mere thought of being personally harmed. Ironically, Emmerich’s admission may actually teach Americans about mullahcracy compliments of Hollywood.”

Read the full article here.

Some of the things he swore to included keeping lobbyists out of his administration, providing five days for the public to review pending legislation and a bi-partisan approach to problem-solving.  Instead, lobbyists, particularly those representing unions, have freer access to the Oval Office than Michelle and the kids.  Not only is the public not given time to digest major legislation, neither are the legislators.  Early on, you may recall, Congress was given less than 24 hours to vote on an 1100-page, trillion dollar, so-called stimulus bill; more recently, when it came to health care, Obama was telling the sheep on Capitol Hill to vote even before an actual bill was written!

So far, as bi-partisanship is concerned, the Republicans have been banished to Washington’s equivalent of Siberia.  These days, bi-partisanship simply means that  David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel are in agreement.

There is one promise, however, that Obama has kept.  He vowed transparency, and anyone who can’t plainly see what the rock star and his left-wing groupies (Axelrod, Emanuel, Jeff Jones, Valerie Jarrett, Cass Sunstein, Anita Dunn) are up to is simply spending too much time watching “American Idol” and college football.

Consider, if you will, the way that Obama has managed to take the spotlight off his attempt to grab control of one-sixth of the nation’s economy that’s devoted to health care and to put the kibosh on conservative talk radio and free access to the Internet.  All he had to do was declare war on Fox News.  Just like that, the mass media, otherwise known as faux news, turned its attention to the phoniest battle since Gorgeous George and the Super Swedish Angel hung up their wrestling tights.

The way the media carried on, you’d have thought Obama was trying to decide whether to send 40,000 additional troops to fight in Afghanistan or to invade Fox.

On the other hand, it is just possible that Obama’s feud with Fox merely proves that he is as thin-skinned and as vain as some of us have suspected all along, which would fit right in with the narcissism that his constant TV appearances suggests.  Not since FDR have we had a president so in love with the sound of his own voice.  Not since Jimmy Carter have we had a president so convinced of his own saintliness.

Although Obama is a prime example of egomania, liberals generally hold themselves and one another in such preposterously high regard that normal people — in other words, conservatives — can only laugh.

For instance, because liberals are always blathering on about how much they love Mother Nature and how concerned they are about ecology, they are never asked to explain why they are so much better at talking the talk than they are at walking the walk.  It’s not just the obvious phonies, either — elitists such as Al Gore, Arianna Huffington, Michael Moore, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Kennedy, Jr., who live in mansions and fly around in private jets, leaving carbon footprints the equivalent of fair-sized communities in their wake — that I have in mind.

I’m also referring to the crowd that showed up in Washington for Obama’s coronation and left our nation’s capitol looking like a pigsty.

I’m thinking of the California Coastal Commission, the folks entrusted with keeping the Golden State’s coastline pristine, but who can always be convinced, for the right price, to come up with a variance.

While on the subject, we shouldn’t overlook the greenies who populate Hollywood and who never once gave George W. Bush a thumbs-up for taking out Saddam Hussein even though his setting fire to the oilfields of Kuwait was the single greatest man-made ecological disaster in history, rivaled only by Adam Sandler’s 30-odd movies.

Finally, we come to nature boy himself, Robert Redford.  Although I am a free market capitalist and believe that Redford should be allowed to build a ski resort, a giant cell phone tower or even have his head carved out of a mountainside, if he chooses to on his own land, I have to question the environmental bona fides of a guy who creates a film festival in the snow-covered hinterlands of Utah.

I mean, every year, upwards of 50,000 people jet in from all over the world for the Sundance Film Festival.  It may be swell for the Utah economy to have all those coke-sniffing, fossil fuel-burning, mugs showing up to watch bad movies and make distribution deals, but if you were really concerned about preserving the environment, wouldn’t it make more sense for these clucks to stay home and watch the movies on their TV sets the way the rest of us do?

