Hollywood is not so bad

CLARE BOOTHE BROKAW

A few reflections on the only difference between the east and west coast, which is one of mileage

No theatrical season is complete, no magazine well balanced, no publication list well rounded which does not exhibit a play, an article, a book devoted to a lurid description of the absurdities and horrors of Hollywood. Hollywood baiting has even become a popular drawing-room sport and the first question asked of anyone who has ever gotten within a hundred miles of a studio is, "Tell me about Hollywood. Wasn't it awful?*

Sightseers returning from the capital of the cinema, retail the latest malapropism, in dialect, of a film producer. (It is usually attributed to Samuel Goldwyn, who, by this time should be growing proud of his nationwide reputation as an unflagging humourist.) They point derisive fingers in the direction of the West Coast, and burst into loud, contemptuous guffaws.

Critics, dramatic, literary or artistic, west of the Rockies, feel called upon, at one time or another, to express themselves with more than ordinary sarcasm on the benighted state of the Eighth Art. But they do not stop at criticism, they usually propose a cure for Hollywood's ills, the sine qua non always being that the existing personnel of the studios, from producers to camera men, should be permanently, and not too painlessly, disposed of.

Artists, authors, and "legitimate" actors who have been lured by handsome contracts to spend a few months of their time—suddenly grown precious—in Hollywood, add their smoke to the smudge of contempt. When their options expire, they return to "civilization", ejecting en route the venom of personal animosity and boredom. Hollywood is picturesquely described as the dumping ground of the arts, a den of iniquity, a desert of vulgarity, a well of ignorance; the home of painted dolls, of stupid puppets, of posturing, fanatical egos, of producers who deliberately—or even worse—unintentionally prostitute what might become an Art into trash that is only fit to be indigested by twelve-year-old morons. Thus, all those from the East, to all those in the West.

Like visitors to the tropics who are constantly warned against jungle fever, and the need of taking along quinine, arrivals in Hollywood are prepared for the "glamourous" absurdities and vulgarities of the cinema fleshpots. with the bitter quinine of prejudice.

(It is strange that even the worst detractors of Hollywood admit that the "glamour", like jungle fever, exists. Indeed, it is doubtful if any visitor, male or female, old or young, who ever entered a studio, did not also cherish a secret hope that some perspicacious director would step forward with a "screenoffer".)

Perhaps I succumbed to the glamour, or mayhap I did not slay there long enough to become immune to the cinema virus. For I found Hollywood to be none of the repellent things of which it is accused. Or, rather, I found that its vices and vulgarities exist in only a slightly greater proportion there than they exist, say, on Park Avenue or Broadway. I prefer the affectations of screen stars, who strive to act like "ladies and gentlemen", who play ping-pong, bridge, Backgammon and serve suppers with light wines, who make a cult of sun baths, who dress simply and use four syllable words, to the bad manners and the speech interlarded with "lousy" and "damn" affected by most of New York's sophisticates and literati in their cellar speakeasies. The over-elaborate good manners of Hollywood's Chattertons and Bickfords; the punctiliousness of a Ronald Column or a Clive Brook is infinitely easier to bear than the studied rudenesses of some of tin; stage and musical comedy stars one encounters in the drawing rooms of New York.

"But they talk about nothing, nothing, nothing but pictures," exclaimed a prominent visitor from the East, who was talking about nothing, nothing, nothing but golf and stocks to a lovely young authoress who talked about nothing, nothing, nothing but books. . . .

Why should the Brown Derby at luncheon time be considered more vulgar than Child's at three A.M.? Why are the papier-mache flower pot shops and windmill fountains in worse taste than the endorsement of a Van de Peyster for beds, or pots of cold cream? Both are advertising. As for the much-derided "homes" of the stars, mentioned always as being examples of bad taste, there are worse examples to be seen a few miles out of New York; and their naive vulgarity is far more sincere self-expression of their owners' personalities than is to be found in the "decorated"' interiors of New A ork apartments. Moreover, there are houses in Hollywood which possess quite as much charm as any to be seen in New York: Joan Crawford, Fay Wray, Lilyan Tashman have created interiors of which no Park Avenue sophisticate need be ashamed. The interior of Hollywood's Embassy Club is quite as charming as New York's, and if the costumes and manners in evidence there appear to be a trifle more al fresco than in New York, they are correspondingly less boring. Hollywood has its Louella Parsons, New York has its Cholly Knickerbocker and Walter Winchell. Sid Grauman's Chinese theatre is no more monumental in its bad taste than Roxy's. Between the "gala preemeers" and the opening of the Metropolitan Opera (if you don't believe this is ballyhooed, look at the newspapers the next morning), between the snobbery that flourishes on Malibu Beach, and the snobbery of Southampton Beach, between the artificial Christmas snows sprayed on Hollywood's boulevards by giant wind machines (the classic example offered of Hollywood's vulgarity ) and Marie Antoinette's salted summer alleys of Versailles, there is, of course, a distinction, but very little difference.

