Part Two: Frank Fay, The Fascist Who invented Stand Up Comedy

In Part 2 Frank Fay finds love and creates the most toxic Hollywood romance of all time. Then he breaks Nazi and holds a fascist rally in New York City less than a year after the end of WW2.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Behind the Bastards. This
is a podcast about the worst people in all of history.
And I'm Robert Evans doing my best n PR voice.
That's good work. That work. It made me uncomfortable. Make
you uncomfortable, it makes me uncomfortable. Yeah, I liked it. Yeah,

(00:25):
speaking of NPR, you know who's better than n PR.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
I mean lots of folks.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Well, Anders Anderson and our guest today, Andrew t YEH.
I don't know a particular problem with NPR.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
I don't really listen to n PR, but I assume
they're they they're valuable, right, They're still good.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
I don't think we have beef with NPR.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
They do something horrible. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (00:50):
They are.

Speaker 4 (00:51):
They are valuable relative to the media landscape in America,
but they are not like a net value.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
To the world.

Speaker 4 (00:59):
Probably, they're like all things that are that are good
in America quote unquote good.

Speaker 3 (01:05):
They're kind of like center right Namby Pambyism. But what
are you gonna do.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
They've got I'm sure, I'm sure they've got their problems.
I think they're like basically the only thing that equivocates
to local news in a lot of ways, right, Like
that that still exists that isn't like owned by Sinclair.
So it's one of those things where like there should
be better things than NPR performing the similar role. But
we are where we are, right So I'm not gonna
shit on for that. What I am gonna shit on

(01:32):
is our topic for today's episode, Frank Fay, the man
who invented stand up comedy. And before I get into that,
I want to plug a fundraiser that we are we
are doing here at behind the Bastards to help out
the Portland Defense Fund. This is a bail fund. It
started out, I mean it's earlier iterations, started out to

(01:54):
help people who had been arrested in the twenty twenty protests.
They still do help protesters, but their primary job is
people get arrested. They're usually homeless and indigent. They are
usually people with no resources, and the Defense Fund doesn't
just help them get bailed out. And often this is
people like literally like one hundred bucks that they just
don't have. Number One, when people are accused of crimes,

(02:15):
if they're out of jail while they are fighting the charges,
their odds of not going to prison are vastly higher.
The Defense Fund helps basically everybody. They do not provide
bail funds to people who are accused of domestic violence
for you know, some reasons that should we are probably
obvious to people. But they help a lot of people

(02:35):
who like literally no one else is looking out for.
That's what the Portland Defense Fund is, and we're trying
to raise money for them because they are out of it.
If you go to if you just type in a
donor box Defense Fund PDX into Google, it will take
you to the Defense Fund fundraiser. That's donor box Defense
Fund PDX. And another way you can help is you

(02:59):
can mow them at at Defense Fund PDX. So you know,
please send some money, help them out. I donate every year.
They're a five oh one c so it's like attacks.
You can, you know, write it off too, like it's
an actual charitable organization.

Speaker 3 (03:16):
They're legit.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
I know the people who run it. Please help them out.
All right, let's talk about a real piece of shit.
You gotta to talk about a piece of shit, Andrew.

Speaker 3 (03:30):
We talk about a good thing for ten fifteen seconds.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
Yeah, yeah, fifteen seconds of a good thing that helps
a lot of people who literally no one else is
looking out for in the entire world, because the homeless
are again the vast majority people who get arrested, and
not Frank Fay, although he is he's like a rich
homeless person.

Speaker 3 (03:49):
Right.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
One of the things about Frank is that he refuses
to have a house or an apartment. For most of
his life, he only lives in nice hotels. So like, right,
really a homeless but like literally he doesn't have a home, right,
He's just he's just staying in nice hotels because that's
the kind of life he prefers to live. And it
makes sense based on his backshirt, right, Like he never
has a stable place, right, Like he and his family

(04:11):
are like living on the road. Right.

Speaker 3 (04:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
So, in the late nineteen teens, when Frank Fay is
establishing himself as the biggest name in vaudeville and the
biggest name in like live performing in New York City,
another person exists. There's two people in the world at
this point in time, and one of them is a
young girl named Ruby Stephens. And while Frank is kind

(04:35):
of making his name for himself, Ruby is living through
one of the worst childhoods I have ever read about. Right,
Ruby had been born in nineteen oh seven, so she's
quite a bit younger than Frank Fay, and she was
the fifth child of Catherine Anne and Byron Stevens. Both
families seem to have come from some degree of like privilege.

(04:56):
It's uncle to me how if they were like rich
or it's just because they've been in a Marria from
like almost Mayflower days or right around then. Right, so
they're like old America and they know their pedigree, but
I don't think I don't know how much money they
actually have. It's a little that part's a little unclear
to me. It may have been that like they used
to be more blue bloody and they just they just
kind of ran out of money. That happens a lot.

(05:17):
But it seemed like she was on track for a
more normal life until in nineteen eleven, when she is four,
a drunk passenger falls off the street car she's on
with her pregnant mother, and he like pulls her mother
down basically, and she goes into early labor after falling
off the street car and dies from sepsis. Right, so,

(05:40):
just a horrible freak street car accident, like really pretty
fucked up. So that's traumatic, right, you know, watching this
happen as a four year old and then being without
your mom and her dad. This is nineteen oh seven
or eleven. Her dad had been a drinker, and having

(06:00):
your wife an unborn kid die in a street car
accident does not make you slow down the drinking in
nineteen eleven. So he takes what I think we can
all agree is an understandable, healthy reaction and becomes a
destructive alcoholic and abandons his family to dig the Panama Canal. Right,
tale as old as time. We've all been there once

(06:22):
or twice, right, you know, Yeah, that's where you and
I met Andrew digging the Panama Canal, and they kept
yelling at us, there's already a canal. Stop digging holes.
But we said, fuck you. You know, I won't do
what you tell me.

Speaker 4 (06:34):
I read you were really you had your You had
your mindset on Canal two.

Speaker 2 (06:39):
Canal too.

Speaker 3 (06:40):
Electric boogle is very admirable.

Speaker 2 (06:43):
Yeah, we're gonna make it even bigger, and we're gonna
kill even more guys from.

Speaker 3 (06:46):
Fucking malaria malaria two.

Speaker 2 (06:50):
So he goes to the Panama Canal and, like everyone
who goes to dig in the Panama Canal. He dies
horribly almost immediately. Right, That's that's what digging the Anama
Canal is, as you are signing up to die from
a mosquito or get drowned in fucking like wet concrete.

Speaker 1 (07:08):
Right.

Speaker 2 (07:10):
If you want to learn more about that sort of thing,
listen to Wait, is it the Panama Canal or was
the Hoover damn and the song the Highwayman one of
the two? Either way? Listen to the song the Highwaymen
by the Highwayman A.

Speaker 3 (07:22):
Just think of any major work.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
Oh, he was a damn builder, He was a damn bilder.

Speaker 4 (07:26):
Yeah, sorry, okay, including modern times though. Yeah, it's made
by a crime against humanity. There's no way to do
it without committing a criming A.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
Yeah, you're gonna have to kill a certain number shitload
of people, right, yeah. So yeah, he leaves Ruby and
her siblings orphaned, but he abandons them before he orphans them,
so it's fine. So she grows up in a series
of foster situations. She is separated from her siblings right away.
She is bullied horribly as a little girl because she's

(07:59):
an orphan and little kids are fucking psychopaths. To quote
another great stand up comedian, Donald Glover, they're little hitlers, right,
They're like, oh, look a little girly lost her whole family.
Let's kick her.

Speaker 3 (08:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
So Ruby comes to hate school, not surprising. The one
thing she has going for her is that one of
her older sisters, who's a young adult or I think
she's actually think she's probably sixteen or seventeen, But that's
as good as being an adult in this day and age,
was a vaudeville dancer, right, And so Ruby gets really
interested in entertainment and her sister helps her kind of
get into theater. She drops out of school at age

(08:35):
fourteen and starts working. And again, you're basically an adult
at fourteen at this socioeconomic level, right, This is not
just the US. You're legally an adult in a lot
of Europe at this point in time. And by age
sixteen she is a chorus girl in a nightclub. So
there's you have to assume some like people taking physical

(08:58):
advantage of her. We would we call this pedophilia to day.
I think that's fair to call it then, but also
that's not what people would have seen it as, right.
They would see her as an adult right, not to
say that that's not still fucked up. That's just the
way things were back then. This is nineteen twenty three
when she starts working as a chorus girl in a nightclub,
So she is getting started in her showbiz career, while

(09:21):
Frank Fay is kind of like he is like near
the peak of his fame and prestige right, like he
is selling out that This is right before he has
his ten week run at the Palace, so he hasn't
like he hasn't quite hit his peak yet, but he's
rising to his peak, right. And so at the time
she is starting as a chorus girl, she would see
him as like one of the big this is one
of the major stars right in her feet, the guy.

