Hollywood (1938)

The imple Life It's easy to buy diamonds and sables and imported cars in Hollywood but the simple life is harder to find and very expensive to maintain By TED LORCH ■ Lincoln did a lot of thinking while splitting rails. Theodore Roosevelt preferred deepest Africa when things got complicated. Then consider the case of Bob Burns, who's stuck in Hollywood while spinning the simple philosophies of the Ozark people. You can get rich in Hollywood if you're lucky. You can develop a broad "a". You can be fashionable as all get out. But brother, if you want to remain simple and unchanged — that's hard! Yep, it's got Robin Burns, the sage of Van Buren, a trifle worried. He couldn't take to splitting rails. He couldn't move to Africa. In fact, he can't even get very far from Hollywood, because he has to be in the heart of it nearly every day. That's why Bob did everything but advertise for the simple life. Bob has been an expert on such things as poverty. He spent a good portion of his life doing enforced research along those lines. Bob can still remember when the smell of good food inside a restaurant while he was passing by had to serve as a 24 Above, Bob Burns at ease in front of his study. Right, the most expensive log cabin in all of the Hollywoods square meal. But it doesn't change the lamentable fact that Bob has struck it rich. "Sure, it's lamentable," Bob says quite frankly. "I got where I am because life was so doggone simple for me. Back in Van Buren we didn't have any complications to keep us from seein' things the way they were or ought to be. But now — well, it's a heap different." A film star has many obligations that come with fame. In the first place, he must dress the part. In the second, he must live it. Bob was told all these things when he "arrived" — was told them even while a brand new business manager was delivering the usual "don't be a spendthrift" lecture. Much against his wishes, Bob did what everyone advised. He got himself a nice home out in Bel-Air. And if you don't know what that means, then use your imagination. In Bel-Air they look you over carefully before selling you a lot They tell you what you can and cannot build. They even supervise your building it, just so you won't get the economical jitters at the last minute. In a word, BelAir is exclusive. Well, one bright morning Bob awakened to find himself in the lap of luxury. It rather appalled him. Some men seem to their best cogitating amid a nightly mass of modernistic mahogany masterpieces, or at least a considerable collection of chromium calmatives. But not Bob. No, sir. His pappy found solace and wisdom in a simple home in Van Buren, and his grandpappy before him lived happily in a cabin constructed of heavy logs. There was nothing in this scheme HOLLYWOOD