Who shall say that Broadway is not merely a slightly mildewed Hollywood? There is small choice between what is called "bad" Hollywood and what is apparent on every side as "cheap" Broadway. But it is no longer smart for the moralists, the sophisticates, the intellectuals to assail Broadway. Criticism is too often like a bull, which charges whatever red flag is waved before its destructive horns. The Hollywood toreadors have waved their red and gilt capes and left the New York producers sitting on the fence smiling—too often on the wrong side of their faces, while a sadistic public follows the Hollywood fracas in the bull-ring. What Hollywood script has ever been more guilty of sickening sentiment than the daily outpourings of the great metropolitan tabloid columnists? What vulgarity on the screen is worse than that which metropolitan producers exhibit in revue sketches no Hollywood producer would touch with a ten-foot pole? Broadway, too (and, for that matter, Mayfair) has its share of painted dolls, of inflated egos—and of failures. Its sixty-nine theatres exhibit only ten current successes, not one of which could be termed either an artistic or intellectual triumph. Yes, it is far less painful for the New York theatrical brethren to concentrate on the mote in Hollywood's eye. . . .

Returning authors, and actors, or, to put it more exactly, returned authors and actors, complain of Hollywood's lack of breeding, of its vulgarity, although the fact appears completely to escape them that it is perhaps even worse taste to go into the homes of Hollywood people (as they all have done) eat their food, drink their liquor, swim in their pools, take their money (and ask for more) and then, when they leave, ridicule their recent hosts. So far, no one has offered an adequate defense of such an abuse of hospitality.

It is also rather baffling to find that visitors take it as a personal affront that the town is provincial. Los Angeles is at the other end of the American continent. There is no particular reason why Hollywood, a mushroom growth, should add to its excellent climate the cultural advantages of Paris, the amusements of New York, and the traditions, and historical background of London. Paducah is a larger town, so is South Bend or Oshkosh, and no one demands of them that they offer cultural inducements to the transient visitor. (The trouble with New Yorkers is that they secretly believe that any city which is not New York is the hinterland. They may be right, but in this case they should remain in New York.)

After all, no one forces writers, actors, artists, at the point of a gun to go to Hollywood. They go West because they are offered such large sums of money that they find it impossible to refuse. Having accepted, they are tormented by a sense of dishonesty—they have never been worth so much before, and can't imagine why they should he worth it now. It is disagreeable to feel that their purchase prices have been reached, That all men are susceptible to corruption. This naturally puts them in surly tempers. They become suddenly self-conscious and "touchy" about their art. They blame their inner doubts on Hollywood. But expecting the worst of Hollywood, and finding it, they should he better sports about it. It is far more agreeable, no matter how you look at it, to he paid more than you are worth, for doing nothing in a land of perpetual sunshine than to he underpaid, or not paid at all, for working like a slave, which is a more usual state of affairs in New York or on Broadway than people will admit. But the visiting fraternity of Eastern talent complains, at length, even of the "Everlasting, tiresome sunshine". They remind one of Peter Arno's languid lady in the limousine, who looks contemptuously on her jewels and sables, and moans to the bewildered gentleman by her side, "You are so good to me, and I am so tired of it all!"

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Further, it seems a trifle unreasonable to get nasty and sarcastic when, on closer acquaintance one finds out that the average screen idol is a painted hussy or a tailor's dummy, stupid to the point of imbecility. What the screen demands are screen faces and screen voices. It would indeed he odd, if, in addition to their physical perfections, the stars should also possess charm and culture. The wonder of it is, that even a few of them do. . . .

Of course, most of the rancour against screen stars which simmers in the breasts of less successful artists, is inspired by envy. The stars earn so much. A current cause for philippics against the star system is the fact that one rather emaciated, colourless blonde of no particular talent or distinction is earning $30,000 weekly. This, you hear outraged outcries on every side, is ridiculous: no one is worth it. "Why, she makes more in a month than the President does in a year!" Perhaps,—but Connie Bennett has given more pleasure to more people in one day than President Hoover has during his entire term. She is "box-office". Hoover isn't. Palpitating clerks, hard-boiled stenographers, tired domestics, mothers of noisy broods, stand in queues in the rain to see her. She is the woman they would passionately love to possess, to be. She is, therefore, worth whatever any astute Hollywood producer can afford to pay her.

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Another word for screen stars. There is far less gay philandering among them than one is led to expect (or hope) from reports which do not emanate from the land where a Picfus Will Hays is officially his Brethren's Keeper. It is difficult to he a hellion at night and to work from fourteen to sixteen hours a day, memorizing and rehearsing long roles under glaring, blinding lights, in thick coats of make-up.

Count the number of pictures a successful star makes a year, the good health and good looks which she must keep, and try to deduce how much time she has left over to devote to the gentle arts, so popular in the Fast, of drinking, overeating, smoking, and flirting, both in its milder and more dangerous forms.

Extra girls, perhaps. . . . They are not much different in Hollywood than "extra" girls are in any business, in any strata of society. And men are much the same on Hollywood Boulevard as they are on the Boulevard des (aliens, Broadway, the Strand, Park Avenue.

What really angers most of the literary or theatrical celebrities who find their way to Hollywood is this: Hollywood is a small town whose population is entirely made up of celebrities, of famous folk, of "big names", of those who "earn salaries larger than the President's". . . . One name more or less means very little to the studio people. Fame, personal glory, beauty, genius even, are commercial commodities. Socially, they are drugs on the market. An arriving celebrity is assimilated so quickly, treated so unexpectedly like a human being (which he has not acted like for years) instead of a visiting nobleman, a prophet with honour, or a bearded lion, that his ego suffers a terrific jolt from which it does not recover during the rest of his Californian sojourn. He construes the natural indifference of his peers (either financial or artistic) as wanton neglect, atrocious rudeness, wasteful unappreciation. He cannot reconcile himself to being a minnow among Goldfish, instead of what he fondly hoped to he, and undoubtedly was among his own little clique at home, a whale among sardines.