(09:44):
This is the guy. He's got a lot of power.
He's you know, she doesn't want to be exactly doing
what he's doing, right, but like she would see him
as someone to look up to because of the level
of success that he's had. He can do something for
he can make her career right obviously. So you know,
there's a number of things that are potentially we can
see unhealthy about the dynamic that's going to form. Although

(10:04):
it's not going to go where you'd expect it to.
For a while, Ruby was stuck at the middle rung
of her field. She makes she's a good dancer, She's
constantly working right, and in order to make extra cash,
she moonlights as a dance instructor for gay and lesbian speakeasies,
which is pretty cool. Like what this is. By the way,
Ruby becomes Barbara Stanwick. This is her initial name.

Speaker 3 (10:27):
She's cool with the.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
Gays, which is nice, you know, given this period of time.
She initially becomes acquainted with Frank Fay in the mid
nineteen twenties, probably right around the time he has that
big ten week stand at the Palace, thanks to her
friendship with a guy named Oscar Levant, and Oscar Levant
is a pianist who had performed many times with Faye
and become one of his friends. In the mid and

(10:49):
late twenties, she starts doing better and better. Right, she
gets recognized, she starts getting acting gigs, and by kind
of like the mid twenties, she is performing in Broadway shows.
And because she is now becoming a star in her
own right, she's kind of a small star now while
Frank's a big one. But you need a better name
than Ruby whatever the fuck her last name was, because

(11:09):
it's forgettable, right, So she picks the stage name Barbara Stanwick. Now,
she falls in love first with one of her co stars,
a man with the incredible name Rex Cherryman. The two
break up in early nineteen twenty eight, and there's kind
of a will they won't they thing going on for
a while, maybe they'll get back together, but then he
dies of sepsis during a sea trip to Europe to perform,

(11:33):
because that's just how people died back there.

Speaker 3 (11:35):
Yeah, you know, that's just what went down.

Speaker 2 (11:38):
Yeah, yeah, sepsis. I hardly know sis. So he's dead
as shit. She's sad as shit, and then levant tries
to cheer his friend up by introducing her to his
other friend, Frank Fay, thinking the two would hit it off.
They did not. In fact, they seem to hate each
other at first, and in Ruby's case at least, this
is with good reason, because Frank is immediately attracted to

(12:02):
Barbara Stanwick, who she's like young at this point, right,
like she's just barely twenty something like that.

Speaker 3 (12:10):
What the fuck? What is this.

Speaker 2 (12:12):
Nineteen twenty eight? She was born in nineteen oh seven,
so she's twenty one years old, right, and he's in
he's almost forty, so there's quite a bit of an
age gap between the two of them, but it's also
less weird at this period of time and in this
industry anyway. Like he immediately has a crush on her, right,
but he doesn't want to admit that and flirt with her,

(12:34):
and she thinks he's attractive, but he starts by negging her, right,
Like he's an early practitioner of negging. And I'm going
to quote from Victoria Williams's book here. After Fay's show
at the Palladium, Levant brought Barbara and Walda, which is
one of her friends and colleagues, backstage. They entered phase
dressing room. As he was removing his makeup, he was

(12:54):
charming and beguiling. He announced he was hungry and that
as soon as he finished taking off his makeup he
was going to arrest Drut, where he said they serve
the best food in town. They really know how to
serve food in this place. Fay went on a little
table in a quiet corner, soft music, and it's like
he's kind of setting her up. Barbara was ready to
accept the invitation. When the dressing room door opened and
in walked a beautiful woman who said, are you ready

(13:15):
for dinner? Frank be with you right away, Fay said.
As he put on his coat, he turned to his
guests and said, you must try this place. The food
is really delicious. And he like sets this up. He's
like really making her think that they're going to go
out together. He's talking about it like that. And he
has set it up with this other lady ahead of time,
knowing he was going to meet her, and knowing that
levant is trying to hook them up. He'd probably he'd

(13:38):
seen her on stage, so he knew that he was
into her. He sets this up specifically to pull the
rug out from onto her because he's an asshole, right, Yeah,
he's such a dick. And in fact, as he leaves
with this other lady, he stops and turns back to
Barbara and says, you should come back and see me
again sometime, and then goes off on a date with
this other woman. Now this is a transparent ployee. He's

(14:01):
trying to make her like desperate. He's trying to, like,
you know, it's obvious what he's trying to do, right,
And Barbara doesn't bite, right. In fact, she doesn't do anything.
She doesn't call him, she doesn't like approach him again,
although she doesn't do anything to avoid future contact with
him either, right, Like, she doesn't do either of those things.

(14:22):
So you know she's she's not like falling for it,
but she's also not being like fuck this guy entirely, right.

Speaker 3 (14:28):
It's not working, but it's not not working.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
Right, And I think this is part of what attracts Frank,
is that she doesn't fall for the bait, and so
he calls her directly a few days later and is like, hey,
do you want to meet me for dinner?

Speaker 3 (14:43):
Right?

Speaker 2 (14:43):
So she kind of wins, and this is I love
Barbara Stanwick. She says, thank you, Yes, absolutely, that sounds great.
I'll meet you at you know whatever restaurant at whatever time, right,
And they set up a date and she stands his
ass up so you can see there, you know, which
it sounds like these two might be kind of made
for each other.

Speaker 3 (15:02):
Right, Yeah, that's pretty good.

Speaker 2 (15:04):
Actually, So she expects him to call her after this
and be like pissed off, right, that's kind of what
she had been hoping. But Faye, again, he takes things
in stride and he maintains radio silence, so neither calls
the other for two weeks, and then Barbara talks to
their mutual friend Levant and is like, hey, could you
call Frank and invite him to dinner? And I'm going

(15:25):
to show up at the dinner, but don't you know
you don't need to tell him that. So Frank asks
his friend who else is going to be there, and
Lavatte doesn't lie, and he's like, well, Barbara, Stanwick's going
to be there, And so as soon as Frank here's that,
he hatches places, yeah, I'll be there. We'll all have
a dinner together. And then he no shows again. So
at this point Barbara might have been it seems to

(15:47):
be like kind of veering towards fuck this guy. But
then for the next two weeks, wherever she shows up
for dinner or lunch or at like a bar or whatever,
whenever she shows up to like watch a performance, he's there.
He's always there, everywhere she winds up going, and he's
always there with a different beautiful woman. Right no matter

(16:07):
where she goes, there's Frank Fay and he's always on
a date. And she doesn't learn this until later but Frank,
he's got a lot of connections, and he's a lot
of money. He's been both I think probably paying people
to stalk her and also just like using talking to
other people he knows to like figure out where she's
going and scheduling dates with random women for the sole

(16:28):
purpose of like making her watch him make out with
other people. So they're not in a relationship, and this
is already one of the most toxic relationships I've ever
heard of.

Speaker 3 (16:41):
I mean, I guess this is juicy. It's so bonkers, it's.

Speaker 2 (16:45):
So nuts, and like Barbara is the good guy in this,
but she's definitely there's some toxicity coming from her too. Right, So,
after a couple of weeks, he shows up at a
fancy restaurant when Stanleyck and Lavaunt are about to have
dinner think with a couple of mutual friends, and he
sits down at the table and he and Barbara immediately
start insulting each other. Right, they just start going to

(17:07):
town at each other, you know, like letting out all
of this like frustration over this last couple of weeks
of fucking around, and eventually their friend Levant, who has
judged the vibe properly stops them. It's like, you too
obviously want to fuck. Will you just do it already
and stop with this bullshit, Like I know you both,
like you're clearly into each other and you're just both

(17:27):
toxic psychos. Stop it. Just get laid, you know, and
it works. Levant's like he called it. They're like, yeah,
you know what, fuck it. And so they start dating, right,
they start going out. They start you know, uh, banging
the nasties, you know, bumping uglies, twiddling the what Sophie, Sophie,

(17:48):
you can't say sex or fucked on a podcast, We'll
get arrested.

Speaker 3 (17:53):
That's true. That is true.

Speaker 2 (17:55):
The code, there's a haze code called yeah yeah. So
they start noodling the whirlpool, so to speak. They start dating,
and she falls head over heels in love with Frank
right very very quickly, you know, once they're actually they
drop the pretense to start seeing each other, and he
seems to fall in love as well. They are both

(18:18):
obsessed with each other, and in Barbara's case, she's obsessed
with him enough to the point that, like she is
willing to give up her career and she at this
point is fairly big, right, like she is now a
major name on a marquee. She's getting some pretty juicy
she's not quite a leading lady yet, but she's getting
some really juicy like Broadway roles, right. And she's tells

(18:40):
openly like, I'm willing to kind of give up my
career in order to be like a full time wife, right,
And that made out because she's obviously very good, she's
very dedicated to her career. You have to think in
terms of making sense of this, this is a girl
who lost her entire family very young and has never
had one, has never had that kind of emotional stability. Yes,
so she I think, and that's what That's what her

(19:02):
biographer rights. It's basically she is desperate for that kind
of stability At this point. It matters more to her
than this career.

