Jacqueline Stewart 0:01

Two of the most iconic performances in all Hollywood history hit screens in 1950. The first was Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard.

Gloria Swanson 0:11

[Sunset Boulevard soundbite] [music throughout] [as Norma Desmond] You see, this is my life. It always will be. There's nothing else. Just us... And the cameras... And those wonderful people out there in the dark. All right, Mr. DeMille. I'm ready for my close-up.

Jacqueline Stewart 0:32

In Sunset Boulevard, Gloria Swanson plays Norma Desmond, an aging, that is a whopping 50-year-old silent film star, who stays holed up in her mansion, and whose relationship with a young screenwriter turns dangerous.

William Holden 0:47

[Sunset Boulevard soundbite] [music throughout] [as Joe Gillis] You're Norma Desmond. Used to be in silent pictures, used to be big.

Gloria Swanson 0:52

[Sunset Boulevard soundbite] [as Norma Desmond] I am big. It's the pictures that got small.

Jacqueline Stewart 0:59

The film, the cinematography, and the performances are still inspiring filmmakers 70 years later.

Laura Dern 1:07

I can't think of a master filmmaker I've worked with that doesn't reference Sunset Boulevard.

Jacqueline Stewart 1:14

This is Academy Award winner Laura Dern. Famous for her roles in Jurassic Park, Marriage Story, and her longtime collaboration with filmmaker, David Lynch.

Laura Dern 1:24

I have worked with some true genius filmmakers. But they've asked me-- A few times I've been asked to do something radical and severe, namely David Lynch and and in my work with David, he has referenced her performance a couple times reminding me how fearless he expects me to be or how much he expects me to surrender to a character's kind of grand illusion about themselves. And the shot of her coming down the stairs, you know, her iconic, I'm ready for my close-up moment is so otherworldly that you really have to see it to believe it.

Jacqueline Stewart 2:14

[original music] I asked Laura to join me to talk to us about Gloria Swanson and also another iconic performance in 1950, Bette Davis in All About Eve.

Bette Davis 2:26

[All About Eve soundbite] [piano music] [as Margo Channing] Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night.

Jacqueline Stewart 2:32

In All About Eve, Betty Davis plays Margo Channing. She's an aging stage actress, aging in that she recently turned the ripe old age of 40, who lets a young ambitious fan into her life only to find her relationships and career threatened.

Bette Davis 2:49

[All About Eve soundbite] [as Margo Channing] I will not be tolerated, and I will not be plotted against!

Gary Merrill 2:52

[All About Eve soundbite] [as Bill Sampson] Here we go.

Bette Davis 2:53

[as Margo] Such nonsense. What do you all take me for? Little Nell from the country? Been my understudy for over a week without my knowing it. Carefully hidden no doubt.

Gary Merrill 3:02

[as Bill] Now don't get carried away.

Bette Davis 3:03

[as Margo] Arrived here for an audition when everyone knows I will be here.

Laura Dern 3:07

She isn't trying to hold on to what she once had. She's still owning it in her power. Still, e- you know, being our greatest stage actress, the most beloved, most brilliant wit, can cut anyone, can put anyone in their place. She's unraveled by someone else's youth and desperation to have what she has, to believe, you know, that the sun- its light is only large enough to shine on one person, so she's got to get it, pull it away from this individual so she can have it. And that's what's so devastating about it. And therefore, she becomes such a vulnerable character as that's done to her.

Jacqueline Stewart 3:50

Immediately both films garnered rave reviews, in particular for these two powerhouse performances.

Matt Severson 3:57

I mean, these are career best films, career best performances.

Jacqueline Stewart 4:02

This is Matt Severson, director of the Academy's Margaret Herrick Library. He notes that the competition for best actress that year was particularly fierce.

Jacqueline Stewart 4:12

[to Matt Severson] Heading into that Oscars night uh in 1951. What were the expectations about who would take home the Best Actress Oscar that year?

Matt Severson 4:22

It really seemed like it was the two, the two actresses. Bette Davis, Gloria Swanson were the-- were kind of neck and neck.

Jacqueline Stewart 4:30

That Oscars night in 1951, two icons actually sat on opposite coasts. Swanson in New York, Davis in Los Angeles. This was before the Oscars were televised, and so awards were announced on a radio broadcast. Toward the end of the night, Broderick Crawford presented the award for Best Actress.

