Motion Picture Classic (Jul-Dec 1930)

^ Classic Holds H Open Court (Continued from page J7) Then just what is it about Hollywood that snares and translates into lamb chops the goat of so many of its juicy-minded gentry? Why is it that big-leaguers visit it but temporarily, then depart with pinched noses and expressions of disdain? Why is it that you will ever and anon see that familiar gesture ... a gasp, a lurching rise from even the most comfortable seat, a stiflF-fingered grasp at the brow, a tortured voice crying: "This town! Good God, this town ! " Behind the Crime WELL, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, a prosecutor's task is to be critically destructive, and not constructive. But an inherently kind heart prompts me to tell the gaudy and empty shell which now lie« prone before you, just what is the matter with it. And that, I might point out, is something which the assailants of Caesar didn't do for him! First, I believe that the principal reason for Hollywood's terrible cheapness is its utter disregard for the rich storehouse of the past, in favor of the lessons brought to it by vaudeville players of questionable tastes. Here the old, the fine, is abandoned in favor of the crassly new. Those rows and rows of stodgy, newly rich houses, filled with yesterday's output at Grand Rapids— ugh ! The mediocre minds which fill them — double ueh! They are Hollywood's minor assassins! The older communities of Southern California are grand. But Hollywood is a merry-go-round, chasing its tail to the encouragement of a strident tune. Its sense of values has become perverted by a too-close adherence to the dramatic wants of shop-girls and old ladies from Oshkosh. Its eyes have been blinded to true beauty by the dollars which it uses for lenses in its eyeglasses. In the midst of its mighty commercial success it is sterile and without power but to destroy the finer sensibilities of those attracted to it, youth and the bright Medusa. Summation 'T'HUS I call Hollywood a murderer. I Lacking appreciation of the brown savor ofearth and of the rich red blood of life, it destroys those appreciations in others. The man or the woman who would preserve his artistic integrity should flee from it as from a banshee. It is a vampire, a ghoul, a paste diamond caught in the amber of its own hopeless routine. It is the slayer of individuality! I pity it and sorrow for it. Pity it, because of its failure to grasp the huge possibilities for good to which it has access; sorrow for it, because I fear that, except for a few isolated instances, it never will realize them. Yet, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, if in your opinion I have presented my case with enough force to arouse Hollywood from its dormant attitude as regards true artistry, I will ask that the court give it a f>eriod of probation in which to prove itself. Otherwise I ask that you sentence it to its usual quota of laughter in the eyes of the cultured world! The prosecution rests. 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