Behind the Bastards - Part Two: Frank Fay, The Fascist Who invented Stand Up Comedy

Episode Date: August 14, 2025

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Call Zone Media 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 NPR voice. Is it good? That work? Did that work for everybody? It made me uncomfortable, frankly. Did it make it uncomfortable?

It makes me uncomfortable. Yeah. I liked it. Yep. Speaking of NPR, you know who's better than NPR? I mean, lots of folks. Well, Anderson. Anderson.

And our guest today, Andrew T. Yeah. I don't have a particular problem with NPR. I don't know. I don't really listen to NPR, but I assume they're valuable, right? They're still good? I don't think we have beef with NPR. Did they do something horrible?

I don't know. They are valuable relative to the media landscape in America. Yeah. But they are not like a net value. to the world probably they're like like all things that are that are good in America quote unquote good they're kind of like center right Nambi Pambiism but what are you gonna do they've got 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 that still exists that isn't like owned by Sinclair so it's one of those things we're like there should be better things than NPR performing the similar role but we are where we are right so I'm not going to shit on NPR for that. What I am going to shit on is our topic for today's episode. Frank Faye, the man who invented stand-up comedy. And before I get to that, I want to plug a fundraiser that 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 help people who had been arrested in the 2020 protests. They still do help protesters. But their primary job is people get arrested. They are 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 who need literally like a hundred bucks that they just don't have. Number one, when people are accused of crimes, 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, are probably obvious to people, but they help a lot of people who, like, literally no one else is looking out for it. 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 can Venmo them at at Defense Fund PDX.

So, you know, please send some money, help them out. I donate every year. They're a 501C, so it's like a tax. You can, you know, write it off too. Like, it's an actual charitable organization. They're legit. I know the people who run it. Please help them out.

This is an IHeart podcast. It's Black Business Month, and Money and Wealth podcast with John Hope Bryant is tapping in. I'm breaking down how to build wealth, create opportunities, and move from surviving to thriving. It's time to talk about ownership, equity, and everything in between. Black and brown communities have historically been last in life. Let me just say this. AI is moving faster than civil rights legislation ever did. Listen to Money and Wealth from the Black Effect Podcast Network on IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you.

get your podcast. If you're looking for another heavy podcast about trauma, the saying it. This is for the ones who had to survive and still show up as brilliant, loud, soft, and whole. The Unwanted Sorority is where black women, fims, and gender expansive survivors of sexual violence rewrite the rules on healing, support, and what happens after. And I'm your host and co-president of this organization, Dr. Leitra Tate. Listen to the Unwanted Sorority, new episodes every Thursday on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So what happened to Chappaquittic? Well, it really depends on who you talk to. There are many versions of what happened in 1969 when a young Ted Kennedy drove a car into a pond. And left a woman behind to drown. Chappaquittic is a story of a tragic death and how the Kennedy machine took control.

Every week, we go behind the headlines and beyond the drama of America's royal family. Listen to United States of Kennedy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. On the new podcast, America's Crime Lab, every case has a story to tell. And the DNA holds the truth.

He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. This technology's already solving so. many cases. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right.

Let's talk about a real piece of shit. Are you ready to talk about a piece of shit, Andrew? We talk about a good thing for 10, 15 seconds. Yeah. 15 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 of people get arrested and um not frank fay although he is he's like a rich homeless person right 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 not really a homeless but like literally 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 backstory right he like he never has a stable place right like he and his family are like living on the road right yeah um So, in the late 19 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 Stevens. And while Frank is kind 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 1907, so she's quite a bit younger than Frank Faye, and she was the fifth child of Catherine Ann and Byron Stevens.

Both families seem to have come from some degree of, like, privilege. It's unclear to me how if they were, like, rich or it's just because they've been in America 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. That part's a little unclear to me. It may have been that, like, they used to be more blue-bloody, and they just kind of ran out of money. That happens a lot. But it seemed like she was on track for a more normal life until in 1911, when she is four. A drunk passenger falls off the streetcar 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 just a horrible freak streetcar 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 1907 or 11, her dad had been a drinker. And boy, having your wife an unborn kid die in a streetcar accident does not make you slow down the drinking in 1911. 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? Sure.

Pale as old as time. We've all been there once 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.