Speaker 3 (19:09):
That she's got.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
Now, Frank is an alcoholic. This should not be surprising
to anyone. It's not an uncommon situation for a major
performer today and it certainly was not back then. They
start their relationship when he's sober, right he had I
mean he's an alcoholic because he had been. He had
gone sober because it was causing him problems, right, even

(19:34):
during the height of his time at the palace. He
misses shows semi regularly, left to cancel suddenly because he's
like too sick from getting fucked up. So during one
of their initial dates, like no one at the table
is allowed to drink whenever they show up with a
group because Frank isn't drinking, right, And that's the kind
of you know guy he is, is like, no one
else at the table can be drinking if I'm not drinking,

(19:57):
And you know, this is one of those things. Also,
he's got an entourage, so whenever they're like hanging out
or traveling around, it's never just Frank or Frank and Barbara.
It's Frank and Barbara and his personal barber and his manicurist,
and his songwriter and his pianist and his composer and
his tailor and his secretary. Like he literally travels with

(20:19):
these people most of the places that he goes. Now
he's sober initially, but he periodically will fall off the wagon,
and when he does, he will go on days long
binges hours or days and hours long is a short one.
Sometimes he'll be drinking for days, but all of his
binges in the same way with him staggering to Saint

(20:41):
Patrick's Cathedral to confess his sins. For an idea of
how committed a drunk this guy was when he was drinking,
I want to read you the text of a poem
that he kept on him at all times while traveling.
The wonderful love of a beautiful maid, and the staunch
true love of a man, the love of a baby unafraid,
which hath exist since life began. But the greatest love,

(21:02):
the love of love, transcending even that of a mother,
is the tender, the passionate, the infinite love of one
drunken bum for another.

Speaker 3 (21:11):
Pretty good poem.

Speaker 2 (21:14):
Yeah, it kind of hit, so Barbara would would have
been aware. Number One, there's stories about this guy's drinking.

Speaker 3 (21:21):
Right.

Speaker 2 (21:21):
He's been arrested a bunch of times, He's been in
tons of fights. He is a fame. He is famous
in the twenties for being an out.

Speaker 3 (21:29):
Of control alcoholic.

Speaker 2 (21:31):
That's not easy, right, Like you could buy cocaine at
the store. Yeah, yeah, you can buy cocaine at the store,
and this guy's a famous alcoholic. That's like being a
famous beer lover in Wisconsin, right, Yeah, you know, like
we don't have the technology to be an alcoholic the
way this man is now, this guy is a quint
from Jaws level drinker.

Speaker 3 (21:52):
So it's like having a coke problem at Studio fifty four.

Speaker 2 (21:55):
It's like right, right, yeah, It's like it's like the
fucking bathroom attendant at CBGB's being I came in, I
think you might be doing.

Speaker 3 (22:01):
Too much blow.

Speaker 2 (22:02):
Yeah, It's like John Dolorean sitting you down about your
coke problem. So Barbara would have been aware that this
thirty seven year old man she'd started seeing it twenty
one had a checkered past. For one thing, he'd already
been divorced three times. His first marriage was to a
fellow vaudeville star, and it seems to have ended two

(22:23):
years after the marriage due to infidelity because he cheats
on her a bunch. Probably one of the people he
cheats on her with is his second wife, who divorces
him after two months. That's a bad marriage due to
again rampant infidelity. Within three months of their divorce being
made official, Frank is jailed for refusing to pay alimony.

(22:45):
So his third marriage is his first wife, who he
marries again, and he makes her quit her because she's
also like a performer he makes her quit her career
in entertainment after they get married for the second time,
and then the two up again immediately because again he
cheats on air constantly, so not a good husband. And

(23:06):
it's not just the cheating. He also has a tendency
to get crazy, drunk, fly off the handle, and beat
the shit out of his partners. He is very physically abusive.
He is again noted as being a wife beater in
the twenties when like, as long as you're just like
slapping ry, that's not even considered spousal abuse back then, right,

(23:27):
Like he is abusive for the era, Like guys who
are putting their wives in the hospital are sitting him
down and being like, man, you gotta cooling, you know,
Like that's the level of bad husband.

Speaker 3 (23:39):
This man is the time the time really puts a yes.
It's just like.

Speaker 2 (23:45):
Yeah, yeah, Like the Jonathan wife beater, the man who
coined the wife beater shirt, is sitting this guy down
and talking to him damn like he's a shitty husband.
And even outside him. And again, he's not just beating women.
He assaults every He loves assaulting people. He particularly is
abusive to women. But this is just also generally a
physically violent man, right, Like, I think we've established that now.

(24:09):
He's not a stable guy. He's been arrested. He's one
of the first drunk drivers. He's gonna it's not even
illegal to have a drink. You can have a cocktail
in your hand drinking in the twenties, and he's getting
arrested for drunk driving. It's nuts. How drunk a driver
this guy is. He had also already again at the

(24:30):
height of right, at this period of time, there's weeks
where he's making three hundred grand in a week in
modern money. He's already declared bankruptcy several times. You know,
some of that alimony, right, Some of that's because he
refuses to buy a home or live anywhere but luxury hotels. Right,
Barbara knows all of this. That is important to note. Right,
I'm not again the abuse that he is going to

(24:52):
do over the course of the relationship. I'm not saying
that that's I'm not mitigating that at all. But she
is aware of all of this when she starts the relationship, right, Like,
she does go into this with her eyes open. Obviously
she's very young. You know, there's a power and balance here,
but she's heard of him, right, none of this is
a mystery. She also knows that he gambles uncontrollably when

(25:13):
he's on a bender, which is another reason for all
of the bankruptcies. For whatever reason, in spite of all
of this, Barbara Stanwick really does fall for this guy.
And I think again a lot of it is that
he does give her this sense of emotional stability, that
she's got a center to her world.

Speaker 3 (25:29):
Right.

Speaker 2 (25:29):
She's never had a home in the sense of another
person that she belongs with before, and that's just I mean,
that's the most intoxicating thing in the world, really, right.
I think we can all understand that, especially if you're
someone who's never had that, like she will do anything
to keep this in her life. So they get engaged,

(25:52):
and then they almost immediately get unengaged. And I'm going
to quote from an article on Standwith published by Meredith
Grau here when the duo argued they are argued tooth
and nail and hammer. It was during one of their
many pointless but explosive arguments that they temporarily broke up.
Faye took a trip to Saint Louis on a two
month engagement and Barbara devoted herself to burlesque, evaded friends,
and became a near ghost. Burlesquwood in end that burlesque

(26:15):
is a show, right, Like it's not burles day, that's
like an actual play. Burlestwood end its Broadway run as
a local triumph on July fourteenth, but not before Faye
would fake a breakdown just to drag Barbara to his
feigned bedside and pop the question. So that's a summary
of what happened. It actually makes things sound up less
fucked up than they were. So here's the whole story.
So they break up, right, she goes off and is

(26:37):
a huge success. This is like it's a book of
Mormon level hit. This is the biggest thing on Broadway.
She's on Broadway for months, then she's touring around the country.
She's the leading lady in this show. This is a
huge fucking deal. Right, And Fay has continued to perform,
but like he is there separated, and he just starts

(26:58):
calling her almost every night talking about how he's filled
with grief, he can't stand it. He thinks he's going
to kill himself, and he always is drunk. He's fallen
off the wagon. He's telling her like I can't stop drinking.
I'm destroying myself because you're not here anymore, right, Like
I can't stand to be without you. And one night,
one of Frank's, one of their mutual friends, calls Barbara

(27:20):
and he's like, hey, man, Frank is I've never even
seen him like this? Like he is so drunk right
and in such a bad way. He can't work, he
can't even sleep anymore, right, Like we got to do something.
He's going to die, you know, like like this guy friends,
it is like this is deathly serious. You got to
help me do something to say Frank. So she's like,

(27:41):
is he on the phone? Like can he come to
the phone now? And their friend puts Frank on the phone,
and Frank gets on the phone and he just sounds
ruined right, just absolutely like barely can talk drunk. He
tells her his heart's broken, that like he's just ready
to die because he can't live without her, And Barbara's
resolve crumbles and she tells him, if you can sober up,

(28:06):
I'll get engaged to you again. The next moment, as
soon as she says this, his voice changes. He sounds
sober because he hasn't been drunk at all this whole time,
all been fake, every one of these calls. He's been
faking it, right, He never fell off the wagon, at
least as far as we know. And he's immediately just

(28:27):
sobers his voice up and says, all right, well, in
that case, why don't you get on a train tomorrow
and we'll get engaged, you know, take a train to
meet and we'll get engaged and we'll get married right away.

Speaker 3 (28:33):
This christ oh.

Speaker 2 (28:35):
Yeah, oh yeah, just the mmm. That's the good toxic,
abusive relationship stuff. We love to see it. We don't
love to see it. And you know, what a what
a performance it is a great I mean, look, man,
he's not a bad actor.

Speaker 3 (28:50):
Just the swil god that's so fucked up.

