Death On The Lot Podcast -- Celebrity Tragic Deaths in the 40s & 50s

Adam McKay is one of the creative people in Hollywood that can still surprise the audience. You've never quite sure what you'll get with a McKay TV show, movie, or podcast. 

In his previous podcast, Death On The Wing, each episode looked at a different high-profile death related to the NBA during the ’80s and early ’90s, an era when professional basketball was being radically reshaped by an explosion of wealth and everything that comes with it.

But McKay’s excellent podcast used that narrative as scaffolding to construct a sustained commentary on Reaganism and its cultural underpinning, which still insinuates itself into the American psyche today. 

Just released, McKay’s Hyperobject Industries and Sony Music Entertainment have launched a new original podcast series, Death on the Lot. The podcast was developed and hosted by McKay.

Each episode of the eight-episode series focuses on the story behind one celebrity’s tragic death in the 1940s and 1950s and the cultural implications that upended their life. It also dives into the cultural transformation of Post-war America and Hollywood’s fabrication of a new American dream, as well as Hollywood unions and labor strikes.

All eight episodes are available now on The Binge, so save all your laundry folding or sock drawer reorg for Death On The Lot.

Adam McKay says, “The first season of Death at the Wing was one of the most satisfying and fascinating projects I’ve ever personally been a part of. It combined a real life murder mystery, history and incredible personal stories to paint a truly unique portrait of the 1980s. Now we’re looking at the 40s and 50s through the lens of a spate of tragic and bizarre deaths in Hollywood.”

Death on the Lot covers the deaths of gangster Willie Bioff, method actor John Garfield, teenage idol James Dean, Superman actor George Reeves, first Black Academy Award winner Hattie McDaniel, swashbuckling star Errol Flynn, and controversial western legend John Wayne.

The podcast also provides an overarching view of the transformation of the U.S. following World War II, as well as a divide the country faced between the rising right wing seeking to create conformity and fear and the left wing fighting for Civil Rights.

• Episode 1: Don’t Change That Dial: As post-war Hollywood strives to define itself, it mirrors the divide happening in America. A rising right-wing seeks to create conformity and fear, while a left-wing fights for Civil Rights and a more equitable future.
  
  
• Episode 2: Willie Bioff & Labor’s Last Stand: The Life and Death of Willie Bioff, a gangster who bled American unions dry right just as labor was starting to deliver real results for workers.
  
  
• Episode 3: The Red-Baiting of a Golden Boy: A new generation of actors questioned the status quo; a rattled establishment fought back; dire consequences ensued. We’re talking John Garfield, Hollywood’s first method actor.
  
  
• Episode 4: Blood Alley: The life of James Dean, a restless man-child desperate to express himself in uptight post-World War II America. The original Rebel Without a Cause, and the prototype for a new kind of American teenager who longed to escape Mayberry.
  
  
• Episode 5: Faster Than A Speeding Bullet: As television transformed American life, George Reeves became a star, only to get trapped inside the part that made him famous: Superman.
  
  
• Episode 6: Change Agent: How Hollywood’s use of Black actors clashed with the rising Civil Rights movement and how the first black Oscar winner, Hattie McDaniel, was caught in the middle.
  
  
• Episode 7: The Swashbuckler: The wild story of Errol Flynn, who just kept hanging around as a symbol of Hollywood’s misogynistic past as it tried to navigate its future.
  
  
• Episode 8: The Bomb That Killed John Wayne: The fall of the studio system, the rise of the nuclear age, and the lives caught in the fallout. John Wayne and the staggering production of The Conqueror close us out.

Interviews with experts, journalists and Hollywood insiders, include director Ron Howard; actor James Cromwell; Academy Award-winning actress Lee Grant; cultural critic and historian Isaac Butler; Hattie McDaniel's great grand-nephew Kevin Goff; Sidney Poitier's daughter Sydney Poitier Heartsong; and Errol Flynn’s daughter Rory Flynn, and grandson and child star Sean Flynn.

 

All episodes of Death on the Lot are now available to subscribers of The Binge. Listeners can subscribe to Death on the Lot on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher and wherever you listen to your podcasts. 

 

Check it out. You'll be disgusted by the treatment of McDaniel, stumped by the mystery surrounding Reeves's death (TV's Superman), and pissed off by the misogyny that dominated Hollywood for decades.