I mean, you were really, you had your, you had your mindset on Canal 2. Canal 2. Electric Boogaloo. It was very admirable. Yeah, we're going to make it even bigger and we're going to kill even more guys from fucking malaria. Malaria too. 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 what digging the Panama Canal is, is you are signing up to die from a mosquito or get drowned in fucking, like, wet concrete, right? If you want to learn more about that sort of thing, listen to, wait, is it the Panama Canal or was the Hoover Dam and the song, The Highwayman? One of the two. Either way, listen to the song, The Highwayman by the Highwayman. Listen, just think of any major work. Oh, he was a dam builder.

He was a dam builder. 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 crime against humanity. You're going to 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 an orphan and little kids are fucking psychopaths. To quote another great stand-up comedian, Donald Glover, they're little Hitler's, right? They're like, oh, look, a little girl who lost her whole family, let's kick her. Yeah.

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, I think she's probably 16 or 17, 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 14 and starts working. And again, you're basically an adult at 14 at this socioeconomic level, right? This is not just the U.S. You're legally an adult at a lot of Europe at this point in time.

And by age 16, she is a chorus girl in a nightclub. So there's, you have to assume some, like, people taking physical advantage of her. We would call this pedophilia today. I think that's fair to call it. 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 1923 when she starts working as a chorus girl and a nightclub. So she is getting started in her showbiz career while Frank Fay is kind of like, he is like near the peak of his fame and prestige, right? Like he is selling out. This is right before he has his 10 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 field.

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 her. 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 that's going to form, although 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 speak-easies, which is pretty cool. Like, what, this is, by the way, Ruby becomes Barbara Stanwyck. This is her initial name. She's cool with the gays, which is nice, you know, given this period of time. She initially becomes acquainted with Frank Faye in the mid-1920s, probably right around the time. He has that big 10-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-late 20s, she starts doing better and better, right? She gets recognized. She starts getting acting gigs. And by kind of like the mid-20s, 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 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 1928, and there's kind of a will-they-won-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, because that's just how people died back then. Yeah. You know? That's just what went down. 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 Faye, thinking the two would hit it off. They did not. In fact, they seemed to hate each other at first. And in Ruby's case, at least, this is with good reason, because Frank is immediately

attracted to Barbara Stanwick who she's like young at this point right like she's like just barely 20 something like that what the fuck what is this uh 1928 she was born in 1907 so she's 21 years old right and he's in his he's almost 40 um 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 uh like he immediately has a crush on her, right? But he doesn't want to, like, admit that and flirt with her. 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 Faye's show at the Palladium, Levant brought Barbara and Walda, which is one of her friends and colleagues backstage. They entered Faye's dressing room as he was removing his makeup. He was charming and beguiling. He announced he was hungry and that as soon as he finished taking off his makeup, he was going to a restaurant where he said they serve the best food in town. They really know how to serve food in this place, Faye 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 for dinner, Frank? Be with you right away, Faye 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 seen her on stage. So he knew that he was into her. He sets this up specifically to pull the rug out from under her because he's an asshole. Right? 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 ploy.

He's trying to make her, like, desperate. He's trying to like, you know, it's obvious what he's trying to do, right? 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. So, you know, she's not like falling. for it, but she's also not being like, fuck this guy entirely. Right. It's not working, but it's not not working. 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, right? 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's a degree to which it sounds like these two might be kind of made for each other, right? Yeah, that's pretty good, 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? you call Frank and invite him to dinner, and I'm going 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 Levant doesn't lie. And he's like, well, Barbara Stanwick's going to be there. And so as soon as Frank hears that, he hatches his place, he says, 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 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 where she goes, there's Frank Faye 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 stalker 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 purpose of like making her watch

him make out with other people like so they're not in a relationship and this is already one of the most toxic relationships I've ever heard of I mean um I guess this is juicy it's so bonkers it's so nuts and like Barbara is the good guy in this, but she's definitely, there's some toxicity coming from her here too, right? So after a couple of weeks, he shows up at a fancy restaurant when Stanwick and Levant are about to have dinner, I 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 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. And it's like, you two 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 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. Why not? And so they start dating, right? They start going out. They start, you know, banging the nasties, you know, bumping uglies.

Yeah. Giddlest, what, Sophie? Sophie, you can't say sex or fucked on a podcast. We'll get arrested. That's true. Robert. That is true. The code, there's a Hayes code.

What the fuck is it 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 and start seeing each other.

