Old Hollywood Curses: The Superman Curse, Rosemary's Baby, and more
Can films be cursed? What about specific roles? Today we're going to look into the story of a curse that was placed on Hollywood in the 1800's, and the ripple effects that may have had.
TW: Suicide
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Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by Kaelyn Moore.
SOURCES
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/16/entertainment/henry-cavill-the-witcher-superman-intl-scli/index.html
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/jan/30/take-that-mr-hitler-the-jewish-roots-of-superheroes
https://www.wrhs.org/blog/the-greatest-american-hero-the-story-of-jerry-siegel-and-joe-shuster/
https://la.curbed.com/2017/10/31/16551314/los-feliz-griffith-park-murders-ghosts-haunted
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-01-03-me-8094-story.html
“Rosemary’s Baby” Cursed Movies. Created by Jay Cheel. Season 2, Episode 2. April 14th, 2022
TRANSCRIPT
We can’t talk about Hollywood, without talking about the Hollywood Sign.
It’s looked over LA from up on a mountain for 101 years now. It’s on postcards, t shirts, movie posters. But what if I told you that the land the hollywood sign sits on, a large, mountainous piece of the city known as Griffith Park, is actually cursed? Long before the sign went up, a family, the Los Feliz’s, owned Griffith Park, and placed a curse on the land so vitriolic it’s believed that it still effects the land today.
The story goes that back in the 1860’s, a man named Antonio Los Feliz was heir to the Los Feliz ranch, a plot of land that included all 4300 square acres of Griffith park. Antonio was a perpetual bachelor and had no children of his own, but treated his teenage niece, Petranilla Los Feliz like his own daughter.
But one night, in 1863, Antonio lay in his bed, dying of small pox. Though he wanted to be near his family, it had been decided that Petranilla should go into the city to avoid getting her uncle’s illness.
Petranilla protested the idea, however. She wanted to stay. Not just to say goodbye to her dying uncle, or to help take care of him. She knew that Antonio had some questionable friends. Friends that only liked him for his money and she feared that in his fragile state they’d be on him like vultures on a dying deer, trying to suck the cash they could out of him in his final moments.
And sure enough, that night, two men showed up to Antonio Los Feliz’s door. Antonio Coronel, and a lawyer named Don Inoccante. Petranilla’s mother answered, and let the men in thinking nothing of it, but these were the worst two people that could have come to the ranch.
The men convinced Antonio to change his will and leave the Los Feliz ranch, which had been in the family since the land was gifted to Antonio’s ancestor in the 1790s, to them, not to Petranilla. Since Antonio didn’t have any heirs, the land was supposed to stay in the family through her. All it took was a quick flick of the wrist and he signed it all away.
That night, Antonio died. And when Petranilla found out what happened, she was filled with a fiery anger she had never felt before. She and her mother were left with nothing, no place to live. This land was no longer theirs. She ran to town to find Antonio Coronel and his lawyer drinking in a local bar. She marched right up to them and reportedly screamed:
Your falsity shall be your ruin. The substance of the feliz family shall be your curse! The lawyer that assisted you in your infamy and the judge shall fall beneath the same curse. The one shall die an untimely death and the other in blood and violence. A blight shall fall on this terrestrial paradise. The cattle shall sicken. The fields shall no longer respond to the tiller. I see a great flood spreading destruction. I see the grand oaks wither in the tongues of flames. The wrath of heaven and the vengeance of hell shall fall upon this place”
Afraid that a curse may really come to pass, Antonio Coronel quickly sold the land to a man named Leon Baldwin, but that couldn’t save them from the curse. The lawyer who helped Coronel was killed, and Coronel himself was financially ruined later in life. He died without any money to his name.
The year that Baldwin bought the land, a plague of grasshoppers came and destroyed all of the crops he attempted to grow. That same year, a devastating illness killed all of his cattle. It was a huge financial loss to his family. Baldwin would later be killed by an outlaw, but not before selling what he believed to be cursed land.
