Hollywood Spectator (1931)

6 inches as I cross an intersection .... a battered Ford parked in front of my garage when I reach home .... Just an ordinary motor trip .... an ordinary day . . . . ordinary conditions. Only difference is that this time I noticed things. And I thought of how we live .... Millions of us scattered over yesterday’s desert .... dwellings on hillsides that we twist up grades to reach .... clamorous, discordant street cars .... jammed sidewalks .... streets that would be tunnels if they had roofs .... smells everywhere . . . . restless, nervous speed .... crimes .... constant annoyances . . . . daily papers .... silly people who imagine they are important .... something the matter with the car .... ▼ v And I WONDERED if somewhere in the world there still is a sawmill beside a tranquil river .... a lumber yard with its clean smells, where boys gather on sunny Sunday afternoons and exchange ambitions .... village streets, tree-shaded, with baby carriages, dogs, and unexcited people .... a meadow sloping to a creek that sings songs to the accompaniment of music played on the rocky keyboard in its depths .... a pool, darkened by branches that look at themselves in it ... . perhaps a trout to justify one’s patience in casting .... a field of clover with its perfume and its bees .... sheep indolently nibbling their way across a great carpet .... a pasture with cows posed ready for painting .... a reaper in a field kicking up perfume of hay .... a little house by itself, hugged by honeysuckle and morning glories .... a grandmother inside putting cookies in a jar .... sleeping there at night .... mingling with the first dream, the languid tinkle of a bell as a cow moves in the barnyard. Do they still have such things? And has half a century made much difference in the maples in Orillia? Do the new generations of the Tudhopes, the Quinns and the Flendersons gather butternuts when they ripen in — when was it? September? October? And choke-cherries; I suppose they’re still there to pucker-up mouths. Do the kids still steal apples? Every small boy, I contend, has an ethical, moral and legal right to his neighbor’s apples if he can get them without being caught. How about the tanyard? Is it still there? I can’t remember the name of the man who owned it. I went to school with his son. Is Lake Couchiching as peaceful, as friendly, as lovely as ever? Do the weeping willows still lean over it to bless romances that begin beneath them? Can you still walk out only a few miles and come to streams that murmur gently and offer mossy banks to the loafers whom the summer breeze, the restless leaves, the songs of birds, and the smell of nature make lazy? .... Are the roads still dusty — the roads which leisurely crawl up unambitious hills between rail fences that wiggle their way up the same grades as if to learn where the roads are going? And are the fields as they used to be, with meadow larks, buttercups, an oak with a tremendous spread, and near it the rotting stump of what Hollywood Spectator had been a noble tree that stretched great verdured arms to God? ^ ▼ I WONDER if the flower market at Nice is as soothing as it was before the world was made harsh by the war .... The village we found up in the Alpes Maritimes, near where France, Switzerland and Italy touch one another — the quiet of it, the ineffable peace that kept us there for four days, doing nothing magnificently .... The French village on a by-road, with its wedding, gorgeously floral, fascinatingly attired peasants who invited us to attend .... A Sunday among the tulip farms of Holland .... That sweet old woman in front of a farmhouse in England, the one we lied to about our car being disabled because we wanted her to ask us in for a cup of tea ; and the tea, and the crumpets and the jam; the old dog who shared our feast, and the kind old eyes of the sweet old woman — her gossip — her laughter. Is peace still part of the English landscape? Now I’ll drive dangerously all the way from the roaring beach of the Pacific to the sun-baked stand at Wrigley Field, and be one of several thousand people who will scream crazily at a ball game. The Moon and I HARRY Carr a few weeks ago wrote in the Los Angeles Times something to the effect that the greatest modern idiocy is men’s attire. He should have been with me on a stroll from which I just have returned. The moon is full — I’m writing this about three weeks before it will reach you — the night is warm, the breeze gentle and the surf lazy. Naked, except for bathing trunks and a pipe, I have patrolled the beach for a mile on either side of our beach house, the hard sand affording good going and the hour providing a measure of freedom from distracting human traffic. A night for meditation, *ga_ . . ■ . _ . — ss* ▼ ▼ The HEAD of a New York music publishing house is on the Metro payroll for the purpose of spotting songs in forthcoming productions. He “will keep in close contact with studio composers and advise on the commercial possibilities of placing songs in screen musicals.’’ That’s a staggering announcement. The first musicals were made that way. That is why they failed. Some day Metro may become sufficiently wise to allow only people who know something about motion pictures to dictate what will be in them. That will be tough on music publishers, but will afford musicals a chance for success. Paying a New York song merchant to tell it how to make motion pictures is an idiotic idea unless Metro intends to make only idiotic musical pictures.