And he seems to fall in love. as well. They are both 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 tells 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 sense, 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. Sure. Yes. So she, I think, and that's what, that's what her biographer writes. It's basically she is desperate for that kind of stability at this point. It matters more to her than this career that she's got. 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 during the height of his time at the palace, he misses shows semi-regularly. they'll have 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. 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 Taylor and his secretary. Like he literally travels with 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 St. 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 existed since life began. But the greatest love, the love of love transcending even that of a mother is the tender, the passionate, the infinite love of one drunken bum for

another. Pretty good poem. Snaps. Yeah, it kind of hit. So Barbara would have been aware, number one, there's stories about this guy's drinking, right? He's been arrested a bunch of times. He's being in tons of fights. He is a fame. He is famous in the 20s for being an out-of-control alcoholic.

That's not easy, right? Like, you could buy cocaine at the store. Yeah, yeah, you could buy cocaine at the store. In this case, 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.

It's like having a Coke problem at Studio 54. It's like, right, right. It's like the fucking bathroom attendant at CBGB's being like, hey, man, I think you might be doing too much blow. Like, yeah. It's like John DeLorean sitting you down about your Coke problem. So Barbara would have been aware that this 37-year-old man she'd started seeing at 21 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 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. 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 split up again immediately, because again, he cheats on her constantly. So not a good husband. And 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 20s.

When like, as long as you're just like slapping her, that's not even considered spousal abuse back then. Right. Like, he is abusive for the era. Like, guys who are putting their wives in the hot. are sitting him down and being like, man, you got to cool it, you know, like, that's the level of bad husband this man is. The time, the time really puts a lids on it. It's just like, oh, man.

Yeah, like Jonathan Weifeter, the man who coined the wife beater shirt, sitting this guy down and talking to him, like, he's a shitty husband. And even outside of, and again, he's not just beating women. He assaults everybody. 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, he's not a stable guy.

He's been arrested. He's one of the first drunk drivers. He's getting, it's not even illegal to have a drink. You can have a cocktail in your hand drinking in the 20s, and he's getting arrested for drunk driving. It's nuts how drunk a driver this guy is. Yeah. He had also already, again, at the height of, right at this period of, time, there's weeks where he's making 300 grand in a week in modern money, he's already

declared bankruptcy several times, you know, some of that's the 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 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 imbalance here.

But she's heard of him, right? None of this is a mystery. She also knows that he gambles uncontrollably when 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 to center to her world, right? 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. And then they almost immediately get unengaged. And I'm going to quote from an article on Stanwyth published by Meredith Grau here. When the duo argued, they 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 St. Louis on a two-month engagement, and Barbara devoted herself to burlesque, evaded friends and became a near ghost. Burlesque would end, and that burlesque is a show, right? Like it's not burlesque, that's like an actual play. Burlesque would end its Broadway run as a local triumph on July 14th, 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 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 is continuing to perform, but like he is, they're separated. And he just starts 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. And he's like, hey, man, Frank is, I've never even seen him like this. Like, he is so drunk right. 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, this guy frames it as like, this is deathly serious. We have, you got to help me do something to say Frank. So she's like, 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 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 soberes 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 me and we'll get engaged and we'll get married right away. Jesus Christ, man. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Just the 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 performance. It is a great. I mean, look, man, he's not a bad actor. Just the sweet. God, that's so fucked up.

Bad husband, bad fiancé, 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 Stanwyck? I don't know, probably Blue Apron. I doubt LASIC would, but Blue Apron might. Here's ads. Your entire identity has been fabricated. Your beloved brother goes missing without a trace. You discover the depths of your mother's illness, the way it has echoed and reverberated throughout your life, impacting your very legacy.

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Why did I think that way? Why did I allow myself to get so sucked in by this man? And in thinking to the point that if I died for him, that would be the greatest honor. But in 2014, the youngest of the girls escaped and sparked an international manhunt. For all those years, you know, he was the predator and I was the prey. And then he became the prey. Listen to The Turning River Road on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2020, a group of young woman.

in a tidy suburb of New York City, found themselves in an AI-fueled nightmare. Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts on my body parts that looked exactly like my own. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to scream.

It happened in Levittown, New York. But reporting this series took us through the darkest corners of the internet and to the front lines of a global battle against deep fake pornography. This should be illegal, but what is this? This is a story about a technology that's moving faster than the law and about vigilantes trying to stem the tide.

I'm Margie Murphy. And I'm Olivia Carvel. This is Levitown, a new podcast from IHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Collideroscope. Listen to Levitown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Maybe you've heard that Stonewall was a riot where queer people fought back against police

or that it's the reason pride is celebrated this time of year. It was one of the most liberating things that I have ever done. But did you know that before it went down in history, the Stonewall was a queer hangout run by the mafia. The Vogueing at Stonewall was unbelievable. In the summer of 1969, it became. the site that set off the modern movement for LGBTQ plus rights. Start banging on the door of the stonewall like one, boom, boom, boom.

