An Actress's Contract Locked In Her Body: Gain Weight and You Breach It, Lose Weight and It Kills You
In the 1920s the actress Molly was shelved by her studio for gaining weight and ended up on an operating table; in the 1990s a bride named Mary died from the diet drug fen-phen. Once a body becomes a commercial asset, the punishment and the shortcut lead to the same place.
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The contract turned her body into a term she could breach
In the 1920s the big Hollywood studios controlled production, distribution and the theatres themselves, and they treated actors as assets on the balance sheet. Molly's contract set her hours and her exclusivity, and it added one particular clause: for as long as she wanted to work, she had to keep the same bodily outline forever. When her body changed naturally, the studio invoked the clause covering ‘facial or bodily disfigurement’, treated the weight she gained in adolescence as a breach, and stopped paying her. The contract is what gave commercial power a legal basis for intervening in a body, and it is the foundation the whole episode is built on.
The ultimatum was blunt: get thin or the studio stops using you
The production manager Al Rockett summoned Molly and delivered the ultimatum: you can be as fat as you like, but the studio will not cast you again until you are down to the ‘right size’. At that point Molly was only about 20 pounds heavier than the average screen actress of her height. She was not indulging herself; she was a teenager still growing, and permanently hungry. But 1920s taste demanded the pencil-thin flapper silhouette. The punishment cut off her income directly, which is what forced her to comply.
Twelve weeks to shrink, held to an industry standard rather than one man's taste
The studio gave Molly twelve weeks to restrict her calories and fit back into her old costumes. Elsewhere in the industry at the time, Lila Lee drank nothing but orange juice and lost eight pounds in under two weeks, and Vilma Banky lost fifteen pounds before she was hired at all. The press shamed Molly's ‘solid flesh’ in public, and even invented a rumour that she was hoping to catch influenza as a way to lose weight. Fans wrote in to protest; the studio was unmoved. What this shows is systemic pressure: not one person's judgement of her, but an entire industry's standardised measure.
The diet black market ran from tapeworms to concentrated thyroid extract
The 1920s ‘reducing craze’ generated a mass of dangerous products: laxative chewing gum, slimming corsets, soaps that claimed to dissolve fat. More extreme still was swallowing tapeworms, and taking over-the-counter pills such as Rido Fat, which contained concentrated thyroid extract — in 1926 one dieter who overdosed on it rapidly developed heart disease and died at 33. Molly tried these routes and still could not get into the costumes, so she turned her attention to surgery.
Surgery cut away ten pounds of fat and took her health with it
Molly went to the celebrity surgeon Robert Griffith for a lipectomy. He made long incisions in her hips and legs, scraped out roughly ten pounds of fat, then pulled the skin tight and stitched it. Anaesthesia was primitive at the time and there was no penicillin, so open wounds became infected easily; two years earlier a woman in Paris had developed gangrene after a similar operation and lost a leg to amputation. Afterwards Molly looked slender, but she was weak enough to need crutches. She satisfied the studio, and paid for it with her physical health and her ability to come back.
Millions of fen-phen prescriptions meant millions of people sitting on a fuse
After the lawyer Alex MacDonald took on Mary's case, he found that millions of fen-phen prescriptions were being written every year — meaning millions of people, the overwhelming majority of them women, were sitting on a medical time bomb without knowing it. Mary had taken the drug for only 23 days, and the damage was already permanent. The Mayo Clinic later confirmed dozens of cases of a rare heart condition linked to fen-phen, and the FDA pulled the drug in September 1997. The company had received reports of the risk and chose to conceal them, in order to protect its profits.
Neither woman was vain or naive; both decisions were entirely rational
Tim Harford's conclusion is that what Molly and Mary decided was not vanity or naivety but completely understandable. Molly's employer, the source of her income, told her to get thinner; Mary's specialist recommended fen-phen to her. Each trusted someone who appeared to know what they were doing, and ran into pitiless commercial logic. The technological shortcuts are still with us: GLP-1 drugs have real health benefits, and Brazilian butt lifts can kill you. We treat variation between bodies as a bug rather than a feature, and we reward change that is fast and visible, whatever it costs.
— Tim HarfordIn their own words · checked verbatim
Molly O'Day must hold the same silhouette forever, as long as she wants to keep working.
I was a growing kid, and I was hungry. And it was the streamline era in the pictures, where a girl had to have a figure like a lead pencil. I didn't have that kind.
Molly O'Day12:45
The studio seems to have argued that Molly's adolescent weight gain was a kind of disfigurement, and they suspect her without pay.
Maybe the studio still didn't think she was thin enough. Maybe the relentless scrutiny had bred in Molly a deep internal panic. Either way, the goalposts had moved, and fitting into the dress no longer represented victory.
Mary Lynnon died in hospital at the age of thirty, less than a year after taking her very first dose of fenfen.
It might be tempting to dismiss Molly and Mary as simply vain or naive. I think their decisions are entirely understandable.
Tim Harford35:31
I was a natural. If only natural had been enough.
Molly O'Day39:39
Figures
| How much heavier Molly was than the average screen actress of her height | About 20 pounds | 11:43 |
| Deadline the studio gave Molly to lose the weight | 12 weeks | 15:56 |
| Fat removed in the lipectomy | About 10 pounds | 25:18 |
| How long Mary took fen-phen | 23 days | 26:19 |
| Annual cost of Mary's mechanical pump | Up to $200,000 per year | 27:21 |
| Mary's age at death | 30 | 32:25 |
| Settlement in the fen-phen death case | $15.5 million | 37:36 |
| Amount the drugmaker set aside for fen-phen | At least $21 billion | 38:36 |
Glossary
- lipectomy
- Surgery that cuts away subcutaneous fat; in the 1920s the technique was crude and the infection risk high.
- fen-phen
- A diet drug combining fenfluramine and phentermine, withdrawn because it caused pulmonary hypertension.
- primary pulmonary hypertension (PPH)
- The small blood vessels of the lungs thicken and close off, obstructing the heart's pumping; it can be fatal.
How to listen
Founders in brands, healthcare and consumer, plus investors who study platform labour and compliance: watch how a contract turns a body into a metric that is not allowed to change.