Lee Marvin Reveals the 7 Most Evil RACIST Actors of Hollywood’s Golden Age HT

Lee Marvin reveals the seven most evil racist actors of Hollywood’s golden age. Lee Marvin saw Hollywood’s racism up close for three decades. And before he died, he revealed the names of the stars whose prejudice disgusted him most. Among them was America’s Boy Next Door, who painted his face dark and mocked entire races for laughs in two of Hollywood’s most beloved films.

There was the elegant actor who told the United States government under oath that applauding a black performer should be considered evidence of treason. And there was the man Marvin co-starred with in two films who openly endorsed racial superiority in a verified interview and had to be physically restrained from attacking a young woman at the 1973 Academy Awards.

These are the seven most evil racist actors of Hollywood’s golden age. Number seven, Mickey Rooney. America’s boy next door who mocked entire races for laughs. Mickey Rooney ranked among the most beloved entertainers in American history. Starting as a child performer in the 1920s and remaining active for nearly nine decades across over 300 films.

And at his peak in the late 1930s and early 1940s, he was the number one box office draw in the entire country. more popular than Clark Gable, more popular than Humphrey Bogart, more popular than anyone in Hollywood. What America chose to overlook was that Rooney built a significant portion of his early career on racial mockery.

And in 1939, he starred alongside Judy Garland in the musical Babes in Arms and performed an extended sequence in Blackface, painting his skin dark and mimicking black performers for laughs, while Garland did the same beside him. And this was not a brief moment or an ambiguous scene, but a deliberate extended performance designed to get laughs from a white audience by cariculturing black people.

22 years later in 1961 came what many critics now consider one of the most offensive performances in the history of American cinema. Because in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Rooney played Mr. Yunioshi, a Japanese character wearing prosthetic teeth designed to look exaggerated and stereotypical while taping his eyes to mimic Asian features and speaking in a high-pitched, heavily accented voice that bore no resemblance to any actual Japanese person, reducing an entire people to a punchline in one of Hollywood’s most beloved films. The Hollywood Reporters Review at the time noted that the role amounted to a caricature that would be offensive to many, and the Asian-American community protested the portrayal for decades afterward. Director Blake Edwards eventually expressed regret, saying he wished he had never done it and would give anything to recast the role, and Rooney himself claimed in a 2008 interview that he was heartbroken by the criticism and would not have done it if he knew people would be offended. The pattern told its own story because from

blackface in 1939 to the grotesque Asian caricature in 1961, Rooney spent over two decades demonstrating a willingness to mock other races for entertainment. And Marvin, who worked in the same industry during the same era and never once participated in racial mockery of any kind, found Rooney’s behavior particularly troubling.

A colleague recalled Marvin saying that Rooney was talented enough to be funny without making fun of someone’s race and the fact that he chose to do it anyway told you what he really thought about the people he was mocking. Number six, Bob Hope. The beloved comedian who laughed at other cultures.

Bob Hope performed for American troops overseas for decades, hosted the Academy Awards more times than any other person, received honorary awards from Congress, earned a nighthood from the Queen of England, and was celebrated as a national treasure, making him one of the most famous entertainers of the 20th century.

1942 brought Road to Morocco alongside Bing Crosby and the film featured both men in brownface darkening their skin to portray caricatures of North African and Middle Eastern people with the portrayals relying on exaggerated accents, stereotyped behavior, and the assumption that non-white cultures existed primarily to be laughed at by white audiences.

An Incession film review noted that watching white actors in brownface playing racist caricatures makes it hard not to feel uncomfortable and that the portrayals were representative of how most middle-class Americans would have viewed Moroccans at the time because the film treated an entire region and its people as a backdrop for comedy with Hope and Crosby playing for maximum laughs at the expense of the cultures they were mocking.

Hope’s defenders argued this was simply the comedy of its era. And Marvin, who lived through the same era and managed to build an equally successful career without ever putting on racial makeup or mocking another culture, did not accept that excuse. A friend recalled Marvin observing that plenty of comedians in the 1940s were funny without painting their faces, and that choosing to mock someone’s race was not a requirement of the era, but a choice made by people who thought other cultures were beneath them.

Number five, Robert Taylor. The leading man who named names to destroy careers. Robert Taylor ranked among MGM’s biggest stars throughout the 1930s and 1940s as a handsome leading man who appeared in films like Waterl Bridge and Ivanho. And he was also one of the first actors in Hollywood to voluntarily cooperate with the House Unamerican Activities Committee, delivering testimony that helped destroy careers which would never recover.