In my experience, which consists of watching movies on airplanes, a movie that stinks at sea level reeks just as badly at 30,000 feet.  Otherwise, why settle for Utah?  It would make far more sense to hold a film festival atop Mt. Everest.

To read Part I of this series, please click here.

To read Part II, please click here.

Broke, with her second marriage in shambles and blacklisted by studio boss L.B. Mayer—Esther wouldn’t trade amorous favors for movie roles—Esther Ralston flees to New York in 1939 to find work and rebuild her shattered career.

Esther, in her slim but resonant 1985 memoir, Some Day We’ll Laugh, tells us that she was forced to leave her daughter Mary behind in California with her mother.

Working in Summer Stock and radio, Esther meets a young entertainment columnist named Ted Lloyd.  Everywhere she plays, Ted is in the audience. With characteristic understatement Esther notes that Lloyd “seemed to follow me.”

Clearly, Esther has an admirer. Not surprising in that Esther Ralston, dubbed The American Venus, was a famous Hollywood beauty. One would hope that coming on the heels of two ex-husbands who were not only unreliable, but also somewhat homicidal, Esther would steer clear of another hasty romantic entanglement, but —

— Alas, soon enough Lloyd is escorting Esther around town. They appear arm in arm in the fashionable Stork Club, Toot Shorr’s, Jack Dempsey’s and Lindy’s.

Esther writes:

During these weeks, Ted kept telling me how much he loved me and pleading with me to marry him. I explained that I was trying to recover from a sad divorce and was not interested in ever marrying again.

Okay. Good for Esther. She’s using her common sense under the juggernaut of her latest suitor’s attentions.

Esther and Scary Husband #3

But Lloyd is not just aggressive, he’s coldly manipulative and he zeroes in on Esther’s vulnerable core—her eight-year old daughter Mary.

Ted took a trip to California and got in touch with my family. He took them all to dinner, bought Mary a doll, and tried to talk her into persuading me to marry him so she could come and be with her mother.

This is seriously creepy, and it should have unmasked Lloyd as morally deficient. Esther, once discovering this ethical breach, should have reacted with fury. But Mary’s pathetic letters—“I miss you, Mommy. Please can’t I come to you?”—breaks Esther’s will and she surrenders to Lloyd.

In a final and serious talk with Ted Lloyd, I told him I wasn’t in love with him, I’d been too hurt and disillusioned by my previous marriages, but if he still wanted me, I would marry him and do my best to make him happy. We were married at the Pickwick Arms in Greenwich, Connecticut, on August 6^th 1939.

Homicidal husband #3, Ted Lloyd.

Esther, Ted and Mary move into a modest house in Little Neck. Esther’s dream—the American Dream—of a life of simple domesticity seems to be falling into place. But finances are something of a problem. Lloyd, a lowly columnist and sometimes PR guy, is not pulling in that much money.

And so, in September of 1939, on Esther’s thirty-eighth birthday, when Darryl F. Zanuck calls to offer Esther a role in the prestigious Alice Faye vehicle, Tin Pan Alley, Esther immediately agrees to play the famous singer Nora Bayes.

In Hollywood a week later, Esther is working with a solid cast including Alice Faye, Betty Grable, Jack Oakie, and John Payne.

A few years earlier, Esther notes, she met Nora Bayes on the Paramount lot and Bayes offered some words—deeply prophetic—that Esther never forgot:

“You’re young now, Esther. What I say may not mean much to you now, but someday you’ll remember what I tell you. Someday, everything you think, everything you do, will be in your face. Remember that.”

As she’s wrapping up work in Tin Pan Alley, Esther is offered a supporting role in Universal’s San Francisco Docks.

Acutely aware of her role as mother and wife, Esther calls Ted to ask his permission to stay another few weeks in California. Reluctantly, Ted agrees, but makes Esther promise that this will be her last motion picture.

Esther abides by her agreement.

