20 Horrible Things Done By Influential People
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’ll be discussing individuals noted for their contributions to history, who also either espoused horrible beliefs or committed horrible actions.
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00:00Do you call coercion and threats by a nation with a far more powerful army fair and square?
00:05Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we'll be discussing individuals noted for their
00:09contributions to history, who either espoused horrible beliefs or committed horrible actions.
00:15You don't know. You don't want to.
00:17No, of course I want to.
00:20Child Abandonment, Steve Jobs
00:23There's no denying the impact Steve Jobs has had upon the technological industry.
00:27His personal life, however, was an entirely different matter.
00:30I'm just thinking of a couple of things where your mom was on the phone,
00:32you were just a little girl, and she was begging your dad for money. Like, sobbing and begging.
00:38And you, as a little girl, walk up and take the phone from her and said,
00:41just give him, just give her some money, okay? And like, hang up the phone.
00:45Jobs engaged in an on-again, off-again relationship with a woman named Chrisann Brennan.
00:49This romance eventually led to a contentious pregnancy and paternity battle,
00:53one that Jobs fought for years against this former lover.
00:56You knew going into this, the paternity test could prove that you were the father.
01:01There are 24 million people in California that test as a 5%
01:04margin of error. That's 1.2 million people that could be the father of that child. And it's not
01:10me.
01:10Jobs maligned the personal integrity of Brennan with regard to the fatherhood of the child,
01:15and refused to financially support the pair, even when it was revealed that Brennan was on welfare.
01:20The Apple co-founder did eventually offer financial assistance to his daughter, Lisa,
01:25but she didn't see a significant amount until after a 1982 Time magazine interview with Brennan
01:31that revealed the details of their affair.
01:33As reported by Time magazine, I've slept with 28% of the men in America.
01:37No.
01:38All of them, exactly nine months before Lisa was born.
01:40Abuse allegations. Alfred Hitchcock.
01:43When you have an obsession over someone, it is a terrible thing to be the object of that obsession.
01:51It was often a dream of old-school Hollywood actors to work under Alfred Hitchcock.
01:55This was despite the director's very specific ideas about what he wanted on screen,
01:59and how far he would go to achieve these goals.
02:02Walt Disney had the right idea. If he didn't like the actors, he tore them up.
02:08Tippi Hedren was just one of the prototypically icy and distant
02:11Hitchcock blondes that was seen frequently as a trademark of the director's films.
02:15Yet Hedren also claimed that Hitchcock deliberately sabotaged her career
02:20after she refused his sexual advances.
02:22He said, I'll ruin your career.
02:25Wow.
02:26I said, do what you have to do, and out the door I went.
02:29And did he ruin your career?
02:30Yes, he did.
02:31Hedren also claimed that Hitchcock utilized
02:33real birds during an attack sequence in 1963's The Birds, instead of fake mechanical substitutes.
02:40This was despite the director knowing full well about Hedren's real-life fear of the creatures.
02:45Adultery and mistreatment.
02:47Martin Luther King Jr.
02:48Among the claims detailed, Martin Luther King Jr. was involved
02:52in extramarital affairs and other sexual activities
02:55that, if true and real publicly, would have been devastating to Dr. King and his movement.
03:00The civil rights work of Martin Luther King Jr. is rightfully
03:03lauded today for its utopian ideals concerning racial coexistence.
03:07That said, King's failures as a husband were brought to light
03:11via covert government surveillance efforts from both the FBI and the CIA.
03:15The COINTELPRO bugged Martin Luther King Jr.
03:18They bugged his house, they bugged his hotel rooms, they bugged his office.
03:20They had people working in the SCLC who were working for the FBI.
03:25So they were on Martin Luther King hard.
03:28Federal wiretaps revealed that King engaged in several extramarital affairs
03:32during his marriage to Coretta Scott King.
03:34This was despite the leader's own expectations within their marriage for his wife,
03:39namely that she step down from her activism in order to focus on motherhood.
03:43Further allegations assert that King allegedly bore witness to a sexual assault by an acquaintance,
03:49Pastor Logan Kearse, and rather than stepping in to stop it,
03:52quote, looked on, laughed, and offered advice.
03:56Many of the source documents will not be available until the year 2027 based on a judge's order.
04:03When 2027 comes around, a lot of people will be interested
04:07in listening to those tapes and reading those transcripts.
04:10Spying and sex trafficking. Chuck Berry.
04:13There was a lot of backdoor slimy stuff going on.
04:19The history books will always credit Chuck Berry as one of the fathers of rock and roll music.