Broderick Crawford 4:51

[Academy Awards soundbite] The nominations for the Best Actress are Miss Anne Baxter in All About Eve from 20th Century Fox; Miss Bette Davis, All About Eve, 20th Century Fox; Miss Judy Holliday, Born Yesterday, Columbia; Eleanor Parker in Caged, Warner Brothers; and Miss Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, Paramount. The winner is Judy Holliday! [audience roars, applauds and music plays] [fade out]

Jacqueline Stewart 5:18

Some consider this one of the greatest upsets in Oscars history that neither Davis nor Swanson took the award home. The winner Judy Holliday played Billie Dawn in Born Yesterday. She portrayed the brassy girlfriend of a corrupt politician. She was a young, funny blonde bombshell. So the role wasn't seen as having the same gravitas as Norma Desmond or Margo Channing.

Matt Severson 5:42

All of the actors in this category, were on good behavior that night at this nightclub in New York, with your other fellow nominees. And, and all, you know, the photographer's kind of waiting for you. Swanson is very conscious of the fact that the photographers and the press were going to want to pit the women against one another.

Jacqueline Stewart 6:04

[theme music] I'm Jacqueline Stewart. Welcome to the Academy Museum podcast. This is our first season, And the Oscar Goes To. In every episode, we'll revisit a specific Oscar ceremony. In this week's episode, 1951, we're going to be looking at a year that encapsulates how classic Hollywood portrayed and treated women, especially as they got older. And later in the episode, we'll be hearing from the only surviving cast member of Sunset Boulevard, Nancy Olson, on how she experienced coming of age in the Hollywood system. [music out] [pause]

Jacqueline Stewart 6:35

The power of Bette Davis's performance in All About Eve is undeniable.

Bette Davis 6:58

[All About Eve soundbite] [music plays throughout] [as Margo Channing] Funny business, a woman's career. The things you drop on your way up the ladder so you can move faster, you forget you'll need them again when you get back to being a woman.

Jacqueline Stewart 7:09

But it was seen as a kind of comeback performance. And there were lots of ways in which the kinds of anxieties about where she was in her movie career are echoed in the questions that are coming up in the anxieties about, you know, where Margo Channing is in the trajectory of her own career as well. Right?

Matt Severson 7:27

That's absolutely true. And I think uh, Bette Davis is quoted as saying that Joseph L. Mankiewicz brought me back from the dead, when she got this role.

Jacqueline Stewart 7:37

Bette Davis's film career spans more than 50 years and over 100 acting credits. She's still a household name, but her career had a perceived low point in the mid-1940s. She turned down roles that won other actresses Academy Awards, had a run of films that lost studios money, and her popularity with audiences began to wane.

Matt Severson 7:58

If you look at her career trajectory in the early 30s through the early to mid-40s, I mean, she's the queen of Warner Brothers; she's maybe you know, the most significant actre-- She's one of the great Hollywood actors at that time. But her roles in the late 40s, in the last half of the 40s, are not among her greatest achievements.

Jacqueline Stewart 8:23

But things seemed like they could take a turn when the script for All About Eve landed in her lap. She was 41 years old when she made this film. But that number 40, as being some kind of cliff that women fall off of [laughs] at a certain point in the culture in general, certainly uh at that time, but in the film industry more specifically, that must have been a huge part of her frustration that not only was it the quality of the roles, but the roles weren't keeping up with where she was in terms of her virtuosity as a performer.

Matt Severson 8:57

Without a doubt. 100, 100%. And that becomes I think, one of the uh, one of her great monologues is all, when there's she's stuck in the car with Celeste Holm, and she's talking about and then 40 comes along and every, and and it's like, that's the thing. And um I mean, certainly, I mean, that had to be I mean, that ha- I mean, there obviously is truth to that. There's no doubt about it. And I think all of us collectively look back and say, Isn't that-- I mean, it is really sad, because these, she's a great actor. She should-- I mean, Davis operated as a wonderful actor through, I think 60 or 70 years of performing. But it was rare that she got a script this great. I mean, it's rare for anyone to get a script this great. But it is sad, though, that at that time in particular, that these great actors who are obviously rising, you know, they they're coming to age, Gloria Swanson included, at a time at the birth of this new industry, which is not, it's still real young at this time. Bette Davis and Gloria Swanson both did not really have a good time in Hollywood in the 50s.