Speaker 2 (28:53):
Bad husband, bad fiance, bad person, sure, but not a
bad actor. You know who else will lie about destroying
themselves with alcohol in order to get married to Barbara Stanwick?

Speaker 3 (29:07):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (29:07):
Probably Blue Apron. I doubt Lasik would, but Blue Apron might.
Here's ads Ah, we're back. Which sponsor do you think
would lie about destroying their body and brain with alcohol
in order to keep Barbara Stanwick in love with them?

Speaker 3 (29:28):
I think? I mean, obviously, any of the mattress ones.

Speaker 2 (29:30):
Any of the mattresses. Oh my god, Casper, Yeah, yeah,
saw Casper actually would kill themselves drinking in order to
make Barbara stand with regret dumping them.

Speaker 3 (29:41):
That's right, It's not a lie, it's a way of life.

Speaker 2 (29:44):
Yeah, it's just how Casper rolls, you know. That's why
they're a ghost. They already did it, so he's just
lied to her the way it was. It's written in
the biography, Williams wrote, Barbara is kind of aware that
he must have been lying, But I don't know if
she is or isn't. I don't know if she gets
fooled by this initially, whatever is the case, She takes

(30:07):
a train to him, they get engaged again, and they
get married. Right, maybe she was aware, but it just
she just was in love with this guy and she
just needed this in her life, right. I think that's
probably what's going on here, you know.

Speaker 4 (30:21):
I mean I think from the outside of a lot
of like toxic relationships too, it is just like this
thing where it's like a little bit yes, little bit no,
Like you feel like it feels like people kind of
know but like can't bring themselves to really confront it.

Speaker 3 (30:33):
And that's how it is.

Speaker 2 (30:35):
No, And like, also with all of these toxic relationships
and with all of these celebrity relationships and shit that
are so seems so poisonous, there's gotta be good stuff
here too, right, There's something she's getting that she loves
and there are good times, right, And there's aspects of
him again, there's a reason why he's so charming and beloved, right,
like he is. She's getting something out of this. And

(30:59):
I'm not saying that to like blame her on it
or something, but like you have to assume this is
not We're not like, it's not just bad stuff, right,
It never is. Otherwise why why would she be so
committed to this? Right? Yeah, that's the way abusive relation
and just toxic. Even when it's not abusive, and it's
just like codependent or stuff, there is, there's always something
there that keeps one or both people coming back.

Speaker 3 (31:20):
Right.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
So she finishes the current run of her touring show,
and then she retires, Well, she actually gets sick right
at the end of it, but either way, she finishes
burlesque and she retires. Now this is not a full retirement, right,
it means that she no longer has an independent career.
Fay is touring on his own, like he's doing you know,

(31:42):
the Frank Fay Show basically, and she starts performing as
part of his shows. Right now, Oh, she makes a
lot of money doing this. She is independently getting paid,
and she is getting paid very well, the equivalent of
probably probably a million or more a year, right or
somewhere in that, like at least high six figures. She's

(32:03):
she's making very good money, right, But what she's also
doing is she is clearly I think I don't know
if it's that he asked her to play second fiddle
to his ambition or she was just immediately willing to.
It's probably a little bit of both, right, that he
wanted her, but also I don't think it's entirely that,
because he is actually really supportive of her having a career.

(32:23):
I do think her attempting to quit is largely just
her really wanting to commit to the relationship. I think
that's a big part of it because of some of
the stuff that's going to happen next. So this is
a little more complicated, right, I don't want to It's
not just him being like I can't stand to have
her be a big star or I can't stand to
have her have a life outside of me. She is

(32:45):
really motivated by the idea of dedicating herself for to
this relationship. That is part of what's happening here. As
the twenties are kind of starting to come to an end,
Frank is looking out at the entertainment landscape, and he's
a smart guy, and he's an innovative guy. He understands
he's got good instincts, right, and he sees that Vaudeville's

(33:06):
days are numbered, right, this is not going to be
is already starting to fade. He can kind of see
there's not as much money coming in, there's not as
much audience. There's more entertainment out there, right, Like Vaudeville's
days are kind of over. And he can see that
the traveling variety acts and these big stage productions that
you know, cost a lot of money and involve a

(33:27):
lot of people that have dominated entertainment all his life
are not going to be around forever. You know, the
radio is a bigger thing, moving pictures are increasingly significant,
and you know, we're coming to the end of the
Roaring twenties, so the bottom is about to fall. Out
of the economy, which is going to make those big productions,
those big, huge touring shows and these big elaborate stage

(33:47):
shows a lot harder to afford, both of the people
putting them on and for people to buy tickets to. Right,
So he makes a bold decision right before the depression
hits to break up with his production company. He like
breaks a contract to leave them. And this is the
number one vaudeville production company. They have the ability to
blacklist him from like the industry almost right, they don't

(34:10):
do this, but that's the thing he's risking. He takes
a major risk to leave them because he sees that
like the bottom's about to fall out, and he wants
to get into something that he can make work in
this new era. So he starts performing totally independently with
a skeleton crew of you know, some stage hands and
a couple other you know, entertainers and his wife, and

(34:31):
they're doing longer and longer sets. And now he is
being up there for something that is like a Netflix,
you know, especially like a full hour type deal. Like
he's doing full stand up routines effectively, you know, in
something that's very close to a modern sense and he's
again he's a major pioneer. He starts doing something that's
kind of weird owl adjacent or like Tom Larrr adjacent.

(34:54):
Tom lair who just died, the greatest musical comedian of
all time, one of also one of the greatest men
mathematicians of all time, also invented the jello shot. Incredible man,
Tom Lairr. Yes, inventor of the jello shot so that
he could smuggle alcohol into like army gatherings. Amazing man,
just sense.

Speaker 3 (35:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:16):
So, and he's not the only there's another musical comedian
right around the same time who's also an influence on
like Tom Lairr and and you know later guys. But
he is one of the first like musical parody artists.

Speaker 3 (35:30):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (35:30):
And it's interesting. The way he does this is a
little is it's not the same as what like Lara
and al are doing. It's really interesting. He'll start with
a popular song and he'll get his musicians to start
playing like Tea for two. That's one of his big bits,
which is like you've heard of ta for two At
this point, it's like a hit song. It's like the
call Me maybe of its Day or the Wet ass

(35:51):
Pussy of its day. Right, those are the two songs,
the only two I've heard of. And what it is
kind of like wet ass pussy because it's smutty, right,
like it is about it's smutty for the day, right,
because it's like about a date.

Speaker 3 (36:08):
Right.

Speaker 2 (36:09):
So every couple of lines, he'll start playing the song
and he'll start singing it, and then he'll stop after
like a line, and he'll break down what doesn't make
sense or is secretly absurd in the song? Right, here's
a reason's cinema sensing it? Yes, exactly exactly. Tea for
two and two for tea, ain't that rich? Here's a

(36:30):
guy that has enough tea for two, so he's gonna
have tea for two. I notice he doesn't say a
word about sugar comedy. This is easy to anyway whatever.
I'd assume lots of it's in the delivery. But you
see what he's doing. He's going through the lyrics of
this song and then he's like riffing on it, right,
he's like making fun of bits about it. And I
think that's interesting because it's the type of bitthesiss is

(36:52):
so modern. You brought up cinema sins because like initially
it was like, oh, he's like kind of a proto
Tom Lair or weird al but honestly, because they're actually
doing full pair of these songs. A better comparison is
like modern YouTube videos where like not just songs, but
like like the Red Letter stuff red Letter Media got fans,
you're like break down a movie. You're like going through
like a whole movie or old and you're like breaking

(37:14):
it down piece by piece and talking in granular to
tale about like what of this movie or video game
or whatever doesn't make sense? Like is like the analog
version of like most of YouTube's big creators are doing now, right,
I think that's such so interesting to me, right, Like, yeah,
he is just like reflexively a very innovative entertainer.

Speaker 3 (37:35):
Yeah, that's sounds genuinely so odd.

Speaker 4 (37:37):
But also it is like I don't like because the
source material is so old, it's so funny to hear
how corny even the like jab is.