October 22nd of 1947 brought Taylor before walk as a friendly witness where he named specific colleagues he believed were communists including actors Howard Dilva and Karen Moley giving the committee exactly what it needed to expand the blacklist that would devastate the industry for the next decade. What connected Taylor’s testimony to racism was the disproportionate impact the blacklist carried against black performers and civil rights advocates because the committee used accusations of communism as a weapon against anyone who supported racial equality and performers who attended civil rights meetings, supported integration, or spoke out against segregation found themselves targeted for investigation, which meant Taylor’s willingness to name names fed a machine that specifically punished people for supporting racial justice. Ice. Taylor held membership in the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, the same conservative organization that included John Wayne and other figures who used anti-communist politics as a

cover for enforcing racial hierarchies in the industry. Marvin arrived in Hollywood just a few years after Taylor’s testimony and witnessed the aftermath of the blacklist firsthand, seeing talented performers who could not find work because they had attended a civil rights meeting or signed a petition supporting integration and watching the industry punish people for believing in equality while rewarding the informants who turned them in.

A colleague recalled Marvin saying that Taylor destroyed people’s lives to protect his own career and that the blacklist was never really about communism but about keeping certain people quiet and certain other people in charge. Number four, Adolf Menju. The man who proudly called himself a witch hunter.

Adolf Menju appeared in over 90 films between the 1920s and the 1960s and earned a reputation as one of Hollywood’s most elegant and sophisticated actors. Known for his impeccable wardrobe and his refined screen presence, he was also, by his own proud admission, a man who dedicated a significant portion of his life to destroying the careers of people he considered politically unacceptable.

October of 1947 brought Menju before Ha where he did not pretend to be a reluctant participant, but declared openly and on the record that he was a witch hunter if the witches were communists and a red baiter who would like to see them all sent back to Russia. And he carried no shame about any of it because he was proud.

What made Menju’s testimony specifically connected to racism was his method of identifying supposed communists because he told the committee that anyone attending any meeting at which Paul Robersonson appears and applauds can be considered a communist. And Paul Roberson was one of the most gifted black performers in American history.

a man of extraordinary talent who used his platform to advocate for civil rights and racial equality, which meant Menju was telling the United States government that applauding a black civil rights advocate amounted to evidence of communist sympathy. Weaponizing anti-communist politics to specifically target people who supported racial justice.

Menju held founding membership in the Motion Picture Alliance and remained an aggressive voice against civil rights activism for the rest of his career, publicly attacking Katherine Heppern by calling her a communist sympathizer and infuriating Spencer Tracy and Hepern so deeply that they refused to speak to Menu offscreen during the filming of State of the Union in 1948.

Marvin came up through an industry still reeling from the blacklist’s damage. And a colleague recalled him saying that Menju destroyed lives and bragged about it and that any man who considers applauding a black performer to be evidence of treason has revealed exactly who he is and what he stands for. Number three, Joan Crawford.

Hollywood’s queen who put her racism in writing. Joan Crawford won the Academy Award for best actress and ranked among the biggest stars in Hollywood for four decades. And behind the glamorous image lived a woman who contractually demanded racial segregation in her own films. A contract clause from the 1940s discovered in Warner Brothers archives explicitly stated that Crawford would not appear in scenes with black performers in equal status roles.

And this was not a private preference or an unspoken understanding, but a written legal demand that shaped the casting and scripting of every film she made for years. Production of Sudden Fear stalled in 1952 when Crawford objected to a black actor being cast in a dinner party scene and demanded the script be rewritten to change him from a guest to a servant.

And she insisted on separate dressing room facilities whenever black performers were on set, even for brief scenes filmed on different days. Dorothy Dandridge, one of the most talented black actresses of her era, documented Crawford’s coldness and refusal to speak to her in the Warner Brothers Commissary, despite both being contracted stars at the same studio.

Crawford maintained these attitudes well into the 1970s, long after the Civil Rights Act had passed, and Marvin, who worked in the same studio system, heard about Crawford’s contractual demands through colleagues who witnessed them firsthand. A colleague recalled him saying that most racists at least had the decency to keep it verbal.

But Crawford actually wrote it into her contract, which meant she was proud enough of her prejudice to make it a legal document and force other people to enforce it. Number two, Bing Crosby, the Kuner, who refused to share the stage. More records sold than any solo artist in history.

a recording of White Christmas that remains the bestselling single of all time and a wholesome image that made Bing Crosby one of America’s most trusted entertainers. And behind that image, according to multiple sources, he actively refused to share stages with integrated bands. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, even as the music industry began slowly integrating, Crosby maintained all white musical arrangements.