Jacqueline Stewart 10:12

Gloria Swanson started acting in the silent era. She was a silent star sweeping the screen in the 1920s. But as she made the transition to sound films, her career as an actress began declining. She turned to radio and the stage, to clothing lines and television shows. Sunset Boulevard was her great return to film, and her performance clinched her third and final Oscar nomination.

Jacqueline Stewart 10:37

[to Matt Severson] Well, let's talk about Sunset Boulevard. Another film about an ageing actress starring a legendary actress, Gloria Swanson, in another, really, we can characterize it as a comeback role for her. For people who aren't familiar with the significance of Sunset Boulevard, how would you describe it, Matt?

Matt Severson 10:58

Well, I would say that it's it's a film about Hollywood, and it is, you know, written and directed by Billy Wilder. Wilder had like a dark cynical view of human nature. And at times, Sunset Boulevard sometimes plays almost like a horror film in a way that it's utilizing Gloria Swanson's age, her mannerisms. She's kind of operating in the world that she lives in, like a silent movie star. She was, you know, much like Gloria Swanson herself, the story is about a former silent movie star, one of the great movie stars in the world, that as the, as the arrival of sound came to the medium, she was one of those performers who then slipped out of public consciousness.

William Holden 11:47

[Sunset Boulevard soundbite] [music plays throughout] [as Joe Gillis] Tell her there isn't going to be any picture. There aren't any fan letters except the ones you write.

Gloria Swanson 11:52

[Sunset Boulevard soundbite] [as Norma Desmond] That isn't true!

William Holden 11:53

[Sunset Boulevard soundbite] Norma, you're a woman of 50, now grow up. There's nothing tragic about being 50, not unless you're trying to be 25!

Gloria Swanson 12:00

[Sunset Boulevard soundbite] [whispering] The greatest star of them all.

Jacqueline Stewart 12:04

And for movie stars, audiences are often encouraged to blur performer and role. All About Eve and Sunset Boulevard are sometimes read as biographical. Two stories about actresses losing their star power, being pushed out of the industry by a new generation.

Matt Severson 12:21

I think actors are often very misunderstood. I think a lot of people thought that Bette Davis really was Margo Channing, and that it wasn't really a perfor-- That's just Bette Davis. It was a performance that kind of like, shattered her, I think, for the, for the majority of her life after.

Jacqueline Stewart 12:39

Mmm hmm. And Gloria Swanson, of course, right? Like this kind of Gothic view of what a silent film star's life would be like. [original music] Cari Beauchamp received an Academy Film Scholars grant to write a new biography of Gloria Swanson. She reflects on the complex relationship between Gloria and Norma.

Jacqueline Stewart 13:03

[to Cari Beauchamp] Do you think she had any trepidation or any, you know, even kind of deeply held concerns about playing a character that was so openly, like resisting aging?

Cari Beauchamp 13:17

No. And in real life, she loved the part of Norma Desmond. She was very proud of it. It was a three-dimensional character. She wrapped her hands around it and ran. Right? Now in real life, she would often say, Oh, people think I'm like Norma Desmond, but I'm not. I do not live in the past. And that was absolutely true. She did not live in the past.

Jacqueline Stewart 13:42

So it's been very easy for people to point to 1950 and come to the conclusion that Hollywood did not respect aging actresses, but the person who was left out of this narrative is Judy Holliday.

Matt Severson 13:54

You know, I think we can even look at Judy Holliday, because I think there's probably a lot of people that see uh Billie Dawn in Born Yesterday, and they think well that's just who that is. Th-- are they really performing?

Jacqueline Stewart 14:08

Billie Dawn is a blonde, naive, fairly uneducated and brassy character.

Announcer 14:15

[Born Yesterday trailer soundbite] [music plays throughout] Born Yesterday stars Judy Holliday and her history making stage role as Billie Dawn- blonde, beautiful, brazen and, oh brother!

Judy Holliday 14:25

[Born Yesterday soundbite] [as Billie Dawn] [clears her throat] Are you one of these talkers and would you be interested in a little action?

Jacqueline Stewart 14:31

But to write off Holliday's well executed comedic performance is a disservice to the actresses nominated that night.