04:24Berry was convicted in 1962 for violating the Mann Act,
04:28a federal law whose design is to prosecute those who transport
04:32persons across state lines with intent for sex or prostitution.
04:36They had met, I think, in Arizona or New Mexico.
04:39He brought her back to work in his club.
04:42He had taken an underage girl across a state line.
04:47The guitarist was also arrested for assaulting a woman in 1987
04:51while staying at New York's Gramercy Park Hotel.
04:54Additionally, hidden cameras were found in the women's restroom of a restaurant owned by Berry,
05:00a case that Berry settled out of court.
05:03Fire, fire, I say fire, fire.
05:08Anti-Japanese sentiment. Theodore Seuss Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss.
05:13Warfare can be fought on many fronts, with one particularly important weapon being propaganda.
05:19Theodore Seuss Geisel, otherwise known as children's author Dr. Seuss,
05:23served in the United States Army's Animation Department in 1943.
05:28Sounds harmless enough. Innocent stuff. But let's take a look in and find out what's cooking.
05:35He wrote propaganda and training films for the Army during this time,
05:38while continuing to draw political cartoons and posters.
05:41Much of Seuss' animation during this time was critical of the Japanese and often
05:46disparagingly depicting the people.
05:48We were allowed to use certain words that we couldn't use on the screen then and maybe not even now.
05:53The otherwise beloved author was just one of many Americans who were swept away
05:58in a wave of anti-Japanese sentiment during the Second World War.
06:02It doesn't excuse Seuss' actions or the content of his early books,
06:06but it also speaks to a larger cultural sentiment of the era.
06:16Abuse and abandonment. John Lennon.
06:18Imagine there's no heaven.
06:25It's easy if you try.
06:28Music is a very powerful thing, and we as fans often tend to martyr our favorite artists.
06:33Yet perhaps we shouldn't, because behind every musician is a human being with failures and faults.
06:39John Lennon, by all accounts, failed as a father and husband,
06:42at least when it comes to his first wife, Cynthia Powell, and their son Julian.
06:46To a degree, I was abandoned as a kid, you know, twice, if not three times in many respects.
06:53Lennon's contradictory life included physical violence against Powell during a time when
06:57much of the Beatles' music espoused peace and love. The songwriter's split from Powell was
07:02acrimonious as well, with the pair engaging in lawsuits over his infidelity with Yoko Ono,
07:08as well as Lennon's emotional abandonment of their son.
07:11There was a great deal of anger there, but there's also, you know, I've grown up a lot,
07:14and there's been forgiveness since then. But it was tough, yeah. It was very tough growing up,
07:20that's for sure.
07:21Advocating euthanasia and eugenics, Helen Keller.
07:25Every day she slips further away.
07:32I don't know how to call it back.
07:33The deafblind activist Helen Keller wasn't the only politically-minded individual of her time
07:39to advocate for euthanasia and eugenics. It just surprised many that a person who
07:43overcame so many physical challenges in her own life would espouse the destruction of another,
07:48without giving it a similar fighting chance.
07:51She did write about eugenics, and she was concerned that children with disabilities,
07:56who with severe disabilities, would not be able to function in society. I think it was
08:00part of that zeitgeist at the time.
08:02Keller's opinion specifically reflected a 1915 case when a baby's life was allowed to expire
08:08after a doctor refused to operate. Keller charged those who advocated for the baby's
08:13life as containing, quote,
08:15"...cowardly sentimentalism."
08:17And she actively distanced herself from the disabled community throughout her adult life.
08:35Overseeing COINTELPRO, J. Edgar Hoover.
08:38Remember always that the spy and the saboteur or the destroyer carries no badge.
08:45He hides behind a hundred fronts. He pretends innocence. He likes to rub elbows with patriotic men.
08:54The figure of former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover is one that looms large over the agency's power
08:59and influence. One aspect of Hoover's controversial legacy includes operations that were conducted
09:04under the umbrella of COINTELPRO. These weren't just mere smear campaigns, but instead coordinated
09:10unrelenting attacks upon groups that the FBI considered undesirable.
09:15We knew the FBI was systematically trying to squash dissent, and dissent is the lifeblood
09:20of democracy.
09:21The activities and lives of the Black Panthers, anti-Vietnam activists, and even movie stars
09:26like Gene Seberg were monitored by FBI agents. Phones were tapped, conversations were recorded,
09:33and assassinations were approved under COINTELPRO, as the FBI manipulated the media and committed
09:39psychological warfare against United States citizens.
09:42The surveillance was so enormous that it led various people, rather sedate people in editorial
09:49offices and in Congress, to compare it to the Stasi, the dreaded secret police of East Germany.
