“When I asked Al why didn’t he break Sidney’s back, he said a very peculiar thing – that you cannot make a moral judgment of a person who is utterly without morality. Anyway, Sidney is Hollywood – I mean the place is full of Sidneys. Sidney doesn’t do evil. Sidney is the ultimate amoral. If you asked him about that wretched gangshag he set up eleven years ago he might be nervous – but not ashamed. He was doing everyone a favor. He was doing Samantha a favor by getting her a job on TV. He was doing the boys a favor by getting them a free lay on the set. And he was being progressive. He was forwarding the whole industry in his own way.”
Samantha was first published in 1967. It took fifty more years for a Sidney to fall from grace. Unjustly so? Not if Samantha’s story is anything to go by.
“Did Samantha get the bit part she was brought down there for? I mean, was she actually filmed? […] “No. Jesus God, man, do you think she was in any condition to act?”
The rape happens when Samantha is 18 years old. She never enters into show business at all. Fast lets her die of ill health a year later. Maybe that’s a bit melodramatic, but a fate like that – if you have no family to return to and no welfare system – is not unheard of either.