Matt Severson 14:38

Judy Holliday's performance as Billie Dawn in Born Yesterday, has a real you know, there's a there's a there's a wonderful quality to her arc as someone that is kind of a shallow, silly woman when we meet her and gradually becomes kind of educated and interested in the world, and has a viewpoint on politics and art. But at the same time, this is the arc of someone that has seen, also that knows hardship. You sense that this young woman has found a place for herself in the world but finding it the hard way. You know, comedy is never easy. And I think we often overlook comic performances on film. I, I would rank Judy Holliday's performance as one of the all-time greats. And it's not great just because it's funny. Yes, there's that. But there's something really, there's something lovely and also, at times heartbreaking about her performance, too. And that's probably why she was also recognized. You know, she's not just that sex kitten. There's layers to her performance.

William Holden 15:50

[Born Yesterday soundbite] [as Paul Verrall] [music throughout] Come a long way from the chorus all right.

Judy Holliday 15:52

[Born Yesterday soundbite] [as Billie Dawn] I wasn't only in the chorus. I spoke lines.

William Holden 15:57

Really?

Judy Holliday 15:57

I coulda been a star probably if I'd a stuck to it.

William Holden 16:01

Why didn't you?

Judy Holliday 16:03

Harry didn't want me being in the show. He didn't want to share me with the general public.

Jacqueline Stewart 16:09

But winning the Oscar didn't save Judy Holliday from having to fight against the pressures and pigeonholes of Hollywood.

Jacqueline Stewart 16:16

[to Matt] Do you have a sense of what effect the Oscar had on Judy Holliday's career?

Matt Severson 16:20

That's a great question. I would say, I mean, her career is not long. Y- kn- She died tragically young from cancer. She was never able to really jettison the cookie blonde archetype that she became known for. You know, I, I mean, you can look at Marilyn Monroe, who's similarly struggled against being the sex bomb. That dumb blonde stereotype, you know, plagued them as well as many other actors over the years. You look at her other films, she's an intelligent actress. She is a fabulous comedian. And I would say that there's always a sense of sadness or melancholy that's at the heart of her performances, which I always find so rich. I think, a lot of what people thought Judy Holliday, who was, I think 28 or 29, when she was performing in in Born Yesterday was, I mean, they saw her as the, as the newcomer into this, and they're, you know, that, and we still see it today in the Academy Awards and in films that are released now. But I mean, it's 12 years difference, b- you know, 12, 13, 14 years difference between these people. That's not a lot. And it's, it's silly.

Jacqueline Stewart 17:43

Matt thinks that overall things have changed for Hollywood actresses today.

Matt Severson 17:47

I think actresses today, I I think are, I'm sure are still dealing with that stigma of age. But like, it does seem like in today's Hollywood, it seems like that number, it's kind of moved up to that 50.

Laura Dern 18:02

Today, I'm doing a movie in Morocco. And a love story is at the center of the film.

Jacqueline Stewart 18:08

Again, this is Laura Dern.

Laura Dern 18:11

But my writer, and my director, brilliant writer, Susannah Grant, is also a woman that I'm having a conversation around this love story. And my actor is younger than me. And age has never been brought up. That is definitely the first time I have ever been on a movie where my leading man is younger, and it's and it's not needing to be addressed in the story. It's just about people who see each other.

Jacqueline Stewart 18:52

Gloria Swanson wasn't the only performer from Sunset Boulevard nominated for an Oscar that night in 1951. Nancy Olson, who played ingenue and writer Betty Schaefer, was up for Best Supporting Actress.

William Holden 19:07

[Sunset Boulevard soundbite] [as Joe Gillis] [inside a bar with piano playing] Now, if I got you correctly, there's a short stretch of my fiction which you found worthy of notice.

Nancy Olson 19:10

[Sunset Boulevard soundbite] [as Betty Schaefer] The flashback scene in a courtroom when she tells about being a school teacher.

William Holden 19:14

I had a teacher like that once.

Nancy Olson 19:15

Maybe that's why it's good. It's true. It's moving. Now why don't you use that character--

William Holden 19:20

Who wants true? Who wants moving?

Nancy Olson 19:22

Drop that attitude! Here's something really worthwhile.

William Holden 19:24

Want me to start right away? Maybe there's some paper around.

Nancy Olson 19:26

I'm serious. I've got a few ideas.