09:56Accusations of anti-Semitism, Ruald Dahl. It often comes down to the consumer to decide whether or
10:02not we're able to separate the art from the artist.
10:05And I agree with you, it is difficult. Very, very difficult.
10:08Ruald Dahl is responsible for a writing score of certified children's classics, including
10:13Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda. However, this English veteran of World War II
10:19has also been accused of harboring sentiments that could be perceived as anti-Semitic.
10:23I thought he was great at first, but then he didn't turn out so nice.
10:27Dahl, in his defense, was quoted as saying,
10:29I am not anti-Semitic, I am anti-Israel.
10:32The author's friends often labeled him as a provocateur and subject to saying things on a whim.
10:37Yet, this does nothing to hide the fact that some of Dahl's early work, such as
10:41Sometime Never and Madame Rosette, contains defamatory language concerning Jewish people.
10:47One of those kind of horror stories which you have specialized in.
10:50Tikla.
10:51Yeah.
10:51Assault, Roman Polanski.
10:53Here you come to a concrete case for which I have been behind the bars,
11:01and that's what you want to talk about.
11:03Some turn away at the accusations leveled against filmmaker Roman Polanski,
11:07due primarily to his genre-defining work with Rosemary's Baby and Chinatown.
11:12The writer and director even received the Academy Award for Best Director for 2002's The Pianist,
11:17which was released decades after Polanski's infamous run-ins with the law.
11:21He was very powerful, very well-known.
11:24I think when you're wealthy or powerful or well-known, people don't say no to you,
11:29and you have like this different view of life where you're accustomed to getting what you want,
11:34because you get what you want.
11:35The history of Polanski's alleged sexual crimes dates back to 1977,
11:40when he was arrested for drugging and assaulting a teenager in his native France.
11:44Polanski would inconceivably be arrested for this crime again that same year,
11:49this time with an underage model named Samantha Gailey.
11:53Serious jail time loomed for the director, who was informed of this incoming justice,
11:58and Polanski decided to escape from the U.S. prior to his sentencing.
12:02Authorities here in Los Angeles have been unable to arrest Polanski before now.
12:06They say they've tried six times over the years,
12:08yet when they learned he was going to be in Zurich this past weekend,
12:11they asked the Swiss to help catch him.
12:13Advocating colonialism, Rudyard Kipling.
12:16My dear boy, I'm a British officer.
12:18My job is to keep the law.
12:20You keep not the jungle law.
12:22Look here, I don't know about any jungle law, but I do keep man's law.
12:30It doesn't seem unfair to say that many viewers of a certain age
12:33were first exposed to the work of English author Rudyard Kipling's literary work
12:37with the animated Disney adaptation of The Jungle Book.
12:40Kipling was born in British India,
12:42and it was living under these circumstances that provided a huge influence on his art.
12:46Including his Jungle Book duology, as well as a poem titled The White Man's Burden.
12:51Boy, now look at that.
12:53The color and majesty of India.
12:55The exquisite manners and food of England.
12:58All the bare necessities of life.
13:01This poem's narrative offers a cautious yet encouraging advocacy
13:05of American colonialist efforts in the Philippine Islands.
13:08While The Jungle Book, yes, even the Disney version,
13:11presents imagery that mirrors Britain's own colonialist approach to Indian rule.
13:16That's the way I earned my commission in the Maharaja's Fifth Pachyderm Brigade.
13:22Back in 88 it was, or was it?
13:26Here it comes.
13:27The Victoria Cross bit again.
13:29Forced conversion and misappropriation of funds.
13:32Mother Teresa.
13:33She probably make good work for church,
13:38but actually the care and the way she treated the sick people
13:44seems not to be what the media told.
13:46The career and life of Mary Teresa Boyajiu, aka Mother Teresa,
13:51did contribute to providing health care to the poor, needy, and sick.
13:54People who had nowhere else to turn.
13:56However, it's also been alleged that the quality of this care varied,
14:00and often came under the proviso of a forced conversion to Catholicism.
14:04These could be in the form of baptisms of children against their parents' wishes,
14:08or deathbed conversions.
14:10I have videos of a telling congregation in Scripps Clinic in 1992,
14:16that she was surreptitiously converting more and more people who were not able to give consent.
14:21Mother Teresa also contributed to hiding the actions of priests
14:25that were accused of behaving inappropriately with children,
14:27and also came under fire for misappropriating funds for her own medical care
14:32against those designated for her mission.