Legend says Marsha P. Johnson, a mother in the fight for trans rights, through the very first brick. She was really like scrubbed out of that history. This week on Afterlives will separate the truth from the myth in the life of Marcia P. Johnson. Listen to Afterlives on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Oh, 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? I think, I mean, obviously, any of the mattress ones. Any of the mattress. Oh, my God. Casper, yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Sox? Casper actually would kill themselves drinking in order to make Barbara Stanwick regret dumping them. That's right. It's not a lie. It's a way of life. 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, Barbrick 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 a train to him.

They get engaged again and they get married, right? Right. Um, I, maybe she was aware, but it just, she just was in love with this guy and she just needed this in her life, right? Yeah. I mean, I think that's probably what's going on here, you know? 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, a little bit, no. Like, you know, you feel like, it feels like people kind of know, but like can't bring themselves to really confronted and that's how it is. No, and, and like also with all of these toxic relationships and with all of these celebrity relationships,

relationships and shit that are so, seems so poisonous. There's got to 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, there's, she's getting something out of this.

And I'm not saying that to, like, blame her on it or something. But, like, you have to assume this is, we're not, like, it's not just bad stuff, right? It never is. Otherwise, why would she be so committed to this, right? 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 right um so she finishes the current run of her touring show and then she retires uh well she actually gets sick right at the end of it but either way she finishes burlesque

and she retires um 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, the Frank Fay show, basically. And she starts performing as part of his shows, right? Now, 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 making very good money, right? But what she's also doing is she has 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. 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 down. have her be a big star, or I can't stand to have her have a life outside of me. She is really motivated by the idea of dedicating herself fully to this relationship. That is part of what's

happening here. As the 20s 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 days are numbered, right? This is not going to be, it's 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 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 20s. So the bottom's 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 shows, a lot harder to afford, both for 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 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 they're doing longer and longer sets. And now he is being up there for something that is like a Netflix, you know, special or 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, again, he's a major pioneer. He starts doing something that's kind of weird owl adjacent or like Tom Lerer adjacent. Tom Ler, who just died the greatest musical comedian of all time, also one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, also invented the Jello Shot, Incredible Man, Tom Lairer. Yes, inventor of the Jellow shot so that he could smuggle alcohol in. to like army gatherings.

Amazing man. Just so cool. Yeah. 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 Lehrer and, and, you know, later guys. But he is one of the first, like, musical parody artists.

And it's interesting, the way he does this is a little bit, it's not the same as what, like, Lera and Al are doing. It's really interesting. He, um, He'll start with a popular song, and he'll get his musicians to start playing, like, T for Two. That's one of his big bits, which is like, you've heard of T 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 pussy of its day, right?

Yep, those are the two songs. Those are the two songs, the only two I've heard of. Jesus Christ. What? It is kind of like wet-ass pussy, because it's smutty, right? Like, it is about, it's smuddy for the day, right? Because it's, like, about a date, right? Um, so, uh, 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 recent example. He's cinema-sensing this fucker. He's cinema-sensing it. That's exactly, exactly. Tea for two and two for tea.

Ain't that rich. Here's a guy that is enough tea for two, so he's going to have tea for two. I notice he doesn't say a word about sugar. Comedy was easy to be. Anyway, whatever. I 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 the type of bit that this is is so modern. You brought up cinema sins. Because like initially it was like, oh, he's like kind of a proto Tom Blair or Weird Al. But honestly, because they're actually doing full parody songs,

a better comparison is like modern YouTube videos where like not just songs, but like the red letter stuff red litter media guys. famous for doing. You're like break down a movie, you're like going through like a whole movie or whole, and you're like breaking it down piece by piece and talking in granularly detail 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? Yeah. He is just like reflexively a very innovative entertainer. Yeah. That's genuinely so

odd. 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. Yes, it's tea for two. Like, how many jokes can you make about that shit, man? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, that's his like, fucking hour and a half long video breaking down by the Phantom Minus sucks, his tea for two. So. No sugar, eh? Yeah, no sugar, huh? So, yeah, that's a very creative

idea. And again, you got to think of how weird it would be in the 1929 to hear like, oh, yeah, this guy's going to come on stage and sing a popular song. And instead, he's like making fun of the song. Like, the idea that, like, you want to hear this guy make fun of a song slowly? Like, that's a weird ask in this period of time. But it works. This is like one of those popular bits. And again, like, he's just, he's just moving from success to success at this point up to kind of like the start of the Great Depression. And right, really right before the Great Depression, where I think we're like in 29 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 Stanwyk is. And these, you know, we're now in the talkie era. Hollywood is looking for new leading ladies and people, you know, there's talent scouts who go out to Broadway. They've seen her. A lot of studios are calling. And she turned 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, there's money for you here. And she's like, nah, 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 a 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 one of the biggest performers of the day. It's a pretty obvious from like a studio 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 move to Hollywood that 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. 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 is some weird-ass 20 sexism. I don't fully understand what that's supposed to mean, 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 studio that Capra was working with that she has this deal 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, 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 Fay 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 he casts her immediately.

