This is an IHeart podcast.

Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosity's, A production of IHeart Radio and grim and mild.

Our world is full of the unexplainable. And if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosity's.

In Hollywood, they say that it's who you know. The right connections can give you a leg up.

For instance, director Sophia Coppola is an immense talent, but it's easier to get noticed when your dad directed the godfather, right?

In fact, scores of our favorite celebrities,

people with massive amounts of talent, come from Hollywood royalty, Nicholas Cage, George Clooney,

Emma Roberts, the list goes on and on. But while these artists had a leg up, their talent is what earned them job after job. After all, it's not how you get the opportunity. It's what

you do with it that counts. And as one Hollywood starlet has proved, sometimes a foot in the door

is all someone needs to break the glass ceiling. In 1948, an up-and-coming actress arrived for

her voice session at Columbia Pictures, one of the leading film studios in Hollywood.

She had a good singing voice, but was untrained. So the studio had her working with a

composer named Fred Carger to get her as ready as possible for the small parts in an upcoming

film. That afternoon, Fred handed the young actress a vinyl record and encouraged her to listen to it.

The singer on the record was a moderately well-known crooner by the name of Ella Fitzgerald.

And Fred thought that the young actress might be able to learn a few things about singing by listening to Ella.

And the actress did listen and found herself drawn in by Ella Fitzgerald's low, sultry voice. She became an

instant fan and bought scores of Ella's records. As it turned out, Ella Fitzgerald wasn't just

a hypnotic singer. She was also prolific, having released dozens of records since 1935. Over the next

six years, the young actress spent countless hours listening to

Ella's recordings. She followed her career, even as her own career took off, and she began to land

bigger and bigger roles in Hollywood. But much as she loved Ella Fitzgerald, she didn't get to

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