William Holden 19:27

And I've got a few ideas of my own.

Jacqueline Stewart 19:30

After the break, we talk with her about the off-screen realities of coming of age in Hollywood, and why she ultimately left the industry. [theme music]

Nancy Olson 19:39

I walked to this huge, dark soundstage. They opened the door and once you get it closed behind you, you were trapped. [music out] [break]

Nancy Olson 20:03

Northwestern University does a very famous program for June, but it's for high school students who have finished their junior year and are going to start their senior year. It's for that summer, for the month of August to Labor Day.

Jacqueline Stewart 20:18

Yes, the Cherubs! The Cherub program. I, I did that program. [Nancy: You know about the Cherubs?] I did it. I did it. [Nancy: You did it?!] [Jacqueline laughs] I sure did- in journalism.

Nancy Olson 20:28

Well, I was a cherub! [Jacqueline laughs]

Jacqueline Stewart 20:29

[original music] Nancy Olson is the only surviving cast member from the film Sunset Boulevard. She grew up in Milwaukee and was involved in school theater from a young age. As she describes in her forthcoming memoir, A Front Row Seat, she followed that passion to the theater program at UCLA.

Nancy Olson 20:52

I was in a play, and uh, I got a tap on the door after the performance. And it was this man who said that he was the head of the talent department at Paramount, and he gave me his card. And he said, I'd like you to call me. [music out] I'd like you to come and talk to me.

Jacqueline Stewart 21:11

That meeting got her a screen test, and a seven-year contract at Paramount Pictures. From then on, she was on the studio lot as much as possible.

Nancy Olson 21:20

And it was another world. And it was a time by the way, when studios were really the creative force of motion pictures. It eventually changed with the agents taking over and you know, selling the play, the actor, the director, the- they did the repackaging. At that moment, you had all these people under contract, I mean, from Bob Hope to Barbara Stanwyck to um, every everybody. And they were now making pictures. They were l- maybe 14 pictures at once, all being made on the lot in these huge sound stages. And because I was under contract, I could visit them all. I would visit the lot, and Billy Wilder was making pictures on, at Paramount. And he would stop me on the way to the commissary and insist that I have these long conversations with him. And they consisted of what was it like to be going to college? What was it like growing up in the Midwest? What is it like being the daughter of a doctor? It was all these different questions about my life. And one day, I got a call from the talent department saying your next assignment is a picture called Sunset Boulevard. And you will be playing the role of Betty Schaefer, and I read the script and it was the role of a young aspiring writer.

Jacqueline Stewart 23:06

In Sunset Boulevard, Betty Schaefer is a script reader at Paramount Pictures who wants to be a writer. She has a friendship that almost turns romantic with William Holden's character and is one of the few characters in the film to escape Hollywood relatively unscathed.

Nancy Olson 23:21

And I, since then, I had believed that Billy Wilder was talking to me to just get a sense of would you believe that I could be an aspiring writer. I was a student at UCLA. Uh, I I expressed myself fairly well. And what he wanted me to be and do in that film was to be totally myself. And when Edith Head, who was head of the costume department, when she started making costumes for me, and showed drawings to Billy, he would say, No. He said, I liked what Nancy wore last week when she visited the set. I wore all my own clothes. And believe me, I mean, I, I wasn't quite sure where to shop in Los Angeles. I didn't have the time. And I didn't grow up here. So I had to put together as best what Billy and I thought would work. So I'm not, I can't say that I look fabulous, but I look real. And I look like a young woman who if- [Jacqueline: Yeah, you looked real.] He never cast me again. [original music] He just wanted me to be Betty Schaefer period.

Jacqueline Stewart 24:53

So, Nancy, where and when did you learn that you had been nominated for Sunset Boulevard?

Nancy Olson 25:01

Before Sunset Boulevard was released, I married a man, a playwright who wrote musicals. He wrote the the book and the lyrics. And I moved to New York. [music out] And I said to Paramount, I don't want to be a movie star. I want to go out into the world and be a part of the world. I cannot sit on a dark soundstage six days a week any longer. So I was married to Alan...

Jacqueline Stewart 25:35

Alan Lerner of musical writing duo Lerner and Loewe wrote the libretto and lyrics for classics like Brigadoon and My Fair Lady.