And that's actually like a really good, like, 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 that's one good thing that Frank Fay ever did in his fucking life. There you go. Now, this is not a Barbara Stanwick podcast, and I'm not going to do... I'm not going to talk a detail about it. Leave a comment or write in

if you want Robert's Barbara Stanwick podcast. Well, she did murder those children, but in her defense, kids were coming right for her, you know? Who did it? Who amongst us hasn't killed a couple of kids, right? You know? It happens.

It happens. So, by the mid-30s, Barbara Stanwick, as soon as she gets this movie, she's in this, she's a huge hit, she's just immediately, a massive star. Her career is skyrockets from there on up. By the mid-30s, 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 the Barbara Stanwyck story. Things go less well for Frank Fay after this point in time. His first movie, because they get this one picture deal, 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 that 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 them on once and then you keep making money from them, right? So like, you know, it's better a business to be in.

But he's just not doing well in it. and eventually the offer is kind of just slow to a trickle and stop coming in, while Barbara Stanwyk becomes a fucking household name. And I'm going to quote from an article in the New York Times. As her star began to shine, Faye's dimmed. He drank, 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 Mrs. Frank Faye.

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 gossips prophesying divorce? A stick to your man, philosophy, 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 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 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 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 killed her and she does eventually dump his ass in 1935 and at this point when 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 and yeah it looks like this is kind of the end right and again if this had been the end we wouldn't do a 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 it's not It's not newsworthy, exactly, yeah. If we did an episode on every 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 active bastardry 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 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 at 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

still do we all know about Mel Gibson right but again the fact that he's a famous anti-Semite 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. There's a quote from one of his peers,

Milton Josephberg, who is, you know, a Jewish comedian 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 kick off, right? And Frank starts getting increasingly political. He hates FDR. he calls him a communist.

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. So the Jewish bankers cause the depression and also are behind FDR who's got pulled us out of it. What's going on? Anyway, he's losing his mind on alcohol here too. As his 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 Coughlin. Now, we've talked about this guy before on the podcast. Cofflin is a Catholic priest with a far right radio show. Who is? He is a fascist. He is a proto-Nazi. He is one of the guys who's trying to get the U.S. 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.

He referred to the New Deal as the Jew deal. And as a result, he and Frank get along famously. Yeah, like, oh yeah, this is a match made in heaven right here. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Now, you know who else gets along famously with Father Charles Coughlin? I probably shouldn't say that. Here's ads.

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Why did I think that way? Why did I allow myself to get so sucked in by this man and thinking to the point that if I died for him, that would be the greatest honor. But in 2014, the youngest of the girls escaped and sparked an international manhunt. For all those years, you know, he was the predator and I was the prey. And then he became the prey.

Listen to the turning, River Road, on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2020, a group of young woman in a tidy suburb of New York City found themselves in an AI-fueled nightmare. Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts on my body parts that looked exactly like my own.

I wanted to throw up. I wanted to scream. It happened in Levittown, New York. But reporting this series took us through the darkest corners of the internet and to the front lines of a global battle against deepfake pornography. This should be illegal, but what is this? This is a story about a technology that's moving faster than the law and about vigilantes trying to stem the tide. I'm Margie Murphy.

And I'm Olivia Carvel. This is Levitown, a new podcast from IHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Collideroscope. Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Maybe you've heard that Stonewall was a riot where queer people fought back against police, or that it's the reason pride is celebrated this time of year. It was one of the most liberating things that I have ever done. But did you know that before it went down in history, the Stonewall was a queer hangout run by the mafia.

The voging at Stonewall was unbelievable. In the summer of 1969, it became the site that set off the modern movement for LGBTQ-plus riots. Start banging on the door of the Stonewall like one. Boom. Boom. Legend says Marsha P. Johnson, a mother in the fight for trans rights, through the very first brick. She was really, like, scrubbed out of that history. This week on Afterlives, we'll separate the truth from the myth in the life of Marcia.

