"I SPENT a great deal of time on my knees," Marilyn Monroe once said of how she became a film star. "If you didn't go along, there were 25 girls who would." The "casting couch"-the film industry's cosy euphemism for the extortion of sexual favours from movie hopefuls by Hollywood power-brokers-has been under renewed scrutiny in recent days, after allegations of sexual assault and harassment against Harvey Weinstein, a producer, published in the New Yorker and New York Times earlier this month. More than 40 women, many of them famous, have now added their names to the list of victims of crimes they say ranged from demands for sex in return for roles, to indecent exposure, to groping and even rape. Police in America and Britain are investigating. Mr Weinstein has been expelled from the Academy, the institution that awards the Oscars, and sacked by the Weinstein Company, the studio he co-founded in 2005. It is now likely to be bought out (see page 62).
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