The art of sound pictures (1930)

THE BUYER’S PROBLEMS 35 ference. Most motion picture companies hold such conferences more or less frequently. Were it not unkind, we should like to print here a pretty full outline of the stories which are rejected. This being impossible, however, we shall attempt the next best thing, which is to indicate very briefly the essential defects which editors have pointed out in them. Let us begin with a well-written novel which portrays with great vividness and accuracy the rise and fall of a famous motion picture actress. In the early chapters, we see our heroine as a young girl endowed with unusual talents and a very wild spirit. Everybody likes her. She clowns her way through life. She lives on excitement. After several very hard years full of defeats and disillusionments, she finally comes under the eye of a director who appreciates her unusual abilities. In short order she becomes rich and famous. But she proves to be one of the millions who cannot stand prosperity. As soon as she earns $2,500 a week, she begins spending $3,000 a week. Forever in debt, she is pursued by creditors. Her reputation falls away from her like a rag. She becomes morbid, takes to drink, and then to drugs, and reaches the verge of insanity. The big companies drop her. She passes once more into the impenetrable obscurity of the average woman. This story was rejected for reasons which have nothing at all to do with its literary and artistic merit. The trouble with it is that it paints the darkest side of Hollywood a little darker than it really is. The motion picture industry has often been attacked by would-be reformers who love to seize upon any evidence, however flimsy, that will justify them in setting up severe censorships. This