Eventually, the lot of land would be sold to Griffith J Griffith, the man the land is currently named after. But shortly after purchasing the ranch, a flood would destroy all of the oak trees and essentially everything else in the park. Petranilla had passed away by this point, but she was making good on her word.
Griffith gave the land to the city of los angeles in 1896 as a christmas present, but really because no one would buy his cursed, barren land.
Some say the curse ended when the land was sold to the city, but others claim it still lingers to this day. I mean, just a few years ago the land next to Griffith observatory caught fire, burning a big part of the hill. Was that a classic California wildfire, or was Petranilla still trying to scorch the earth?
To me, it’s always seemed funny that hollywood was built on cursed land, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s had any sort of ripple effect. Is all of Hollywood inherently cursed because of one teen girl? In this episode, I want to tell you about some curses that people say have haunted the industry. First, you’ll hear about the curse that follows men who play the role of Superman. Then I want to tell you about a classic hollywood film that many have said is cursed by the devil. But First, we’re going to take a quick break, and as always, listener discretion is advised.
Welcome to heart starts pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings and mysteries. I’m your host, Kaelyn Moore.
I want to dive right in to today’s topic because I am so interested in these stories, but before we dive in have you listened to this months bonus episode on the dark history and supernatural tales of the Waverly Hills Sanatorium? It was an old Tuberculosis hospital that’s now considered one of the most haunted places in the country. The idea was suggested by patrons and then voted on by our high council tier, and what can I say, I’m a woman of the people, I’m here to tell you the the dark history you request.
If you’d like to vote on next months bonus episode, make sure you sign up for our high council tier on Patreon.
Alright, let’s get into it.
In December of 2022, Henry Cavill took quite a hit to his career.
The actor announced that he would no longer be returning to his hit Netflix show The Witcher to play the titular character he had played for 3 seasons. He had contractual obligations to return to DC and reprise his version of Superman. a team of lawyers let Cavill know that he had no choice in the matter, he had played Superman first and that role took precedence.
As if losing out on his $1m an episode Witcher salary wasn’t bad enough, shortly after the announcement was made, Warner Brothers called Cavill to inform him that he was in fact, dropped from the Superman project. The man who was playing two of the most culturally important characters, was now out of a job.
When I first heard about this, my heart dropped and the first thing I thought of was the Superman curse: a curse set to befall any actor who dares play the role. And I wasn’t the only one, the internet was buzzing with theories, claiming that this was destined to happen once Henry signed his name on the dotted line to play superman years ago.
But Can various people who all play the same character become cursed? Well, according to some, Henry is following in the footsteps of many other actors whose lives were ruined by the role. Let’s start at the beginning.
The first man to be cast as Superman for the screen was named Kirk Alyn. In 1948, Alyn was in a Superman movie serial consisting of 15 episodes. He had moved to Hollywood in the early 1940’s to find work as an actor, but wasn’t having much luck, only booking bit parts until he was cast as the super hero.
At first, he thought the call offering him the role was a joke. He recalled what the auditioning process was like. Upon seeing Alyn, Executives from DC Comics proclaimed, “hey, you look just like Clark Kent, take off your shirt.” It was true, Alyn had dark hair and a quarter back build. He was an all american boy, which anyone could tell even when he WAS wearing a shirt. But still, he took off his shirt and flexed for the execs. One man, excited with what he was seeing, shouted out, now take off your pants. Alyn sheepishly smiled and refused, a wise choice even though at the time, not complying could be the end of your career. It seemed to not matter though, he was still offered the role. Alyn was 37 when he was cast.
The movies were released to an ok reception, audiences were mostly excited to see the screen adaptation of the character they had read in comics and heard on the radio. You would think that someone who was cast to play such a big role in 15 movies would have no problem getting more work afterwards… Well, you’d be wrong. After the films, Alyn would go on to struggle getting jobs in hollywood for the rest of his life. He’d occasionally appear in the Superman Universe, appearing as Superman’s father in the 1978 movie adaptation. But He died in 1999 in relative obscurity.