Alice Faye, left, and Esther Ralston on the set of Tin Pan Alley, 1939.

In 1942 Ted loses his job as a columnist. Esther, always the optimist, encourages Ted to produce his own radio shows. He moves ahead with her suggestion and proves successful, saving money by hiring Esther to play multiple roles on his radio plays.

Two more children are born, Judy in 1942, and Ted Jr., in 1943. At last, Esther seems to be, enjoying her life as mother and wife. They buy a bigger house in Great Neck and Esther wears a mink coat when they go sailing on their new ship.

Esther Meets Dorian Gray

But the routine of cooking, house cleaning and laundering leaves Esther exhausted by nightfall.  Ted frequently calls from New York urging Esther to get dressed and join him for an important cocktail party or theater event. But, pleads Esther, she can’t leave the kids.

Inevitably, Ted starts coming home late. He becomes cold and inattentive. Finally, Esther discovers that Ted is having an affair with, yup, his secretary.

Let’s review:

Husband #1, George Webb, gambler.

Husband #2, Bill Morgan, alcoholic.

Husband #3, Ted Lloyd, adulterer.

But something else gnaws at Esther. Something even more disturbing and elemental than the awful cliché of her husband’s infidelity. She looks in the mirror and sees signs of encroaching middle age. But Ted—like Dorian Gray—seems eternally young.

Esther confronts him:

Ted was so quiet, I became alarmed. “You did tell the truth about your age when you wrote on our marriage license that you were the same age as I, didn’t you?” Ted never answered me.

A cold chill ran through me, and then I said quietly, “Teddy, tell me the truth. How old are you?” Then Ted told me he was twelve years younger than I.

“Why? Why did you lie to me?” I gasped, choking back the tears.

“Because I knew you wouldn’t have married me if you had known,” he said.

Nora Bayes prophetic advice kicks in with ferocity:

In the months to follow, I found myself studying my face, my figure, looking for lines, grey hairs, and so on. I became so conscious of the difference in our ages that I became depressed and miserably unhappy. Ted’s frequent sarcasm and slighting remarks that had never bothered me before became red flags to my ego.

An emotional scorched earth policy seems to envelope the marriage. In 1950, while Esther visits her mother in California, Mary, now a lively teenager, urgently writes: “Daddy has a woman sleeping with him in your bed!”

Esther immediately returns to New York. In a scene we have viewed in countless movies, Ted packs his bags and walks out on his wife and children.  He withholds all financial support. Once again, Esther alone is responsible for her children.

I tried to carry on without my husband, but soon found that we were not only running short of food but the telephone and lights were about to be turned off because of non-payment of bills. I was frantic. I called the Welfare Department and told them my husband had abandoned my children and me and what my plight was. They contacted Ted at his office and he was furious that I had called Welfare, but he came by the next day with a bag of groceries.

A week later, Ted calls and invites Esther out to dinner. Hopeful, Esther imagines an attempt at reconciliation. But Ted is strangely silent and Esther, confused and sad, asks Ted to drive her home:

We were both silent as we neared our house, but when he drove right by it and turned down a dark, little-traveled road, I was suddenly frightened. His face was set and ugly-looking and I said to him, “Ted, take me home at once! I don’t know what you’ve got in mind, but if you don’t take me back at once, I’m getting out of this car!”

When he didn’t answer me, but kept driving, I opened the car door and jumped out, and began walking back down the road. I heard him drive a bit further, then turning his car around, he gunned the motor and, with headlights blazing, drove straight at me. I screamed and jumped into the ditch, then stood staring in shock as Ted stopped the car and, putting his head down on the steering wheel, began to sob.

Esther ponders the strange trajectory of her life:

What was there about me, I grieved, that made me fail in three marriages? Why had each of my three husbands wanted to kill me?

Esther, American Patriot

Sadly, Esther’s memoir breaks off at this point in her life, 1950.

What did this resilient woman do next?