P. Johnson. Listen to Afterlives on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Oh, and we're back. I don't know why I make that like sound every, I just, you know, 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 decompress. Got to do it. Yeah.

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 30s. Cliff Nesteroff writes, quote, Faye struggled in film and radio for the next 10 years after his divorce from Barbara. His appearances were spotty and mostly unsuccessful. He had made too many enemies and few cared to help him out. Maurice Zolito wrote that the self-destructive pattern has hampered his career. At various times, he has been a vaudeville emcee, nightclub,

comic, radio star and motion picture hero. Faye has been successful in all of these. He has also been a failure in all of these. Faye has been washed up more times than any other big time star. You know? And that's kind of like the state of his career at this point. Yeah. 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 Hollywood start telling a joke. This is kind of like, well, he's still married to Barbara Stanwick. Which Hollywood actor has the biggest prick? and the answer is Barbara Stanwyck, right? Like that's how people are talking about him, right? His career is over. Right.

So by the start of the World War II, he is in particularly bad odor because, you know, he's basically a Nazi and we're going to war with those people, right? He is on the side of the America firsters. He lives Charles Lindberg and Father Coughlin. So this does 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 1944, he gets thrown a fucking life preserver, right? And 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. You ever seen the movie Harvey with Jimmy Stewart?

Yep. I have not, actually. It's a great film, holds up. Weirdly enough, it was a film. in like the 50s. It's written before then, right? He's doing the stage version in the 40s. About, like, mental health.

Like, the plot is, like, the guy played by Jimmy Stewart. I 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 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.

Character's name is Elwood, by the way. Elwood, Elwood. You're right. Elwood. I would doubt, I think, something like that. And his high society, family and friends are 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, 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, but he's happy. he's not hurting anybody he's not in any danger he just sees a rabbit and that's okay you know 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 i mean he's fucking jimmy stewart great actor weirdly enough great bomber pilot retired as a general in the air force flew like 50 missions in world war two jimmy stewart quite a life

I'm surprised. You didn't know that? I don't think I did. He's George Bailey. Jimmy Stewart, during World War II, 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. 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 flattered me with deja vu.

Weirdly enough, Jimmy Stewart, great actor. killed thousands like literally killed thousands of people um fun guy anyway so uh this is before the jimmy steward version 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 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 um 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 this woman. 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 1,800 performances. 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 II, he has gotten a second chance at stardom, like the kind of second chance that nobody gets when you are as down and out as he is to wind up being the biggest name on Broadway again after a fall like that it's nuts um 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 think probably just kind of try to enjoy it you know rebuild your career keep quiet chill out maybe learn something about yourself grow He learns something, be a better person. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. That's what anyone would do. He takes a slightly different tactic.

He understands that 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 only he can really, you know, defend and protect. And obviously, this is really noble. In 1945, 46, 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 II ends.

Obviously, he's fine. Anti-communism immediately is how the U.S. pivot. So he's not. No, no, it's coming 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. But anyway, the SAG for theater workers. It may still be.

I don't know a lot about the theater. Whatever it is today, 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 1945 held a rally to raise money for a group called Spanish Refugee Appeal. Now, the Spanish Civil War had ended long ago, right? Franco is well in charge. And what the refugee 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 murder. murdering leftists, right?

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. Nestorhoff writes, quote, Faye was furious. He said their criticism was an attack on Catholicism as a whole.

Faye demanded actors' equity investigate each anti-Franco member for un-American activity. The House Committee on Un-American Activities acted on Fay's suggestion, and the actors were vetted. The New York Times reported that Faye 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 Lytel objected to the political investigation. Equity members have a wide latitude of interests and beliefs that they may practice and advocate as private citizens. Actors' equity stood by Brooks Darling and Osato, those are the people organizing this rally. Rather than

expel them from his union, Lytel censured Frank Faye for conduct prejudicial to the association or its membership. So he gets Congress to investigate these people for trying to raise money for fucking refugees and beg Franco in the church to stop having people murdered. And he 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, they're allowed to do this privately on their own, you are trying to destroy their, fuck you, man. Yeah. So this, you know, he gets in trouble over this.

And it's a bad look, especially in 1945. 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 all of World War II. And are really, they're frustrated that we're allied with the USSR. 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 U.S. picked in this. There's also a 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? 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 guise of being deeply pained over the comments about the Catholic Church, these organs of native fascism have been blowing the familiar

tunes and 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 Faye himself, the main attraction in the current whoopty-do. His anti-Semitism is well known, and his numerous brawls on that account are common gossip. Yeah. Pretty good.