Ok, one person playing superman and not being able to find work afterwards is not a curse. It wasn’t until the second man cast as the superhero met an unfortunate end that people started wondering if something nefarious was going on.
In 1951, an actor named George Reeves was cast as the new superman. George had a semi successful career in hollywood up until that point, being in movies like Gone With The Wind. George really popularized Superman, his movies performed far better than Kirk Alyn’s, setting him up to not face the same fate. But unfortunately for George, the roles seemed to dry up after he finished playing superman as well. In 1958, an article titled “No work for superman” ran in the Evening Star.
Then, on june 16th 1959, George was found dead in his room of a gunshot wound, just days before he was to be married. Though the official report ruled it a suicide, there were too many unanswered questions surrounding the event.
The night it happened, his fiance and three other friends were hanging out downstairs while Reeves lay in bed upstairs. According to witnesses, he came downstairs and joined them for a drink before going back up to bed. A few minutes later, they heard a gunshot ring out.
That seemed strange to police, who were called 45 minutes after the shot was fired. They also found it strange that George was found naked, and three bullets were discovered to have been discharged around the room, not 1. His body was also covered in bruises. Some believe that George’s fiance shot and killed him, others think it was a mob hit. There were no prints found on the gun to confirm either way, and no gunpowder was found on his hand. One of George’s friends, Fred Crane, heard that after the shooting, George’s fiance ran downstairs screaming, tell them i was down here, tell them i was down here! Despite this strange evidence, police decided that the actor’s dwindling career was a good enough reason to rule it a suicide, and they closed the book
And if that was part of the curse, well, it seemed to only get stranger from there.
George Reeves was the actor who popularized Superman, but it was Christopher Reeve, no relation to George, who quickly became the most iconic Superman. When I think of Clark Kent, I still think of Christopher Reeve, he was the first superman I ever cared about, before I became obsessed with Smallville, obviously.
Christopher Reeve played superman in the 1978 film Superman, which performed so well he was invited back for 3 more sequels.
In 1995, however, Reeve’s acting career would come to a crashing halt when he was thrown from his horse during a horse riding competition. his horse, named Buck, stopped suddenly in front of an obstacle. The crowd watched in horror as the force threw Reeve forward causing him to land on his neck. Doctors would later say that if he landed 1/16th of an inch left he would have died instantly. If he had landed just a tad right he would have only suffered a concussion and would have been fine. But instead, Reeve was left paralyzed from the neck down. For the rest of his life, he’d be bound to a wheelchair, would struggle to breathe on his own, and have no sensation in 90% of his body. He died in 2004 at the age of 52.
And Christopher Reeve wasn’t the only person playing superman in those specific movies to suffer the curse. They also feature scenes of Superman as an infant, played by a baby named Lee Quigly. Lee would go on to die at just 14 years old from solvent abuse.
while other actors who have played the role since Christopher Reeve haven’t suffered as devastating of fates, some argue that the curse still applies. Dean Cain, Brandon Routh, and Tom Welling have all played the role, and struggled getting work afterwards. And if you had told me that Tom Welling, the star of Smallville, would struggle to get work after the show, I would have told you that’s impossible, this is the most beautiful man to ever live, surely he’ll be a movie star forever. And yet..
But why is this role cursed? Well some say it goes all the way back to the creators of Superman. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster sold their first ever Superman comic to Action comics in 1938 for $130, which is just $2,800 today. That’s not even rent for a month for two people, but they were just excited they could finally see the character they dreamed up come to life.
Siegel and Shuster were two jewish immigrants who initially created Superman as a hero who could single handedly end WWII. Most people don’t know this, but Superman started as a nazi hunting purveyor of Justice, and in a 1940 comic, he punches Hitler square in the face. Now THAT is a movie I want DC to make.