Nancy Olson 25:43

He came out here to write the script for Brigadoon, which he had written for Broadway before that a long time ago. But he w- they were going to make a movie of it. And so we were in Los Angeles renting a house, and I get a phone call from Paramount saying you've been nominated for an Academy Award for the role of Betty Schaefer. And I said, Oh, my goodness, I said, Who else was nominated? And they told me all the people who were nominated, and I thought, I'm not gonna get that award. [laughs] [original music] And and I was right. Alan and I, uh I dressed up, and he put on his his black tie. And we got to the theater, and we were seated in the side, the right-side section, halfway back from the stage. And he said, Nancy, I hate to tell you, but you're not going to win. [laughs] If you were gonna win, you'd be seated somewhere near the front, so you could get up and accept it. So we sat there, and we watched the Awards. It was so crowded, and so much was going on. So we went to the Mocambo, the two of us, which was a nightclub uh on h- Hollywood Boulevard, or Sunset or one of those, and we had supper and danced. [laughs] And that was the night of the Awards.

Jacqueline Stewart 27:10

I wonder if you remember what the reaction was like and what you thought about Judy Holliday's win that year?

Nancy Olson 27:17

Well, I was not surprised. Judy Holliday was an incredible talent. And I, I accepted that completely. Uh, Bette Davis, my God, in in in that movie who would ever forget, you know. A couple of her lines have become infamous. But Gloria Swanson. She was the one person who when we were making the film, she understood she would never be forgotten again. She would never be thrown away again. And it was unfortunate that she lost. However, it th- it already had happened. It was going to live forever. She was going to live forever.

Jacqueline Stewart 28:06

At this time, Nancy was thinking about what she wanted for her own life. She starred in a handful of films in the early 1950s, three of which paired her with her Sunset Boulevard co-star William Holden. She could have continued as an actress in Hollywood, but she made the choice to live her life mostly off screen.

Nancy Olson 28:24

For y- a 21 year old to be- to- First of all, we worked six days a week then. There was only one day off- Sunday. And you s-, you h-, I had to be at the studio at seven in the morning, every morning. And for two hours, they washed my hair, did put my makeup on, wardrobe. I walked to this huge dark soundstage. You, they opened the door and once you it closed behind you, you were trapped. And there was a huge life outside that dark soundstage going on without me. So that was not a life. It's interesting. Do you know any really successful movie star who had a really, really successful marriage and family? Very few. Very few. And I was a doctor's daughter from the Midwest. My mother was a schoolteacher. I had to be a part of the world. And I had to have a partnership and a person to live with that was interesting and doing dynamic thing and giving me a chance to interlock with with the rest of the world.

Jacqueline Stewart 30:00

Thank you. Thank you so much, Nancy. This was amazing. [laughing] Wonderful to hear your story.

Nancy Olson 30:07

Thank you! And the fact that I'm talking to another Cherub, I love it! [laughs]

Jacqueline Stewart 30:11

Nancy Olson's memoir, A Front Row Seat, is slated for release in fall of 2022.

Jacqueline Stewart 30:17

[theme music] The Academy Museum podcast is written and hosted by me, Jacqueline Stewart. This episode was produced by Victoria Alejandro. The Academy Museum podcast team includes Antonia Cereijido, Kimberly Stevens and Monica Bushman. The show was a production of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in collaboration with LAist Studios. Mixing by E. Scott Kelly. Our theme music was composed by Nicolas Britell. Antonia Cereijido and Leo G are the executive producers for LAist Studios. Our Academy Museum website Academymuseum.org is designed by Fantasy and developed by Impossible Bureau. Our LAist website laist.com/podcast is designed by Andy Cheatwood, and the digital and marketing teams at LAist Studios. The Academy Museum marketing team created our branding. Thanks to the team at the Academy Museum, including Shawn Anderson, Peter Castro, Stephanie Sykes and Matt Youngner, and to our Academy colleagues, Randy Haberkamp and Claire Lockhart. Thanks also to the team at LAist Studios, including Sabir Brara, Kristen Hayford, Kristen Muller, Andy Orozco, Michael Consentino and Leo G. Academy Museum digital engagement platforms, including this podcast are sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies. Support for this podcast is made possible by Gordon and Dona Crawford, who believe that quality journalism makes Los Angeles a better place to live. This program is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people. [music out]