Esther continued with her radio work. She managed the boy’s department at B. Altman’s in Manhasset, Long Island. She was lured to television for a role in The Verdict is Yours, and then a steady role as Helen Lee in the 1962 soap opera Our Five Daughters.  Esther was a consultant and decorator for The Lighting Studio, in Glen Falls, and then in 1978 she returned to Los Angeles where she found work in numerous television commercials.

Her son Ted, a 1970 article in The Troy Record informs us, was a captain in the U.S. Air Force.

In 1992, film historian and biographer Eve Golden interviewed Esther and etched a vivid portrait of a lively and generous woman with not an ounce of bitterness or self-pity.

“I have fifteen grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. They’re all over the world, so I can’t see them now, but I write to them and talk to them… I have had a very long and brilliant life. I’ve been very, very grateful…”

It’s hard to evaluate Esther Ralston’s Hollywood career. So many of her films have been lost. But what we do have reveals a luminous presence whose understated and subtle performances are among the most skillful of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Esther Ralston in Old Ironsides, 1926.

In almost every interview I’ve read with Esther, she cites Old Ironsides, 1926 as her favorite movie. It’s an adventure film, and also the story of the U.S.S. Constitution, known as Old Ironsides. Said Esther to silent film historian Anthony Slide, who maintained a friendship with Esther and edited her memoir:

“My favorite is Old Ironsides… My people came over on the Mayflower, and they fought in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War and the World War and Vietnam. I think because Old Ironsides is history—American history—that meant more to me than any of the other pictures.”

Esther’s pride in her American roots, her unabashed patriotism seems a fitting tribute for this Hollywood star.

Esther Ralston never again married.

The American Venus passed away on January 14, 1994, in her 92^nd year.

Esther Ralston’s filmography.

Copyright © Robert J. Avrech

Hollywood on Uncle Sam’s terrorism fight? Don’t even ask.

But now that it’s Uncle Obama on the warpath against the most diabolical villain in the populist panoply, Hollywood is back to showing its anti-Axis resolve against this most indefensible of enemies.

That enemy (for now anyway) is the army of the overpaid — those individuals who represent an unholy axis of unsupervised greed with incomes that evoke envy in the psyche of the ordinary workin’ mench at the mercy of The Man. And why not? According to human resources expert Patrick R. Dailey, top corporate salaries are now 411 times the amount of  the lowest paid worker. In 1980, that ratio was 42 to one. By comparison, star actors are often paid more than 1,000 times the amount of the lowest salary on the set.  No matter.

To hear Hollywood  multi-millionaires like Oscar winner Michael Moore and Emmy winner Lawrence O’Donnell myopically channel Huey Long’s populism, highly paid financial industry execs and Wall Street traders are the only serpents in the suites, the only rapacious rich for making more than the $500,000 annual salary Obama deemed reasonable earlier this year for bank CEOs that received federal tax bailout bucks. But that’s bound for change.

Pay Czar Kenneth Feinberg says the upper limit will be more like $200,000 for AIG’s top people and possibly the others at rescued companies if he has his way.  Feinberg’s notion is to expand the list of the capped and that has members of the chattering class like CBS Early Show host Harry Smith openly talking about the next logical step:  “Why wouldn’t we make this law across the board and put a governor on compensation for everybody in private enterprise?”

Keeping in mind that members of said chattering class do not consider themselves part of “private enterprise,”  its members in good standing undoubtedly see their multi-million dollar incomes as exempt from limitations.  So today, it’s pay limits only for companies that directly received taxpayer cash.  But tomorrow, could it be any company or industry that benefits from special federal legislation — like tax breaks…

Like the tax break Hollywood gets?

Some states give considerable financial help for filming within their borders, but Uncle Sam helps the cameras roll too. Films that begin production by December 31st qualify for special tax treatments and that would be more than enough of an opening for Democratic Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts to exploit: “We are trying on every front to increase the role of government.”