But you would think that the two men who created Superman would be set for life, right? Wrong. Due to some bad deals, they were never properly compensated and hardly received any royalties for the character.
And on top of that, Schuster started losing his eyesight by the 1950’s and was unable to work any longer. Siegel had to take a series of dead end jobs at Marvel to get by.
The two were eventually given a pension by Warner Brothers, but many agree that was not enough. Batman Vs. Superman, made over $870 million at the box office. Siegel and Shuster would have seen less than a quarter of 1 percent of that in their lifetime.
For now, believers in the curse are closely watching Henry Cavill’s career. He’s set to star in the Amazon show Warhammer, which, we’ll see if that becomes as big as his other projects. Maybe he’ll be able to finally break the curse, or perhaps he’s destined to suffer the same fate as those before him.
So, we know that roles may be cursed, but can films themselves be cursed. Up next, we look at what happens when Hollywood tries to portray the antichrist. After the break
There’s an old belief that states the Devil’s greatest trick was convincing us he doesn’t exist. It’s a belief that terrifies me. To think that evil wants to work in the shadows to manipulate us like puppets without our knowledge is horrifying.
There’s another belief, this one more modern, that movies which try to portray the devil are inherently cursed, because they’re trying to shine a light on the demonic presence that wishes to stay hidden.
And to prove their point, people typically turn to the movie Rosemary’s baby.
Let’s start from the beginning. And I’ll say here that there are spoilers for the movie in this next part. But you’ve have 56 years to watch this movie so I think we’ll be ok
Rosemary’s baby is a 1968 film directed by Roman Polanski, about a woman named Rosemary, played by Mia Farrow, who becomes pregnant with Satan’s child. It came out at a perfect moment, America was in Vietnam, people were watching daily as their brothers, friends and lovers were being drafted with no rhyme or reason. The cold war was also a constant, ever looming threat, and the year the film came out, 1968, saw the assassinations of both Martin Luther King Jr and Robert Kennedy. It was a time where it felt like the government couldn’t be trusted, people were paranoid, and the film perfectly played into those fears. It took something mundane, a woman carrying a child during pregnancy, and made it a complete nightmare.
In the film Rosemary struggles with her pregnancy and is often told that what she’s experiencing is all in her head. Later, we learn that the child is Satan’s and its conception was orchestrated by a coven of satanists.
But the real nightmare of making the film started before it even went into production. And that’s because the majority of it was shot on the Paramount studios lot, a place many claim is haunted.
I’ve had the good fortune of working on the Paramount lot twice in my career, once as an intern and the next time as an executive. There’s is something strange about it, when you walk in you feel like it’s 100 years ago, many of the building are as they were at the time the studio was built, and when I was interning, I was in one of the oldest buildings where the big wig executives used to work. And something always felt a little off to me… not just because they were filming glee next door.
Paramount studios is located right next to the Hollywood forever cemetery, the most famous cemetery in the city where countless actors, musicians, and executives who built hollywood are buried. There’s something morbid about being buried next to your workplace. I think it’s not really looked at as weird because it’s showbusiness, but if I was buried next to the fast food restaurant I spent my formative years at, you bet I would have haunted it.
But the land that paramount sits on is an original part of the cemetery that was sold to the studio, and no one is sure how many bodies are still buried underneath.
And for that reason, some say the set of Rosemary’s baby was haunted to begin with. Ghosts are said to roam the paramount studios lot. But on top of that, the production of the film may have invited entities onto the set.
Because the film deals with satan and the occult, they decided to hire Anton Lavey, the founder of the church of satan, to be an advisor on set. Lavey also played the role of satan in the film.
Lavey was known for doing Satanic baptisms and hosting devil worshiping orgies. He published The Satanic Bible and was known in the press as The Evilest man in the world. And with his direction, there are subtle nods to Satan all throughout the film.