Yeah. Yeah. God. Imagine, imagine a contemporary, like, journalist being that good. Yeah. Yeah, unfortunately, I do. 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. Right. But like a lot of fascists, Frank was convinced that he was right and that the rest of the world secretly agreed with him. So, drunk on his newfound fame and enraged with frustration at how World War II had ended, he decided to hold a rally in January of 1946 celebrating fascism in all of its guises. Now, that's a bold move in January, 1946. 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 how could it? It never does yeah yeah 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 1946 and those assholes are Madison Square Garden yeah I mean also also you know It's a tried and true place for a we Nazi rally. We love it there.

Oh, yeah. No, this is, this is, this is completely. Yeah. Oh, God. Please don't sue us again. Can we make that joke, Sophie? Are we allowed to? No.

Maybe we'll bleep it. So, Madison Square Garden agrees to host the event, which he calls the Friends of Frank Faye. 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? Yep. Like, it's one of those, I've been so bummed when they had their falling out.

It's just good to see, you know. The two long-term friends can come back. Hood and hand. Hood-in-hand, right? This is like some shit. This is like from that fucking Wolfenstein game. Yes, it's fucking crazy. Like the KKK and the American.

Nazi party are like your stage hands and like handling like advertising and shit who's speaking who's speaking tell me oh who's so phy so many assholes um now 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 boon in madison square garden you know and involved a bunch of nazis doing a big rally um again Madison Square Garden loves hosting Nazi events, or at least did back then. I'm sure everything's fine in the company now. Provinant speakers at this event included Nazi propagandist Laura Ingalls. And no, I want to be clear here, I'm not talking about Laura Ingalls wilder.

Not the little house of prayer lady. Different person. But also, didn't she also kind of suck? She's also very right wing, but she's not speaking at this event. They just have very similar names. Laura Ingalls was an award. winning female pilot. She's like one of the first like great female pilot. She is like 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. So anyway, I should also note it as a fun fact, because I was like, I just saw Laura Ingalls because I'm reading like old contemporary news articles. I'm like, Laura Ingalls, is this the little house in the prairie. And so I like, I type into Google, as I do sometimes, was Laura Engels 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 Ingalls, the aviator, not the author, was not a Nazi. However, she was a Nazi sympathizer and was convicted of acting as a paid agent for Nazi Germany. And like,

yeah. So why are you saying she's not a not? She was paid for act. She was, 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? Google Jimini. But the AI said so. Yeah.

I'm going to call her a Nazi. She's a Nazi. If you go to jail for advocating for the Nazi government secretly, like, and taking their money, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Technically not a Nazi. She's a fucking Nazi. She's a fucking Nazi. These tech bros think this is the soft.

The pinnacle of intelligence. This is what's going to take us to the stars. Fucking AI bullshit. Now, another guest at this event was KKK member Joseph Camp. And of course, Camp's spelled with a K. Camp, if you haven't heard of him, was one of the chief authors of anti-Semitic propaganda in the United States.

At this period of time, he is a massive, like, Jewish world conspiracy author guy. 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 looking motherfucker with this fucking pencil mustache like legit wild all Walt Disney looking motherfuckers and the caption from this I think this is from the post article another friend of Fay John Geist notorious anti-Semite

and distributor of Rathskeller pamphlets back in the Yorktown days I like that friend is in quote Friend, yeah. What does that mean? Now, there's quite a lot of reporting, Rath Skeller. You know what? I should have looked that up.

Let's look that up right now. Let's do it right now. I will say, I forgot what punk venue is called the Rath Skeller, but I hope they're not. I hope it wasn't that kind of punk. Well, Wikipedia is telling me that it's a name for a kind of restaurant in German-speaking countries. Ooh. Oh, maybe it was that kind of punk bar. Maybe it is that guy to think.

Yeah, maybe it's just like that. like a name for a beer garden yeah uh yeah that's that's that's my guess my best guess uh yikes all right yeah cool um cool guy most importantly cool and moving on 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 their coverage, 19,000 Faye Friends, Jam Garden to Cheer, Anti-Red Speeches. Now, first off, the actual number is more like 11,000. And a lot 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 Faye and included a segment in their review titled Deny Racial Bias. Dr. Emmanuel Josephson, who said he was of Jewish extraction, brought down the house with his attack on communism, labor unions, It's Carl Marx, 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, right?