Speaker 2 (37:47):
Tea for two, Like how many jokes can you make
about that shit? Man? Yeaeah Yeah, that's his like fucking
hour and a half long video breaking down why the
Phantom Menace sucks is tea for two, So no sugar, eh, yeah,
no sugar huh. So yeah, that's a very creative idea.
And again, you gotta think of how weird it would

(38:08):
be in the nineteen twenty nine to hear like, oh, yeah,
this guy's gonna come on stage and sing a popular
song and instead he's like making fun of the song.
Like idi, like you want to hear this guy make
fun of a song slowly Like that's a that's a
weird ask in this period of time, but it works.
This is like one of his most popular bits. And again,
like he's just he's just moving from success to success

(38:30):
at this point up to kind of like the start
of the Great Depression, and right really right before the
Great where I think we're like in twenty nine here,
like right before things really fall off a cliff. Hollywood
starts calling his wife right because Barbara, she's made a
big name for herself, even though she's technically quote unquote retired.
Everyone knows who Barbara Stanwick is, and these you know,

(38:55):
we're now in the talkie era. Hollywood is looking for
new leading ladies and people. You know, there's talent scouts
that go out to Broadway. They've seen her a lot
of studios are calling and she turns them all down.
Like she's getting like we will make you a movie star,
like we want to give you like picture deals, like
like there's money for you here, and she's like, nah,

(39:16):
my husband likes it over here. He doesn't want to
live in California, and my marriage comes first. And she
just says no, over and over again to all of
these major studio agents, Like fucking studio heads are trying
to beat down her door and she won't do it.
She's not at all tempted because that's not what her
husband wants to do right now. Eventually, the head of

(39:36):
a major studio or an agent for a major studio
figures out how to wear her down, which is they
go to Frank and they're like, hey, we want to
sign you and your wife. You know, you each get
a one picture deal basically, right, we want to try
you both out, and to be fair, it's kind of
a no brainer. I'm sure they're not not interested in
Frank because he's the one of the biggest performers of

(39:57):
the day. It's it's pretty obvious from like a student
a position, Well, these are two of the most famous
popular people on the stage. Let's see if they could
be movie stars. Right, invite them both, and they agree, Right,
I think it's just a matter of the money is
so good, and you know, Vaudeville's kind of falling apart,
and yeah, they both decide, all right, let's give it
a try. And it's when they moved to Hollywood that

(40:19):
the problems really start. And they start with Barbara because
she is a horrible auditioner. She's terrible at auditioning. She
doesn't know how to really like do it, and so
she is supposed to be in this Frank Capra film
and she goes in for the audition and she bombs it,
and Capra's like, Frank Capra calls her a porcupine, which

(40:40):
I is some weird ass twenty sexism. I don't fully
understand what that's supposed to earn. But it's like an
insult for a woman. I don't understand why, but he
calls her a porcupine. And this is actually one of
Frank's very few good moments and very few, like really
actually surprisingly supportive partner moments. So the student video that
Caepra was working with, that that she has this deal

(41:02):
with and she's bombed this audition. He calls Frank Capra,
like he gets him on the phone personally because he's
a star and he can do that, and he's like, look,
I know you saw my wife. I know you didn't
like the live performance. I need to show you a
test screening of her, and I think it was her
doing some lines from burlesque or something like that, because like,

(41:25):
if you didn't think she'd she must have just bombed
the audition because she's great, Like, trust me, she's great.
And Frank is such a big name that Capra's like, okay,
I'll do it, and he watches this test. Frank Faye
brings over this test screening and as soon as Capra
actually sees her performing on stage, he's like, oh my god,
I'm a fucking idiot. This woman is one of the
most talented actors of her generation, of any generation, and

(41:47):
he casts her immediately, and that's actually like a really
good like Frank, That's why I'm saying, like he's not
anti her having a career. Weirdly enough, this is going
to cause problems for them later, but like he is
really supportive at the start she gets her movie career
started because he goes to the mat after she bombs
an audition and make sure she gets the job. So

(42:10):
that's one good thing that Frank Faye ever did in
his fucking life.

Speaker 3 (42:14):
There you go.

Speaker 2 (42:15):
Now, this is not a Barbara Standwick podcast, and I'm
not going to do but I'm not going to talk
in detail.

Speaker 4 (42:21):
About Eve a comment or write it if you want
Robert's Barbara Standwick podcast.

Speaker 2 (42:25):
Well, she did murder those children, but in her defense,
those kids were coming right for her. You know who
did it? Who amongst just hasn't killed a couple of kids, right?
You know, it happens. It happens. So by the mid thirties,
Barbara Standwick, as soon as she gets this movie, she's
in this, she's a huge hit. She just immediately a
massive star. Her career is skyrockets from from there on up.

(42:48):
By the mid thirties, she's one of the leading ladies
in pre war Hollywood. She is just massive. She's fucking great.
She's really good at this. It becomes clear to everybody,
and she is just like on a rocket ship to
success from here on out right. That's that's the Barbara
Stanwick story. Things go less well for Frank Fay after

(43:09):
this point in time, his first movie, because they get
this one picture dealer each get a picture. His first
movie does pretty well, it's a modest success, but afterwards
he just doesn't catch on as an actor. He's just
not for whatever reason. I don't know why. Maybe he's
picking bad scripts or whatever. It just doesn't work out
for him right and the start, it doesn't help. At

(43:30):
the start of his career, trying to be an actor
coincides with the Great Depression really hitting, which wipes out
a lot of the money that had made his old
career possible. So there's not as much money in touring
or doing the kind of shows he'd been doing. And movies,
you know, are more economical, they make more because you
pay to put him on once and then you keep

(43:50):
making money from him, right, So, like you know, it's
it's better a business to be in. But he's just
not doing well in it, and eventually the offer is
kind of slow to a trickle and stop coming in.
While Barbara Stanwick becomes a fucking household name. I'm gonna
quote from an article by in the New York Times.
As her star began to shine, fase dimmed, he drank,

(44:12):
was relentlessly abusive towards her and the child Dion they'd adopted. However,
not only did she stick by Faye, but she also
put his faltering career first. She insisted on introducing herself
as Missus Frank Fay. We have to wonder what in
her needed to stick by Faye way past the obvious
expiration date of the marriage. A determination to rebut the
Hollywood gossip's prophesying divorce, a stick to your man philosophy,

(44:36):
her fear of going out in society, an inability to
have sustained friendships with other women. Yes, yes, yes, yes,
and also gratitude to Frank for having supported her career
at a crucial time. But still, her life was actually
in danger because of his violent nature, as was that
of little Dion, about whom it must be said she
didn't seem much concerned. So he's getting increasingly. He had

(44:59):
kind of kept himself on a leash. He is off
the chain. He's drinking more, he is beating the shit out,
he's beating their kid too, to the extent that, like again,
her life is in danger being with this man. That's
how out of control he is. Kind of at his worst,
this isn't consistent, but when he hits rock bottom, that's
how bad this is. Right now, Again, as the New

(45:20):
York Times this is her obituary noted, she's not a
great mom. She's not like she's not necessarily putting the
kid first. So she's not a hero here. But Frank
is definitely the villain. And his physical abuse of Barbara
did escalate to the point where again she could have
could have killed her, and she does eventually dump his
ass in nineteen thirty five, and at this point when

(45:43):
she leaves him, it seems like he's probably heading towards
an early grave, right. He is increasingly you know, he's
not making money, he's not getting work. He's able to
tour some he can do, but it's like not the
way he had been living, and he can't, Like he
hasn't been raining in his expenses. So he is broke,
Like he's constantly going broke. He's gambling what he makes.

(46:06):
And yeah, it looks like this is kind of the end,
right And again, if this had been the end, we
wouldn't do it. Behind the bastards on this guy, because
like he's a dick, he's an abusive husband, but like
that's just not not really the bastard story yet, like's
not me yea if we did an episode on every

(46:27):
famous person who was like abusive to their spouse, Yeah,
like that's just a different show. Not to minimize that,
but it's a different show. We're getting to like the
wild act of bastardury here, Like that's what's coming next.
So it gets worse than this, folks, it gets a
lot worse. So a big part of why Frank had
failed in Hollywood. You know, I said, it's not entirely

(46:47):
clear to me why I forgot I had written this
part because there is one really clear reason, which is
that he's super anti Semitic. And the heads of most
of the major Hollywood studios this point are Jewish guys, right,
And it's the kind of thing if his movies had
been runaway hits, they probably would have ignored that because
they do for other guys, right, because that's Hollywood. All

(47:09):
do we all know about mel Gibson, right, But again,
the fact that he's a famous anti semi and that
his movies aren't doing great like is a big part
of what destroys him in Hollywood. And it's very funny
to be that there's a quote from one of his peers,
Milt Joseph Berg, who is you know, a Jewish comedian,

(47:29):
who said of him quote in a business known for
its lack of bigotry, he was a bigot. This was
no secret, but widely known and well substantiated. Right, So
he is just like that's a big part of like
why he can't get shit working for him in Hollywood.
And then the FDR years kickoff, right, and Frank starts
getting increasingly political. He hates FDR. He calls him a communist.

(47:53):
He starts going on these loud rants about the Jewish
bankers that he believes are behind all of the country's
problems and behind It's weird, like, so the Jewish bankers
caused the depression and also are behind FDR. Who's yeah,
got pulled us out of it? What's going on? Anyway?
He's losing his mind on alcohol here too, as his

(48:13):
old famous friends increasingly step away from him because he
is just he's made himself into a pariah. It's bad
for your career to be associated with Frank. At this point,
he finds a new friend with someone who understands him,
father Charles Kaughlin. Now We've talked about this guy before
on the podcast. Coughlin is a Catholic priest with a
far right radio show. Who is he is a fascist.

(48:37):
He is a proto Nazi. He is one of the
guys who's trying to get the US to go fascist, right.
He's probably the most He is the fucking He's like
Bill O'Reilly mixed with Tucker Carlson, you know, like he
is super influential as a fascist media figure. Coughlin also
believed that Jewish bankers were behind every evil in the country.

