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The 1934 Short That Got Bob Hope Blacklisted by a Studio: 'Going Spanish' and the Educational Pictures Fallout

Bob Hope / Going Spanish (Educational Pictures) 1930s Studio System Archive: verified 2/5 wildness

Early in his film career Hope signed a six-picture deal with Educational Pictures of New York and shot the comedy short Going Spanish in 1934. Disgusted with the result, he publicly quipped to columnist Walter Winchell that when they caught bank robber Dillinger they ought to make him sit through the picture twice. Educational Pictures took the remark as an unforgivable slight and promptly cancelled Hope’s contract after the single film — a small but telling example of how studio and independent producers in the 1930s exercised swift economic retribution for public criticism. The episode forced Hope back into short-subject work with Vitaphone and into an even greater reliance on radio and Broadway for income, a setback that, paradoxically, helped push him toward the larger Hollywood contracts and radio stardom that defined his later career.

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Archive Record · 1930s

Studio System2/5 wildness

The 1934 Short That Got Bob Hope Blacklisted by a Studio: 'Going Spanish' and the Educational Pictures Fallout

Bob Hope / Going Spanish (Educational Pictures) / 1930s

Early in his film career Hope signed a six-picture deal with Educational Pictures of New York and shot the comedy short Going Spanish in 1934. Disgusted with the result, he publicly quipped to columnist Walter Winchell that when they caught bank robber Dillinger they ought to make him sit through the picture twice. Educational Pictures took the remark as an unforgivable slight and promptly cancelled Hope’s contract after the single film — a small but telling example of how studio and independent producers in the 1930s exercised swift economic retribution for public criticism. The episode forced Hope back into short-subject work with Vitaphone and into an even greater reliance on radio and Broadway for income, a setback that, paradoxically, helped push him toward the larger Hollywood contracts and radio stardom that defined his later career.

Archive: verified

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Gerard Damiano’s 1972 Deep Throat became one of the defining commercial shocks of the Golden Age of Porn. Starring Linda Lovelace and Harry Reems, the film escaped the confines of ordinary adult-film distribution and became a national cultural controversy, eventually ranking No. 11 among Variety’s highest-grossing pictures of 1973—above the prestige drama Sleuth. Its success was especially striking because the production was made on a relatively modest scale and was financed through organized crime, according to the biographical account. The film’s sudden profitability attracted enormous attention, but Damiano himself did not share in the fortune generated by the picture. The episode exposed a familiar dark side of exploitation cinema: filmmakers could create a phenomenon while distributors, financiers, and criminal backers controlled the money and the rights. Deep Throat helped establish the modern adult-entertainment industry, yet its financial legacy for Damiano was one of exploitation rather than triumph.

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Glasser initially pleaded not guilty to the California obscenity charges, but the case never reached a full trial. Before proceedings could go forward, he reached a plea agreement under which his company pleaded no contest to creating a public nuisance and paid a $1,000 fine. In exchange, the remaining obscenity charges against the defendants were dropped. The prosecution later became part of the public narrative surrounding Showtime's Family Business, the reality series that began in 2003 and followed Glasser, his mother Lila, and his cousin Stevie as they operated the Seymore Butts company. On the program, Glasser used the legal battle as a springboard for an Internet-based telethon that raised money for freedom-of-speech causes, transforming what might otherwise have been a narrowly focused obscenity case into a recurring argument about censorship, adult entertainment, and the limits of criminal law.

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On April 8, 2008, a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., indicted director and producer John Stagliano and his company, Evil Angel, on federal obscenity charges. The government based its case on scenes involving urination, enemas, and bondage, placing Stagliano at the center of a broader constitutional dispute over how obscenity laws applied to explicit DVDs and internet-era adult entertainment. The prosecution finally went to trial on July 16, 2010, with Stagliano as the defendant, but the case lasted only three days before the charges were dismissed. Federal judge Richard J. Leon described the government's evidence connecting Stagliano to the production and distribution of the DVDs as "woefully insufficient" and said he hoped the government would learn from the experience. Although the dismissal was based on inadequate evidence rather than a sweeping ruling that all of the material was constitutionally protected, Leon emphasized the unresolved questions involving federal obscenity statutes, the internet, free speech, and the rights of criminal defendants, urging higher courts and Congress to provide clearer guidance.

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Lockhart later became an outspoken critic of the production practices that had defined parts of his early career. In a 2008 interview, he said he had agreed to perform without condoms after being falsely told that a producer’s method of pairing models would protect him. He emphasized that testing offered no guarantee and said he was fortunate to remain HIV-negative. The controversy was especially serious because Lockhart said he had begun making films at 17 and that his first four releases were subsequently pulled from circulation in 2005 after he publicly disclosed that he had been under the legal age of consent in several states, including California, when those films were made. After leaving that phase of the industry, he promoted safer-sex awareness, criticized the continued release of bareback pornography, and described the social pressure surrounding the business as a chapter of his life he did not want to romanticize.

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Bob Hope / Going Spanish (Educational Pictures) / 1930s

The 1934 Short That Got Bob Hope Blacklisted by a Studio: 'Going Spanish' and the Educational Pictures Fallout

Studio SystemArchive: verified2/5 wildness

Early in his film career Hope signed a six-picture deal with Educational Pictures of New York and shot the comedy short Going Spanish in 1934. Disgusted with the result, he publicly quipped to columnist Walter Winchell that when they caught bank robber Dillinger they ought to make him sit through the picture twice. Educational Pictures took the remark as an unforgivable slight and promptly cancelled Hope’s contract after the single film — a small but telling example of how studio and independent producers in the 1930s exercised swift economic retribution for public criticism. The episode forced Hope back into short-subject work with Vitaphone and into an even greater reliance on radio and Broadway for income, a setback that, paradoxically, helped push him toward the larger Hollywood contracts and radio stardom that defined his later career.

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