They are unsparing about how racist this was. Quote, after praising equity as the finest organization ever put together, Faye 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 marks. They put on some plays to capture your youth, and for God's sake, watch your children. 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 denied 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 modern, like, I didn't say that. What do you mean I said that there are plays trying to reach out to? I didn't say that at all when we recorded it, so don't you dare lie. To continue, as Faye went along, the clock silently slid past the 1 a.m. 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 woe in libel suits awaited those newspapers that printed stories written with smear dripping pins. They don't sue anybody, right? Yeah. Like, because, again, all of the racism is there. It's, this is just a horrible, it's a Nazi rally.

He holds a Nazi rally in 1946. And this backfires in every way possible, right? This does finally destroy his career. He finally doesn't work again? 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 was like, I saw him walking, like, holding his own hand down Luffer's Lane. That's how lowly he is at the end of his life.

He dies in Santa Monica in 1961 at the age of 69 and is ostensibly unloved and unmoorned. Yeah, yeah, that he gets to live in a nice part of the world and longer, although not that long. For a hardcore alcoholic, it's not doing bad. Now, I read a lot of George Burns, who's a famous. as comedian, like, talking about Faye for this column. And Burns is a guy who talks a lot about, like, Faye's talents and what he was good at. But Burns also talks about, like, all the things that sucked about him, right?

And so here's in this episode, here's a quote from George Burns on Faye at late in life. Faye 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 I'd mention five or six more people And when his food got cold, I'd leave

And so 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 like such as bizarre interaction

Because it's like you hate this guy Because he is an unreformed anti-Semi But you're still doing banter with him. Yeah, but you're doing it to fuck up his day, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, I know. 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 we're just too polarized now. But it's very weird. It's been a minute since I've just had a little joke with a Nazi, is what I'm saying. Well, and that's, you know, one of the many things we like about you, Andrew T. And that is by general best practices is 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 current political climate. Yeah. Nothing is being advocated. You know. Anyway, how do you feel about this guy coming in? Oh, my God. I, I, it's, this is interesting.

Because it is like, I mean, as I said in part one, it is like shocking to me. You know what it is? It's because I was born in a time, you know, like you, I think we were talking about this, where we had come out of perceiving the stand-up that the 70s, the like, you know, the Carlins and Kaufman's of the world had kind of left at 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-wing, like, turn in my lifetime.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it is interesting to learn that this may simply be reverting to the mean. Well, it's at least... I think it's more accurate to say there have always been those kinds of guys in comedy. Because, you know, Miltonborough, 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, like, significant.

Yeah. I think, yeah, right. I think what it is is that there has always been a, an audience that craves this type of guy. Yeah. And we see it now. This is the, you know, well, there, there. Honestly, probably all of the top podcast besides you have that audience. Not entirely true, but it's not like as far off as it would be nice if it were, right?

Yeah. It's just like there was a massive audience for, I mean, even just like speaking comedic terms, as we've talked a couple times, for punching down. Like there is a huge audience. There's an appetite for it. Yeah. And although, of course, you know, if you're really going to strike down, you want to You want to do an elbow down, I think.

Right, right. People, punching 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. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I'm saying this constantly. But, like, so I think that's it.

It's just 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. it's capable of, but it doesn't do it, you know, inherently. Comedy is more about just making fun of the people you hate. Right. And sometimes those people deserve it. Yeah.

Frank Fay being a great example, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, but yeah. Yeah. Anyway, yes. Fucking illuminating.

Fucking illuminating and illuminated fucking. Wait, no, that doesn't work. Anyway. Podcast. Do you get anything to plug? You know, I do a podcast called Yo's It's Racist. We have a premium show that's much more fun called Yo Can We Live, where we don't talk about racism. Yeah.

Yeah, that's it. I don't know. That's great. Yeah. It's I. I don't know. Ever killed anybody? You know what?

Not that I know of. Okay. Okay. No, I've never done it. We always ask that at the end of these episodes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We ask actually every single guest. We've just had to edit out all the other times we've done it

because every other person who's guested on this show 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. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You got to be able to say no right away.

Yeah, absolutely. Anyway, prosecutors, please arrest and prosecute all of our former guests for murder, except for Andrew T. You know, innocent. Andrew Innocent T. Andrew T. Innocent. Yep. 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, thems, and other pronouns, types of people, go have a good weekend, or have a bad weekend. It's pretty bad times right now, but I hope your weekend's good. Just on the podcast. Unless you're bad. No, Sophie, why? Why? Why end the podcast? Podcasts don't need to end. We can just keep going. We can keep vent. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.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.

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