(48:57):
He referred to the New Deal as the jew Deal,
and as a result, he and Frank get along famously. Yeah, like,
oh yeah, it's a match made in heaven right here.

Speaker 3 (49:07):
Yeah yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:08):
Now you know who else gets along famously with Father
Charles Coughlin. I probably shouldn't say that. Here's ads ah
and we're back. I don't know why I make that
like that like sound every day. I just you know,

(49:30):
I'm vamping. It's the it's the post. You know, you
just got yourself out of the ad. We just all
diligently listened to the ads, bought the thing and now
you're decompressing.

Speaker 3 (49:41):
Got to do it.

Speaker 2 (49:42):
Yeah, and now we're decompressing, and we're hearing about his
friendship with Charles Coughlin, right, and just kind of his
this is him, this is him spinning out right in
the late thirties, Cliff nester Off writes, quote Face struggled
in film and radio for the next ten years after
his divorce from from Barbara. His appearances were spotty and
mostly unsuccessful. He had made too many enemies and few

(50:02):
cared to help him out. Maurice Zolotow wrote that the
self destructive pattern has hampered his career at various times.
He has been a vaudeville MC nightclub, comic, radio star,
in motion picture hero. Fay has been successful in all
of these. He has also been a failure in all
of these. Fay has been washed up more times than
any other big time star, you know, And that's that's
kind of like the state of his career at this point. Yeah,

(50:25):
for an idea of like what a famous dick this
guy is at this point, I probably should have put
this up earlier, but it's very funny people at a
Hollywood start telling a joke. This is kind of like
while he's still married to Barbara Stanwick, which Hollywood actor
has the biggest prick and the answer is Barbara Stanwick, right,
like that, that's how people are talking about him. Right,
his career is over. So by the start of the

(50:49):
World War Two he is in particularly bad odor because
you know, he's basically a Nazi and we're going to
war with those people.

Speaker 1 (50:57):
Right.

Speaker 2 (50:57):
He is on the side of the America First yars
who lived Charles Lindberg and Father Coughlin. So this is
not nothing's it just seems like he's completely fucking doomed.
But just as all seems lost and he is as
washed up as washed up can get, in nineteen forty
four he gets thrown a fucking life preserver, right, and

(51:19):
it's thrown by the most esteemed director in Broadway history,
Antoinette Perry, who is looking to put together the cast
for a new play, Harvey. Have you ever seen the
movie Harvey with Jimmy Stewart.

Speaker 3 (51:32):
YEP, I have not.

Speaker 2 (51:33):
Actually it's a great film, holds on Weirdly enough, it
was filmed in like the fifties. It's written before then, right,
he's doing the stage version in the forties about like
mental health. Like the plot is like the guy played
by Jimmy Staff. Forget what his fucking name is the character,
but the main character is this like rich kid. He's
like the oldest son of like a wealthy family, and

(51:57):
he sees a giant talking rabbit and he's constantly talking
with it. It follows him around. They're always at the
bar drinking together. Elwood, by the way, Elwood, Ellwood, You're right, Elwood.
El would doubt I think something like that. And his
high society family and friends are trying trying to have
him institutionalized, right, because he's clearly crazy, right, so they're
trying to like get him in a mental asylum basically

(52:19):
for being crazy and seeing this rabbit. And weirdly enough,
it still holds up as a good depiction of mental
illness because like the message of it ultimately is that like,
actually Elwood's fine, and like everyone just needs to understand
that he's just different from other people.

Speaker 3 (52:36):
But he's happy.

Speaker 2 (52:36):
He's not hurting anybody, he's not in any danger. He
just sees a rabbit and that's okay.

Speaker 3 (52:41):
You know.

Speaker 2 (52:42):
Like it's actually got like a really modern message about
like neurodiversity, and just like like the Jimmy Stewart version
of this movie holds the fuck up. It's a great
fucking film. You should watch Harvey, and I mean he's
fucking Jimmy Stewart, great actor, weirdly enough, great bomber pilot,
retired as a general in the Air Force. Flew like
fifty missions in World War Two. Jimmy Stewart, quite a life.

(53:07):
I'm surprised you didn't know that. I don't think I did,
George Bailey, Jimmy Stewart during World War Two was a
bomber pilot, flew missions over Western Europe, did the most
dangerous job that existed in the American Army. Like he
flew way more missions than he needed to.

Speaker 4 (53:25):
It's crazy, as you just said that, I must have
asked the same question on a previous episode of Behind
the Bastards, because that just flootered me with Deshavu.

Speaker 2 (53:34):
Yeah, weirdly enough, Jimmy Stewart, great actor. Killed thousands, like
like literally killed thousands of people. Fun guy. Anyway, So
this is before the Jimmy Stewart vers This is like
the play. It starts off as a play. The screenplay
actually wins a Pulitzer Prize, right, So this is a
great screenplay and Antoinette Perry is casting the very first

(53:57):
time this is going to be on Broadway, and she
decides that not only is Frank Fay a good fit
for the play, but she wants him to play the star.
He's going to be Elwood. Right, And this is a
huge deal. I had said, Antoinette Perry is like the
most famous director in Broadway history. Antoinette. The shortened version
of Antoinette is Tony. The Tony Awards are named for

(54:19):
this woman. That's that's who this is. Right. So if
she decides this washed up anti Semite is who I
want as my leading man, that's who's going to be
her leading man, right. And she's very good at what
she does. You know, he's a piece of shit. I'm
not happy that he gets this job that reinvigorates his career,
but he's really good. Like he headlines eighteen hundred performances.

(54:45):
That's like for years this show is on Broadway and
then touring. It's a massive fucking hit and it makes
him rich again, and it turns him into a star again.
And so by the very end of World War Two
he has gotten a second chance stardom, like the kind
of second chance that nobody gets when you are as
down and out as he is, to wind up being

(55:06):
the biggest name on Broadway again after a fall like that,
it's nuts. Yeah, Now, what would you do if you
were disgraced for being a massive bigot and an abusive
spouse and went broke and had your career destroyed and
then suddenly become rich and famous again. You know, you'd

(55:27):
think probably just kind of try to enjoy it, you know,
rebuild your career, keep quiet, chill.

Speaker 3 (55:32):
Out, maybe learn something about yourself growth.

Speaker 2 (55:34):
You learn something a better person.

Speaker 3 (55:37):
Yeah, yeah, of course that's what anyone would do.

Speaker 2 (55:40):
He takes a slightly different tactic. He understands now that
he's famous again, he's got influence and prestige and people
listen to him. He needs to speak up for the downtrodden,
you know, the people that no one else is going
to bat for, right, you know, the people that just
have no one else looking out for them, that that
only he can really, you know, defend and protect. And

(56:02):
obviously this is in nineteen forty five, yeah, forty six,
there's no one who needs protecting more than Francisco Franco,
the fascist dictator of Spain. Now Franco isn't in any
real danger as World War two ends. Obviously he's fine.

(56:24):
Anti communism immediately is how the US pivots. So he's
not no, no, it's common for Franco. But what makes
Faye angry, what makes him want to speak out in
defense of Francisco Franco, is that So the Union for
Theater Workers for actors, and I think basically everybody who's
working in the theater at this point is called Actors Equity.
I don't think it's just actors. Maybe I'm wrong about that,

(56:44):
but anyway, the SAG for theater workers, it may still be.
I don't know a lot about the theater. Whatever it
is to actors Equity is the Union for Theater actors, right,
And so a number of members of Actors Equity. This
isn't an official Actors Equity thing, but a lot of
people with Actors Equity. In late nineteen forty five held
a rally to raise money for a group called Spanish

(57:06):
Refugee Appeal. Now, the Spanish Civil War had ended long ago, right,
Franco is well in charge, and what the refuge Appeal is?
Number one, they're raising money to support leftists and political
dissidents who have had to flee Spain, and they are
also begging publicly and trying to get other governments to
pressure FRANCO to stop arresting, torturing and murdering leftists. Right,

(57:30):
They're specifically a big part of it is they are
attacking the Catholic Church and trying to shame them because
the Catholic Church is actively hunting down and helping to
murder leftists, right anarchists and the like, So they're unhappy
about that and trying to stop it. Nesterhoff writes, quote
Fay was furious. He said their criticism was an attack
on Catholicism as a whole. Fay demanded Actors Equity investigate

(57:53):
each anti FRANCO member for Unamerican activity. The House Committee
on American Activities acted on face suggestion, and the Actors
were vetted. The New York Times reported that Fay held
no brief against any member of Actors Equity for political beliefs.
He resented, however, that EQUITY members should be party to
rallies that condemn religious groups. Equity president Bert Lyttel objected

(58:13):
to the political investigation. Equity members have a wide latitude
of interests and beliefs that they may practice and advocate
as private citizens. Actors Equities stood by Brooks, Darling, Molina
and Osato. Those are the people organizing this rally. Rather
than expel them from his union, lytel cinsured Frank Fay
for conduct prejudicial to the association or its membership. So
he gets Congress to investigate these people for trying to

