Hollywood (1938)

Landscapes on Wheels Readymade forests, perambulating gardens, and louring orchards are ordinary sights in Hollywood By EDWARD CHIRCHILL | As Joyce Kilmer wrote, only God can make a tree. But Hollywood, with ever greater enthusiasm, is moving several hundred thousands of dollars worth of them each year — the next best thing to making them. The trees you see in your motion pictures these days are, for a change, real, live trees. Because you demand realism. But it doesn't stop there. Stars, famous over night or in six months, want to feel that they've been that way permanently. A couple of days later a 200-year oak and a 50-year old olive tree grace the front lawn and everybody's happy. Or, consider Edward Everett Horton, who is a regular patron of a "tree farm" on West Pico Boulevard. Horton, purchaser of a bare knob of eight acres in San Fernando valley, has imported trees along with his antiques to the extent of fifty or sixty, and today his estate looks as if it had been there since his Grandpa Orr came to this country in 1840. He has ten acres more, now, and Bob Hamsher, who transports and sells more trees than any other man in the world, is very happy. Hamsher's trees cause trouble. In fact, not long ago, Claudette Colbert and Horton met at a dinner party and there was considerable confusion for a while. Claudette accused Eddie of buying all Hamsher's trees, leaving her nothing but a few small ones to pick from. Only one tree so far has Eddie stumped. It's an Atlantic cedar in a nine-foot box, weighs about 35 tons and Hamsher wants $1,250. "I'm going to buy that tree yet," Horton says, every time he comes in — which means that sooner or later he will. The truth is that the stars love trees. When you drive by an estate or a home owned by a player in Southern California, you're probably mystified to see a huge cedar, an orange tree with fruit on it, or some rare and exotic palm holding down the front lawn. Particularly when the house behind the tree looks only about six months old. The stars go shopping for these trees. ■ Hamsher paints a picture of Joel McCrea coming into his "tree farm" in battered cowboy hat, soiled trousers and shirt open at the throat, to buy a pepper. Joel has a 1,000 acre cattle ranch. "I've got to get some shade for the cows down on the south end," Joel says, pulling 38 himself out of the car. "They're getting too much sun by the well." Joel and Hamsher go into a huddle, and two or three trees are selected. Hamsher employs seventy-five men, has one hundred pieces of equipment. The trees, weighing from 10 to 35 tons, are loaded onto a truck and trailer and off they go to the ranch. Boxes bigger than 9-feet can't be transported. They'll weigh more than 50,000 pounds, have a spread of more than 40 feet, and will be more than 50 feet tall. Moving the house to the tree would be a lot easier, Hamsher says. A twenty-foot palm tree arrives, none the worse for wear, after a 15-mile jaunt through Hollywood traffic to go to work in a film Will Rogers used to be a steady customer, mostly for large vines. Hamsher remembers his visits. Rogers came in first in a dumpy model-T Ford to get his vines. His estate is covered with every variety today as the result of his shopping in this strange place where there is a man-made forest in boxes, and a tree is apt to go scooting down the highway at any minute. Rogers, after making his selections, always said: "Now I'll have to ask maw." "Maw" was Mrs. Rogers, and he always asked before he returned and made the final purchase. Even as rare and spectacular trees grow at the McCrea ranch, the Colbert home, the Horton estate, and many other places, so do they thrive at Gary Cooper's new home in Brentwood Heights. Gary languidly drops in for a tree or two every now and then and his modified Bermuda home in Brentwood is surrounded by thousands of dollars worth of the finest specimens that can be found. | Hamsher can't remember the names of all the stars who have bought his ambulant products since his start in the business ten years ago. One of the earliest of his customers was Ann Harding, who got eight or nine trees for her guarded estate in the hills. California hills are notably barren of large trees — Beverly Hills was once a sage-brushy place akin to a desert — and it's not hard to see why they're in demand. Myrna Loy and Arthur Hornblow, Jr., the producer, have eight or nine trees on their estate in Hidden Valley, above Beverly Hills. These were brought in by truck and lifted to their property on inclined slides. Al Jolson, Richard Dix, and many others have bought trees valued as high as $1,500 apiece. This is a far cry from the early days, when Charles Ray electrified Hollywood and the Paul J. Howard Horticultural Establishment by investing $30,000 in landscaping. Currently, the prize for a large assortment doesn't go to Horton, Hollywood's consistent Number One tree buyer, but to Jack Warner, the producer. The Warner estate, which will outdo every other motion picture property in Southern California, now boasts about 50 transplantations. ■ Trees are not only gracing motion picture estates, and thus confounding the sightseer who heard the places had just been built, but are becoming more and more important on motion picture sets. In the old days — five years ago, let us say — trees brought onto inside sets were cut down, sawed apart, and then bolted together for picture work. The drawback to this was that the sets might be used for thirty days or so and, during that time, the leaves of the trees would show up shopworn on the film which finally reached the screen. Undoubtedly you have seen backgrounds which would have made better kindling wood. In Zoo In Budapest, for instance, a bunch of youngsters dived from a huge