14:34India's Home Ministry refused to renew the Missionaries of Charity's license
14:38to receive funds from abroad, citing what it called adverse inputs,
14:43without giving more detail.
14:44Marrying minors. Charlie Chaplin.
14:47He was very taken with me. He had his cameraman
14:51photograph me in the position of the famous painting, The Age of Innocence.
14:56He thought that I resembled that little girl in the oil painting.
15:00The world of old Hollywood is full of dark shadows
15:02that contrast the bright lights and dazzling stars.
15:05Charlie Chaplin's work during the silent film era was massive,
15:09influencing countless artists.
15:11Yet the man's personal life was tumultuous,
15:13from his left-leaning political sympathies to alleged sexual relationships with minors.
15:19Charlie's assistant said to Charlie,
15:21this is the little girl I've been telling you about,
15:23and I went running over to meet them.
15:26And Charlie looked at me and he said, oh yes, and she's very pretty.
15:29Now would you like to be in a movie?
15:31It should be said that legal ages of consent have historically differed
15:34from both state to state and year to year,
15:36but Chaplin's first two wives were under the age of 18.
15:40His second spouse, Lita Gray, was alleged to have been a teenager
15:44at the time of their affair, during which she became pregnant.
15:47Gray would also allege that Chaplin pressured her for an abortion
15:50in order to circumvent the scandal of their secret marriage in Sonora, Mexico.
15:55I couldn't quite figure out how this was the same man seated at this
15:59table as the man I saw on the screen. It kind of scared me.
16:02Animal abuse allegations. P.T. Barnum.
16:05Figured you'd end up here feeling sorry for yourself.
16:08The modern day sideshows, carnivals, and circus attractions
16:12all owe a debt of gratitude to the showmanship of P.T. Barnum.
16:16However, the man's style of operation within the circus business
16:19has come under large scrutiny over the years,
16:22particularly in the wake of 2017's The Greatest Showman.
16:25I never liked your show, but I always thought the people did.
16:29They did. They do.
16:32Specifically, Barnum often exploited real-life physical conditions
16:36for those appearing in his various sideshows,
16:38while other exhibits leaned heavily into racist and culturally insensitive stereotypes.
16:44The animals under Barnum's watch fared little better,
16:46with many of the tools used to get them to perform their shows
16:50also doubling as instruments of pain.
17:00The Kennedy Lobotomy. Joe Kennedy Sr.
17:03Individuals historically turned to a lot of different places
17:06when it came to seeking out answers for mental illness.
17:09The surgical procedure, known as a lobotomy, was one of these places,
17:13and it wasn't only the poor that turned in this direction.
17:16By the end of the procedure, she's basically lost the ability to talk,
17:19and it's clear that this has gone terribly wrong.
17:22The Kennedy family patriarch, Joe Kennedy Sr.,
17:26subjected his daughter, Rosemary, to a lobotomy during her early 20s.
17:30This was after complications during her delivery and birth
17:33resulted in Rosemary developing some sort of learning-slash-intellectual disability.
17:38From a young age, Rosemary, the eldest Kennedy daughter, was a bit slow.
17:44She was diagnosed with learning disability at the age of about six or seven.
17:49The public perception of Joe and the Kennedy family's feelings
17:52towards Rosemary range from ignorance to shame.
17:55It's also largely believed that the lobotomy was performed to both
17:59neutralize the Kennedy daughter's mood swings
18:01and ensure the political paths for Joe's sons were made more clear.
18:05Joe was convinced Rosemary's lobotomy would somehow fix things,
18:10and then miraculously she would become a perfect Kennedy like all the other Kennedys.
18:15The Bengal Famine. Winston Churchill.
18:18It's not a matter upon which I am able to shed any clear ray of light at the present time,
18:25and if I were, I should certainly not shed it.
18:28The legacy of former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Winston Churchill
18:32was still being forged when this humanitarian disaster struck India back in 1943.
18:38World War II raged across the globe, yet this was also still the time of British colonialism in India.
18:44The war, specifically Japan's occupation of Burma,
18:47was devastating for India's economy during this time,
18:50with foodstuffs being diverted preferentially and strategically
18:54to military personnel rather than Indian natives.
19:07Churchill's level of blame for the Bengal Famine fluctuates depending on who you ask,
19:12with some quoting the Prime Minister's disparaging remarks towards India's people,
19:16while others claim Churchill's hands were tied and that he effectively
19:20quote did his best once alerted of the crisis.
19:24Contemporary non-official observers reported from the start that this was a man-made famine.