(58:37):
raise money for fucking refugees and beg Franco in the
church to stop having people murdered. And it gets them
fucking investigated, and to the credit of Actors Equity in
the Union head they go after Frank and they're like, no, no, no,
you're the one being it. They're allowed to do this
privately on their own. You are trying to destroy their

(58:57):
Fuck you man, so this, you know, he gets in
trouble over this, and it's a bad look, especially in
nineteen forty five. But the fact that the Union refuses
to back Frank's play doesn't mean no one supported him.
There's a lot of right wing and fat just outright
fascist Americans who have been kind of biting their tongues

(59:20):
all of World War two and are really they're frustrated
that we're allied with the USS are. They're frustrated that
we're fighting the fascists. You know, they're real bummed about
all of this stuff. And by the end of the war,
they've been having to keep quiet for so long that
they just are filled to the brim with anger at
what side the US picked in this. There's also a

(59:41):
lot of American francoists who love, you know, what Frank
is saying about their favorite dictator who's still alive, and
these guys start, fascists being the same in every era,
immediately mass mailing death threats to Actors Equity and to
the guys at Actors Equity, like to the people who
had done this rally that Frank had called out right,

(01:00:02):
it's a very modern thing. This right wing celebrity starts
complaining about a thing he doesn't like, and his fans
start threatening to murder people on his behalf right, same
as it ever was. Yeah, pretty standard standard stuff, right.
One journalist at the time wrote, under the guys of
being deeply pained over the comments about the Catholic Church.
These organs of native fascism have been blowing the familiar

(01:00:23):
tunes in all their repulsive cacophony. They say, that the
issue is religion, but they are no more concerned with
religion than were their political masters. The cutthroats of Berlin
consider Frank Fay himself the main attraction in the current
whoopie do. His anti Semitism is well known, and his
numerous brawls on that account are common gossip. Yeah, pretty good, Yeah,
well written.

Speaker 4 (01:00:42):
Yeah, God, imagine imagine a contemporary Oh yeah, like journalist
being that good.

Speaker 2 (01:00:50):
Yeah. Yeah, it's unfortunately are due. Yeah, so we can
look back on this and say, obviously, like that's what's happening, right,
Like obviously this is like a fair description of what
he's doing. But like a lot of fascists, Frank was
convinced that he was right and that the rest of

(01:01:12):
the world secretly agreed with him. So, drunk on his
newfound fame and enraged with frustration at how World War
Two it ended, he decided to hold a rally in
January of nineteen forty six, celebrating fascism in all of
its guises. Now that's a bold move in January nineteen

(01:01:34):
forty six, But Frank had that special kind of brain
damage that God only gives to men who get too
famous for standing in front of a crowd and telling jokes.
So he figured, there's no way this is going to
backfire on me. Right, my career collapsed once because I'm
an abusive, bigoted asshole, But it won't happen again.

Speaker 3 (01:01:54):
How could it? It never does. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:57):
Now, if you're a fascist looking to hold a rally
in New York City, there's only one group of assholes
who suck hard enough to say yes, especially in January
of nineteen forty six, and those assholes are Madison Square Garden.
Yeah yeah, I mean also also, you know that's a

(01:02:18):
tried and true place for a we Nazi rally.

Speaker 3 (01:02:22):
We love it there.

Speaker 2 (01:02:22):
Oh yeah, no, this is this is this is this
is completely yeah, God, please don't sue us again. Can
we make that joke, Sophie? Are we allowed to?

Speaker 1 (01:02:38):
No?

Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
Maybe we'll bleep it. So Madison Square Garden agrees to
host the event, which he calls the friends of Frank Fay.
Let's talk about who those friends are, shall we. Organizing
work is handled by the Ku Klux Klan and the
American Nazi Party, which is nice to see their work
in hand in hand, you know, yeah, like it's it's
one of those it's been so bummed when they had

(01:02:59):
their out. It's just good to see, you know, the
two long term hooden hand hood in hand, right, this
is like some ship. This is like from that fucking
Wolfenstein games. Yes, it's fucking crazy like the KKK and
the American Nazi Party are like your stage hands and
I handling like advertising and ship.

Speaker 3 (01:03:22):
Who's speaking? Who's speaking?

Speaker 2 (01:03:23):
Tell me? Oh, who's speak, Sophie. So many assholes.

Speaker 1 (01:03:28):
Now.

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
I should note here that the last big Nazi rally
in American history, right before World War Two, had been
held by the German American boond in Madison Square Garden,
you know, and involved a bunch of Nazis. Uh doing
a big rally again. Madison Square Garden loves hosting Nazi events,
or at least did back then. I'm sure everything's fine

(01:03:49):
in the company now. Prominent speakers at this event included
Nazi propagandist Laura Ingles and no, I want to be clear,
I'm not talking about Laura Ingles. Wild different person, but
she's also very right wing, but she's not speaking at
this event. They just have very similar names. Laura Ingles

(01:04:13):
was an award winning female pilot. She's like one of
the first like great female pilots. She is very groundbreaking
in that. And then she winds up serving two years
in prison because she worked as an unpaid agent of
the Nazi government while speaking at America First Gatherings and
didn't disclose that she was a paid agent of a
foreign power. That's what happens to her prior to this.

(01:04:34):
So anyway, I should also know it as a fun
fact because I was like, I just saw Laura Ingles
because I'm reading like old contemporary news artiles like Laura Ingless,
is this the little aus on the Prairie? And so
I like, I type into Google as I do sometimes,
was Laura Ingles a Nazi? And obviously now when you Google,
the first thing you get is their fucking AI summary.
This is what the AI summary says. No, Laura Ingles,

(01:04:56):
the aviator, not the author, was not a Nazi. However,
she was a Nazi sympathizer. Was convicted of acting as
a paid agent for Nazi Germany, And like, yeah, so
why you're saying she's not she was paid for acting.

Speaker 3 (01:05:08):
She was.

Speaker 2 (01:05:09):
She went to prison for failing to register as an
agent for the German government for speaking at Nazi rallies.
We can't call her a Nazi, really, but you wont Gemini.
But the AI said, so, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna call
her a Nazi.

Speaker 3 (01:05:25):
She's a Nazi.

Speaker 2 (01:05:26):
If you go to jail for advocating for the Nazi
government secretly without like and taking their money, I'm sorry,
I'm not.

Speaker 3 (01:05:36):
A Nazi's fucking Nazi.

Speaker 2 (01:05:39):
She's a fucking Nazi. These tech bros think this is
the sum of the picle of intelligence. This is what's
going to take us to the stars. Fucking AI bullshit.

Speaker 1 (01:05:50):
Now.

Speaker 2 (01:05:51):
Another guest at this event was KKK member Joseph Camp
and of course Camps fell with a k uh. Camp,
if you haven't heard of him, was one of the
chief all authors of anti Semitic propaganda in the United
States at this period of time.

Speaker 1 (01:06:03):
He is a.

Speaker 2 (01:06:04):
Massive, like Jewish World conspiracy author.

Speaker 3 (01:06:08):
Guy.

Speaker 2 (01:06:10):
There's a picture Sophie's going to show you from contemporary
reporting on the event. Who introduces us to another guy
at this event who happened to look just like Walt
Like a lot of these guys look exactly like Walt Disney,
Like literally, this Walt Disney looking motherfucker. This pencil mustache
like legit wild all Walt Disney looking motherfuckers and the

(01:06:30):
caption from this I think this is from the Post
article another friend of Faye John Geist, notorious anti Semite
and distributor of Wrathskellar pamphlets back in the Yorktown Day.
I like that friend quotes friendly. Yeah. Now, here's quite
a lot of reporting wrath Skeller, you know what. I
should have looked that up. Let's look that up right now.

(01:06:50):
Let's do it right now.

Speaker 4 (01:06:51):
I will say I forgot what punk venu is called
the wrath Skeller, but I hope they're not.

Speaker 3 (01:06:58):
I hope it wasn't that kind of punk.

Speaker 2 (01:07:00):
Well, Wikipedia is telling me that it's a name for
a kind of restaurant in German speaking countries. Uh oh oh,
maybe it was that kind of punk bar. Yeah, maybe
it is that guy that that Yeah, maybe it's just
like a name for a beer garden. Yeah. Yeah, that's
that's that's my guess, my best guess. Uh yikes, all right, yeah, cool,

(01:07:24):
cool guy, most importantly cool.

Speaker 3 (01:07:26):
And moving on.

