Girl 27 is a recent documentary about the Hollywood rape of an underage studio dancer after she and over a hundred other girls were costumed and tricked into attending an MGM sales conference in 1937.She brought a suit against MGM in California state court, and after that was dismissed she brought another suit in US federal court. That got dismissed as well. After that, she just fell off the radar and was never heard from again.
I was unhappy with the egomaniacal director's insertion of himself in the movie, but just the fact that he got this poor woman's story TOLD makes it possible to forgive that. He spent over ten years trying to get all of the information, and tracking down people involved, including the victim herself who never spoke about it in 65 years, even to her own family.
It was incredible to hear to what lengths the movie studio went to hush the story, and about their own investigation that never cast doubt on what she told everyone had happened. They never denied it in the file they had on her, but vilified her in the press and in court. They had everyone on their massive payroll including the police, the jury, the prosecutor, the doctor that treated her, the eyewitness, her own lawyer, her mother (acting guardian) and even the rapist continued to work for them until his death 20 years later. The story just went away.
The documentary shows some contrast to that by telling some other Hollywood stories where the stars were protected forever despite general knowledge to the contrary about their secrets. There are some over-the-top uses of black and white movie depiction of violence toward women and sound bites played over and over of film screams, but some of that lent a real feeling of how things ran in Studio Hollywood in 1937.
I could not stop watching this movie. It was riveting, especially the second half when the director gets to the meat of the story: the woman telling her side of it. She was destroyed by what happened to her before and after the horrific attack at MGM's sales conference. Her family never knew why she was so broken until they read about it in Vanity Fair, and that was barely a week before she died. This story needed to be told, this woman needed vindication, and even through the director's poor handling that is what she got. May she finally rest in peace.