When Rosemary is at the doctor’s office, she picks up a Time Magazine that reads “Is God Dead” in bright red letters, a real cover the magazine ran in 1966. Sammy Davis Jrs autobiography also appears multiple times throughout the film. Davis Jr was known to frequent the Church of satan, and also attended parties with Roman Polanski and his wife, Sharon Tate.
I’ve mentioned before that some horror movies will have religious advisors on set to make sure the production DOESNT become cursed. These are usually members of the church. This production only had advisors that were satanists.
Perhaps that’s why, when producer of the film, William Castle had to go in for emergency surgery after production wrapped because his Kidneys randomly stopped working, he claimed he saw a demonic presence in the operating room. As he was being wheeled in for the procedure, he caught a glimpse of the surgical tools laying on the surgeon's station. There, in the reflection of a large knife, he swore he caught a glimpse of the devil looking right back at him, smiling. William would wake up from the surgery, but the event would stay with him for the rest of his life.
Others on set felt like the devil was taunting them as well. There’s something known as a God Wink, it’s when you feel like god is winking at you to let you know you're on the right path. Like you make a giant decision in your life and then you see something that looks like a sign from god that you made the right decision. You start dating someone and turn on the radio to hear that Bruno Mars song about getting married, that kind of thing.
But some believe there’s also what’s known as a devil wink, strange coincidences that feel like they've been influenced by something demonic. And that seems to have happened multiple times on set
In the film,There’s a character named Hutch who falls into a mysterious coma while helping Rosemary figure out what’s going on. Three months later, he passed away.
Well, after production had wrapped on Rosemary’s baby in 1968, Roman Polanski was out drinking with Kristof Komeda, a Jazz musician who did the music for the movie. That night another one of their friends, Marek Hleda, joined them for a drink. He and Komeda got into a tussle outside of the bar, and Komeda was pushed down a steep slope.
He ended up with a brain bleed and was in a coma for, you guessed it, three months before he passed away.
And then there’s how Terry Castle, the daughter of producer William castle, recalled one night when she was pregnant years after the film came out. she dreamt that she was Rosemary, pregnant with the spawn of satan. The next day, she went into labor, and later lost that child to cancer. When she was asked if she believed if that was part of the curse, she said that she didn’t know. Terry admitted to sometimes wondering if the bad things that happened in her family were part of the curse of Rosemary’s baby.
Most famously, though, one year after the movie came out, there was the death of Roman Polanski’s wife, Sharon Tate. Which I mentioned in the first episode of this hollywood series a few weeks ago. See how everything is related? You may recall I talk about how Sharon saw a vision of herself brutally murdered when she was staying at her friend’s haunted house in 1967, which would have been around the time that Rosemary’s baby was being filmed.
Two years later, on August 8th, 1969, four members of the manson family cut the phone line going into the home Sharon and Roman owned, and brutally murdered her and her three friends that were there. Roman was traveling at the time.
But some say this event was another example of a Devil’s wink, like something demonic had a hand in it. Sharon was eight and a half months pregnant at the time. When she was murdered, she begged for the life of her child to be spared, but the manson family members showed no mercy.
It was hard to not draw some parallels to the movie. In the film, Rosemary gives birth only to be told that the child was stillborn, when in reality, it had been stolen by a coven of Satanists who planned to raise it as the son of the devil. The manson family was also a coven like cult that worshiped Charles Manson, who sometimes referred to himself as Satan, and other times as god. During the attack, one of the members of the family mentioned she considered trying to save Sharon’s baby and bring it back to the cult to raise as their own.
But the strangest part of the curse yet may be the butterfly effect that the film had 18 years after it was released. A strange series of events that lead to one of the most high profile murders of the 80’s.
