The Untold Story: Cora Sue Collins and the Dark Side of Hollywood

2023-06-29 12:05:34

BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA – MAY 2: Child actress Cora Sue Collins attends the Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival Opening Night Gala at Ahrya Fine Arts Theater on May 2, 2019 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Robin L. Marshall/Getty Images)

Cora Sue Collins he knew no other world beyond Hollywood. She came to the movie industry at the age of 5 and from that moment she became one of the most in-demand child stars of the ’30s and ’40s. She rivaled Shirley Temple and was close friends with such notable figures as Lucille Ball and Greta Garbo, and over the course of her short career she appeared in 47 feature films. I say short career because when she was riding high, having worked alongside some of the most prominent figures of the era, she gave it all up. At 18, he left the industry without looking back or ever coming back, hiding the reason for 80 years.

Born in 1927, Cora landed in Tinseltown with her sister when their mother moved them from their West Virginia home to Los Angeles, introducing her to the business in the days before child labor was regulated in the industry. “I worked from sun to shade, sometimes more,” she said in a 2020 interview to Image. However, her professional rise as a child and teen star did not prevent her from being the victim of the same abuses exposed by different actresses through the #MeToo movement almost a century later.

Child actress Cora Sue Collins sitting in an armchair (Photo by John Springer Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

The exactriz told her story in 2020 in a book titled This was Hollywood: Forgotten Stars and Stories written by Carla Valderrama. And I dreamed in her pages where she told the reason that led her to abandon everything for the first time. Because Cora Sue Collins decided to leave the industry as a minor and after experiencing a shocking episode.

He was 15 years old when his friend and mentor, screenwriter Harry Ruskin, offered him a character in exchange for having sex.. The man had 50.

“I loved Harry,” Cora recalled to Fox News Digital in 2022 about this writer who became one of the most famous within the MGM studio. “I met him when I was a girl and he became my father figure, my mentor,” she added in the interview with Image. But then that man she admired called her to have lunch in his office. However, young Cora was surprised that they were alone since she was always full of figures and characters having lunch between desks, shelves and sitting on the floor.

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“He told me ‘I wrote a synopsis for you, and I wanted you to read it yourself.’ I read it and she loved it. She knew me so well. I would have given my right arm for that job. It was written just for me. But then she said ‘The role is yours but you have to sleep with me’”, explained to Fox. Cora was shocked. She was not only a virgin, but she was barely 15 years old and she saw this man as if he were her own father.

“When I told him no, he said, ‘There are a dozen girls in town who would love to sleep with me for this part.’ I said, ‘That’s great.’

Circa 1934: Cora Sue Collins, the MGM child actress given a long-term contract after her role as the young queen in the film ‘Queen Christina.’ (Photo by Virgil Apger/Margaret Chute/Getty Images)

Cora fled immediately. Shocked, confused and hurt by what had happened, secretly crying in a broom closet that she found in a hallway. However, she did not keep the secret, but she tried to ask for help and as soon as she recovered she went to the office of the head of the study, Louis B. Mayer. She waited all day until he finally attended to her.

However, when Cora asked her if she knew what Harry Ruskin had asked of her in exchange for making the film, she says Mayer walked over to her, sat on the arm of her chair, and said, “You’ll get used to it, dear.”

Terrible. Just awful. “Then, after 45 minutes of back and forth, Mr. Mayer finally realized that, first, he wasn’t going to accept, and second, he never wanted to work again. He wanted to leave ”, he told Image. “So he wagged his big toe under my nose and said, ‘Cora Sue, you’ll never work in another studio as long as I live.’ And I said, ‘Mr. Mayer, that is my sincere wish.’”

Cora completed one more film and left the business. “To this day it is the best decision of my life ”, he sentenced.

However, despite her tenacity and courage, she had to bear the insecurity that this episode caused her for a long time. Her mother never believed her, instead she was convinced that she had misinterpreted the scriptwriter’s intentions. “I hardly told anyone what happened to me,” Collins told Fox.“I was so embarrassed thinking that I had caused it… Every time someone wanted to interview me about the #MeToo movement, my answer was ‘no’… [Un escritor] He told me, ‘It’s important that you tell your story because you stood up to Louis B. Mayer.’ But I kept refusing… until I finally did. And I get happy. I finally understand that it wasn’t my fault.”

Actress Cora Sue Collins as ‘Jane Rand’ in a publicity photo for her last film appearance in the film ‘Week-End at the Waldorf’ (which is a remake of the 1932 film Grand Hotel), 1945, USA. (Photo by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/De Carvalho Collection/Getty Images)

Cora Sue Collins was 18 years old when she left everything to start a new life with her first husband on a ranch in Nevada. She claims to have enjoyed a “happy life”, with two “fabulous” marriages, passing her existence between the US, Mexico and Paris. From her He traveled the world and created her own family, but the memory of her lived with her for decades until she finally shared it with the world.

However, it was not until the #MeToo movement uncovered the horrors that many women experienced in the halls of Hollywood, with careers destroyed or threatened by abuse, that she finally revealed the true reason for her abandonment. Because in 1945 she simply disappeared from the media radar without giving any explanation. “It never leaves you, the feeling,” she told Image about what happened that day. “I pray that they believe these women and accept their words. I never felt that I could talk about it, ”she said of the victims who opened Pandora’s box.

Cora Sue knew how to flee from danger at the age of 15 when neither the industry nor society offered her the tools to protect or defend herself. However, his story tells us about a painful reality about the unfair guilt and shame he felt after what he experienced, hiding for 80 years the reason why he had no choice but to turn his back on everything he knew up to that moment. With such active and promising beginnings, I wouldn’t be surprised if Cora Sue had become as legendary a star as Shirley Temple to the point that we all knew her name almost a century later. But not. She had to live the darkest side of her business as a minor, going into oblivion in the cinema and without even her own mother believing her.

This article was written exclusively for Yahoo en Español by Cine54.