And when his record label suggested integrated recording sessions in 1953, Crosby reportedly threatened to leave rather than work with mixed race musicians. Luis Armstrong, one of the most important musicians in American history and a man whose genius had helped create the very musical language that Crosby built his career on, personally confronted Crosby about his refusal to collaborate and documented the interaction in his personal letters, which meant the man who owed his musical vocabulary to black artists refused to share a microphone with them. A 1954 incident at NBC became legendary among crew members when Crosby walked out of a rehearsal after black backup singers were added to the arrangement without his approval and he did not return until the singers were removed and replaced with white performers. Marvin, who worked alongside Jim Brown in The Dirty Dozen without a single issue, found Crosby’s refusal to share a stage with black musicians particularly offensive. And a producer recalled him saying that

Crosby would sing about peace on Earth every December and then refuse to stand next to a black musician in January. And that kind of hypocrisy was worse than honest bigotry because at least an honest bigot does not pretend to be something he is not. Number one, John Wayne.

The Duke who said it out loud while Lee Marvin stayed quiet. Lee Marvin and John Wayne co-starred in two films together. The Common Cherros in 1961 and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance in 1962, occupying the same corner of Hollywood, where both played tough men in westerns and war films, and both projected American masculinity for overlapping generations.

They knew each other, they worked together, and according to those close to Marvin, that proximity made Wayne’s racial views all the more disturbing. May of 1971 brought the interview that changed everything. When Wayne sat down and delivered statements so explicit that Snopes, the Washington Post, CNN, and Variety have all verified them as genuine, openly endorsing white racial superiority, saying he felt no guilt about the history of slavery and calling indigenous people selfish for trying to keep their own land. Wayne served as president of the Motion Picture Alliance from 1949 to 1952, the same organization that Adul Manju and Robert Taylor used to enforce the blacklist. and he joined the John Burch Society in 1960, actively campaigning against hiring black actors in leading roles and rejecting Sydney Poier for a part in the Alamo despite Poier being the biggest black star of the era. The 1973 Academy Awards brought

the moment that exposed Wayne completely when Sasheen Little Feather appeared on stage to decline Marlon Brando’s Oscar on behalf of Native American rights and Wayne had to be physically restrained by security from charging the stage to confront a young woman who was simply delivering a message.

What made Wayne’s racism particularly offensive to Marvin was the contrast between their experiences, because both men played soldiers on screen, but Marvin had actually been one, fighting alongside black Marines in the Pacific and watching men of every color bleed and die for the same country. While Wayne had never served a single day in uniform and had avoided military service during World War II when Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, and Marvin himself risked their lives.

A close friend recalled Marvin saying that Wayne talked about racial superiority from the comfort of a Hollywood mansion. While men who actually fought the war knew that the color of a man’s skin had nothing to do with his courage and that the bravest men he ever knew were the ones Wayne would not have hired for his movies and that being lectured about racial superiority by a man who had never heard a shot fired in anger was an insult to everyone who actually served.

Marvin opposed the Vietnam War while Wayne supported it. and Marvin publicly supported gay rights in 1969. While Wayne clung to a vision of America that excluded anyone who did not look like him, and they had worked together on two films and according to those who knew Marvin, the experience of standing next to John Wayne while knowing what Wayne truly believed about race ranked among the most uncomfortable experiences of his professional career.

What Lee Marvin knew about Hollywood. August 29th of 1987 brought the heart attack that ended Lee Marvin’s life at the age of 63 and he was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. One of the few Hollywood actors honored in that way. Over three decades he spent in an industry that celebrated the very people whose racial attitudes he found contemptable.

Mickey Rooney mocked entire races in blackface and grotesque caricature. While audiences applauded, Bob Hope darkened his skin for laughs and called it comedy. Robert Taylor named names that destroyed careers built on civil rights advocacy. Adolf Menju proudly called himself a witch hunter and told the government that applauding a black performer was evidence of treason.

Joan Crawford put her racism in writing as a contractual demand. Bing Crosby sang about peace while refusing to stand on the same stage as a black musician. And John Wayne, the man Marvin had stood next to on two film sets, endorsed racial superiority from a mansion he had never earned through service.

Marvin saw all of it, working alongside these people, shaking their hands, sharing screens with them, and coming home to tell the people closest to him exactly what he thought of every one of them. The man who had been tested by war, who had watched men of every color fight and die for the same country, carried no respect for people whose courage only extended as far as their prejudice would allow.

Lee Marvin knew what real bravery looked like, and the seven people on this list had none of it, which revelation shocked you most. Did you know about these documented attitudes before today? Share your thoughts in the comments below. And if you found this valuable, do not forget to like and subscribe for more untold stories from entertainment’s hidden past.