Hollywood & Crime: a podcast that scratches at the dark underbelly of film's golden age

An intriguing new podcast, Hollywood & Crime (Wondery, iTunes), takes the glamour of film’s golden age and scratches its dark underbelly. The hook is the infamous Black Dahlia murder of 1947, and host Tracy Pattin uncovers other crimes and scandals from that era. Hollywood glamour was in full swing when Elizabeth Short was brutally killed. Her case remains unsolved, along with a raft of other cold cases with startling similarities that point to a serial killer or a copycat.

Pattin’s voice oozes old Hollywood, and the juxtaposition of glamour and gore is enough to send shivers down the listener’s spine. The podcast comes with a warning about graphic scenes, which is not unwarranted considering its tales of bodies cut in half and dramatised moments from the time. The first two episodes focus on the “Bathtub murder” and recount the horrific killing in 1944 of socialite and oil heiress Georgette Bauerdorf.

As the police briefing from the murder scene is recreated, it makes grim listening. “Thumb and fingermarks on her face, lips, abdomen and thighs suggest that her killer had powerful, almost ape-like, hands,” says the officer in charge of the case. Hearing about the autopsy is powerful, and when more details of the crime emerge, it takes a chilling turn. The first episode should be enough to hook you and the second – Generous Georgette – paints a picture of the young victim’s life. She came from a privileged family and enjoyed life as a socialite, cutting spare keys for servicemen, whom she welcomed to stay the night. Her friend described her as “a very proper girl”.

Fifteen months earlier, the body of another young woman, Ora Murray, was found on a Los Angeles golf course. “She had been strangled, brutalised and left face down in the grass,” says Pattin. “When her body was rolled over, deputies found she had been mutilated and her clothing shredded, and, in a grim twist, a floral corsage wrapped in tinsel was lying under the body. A white gardenia.” And so begins the next story in a new true-crime series that is dramatic, gripping and fuel for the imagination.

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