Propaganda Part 1: Image is Everything

The straight sh*t on how MGM ripped off the Goldwyn lion logo; my Dad’s advice on being photographed/filmed; having your worst pre-teen haircut captured in paparazzi photos and more…

I learned the value of propaganda before I learned arithmetic. I may have failed geometry twice but I had a master class in image making from the best that has proved way more valuable. 

Front & center in my high school geometry class pic, selling the narrative of a math lover. At bottom left is my classmate Rachel Morrison, who later became the first woman nominated for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography, in 2018.

The first rule is how to master (and reshape, if needed) your public identity—nevermind if a few edges get too polished or lost in the process. 

Since I was born I was mindful that my narrative wasn’t entirely my own. It was part of a legacy, attached to lore. It was programmed into me from the time I was conscious: I am a part of a Hollywood myth whose image needed to be protected and preserved. Having an older father who kept close family friends from my paternal grandparents era meant that I was around people who had known them firsthand. Your grandfather was a pioneer; your grandmother was so elegant; you’re so lucky to have such a rich heritage were the repeated refrains of my childhood. 

I grew up living in their house, surrounded by their glamorous photos but I longed to know the awkward, human traits that would make my grandparents feel more real. They seemed so polished and perfect, captured for posterity in authorized biographies and plaques on buildings bearing their names. I secretly collected unauthorized bios of my grandad hoping for juicy tidbits and would pester the older generation who knew them for any sordid scandal they might be willing to share (usually to little avail.)

I was acutely attentive of the Goldwyn shadow that was cast over me, and couldn’t help feeling that I was of little value without my proximity to the name or the fame. Before I had created anything of my own, there existed a story around who I was and what I was about which I had no control over. I’d imagine the whispers— stuck up rich girl who’s had everything handed to her, she’s probably a total bitch and out of touch with reality. 

In the late 90s/ early 2000s when I began receiving attention for my style, the press referred to me as an “MGM heiress” which annoyed me because it’s simply not true. Lazy fucking fact checking! Not only did our family have nothing to do with MGM (ownership, management or production) but the internationally known lion logo that contains our surname *(a totally made up name by the way, it was originally Gelbfish when grandpa first immigrated to America in the 1890s;) was created as the trademark for Goldwyn pictures back in the day. Let me give you the tea…

One of (if not the first) lion logos created for Grandpa Sam’s company, 1917

My grandpa produced the first feature film in Hollywood in 1913, “The Squaw Man,” with his producing partner (and brother in law at the time) Jesse Lasky, who was a vaudeville star. It was also the debut of the soon to be iconic director Cecile B DeMille, who was their third partner. Grandpa Sam later went on to found many of what became the current studios in Hollywood. In 1917, the “Leo the Lion” logo was designed by studio publicist Howard Dietz for grandpa’s “Goldwyn Picture” corporation. 

Early Goldwyn Picture lion logos *NOT MGM*

Sam Sr. had multiple companies during Hollywood’s early days but maintained the lion logo. In 1924, one of the studios he had started, and since resigned from, was bought by Loews, a theater corporation. They also bought a soundstage called Metro at the same time, and hired a guy called Louie B. Mayer to run them. Apparently Mayer was kind of a dick (according to what I’ve heard passed down from Hollywood old timers and family lore) and put his name on the Goldwyn logo, along with Metro’s, renaming the studio “Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.” He claimed that when buying the building, it included the name “Goldwyn” and the lion logo, because both my grandfather and the lion were already famous and synonymous with Hollywood worldwide. 

This Mayer mofo even went so far as to try and sue my grandfather to make him stop using his own name. But the name Goldwyn was one that Sam Sr. had invented—changing Gelbfish to Goldfish and later to Goldwyn. The case went to the California Supreme Court who ruled that “a self-made man is entitled to a self-made name.”  My mom told me that all his life, my grandpa would refer to MGM as “just “Metro” and that Irene Selznick, Mayer’s daughter, who loathed her father made a big point of being seen in public arm and arm with Sam, Sr.” 

My father was born just a couple years after the MGM debacle, so Grandpa must have started indoctrinating him on the importance of controlling your name and narrative from the time he could form sentences. I say this because my dad did the same to me. As a child, my father constantly impressed upon me the power of image and how to present the best front. He would often tell me, even while taking casual family snapshots, “never let them shoot you from below,” meaning, it was unflattering to be photographed or filmed from a low angle. In the late 90s, at a fashion shoot for Purple Magazine, I expressed this to a photographer who was taking my portrait. He was not happy being art directed, but I won out and made him shoot me from a ladder.

Me on left at 17 in art school, pretending to be glamorous like grandma Frances on right, in her modeling days

This, coupled with receiving regular comparison to my elegant, stylish grandmother Frances, because we both had red hair, gave me a bit of a complex. I was hyper critical of my appearance to the point where I would cover my face in a candid family photo if I had a minor zit, the casualty of pre-teen hormones. Once I cut my bangs too short like a crew cut and cried for hours about how terrible I looked. I know I’m not the only 11 year old who has given themselves a bad haircut but I also had said haircut captured in paparazzi photos at the Oscars next to stars like Oprah and Meryl Streep looking effortlessly beautiful in professional glam. It was a high bar to live up to.

WORST self haircut of my life note the bangs are basically a crew cut, I got sunburnt on my forehead shortly after cutting them. And a fucking perm??!

For most of my late teens and 20s, even into my 30s if I am being honest, I cared way more about controlling how I came off instead of trying to figure out who the hell I was. It was a constant internal battle between holding my cards close to my chest, and leaning into the image I had created of a black sheep, if only as a way to differentiate myself from the golden residue of the Goldwyn name. I worried about every instance of being photographed— even missing out on major opportunities, like being shot by the late Richard Avedon for a Harry Winston diamonds campaign because I was too concerned about what my dad would think, whether it would somehow tarnish the family name. 

I bet my grandfather would have told me to go for it. He was a masterful image architect. Who would have thought that a penniless Polish teenage immigrant turned glove salesman would end up as a founder of an industry that manufactured dreams? Part of his success must have been due to his nature as a risk taker; the other part sheer will of an outsider looking to fit in and make it rich.