On December 8th, 1980, John Lennon walked out of his luxury apartment building into the chilly new york air. There, a car was waiting for him and his wife to take them to a recording studio. crowds of people gathered by the gate, eager to get a peak of the former Beatle. As he was walking towards the idling car, a fan stepped in front of Lennon, and held out a copy of his most recently released album, Double Fantasy. Many celebrities would have walked right past this with their head down, but John Lennon was different. He loved his fans. He spent a lot of time standing by the gate of his building chatting with them and signing the albums they brought to him. He possessed a rare form of patience.
And so, even though he was already late to the studio, Lennon smiled, took the album from the fan and signed it.
But what John Lennon didn’t know, was that man, Mark David Chapman, was carrying a .38 special revolver in his coat pocket that he had brought with him from Hawaii. He had traveled 6,000 miles with the gun and a copy of Catcher of The Rye, with the goal of killing the musician.
Chapman felt a spiritual calling to kill Lennon after hearing John had once referred to the beatles as “more popular than Jesus”. He also felt that Lennon singing the iconic line “imagine no possessions” while living a lavish lifestyle made him a phony, borrowing the word from his favorite book, the catcher in the rye.
So Later that night, when Lennon and Yoko Ono returned from the studio, Chapman was waiting by the gate. As the couple walked by he fired the gun five times into Lennon’s back from about 10 feet away.
But the murder of John lennon almost didn’t happen. Mark David Chapman reported that he was unsure if he was really going to follow through with his master plan. But it was signs he saw that day that he felt were from God that convinced him to go through with it.
One of those signs was Mia Farrow, the actress who played Rosemary. Chapman saw her walk by him that day, and in his mind, that was a divine sign. Mia Farrow was in Rosemary’s baby. Rosemary’s baby was directed by Roman Polanski, who was married to Sharon Tate, who was murdered by Charles Manson, Charles manson was obsessed with the song Helter Skelter, which the murderers actually wrote out in blood at the scene of Sharon Tate’s murder. Helter Skelter was a Beatles song, and John Lennon was a beatle. That was all of the evidence he needed that he was meant to go through with his plan.
And that wasn’t the only invisible string Rosemary’s baby was pulling that day. If you were to see the gate where Lennon was killed, you may recognize the German renaissance style building, and the arched corridor that leads into its courtyard. It’s the building that Rosemary moves into in the film. And not only that, one of the only friends she makes in the building, a woman named Terry, is found dead on the sidewalk of the building’s entrance after she jumps off her balcony, right near the spot where John Lennon was killed.
More, after a quick break
Mark David Chapman thought that the small act of Mia Farrow walking by him was a sign from god. And we know that was a delusion, Mark David Chapman was mentally unstable and saw signs and patterns in places that didn’t exist
Really, you could find any two random things and connect them somehow, it doesn’t mean that god is sending you a message. And so maybe we’re delusional for thinking that a film is cursed just because a series of bad things happened afterwards. Maybe it’s delusional to think that just because people’s careers end after playing a role, its cursed . Like I said, we’re watching you, Henry Cavill.
But what I do know, is that every morning when the sun comes up, the light reflects off of the big hollywood sign that sits in the Griffith Park hills on what used to be the Los Feliz ranch, where 160 years ago a teen girl shouted with her whole chest that A blight shall fall on this terrestrial paradise.
And maybe she wasn’t just referring to the success of the land. maybe there’s another blight that people are cursed to face in this city, one that affects their careers rather than their crops. Or maybe we’re all delusional for thinking a teen girl could have that kind of influence
That’s all I have for you for todays episode. If you’d like to hear more, do join us over on patreon for our footnotes episode, where I talk more about the cursed events that have befallen los feliz after Petranilla cursed the land. I’ll also tell you more about my thoughts on if films can be cursed.
I’ll see you next week for our last episode in our haunted hollywood
This has been heart starts pounding
And I’d like to give a very special welcome to the newest member of the Rogue Detecting Society, John Christopher Turner Born on 29mar24 to one of our listeners, Marissa. Make sure you keep an eye out for him, a wise man once told me that babies are more open to the spirit world than adults are, so you never know what he’s going to see!