9. Hollywood stag parties were notorious for their exploitation of young aspiring female stars
Pauline Wagner was a young actress in the early 1930s who, like so many others, arrived in Hollywood with dreams of becoming a major star. In 1930 she landed a role in the film College Lovers, one of the early Hollywood talkies, which was produced prior to the Hays Code’s impositions of restrictions on what could be portrayed on the big screen. For Pauline, the small role – she portrayed the girlfriend of star Frank McHugh – was to be a stepping stone into larger roles, though her musical and dance numbers were cut from the film before it was released. In 1933 she accepted another role, one in which she served as a stand-in for Fay Wray in the epic King Kong. It was to be the high point of her acting career.
Pauline still found roles in Hollywood, despite being warned by director Sam Wood to avoid them. They were in attending stag parties, which were common events often hosted by studio executives, and which served as little more than staged orgies for the leading men and other studio executives of the Golden Age. Aspiring starlets were often directed to the parties, where they were expected to provide sexual services for the male attendees (and sometimes female attendees as well). Women were sometimes told that the party was in actuality a location filming for an upcoming picture and that they would be serving as extras, only to arrive and find out that they were there for the selection of the privileged male stars in attendance. Some parties, such as an event held on May 5, 1937, in a private rail car, offered free entertainment (Laurel and Hardy) and copious booze, supported by over 100 such women, several of whom were raped despite the additional attendance of an escort provided by the Los Angeles Police Department.