Moore and O’Donnell and their many movie-biz supporters would be fine with that for everybody else, but what if that means Uncle Sam also gets to cap Hollywood’s gigantic paychecks?

Could Disney’s Bob Iger (30 million in 2008), CBS’ Les Moonves (36 million in 2008), Time Warner’s Jeff Bewkes (19 million in 2008) or DreamWork’s Jeffrey Katzenberg (11 million in 2007) or Lion’s Gate’s Jon Felheimer (6 million in 2007) get by on a paltry 200 grand? Or what about Cameron Diaz and her reported 50 million income or Simon Cowell’s 72 million or Will Smith’s 20 million plus per picture or …

They’d all still be “rich” with an income of 200 large, according to Uncle Obama’s current rationale, but the gap between above and below the line would definitely be compressed, possibly to the point of adopting a new compensation model.

While it is true that quite a few of the huge executive pay packages in public corporations can be traced to boardroom cronyism which shareholders are all but powerless to fight, those maligned bonuses are usually paid to people like Wall Street traders or salespeople who have to show bottom line results. How would that work here in Hollywood?

Hollywood is now the land of schmooze, off-book arrangements and any number of other “things” that most here would not want to tell a Congressional investigation committee or the Securities and Exchange Commission. But let’s try one measure of pure performance for people that may be paid 15 to 20 million or more for a few month’s work.

According to Forbes, The Bourne Ultimatum grossed $29 for every dollar star Matt Damon was paid.  Jennifer Aniston’s last three starring films earned $17 to every dollar she was paid. Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks and Will Smith bring in about $12 per every dollar they are paid. And Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell and Jim Carrey bring in about $9 for each buck they get. Unfortunately, that’s where the simplicity stops.

How many saw The Bourne Ultimatum just because it starred Matt Damon? How many saw it because it was a well-written, compelling story that was superbly directed and had a terrific actor ensemble ? Would just as many have seen it had the film starred somebody else? How much of the credit and compensation a star gets is due to other’s work that makes him look good? The Wall Street traders now in the class warfare crosshairs have no such variables. They either made money or they didn’t. Whether that trading helps or hurts people is a subject for another discussion, except for one point that appears to be getting ginned up as a Hollywood defense against any attempt at exerting Washington control here.

That argument is that what financial industry types do affects the well being of individuals and the economy at large, while Hollywood doesn’t do either. Good luck with that reasoning to those who think it’ll keep them away from the Frank ‘n Feinberg fingers if they start to roam. On the other hand, running a riff on that Huey Long legacy might do the trick.

During the 1930s, Louisiana’s Democratic populist Governor Huey Long was so dictatorial about wages and most everything else, that Congress started to investigate whether his state was still a republican form of government as the Constitution required. Long was murdered before committee hearings started, but its question about the limits of legitimate government control is worth considering.

At what point would Barney Frank’s forewarned government micro-managing of America disqualify it as a republican form of government? Wherever that point is, it doesn’t necessarily have to crimp Hollywood.

Huey Long has been resurrected as Michael Moore, Hollywood’s anti-capitalist Kingfish of compensation, and he’s supported by Lawrence O’Donnell and his 99% socialist Writer’s Guild garrison. Together, this formidable semantics’ force could clear the way for Frank and presumably Feinberg while protecting its own.

How? By doing two things Hollywood does best: using film and television to alter a contract –in this case the people’s contract with its government — thus creating a false perception that eventually becomes a public opinion reality.

In scripts, Moore and O’Donnell could re-write the Constitution’s Guarantee Clause to depict pay czar control and other Washington dictates to have have always been an integral part of a republican form of government. Then they could exempt themselves by turning the Equal Protection Clause into a dramatized PETA approved “Napoleon” doctrine of  Tinseltown exceptionalism reading that all animals are equal but that Hollywood animals are indeed more equal than others.

Yeah, it’s a bit of a stretch, but flyover land has been influenced by our scripted propaganda for over a century now, so why not again if it saves our bacon?

Oink.