Karina Longworth's acclaimed podcast "You Must Remember This" has announced its return with a new season devoted to Libby Holman, the jazz-age singer and actress whose bisexuality and romantic entanglements with Hollywood's golden age elite have largely faded from popular memory. Holman, who rose to prominence in the 1920s and 1930s as a torch singer before transitioning to film and theater, becomes the podcast's latest deep subject.
The season will explore Holman's affair with Montgomery Clift, the Method actor whose own closeted bisexuality and turbulent personal life made him a tragic figure in cinema history. Their relationship adds another layer to Longworth's ongoing project of excavating Hollywood's queer histories and the complex lives of women pushed to the margins of the industry's official narrative.
Longworth has built "You Must Remember This" into essential listening for cinema scholars and general audiences alike over its previous runs. The podcast excels at combining rigorous archival research with narrative storytelling, treating its subjects as full human beings rather than footnotes or scandal vehicles. Her approach to Hollywood history refuses the sanitized versions long peddled by studio publicists and mainstream biographers.
Holman's story encapsulates several themes central to Longworth's project: the precarious position of women entertainers in early Hollywood, the suppression of queer identities across entertainment history, and the ways talented performers disappeared from cultural consciousness after studio systems collapsed or reputations became complicated. Beyond Clift, Holman's life included marriages, theatrical acclaim, and legal troubles that shaped her legacy.
The podcast's return arrives as renewed interest in vintage Hollywood continues through streaming documentaries and academic work examining the period's hidden histories. Longworth's deep, multi-episode approach offers something rarer than the quick-hit true crime model dominating podcast culture. She treats Old Hollywood as deserving the same cultural examination afforded to contemporary celebrity scandal, but with the added dimension of historical recovery work.