19:29Calcutta newspaper The Statesman wrote,
19:31The sickening catastrophe is man-made. The famine constitutes the worst
19:35and most reprehensible administrative breakdown in India.
19:39Nazi sympathy Coco Chanel
19:41Operation Model Hat. Your codename is now Westminster.
19:45The name Coco Chanel is synonymous with the fashion industry,
19:48yet the real-life historical figure behind this brand possessed a complicated history.
19:53We're speaking of Chanel's involvement with Nazi officials during their occupation of France
19:58during World War II. Chanel had an endgame in mind with regards to her SS collaborations,
20:04specifically freeing her nephew who was being held as a POW.
20:08She decided to go to the French, you know, collaboration government
20:19and who were in touch with the Gestapo.
20:22Chanel's romantic affair with Nazi officer Hans Gunther von Dinklage succeeded in this aim,
20:27yet she continued contact with the Nazi brass after the release of her nephew.
20:32One of Chanel's political allies was the aforementioned Winston Churchill,
20:36and it was via this influence that the fashion icon was able to avoid charges
20:40of collaboration after the war. We've had many dinners together
20:44since the 20s, vacation together. So it's personal.
20:48Oh yes, Sir Winston has even taken the opportunity to crawl in my lap.
20:52Promoting segregation Woodrow Wilson
20:55He introduced Jim Crow to Washington D.C.
21:01At a time when it was just starting to loosen up,
21:04he brought it back and it became, for all intents and purposes, the law of the land.
21:10Armchair historians might like to point out how former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson
21:14probably would have wanted his 14 points or the League of Nations to be part of his lasting legacy.
21:20Instead, a recent light has since been shined upon just how reticent Wilson's presidency was
21:25to listening to voices of change and their increasing clamor for equality.
21:30The former president supported segregation at every turn,
21:33including enforcing it within the branches of the federal government.
21:36In addition to this physical separation from whites,
21:39black federal workers were appointed to menial positions or reassigned to jobs slated for
21:45elimination. Wilson worked to remove African-American politicians from their posts,
21:50and he actively opposed the women's suffrage movement.
21:53Post-Civil War reconstruction in America was not easy,
21:56but the 20th century presidency of Woodrow Wilson did a lot to help undermine a lot of that era's
22:02success. On the one hand, he's got this abstract vision of a more just world that has all of this
22:10potential and possibility in it. And then on the flip side, for all of his big ideals,
22:16he is such a narrow-hearted little man. The Siege of Drogheda, Oliver Cromwell.
22:21The mere mention of the name Oliver Cromwell is enough to elicit many passionate opinions.
22:33The legacy of this former Lord Protector is nothing if not complicated, with some sides
22:37of history praising Cromwell's military might and others condemning him for the same reasons.
22:43The Siege of Drogheda was a military conflict often used to underline Cromwell's brutality
22:48while also criticizing the man's campaign in Ireland.
23:06Sir Arthur Aston, who was in charge of defending the garrison, refused a chance to surrender to
23:12Cromwell's invading forces. As a result, nearly all of Aston's men were killed, along with an
23:17unnamed number of civilians. It's this latter fact that speaks to just how often Cromwell's
23:22opposition was slaughtered, seemingly without regard to mercy or decency.
23:47The Indian Removal Act, Andrew Jackson. His visage remains on the $20 U.S. note,
24:02but perhaps reckoning will eventually come for former American President Andrew Jackson.
24:07The man's problematic legacy has grown exponentially in recent years,
24:11thanks primarily to his enforcement of the Indian Removal Act in 1830.
24:16The Cherokees actually won a Supreme Court case over land in Georgia,
24:20but Jackson ignored the decision. The bill was signed into law by Jackson,
24:24and its enforcement was continued by the President's successor, Martin Van Buren.
24:28Under this act, over 60,000 Native Americans were forced to uproot and move west,
24:34a journey that became known as the Trail of Tears.
24:37Many were shackled in chains and forced to walk, at gunpoint, more than 1,000 miles west
24:44on a series of routes that all led to Oklahoma.
24:48Up to a third of the 15,000 Cherokee who were forced to make the journey died.
24:53The act is seen today largely as a strategic land grab movement by the United States,
24:59with Jackson's personal feelings asserting an idea that Native self-rule should only take place
25:04upon federal land west of the Mississippi River.
25:07They took everything from us. America's built on stolen lands. America is a stolen country.
25:12Did any of these revelations surprise you? Let us know in the comments.
25:17We knew that the FBI had us under constant surveillance,
25:20but I don't think anyone at the time really knew the full extent of the program, of COINTELPRO.
25:31Check out these other clips from WatchMojo,
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