Speaker 2 (01:07:27):
So there's a lot of reporting left to read through
from this event. You can find a lot of articles
written about it at the time, and much of it
is quite funny. The New York Daily News, who is
pretty positive about this event, titles they're covering nineteen thousand
Fay friends jam garden to cheer anti red speeches. First off,
the actual numbers more like eleven thousand, and a lot

(01:07:47):
of those are protesters who are there to like Jeer
and try to disrupt the event too. The Daily News
was happy to carry water for Fay and included a
segment in their review titled deny rac Bias. Doctor Emmanuel Josephson,
who said he was of Jewish extraction, brought down the
house with his attack on communism, labor unions, Karl Marx,

(01:08:09):
Harold Lasky, the New Deal, the State Department, the OPA,
and the more deadly of the Roosevelt species. So it's
not anti semitic. They've got a Jewish guy. Great now.
The New York Post not my favorite publication today, but
was a much better publication back then. Right, And their
reporting on this is actually pretty good.

Speaker 3 (01:08:30):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:08:30):
They are unsparing about how racist this was. Quote after
praising Equity as the finest organization ever put together, Fay said,
there is a certain little group coming into Equity, coming
not through the stage door, but through the and hear
his words slurred, and he may have said either south
or back door. They have nothing to offer you but
the bad breath of Marx. They put on some plays
to capture your youth, and for God's sake, watch your children.

(01:08:53):
We didn't have that when we were kids, but we've
got it now. A Post reporter later asked Faye what
plays he was referring to, and he didn't and he
had made the statement quoted. Later, coming upon the Post
reporter again, he warned him to be careful about the
quotation because his address had been recorded. It's very much
much modered, like I didn't say that.

Speaker 3 (01:09:11):
What do you mean?

Speaker 2 (01:09:11):
I said that there are plays trying to reach out
to w I didn't say that at all when we
recorded it. So don't you dare lie to continue? As
Fay went along, the clock silently slid past the one
am mark, and spectators, by the score literally were sleeping
in their chairs. Mcnabo too, who's one of the other hosts, too,
constantly reminded the audience that every word uttered at the
meeting was being recorded, and that woewen libel suits so

(01:09:33):
waited those newspapers that printed stories written with smear dripping pins.
They don't see anybody, right like, because again all of
the racism is there. This is just a horrible it's
a Nazi rally. He holds a Nazi rally in nineteen
forty six, and this backfires in every way possible. Right,
this does finally destroy his.

Speaker 1 (01:09:54):
Career, finally doesn't work again.

Speaker 2 (01:09:56):
No, he never works again. There are like one of
the jokes, I forget exactly who says this, but it's
another famous comedian who is like I saw him walking
like holding his own hand down lover's lane. That's how
lonely he is at the end of his life. He
dies in Santa Monica in nineteen sixty one at the
age of sixty nine and is ostensibly unloved or unwarned. Yeah, yeah,

(01:10:22):
that he gets to live in a nice part of
the world and longer, although not that long for hardcore
alcoholic it's not doing bad now. I read a lot
of George Burns, who's a famous comedian, like talking about
the Fay for this column, and Burns is a guy
who talks a lot about like Fay's talents and what
he was good at. But Burns also talks about like

(01:10:44):
all the things that sucked about him, right, And so
here's here in this episode, here's a quote from George
Burns on Faye at late in life. Fay hated Jews,
but he was very religious. He used to eat at
the Brown Derby and I used to watch just before
his food came, I would sit down and start to
mention people that are dead. I'd say Tom Fitzpatrick isn't
with us anymore. He'd bless him and say a prayer.

(01:11:06):
I'd mentioned five or six more people, and when his
food got cold, I'd leave. And so that's that's how
Burns gets some revenge on him, is he'll just like
hang out whatever he's eating and like sit down and
talk about all the people who have died recently. So
that because he knows he's got to like do a
little just to ruin his meal. It's a kind of
petty we should all seek to embody. But it's also

(01:11:28):
like such a bizarre interaction because it's like, you hate
this guy because he is an unreformed anti semi.

Speaker 3 (01:11:34):
Absolutely, you're still doing banter with him.

Speaker 2 (01:11:38):
Yeah, but you're doing to his day, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no,
I know. But but it's just like a thing where
they still have the type of relationship where there's banter, right,
I find that. I mean, listen, I guess, I guess
we're just too polarized now.

Speaker 3 (01:11:53):
But it's very weird.

Speaker 4 (01:11:56):
It's been a minute since I've just had a little
joke with a Nazi, is what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (01:12:00):
Well, and that's, you know, one of the many things
we like about you, Andrew tu And that is my
general best practices is don't don't joke around with the Nazis,
don't socialize with Nazis, don't argue with Nazis, don't debate them.
There are some things you should do to Nazis, but
we can't talk about that on the podcast in the
political climate.

Speaker 4 (01:12:19):
So yeah, nothing is being advocated.

Speaker 2 (01:12:22):
You know. Anyway, how do you feel about this guy
coming in?

Speaker 4 (01:12:28):
Oh my god, I I it's this is this is
interesting because it is like I mean, as I said
in part one, it is like shocking to me because
you know what it is is because I was born
in a time, you know, like you, I think we're
talking about this where we had come out of perceiving

(01:12:52):
the stand up that the seventies, the like, you know,
the Carlin's and Kaufman's of the world had kind of
left left our doorstep. Yeah, made stand Up seem to
the extent that it was political, did not seem like
like I guess what I mean is like to me
from my perception, stand Up has taken a big right

(01:13:14):
wing like turn in my lifetime. Yeah, and it is
interesting to learn that this may simply be reverting to
the mean.

Speaker 2 (01:13:23):
Well, like it's at least I think it's more accurate
to say there have always been those kinds of guys
in comedy because Milton Borough, we're talking about how a
lot of people hated him, he was not personally super
well loved, and you know, his career is destroyed in
large part due to how much of a bigot he is.
But this has always been there, and it's always been

(01:13:44):
like significant, Yeah, I think, yeah, right, I think what
it is is that there has always been a sign
an audience that craves this type of guy, and we
see it now, this is this is the you know, well,
there's honestly probably all of the top podcasts besides you

(01:14:05):
have that audience. Not direly true, but it's not like
as far off as it would be. Nice if it were, right. Yeah,
it's just like like there was a massive audience for
I mean even just like speaking comedic terms, as we've
talked a couple of times for punching down, Like there
is a huge idea, but there's an appetite for it.

Speaker 4 (01:14:25):
Yeah, and although of course, you know, if you're really
going to strike down, you want to you want to.

Speaker 3 (01:14:31):
Do an elbow down.

Speaker 2 (01:14:32):
I think, right people, right, people, punching is is not
as efficient, no, no, no, and just you know, try
to find someone shorter than you. That's always the easiest
person to hit.

Speaker 3 (01:14:41):
Yeah exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:14:43):
Yeah, I'm saying this constantly.

Speaker 3 (01:14:45):
But like like so, so I think that's it.

Speaker 4 (01:14:47):
It's just that that there's always been this audience and
the perception that like comedy spoke truth to power, as
it were, is like really just the fabrication.

Speaker 3 (01:14:59):
It's it's capable of, but it doesn't do it. You know.

Speaker 4 (01:15:03):
Inherently, comedy is more about just making fun of the
people you hate. Sometimes those people deserve.

Speaker 2 (01:15:11):
It, Yeah, Frank Fae being a great example, righteah exactly.

Speaker 4 (01:15:16):
Yeah, yeah, but yeah, yeah, yeah, anyway, yes, fucking illuminating.

Speaker 2 (01:15:23):
Fucking illuminating and illuminated fucking wait no, it doesn't work anyway.
Uh podcast, do you get anything to plug?

Speaker 4 (01:15:32):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (01:15:33):
You know, I do a podcast called Josi's Racist. We
have a premium show that's.

Speaker 4 (01:15:37):
Much more fun called yoak when we live where we
don't talk about racism. Yeah, yeah, that's it. I don't know, right, Yeah,
it's I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:15:47):
Ever killed anyboddy.

Speaker 3 (01:15:49):
Uh you know what not that I know?

Speaker 2 (01:15:51):
Okay, okay, I've never done it. We always asked that
at the Enity episodes. Yea, we ask actually every single guest.
We've just had to edit out all the other time
we've done it because every other person who's guested on
the show has has admitted to a murder. That's a
fun behind the bastards fact, folks. Sometimes there's sometimes there's
just a long pause, and even that's incriminating.

Speaker 3 (01:16:12):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you gotta be able to say
no right away. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:16:16):
Absolutely. Anyway, Prosecutors, please arrest and prosecute all of our
former guests for murder except for Andrew T. You know, innocent,
Andrew innocent.

Speaker 3 (01:16:28):
Andrew T innocent.

Speaker 2 (01:16:29):
Yeah. Well, Sophie's not speaking up, so this must be
okay for me to say anyway. That's about it. For
us here today at Behind the Bastards. Ladies, gentlemen, them's,
and other pronouns types of people. Go have a good
weekend or have a bad weekend. It's pretty bad times

(01:16:51):
right now. But I hope your weekend's good unless you're bad. No, Sophie,
why why why? In the podcast, podcasts don't need to end.
We can just keep going, we can keep vent.

Speaker 1 (01:17:05):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia
dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the
Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday
and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com slash

(01:17:26):
at Behind the Bastards.