Our news feeds, headlines and inboxes are bombarded daily with sensationalised stories of celebrities behaving badly. In an age of smartphones, wi-fi and Insta-fame, are today's celebrities really more debauched than their predecessors, or is it "our" attitude towards salacious and scandalous behaviour that has changed?
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Actor James Franco recently caused a media melee thanks to leaked messages showing him flirting with a 17-year-old. After an appearance on Live with Kelly & Michael, Franco admitted: "I'm embarrassed and I guess I'm just a model of how social media is tricky. You just don't know who is on the other end. I used bad judgment and I learned my lesson."
Franco didn't touch the girl and landed himself in hot water, yet the likes of Errol Flynn, who is rumoured to have regularly engaged the services of Hollywood pimps to search out underage girls for raunchy rendezvous, never raised a brow back in the day.
During those Hollywood golden years, gay and bisexual stars such as Rock Hudson, Cary Grant, Randolph Scott and Greta Garbo were forced to sign "moral'' clauses in their contracts compelling them to conceal their sexual preferences.
Katharine Hepburn often had studio bosses pleading with her not to advertise the fact she was gay, claims Scotty Bowers, author of Full Service and the Heidi Fleiss of old Tinseltown.
He claims in his tell-all that he procured more than 150 female lovers for Hepburn during their 50-year friendship. One, a 17-year-old named Barbara, went on to have a 49-year on-and-off relationship with Hepburn, he says.
That rumoured "unrequited love story" with Hepburn and Spencer Tracy was merely an industry cover up, as he had a penchant for strapping young men, according to Bowers.
Original bad-boy rock'n'roller Jerry Lee Lewis copped flack, but was still permitted to wed his 13-year-old bride.
In 1959, at just 14, Priscilla Beaulieu met Elvis in Germany, who brought her back to live with him at Graceland, on the promise of marriage. No one dared insinuate that Elvis was a predator.
Meanwhile, as Vegas sparkled in the desert sands and the Rat Pack ruled, behind hotel doors there were shenanigans worthy of front-page news.
Tom Jones has revealed that early in his career he partook in romping orgies alongside the King and Ol' Blue Eyes.
As the 60s ended and flower power bloomed in a time of peace and free love while getting high on the collective yellow submarine of life, a new bunch of boys could get no satisfaction.
Enter the rock gods. The likes of the Rolling Stones, Kiss and AC/DC operated a time when nobody batted an eyelid at their sex, drugs and rock'n'roll mantra.
Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were nabbed numerous times by police, but often with little repercussion. In 1977, heroine addict Richards was busted in Canada with a whopping amount of drugs and faced a life sentence, which was later reduced after he agreed to rehab.
Yet when Justin Bieber, Amanda Bynes or Paris Hilton get busted with a dooby or two or a small bag of "something" the world goes into a frenzy of biblical proportions and these kids suddenly are making orange the new black.
Gene Simmons of Kiss was a sex god, bedding close to 5000 women; Julio Iglesias a Latino Cassanova for his effort of 3000 (pre-1976).
Rod Stewart claims to have bedded more than a thousand women, admitting: "The most memorable is always the current one, the rest just merge into a sea of blondes."
Do we really live in a world where it's OK when Warren Beatty admits to sleeping with 12,775 women, yet Lindsay Lohan is slammed for revealing the hot Hollywood hunks she's hooked?
Is a pash-and-dash between Madonna and Britney, Rih-Rih with a stripper on her lap or a pseudo-nude twerking Miley any worse than Ozzy Osbourne biting the head off a bat, Prince simulating sex with his guitar or a half-naked woman jiggling her bits in a class full of kids in Van Halen's Hot for Teacher video?
These days it seems as soon as a celebrity puts a designer-clad foot wrong the entire planet has its collective panties in a twist.
One can't help but wonder: if we paid the same attention to poverty, education, climate change and political instability that we do to Miranda Kerr's love life, Katy Perry's hair colour or Kimye, could this world be a better place?