The New Movie Magazine (Jan-Sep 1935)

"WE'RE HAVING HEINZ SPAGHETTI TONIGHT, NORA" EACH day thousands of grocery lists include Heinz Cooked Spaghetti. It is such an appetite-enticing main dish, and so inexpensive and quickly fixed for serving! Tender strands of Heinz-made spaghetti come to you adrip with a sauce which many good cooks admit is better than their own concoctions. Made of ripe tomatoes, imported cheese and meat stock, deftly seasoned with just the right spices. It is rare good fare. Warning: Prepare for clamorous demands for second helpings. H. J. HEINZ COMPANY PITTSBURGH, U. S. A. ■ TORONTO, CANADA LONDON, ENGLAND The Most Exciting Street on Earth and toes. Better than $12,000. He instantly became, on his personal adding machine a $52,000 a year man. And so he was — for twelve weeks. Came the end of the contract. Came no renewal. This writer, departing, left with a newspaper interviewer an opinion of Hollywood that would smoke the hide off an alligator. This writer returned bitterly to his beloved New York — to do his damnedest to write another book which will entitle him to a return trip to the city of fatted calves! Among his parting remarks was the observation that Hollywood Boulevard is a sordid, dirty, overrated alley. I hold no brief for or against this fellow's attitude. Perhaps the experience will enrich his philosophy. But his opinion is not an opinion. It's a prejudice. I HAVE sold many of my stories to the movies. Naturally, I'm not bitter about it, although I firmly believe that the intelligence of the movie -makers, where correctly fashioned dramatic stories are concerned, is awfully limited. Let's try to get at the soul of Hollywood Boulevard. You are a discerning person and you know that the spirit of Hollywood is the spirit who rose from the creaming waves off Crete so many thousands of years ago, cleanlimbed and lovely, with jewels in her hair, glamour in her smile and danger in her voice — Aphrodite, goddess of love, or, if you will, of amorous desire. Aphrodite is, as you know, the spirit and the mother of Hollywood— a coquette forever renewing her youth in the soft, pink, scented flesh of the newcomers. Motion picture studios, as you are also aware, are her temples. Temple-factories. In these templefactories, the love-making habits of the world are forged and hammered into being. There is a nice argument here. Hollywood, we freely admit, is the sex capital of the world. Hollywood's temple-factories not only set the styles in love-making the world over but they determine the moral code of the age. Or do they? The producers say not. The producers say they are merely reflecting the changing moral standards. Fight it out among yourselves. The point is, however, that Hollywood Boulevard must, by the very forces which made it the street it is, point toward sex. Ask a beauty-contest winner from Kissimmee, Florida, or Oskaloosa, Oklahoma, who has been screen-tested and signed up by a big, indulgent producer — ask her what she thinks of Hollywood. Ah, place of glorious enchantment! Ah, city of golden dreams come true! Hollywood Boulevard, to this happy lass, is Main Street, Eldorado, or el camino encantado — the enchanted street. Its smart shops fawn and its pitfalls yawn. Everybody loves her. Every chiseler in Hollywood sharpens his steel for this newest delectable, dizzy, dazzled, dazzling darling. This newcomer with her shining eyes and flushed cheeks and enrap (Continued from page 19) tured smile, this darling of the gods, this nectareous nymph, this gal who is getting the breaks — she drives along the enchanted Boulevard in a grand new roadster, all bright enamel and glittering chromium. But look at the ones on foot — the ones with stories in their faces. They are usually beautiful, or nearly beautiful. Their make-up has been skilfully applied, but they have a certain look of pallor under the delicate artificial coloring. Their eyelashes are long and black with a alluring upward tilt — but the eyes below look worried. Here is one approaching. Look at her carefully. She walks with an air of jauntiness, her eyes scanning the oncoming faces brightly, and her lovely lips holding the faintest suggestion of a smile. For one never knows when a watchful director may be strolling on the Boulevard. But look her over. The seat of her dress is waffle-patterned by the cane bottoms of casting directors' waiting room chairs. Her heels are worn down by the studio-to-studio trek. Her clothes have that week-before-last look. Not yet seedy; but not fresh, not crisp. Nothing about her is crisp. Who is she? What's her story? What's her fate? Almost every week, it seems to me, one of these soul-sick children jumps out of a high window or turns on the gas. LJOLLYWOOD Boulevard isn't el *■ -*■ camino encantado to this youngster — it's el camino doloroso. Don't ask her what she thinks about Hollywood. She doesn't know. She doesn't know what she thinks about anything. Let's hope she can take it. Let's hope she has moral fibre tough enough to stand the strain until the breaks come her way — if they come. And then there are the ones who have proved they have that moral fibre. They have arrived. They are "the stars." You may see them lunching animatedly in the Brown Derby, Sardi's, the Vendome. These gods and goddesses, these big shots, go, of course, to these places to be stared at. If you're lucky, you may see Joan Crawford, the screen's most ambitious girl, lunching at Sardi's with P'ranchot Tone, the screen's smoothest young man. In the Brown Derby, you may see Wallace Beery strutting his recently adopted daughter. You don't, of course, see Garbo anywhere. V7"OU look in vain for signs of 1 dissipation in these people. The goddesses have rose-petal complexions, the gods clear eyes and lean jaws. For the night life of the gods — of most of them — has become, in recent years, comparatively quiet. Many of them don't know just how long their present fat incomes will last. Generally, they're leading quiet, stay-at-home lives. Practising economy. Reading books. Bearing in mind that early to bed and early to rise makes a star at least healthy and wealthy. The famous wild parties of Hollywood are not a thing of the past, but they are fewer. Since repeal, most of the cabarets have been closed for violation of the Los Angeles liquor ordinances. But in those few which remain, one glimpses an occasional favorite— one of Hollywood's more prominent drinking young stars. He is accompanied usually by a crowd of people very aware of the fact that they are accompanying him. They guard him jealously. They see that he has plenty to drink, and that the girl he prefers sits besides him. He is, for his little hour, as important as a visiting Roman emperor. His face is rather blank. You may also see the stars shopping on the Boulevard. But it takes longer than a few months to grow used to seeing them in the flesh. When I go into a store to buy a hat or necktie, and one of the reigning favorites happens to drop in, I am almost as thrilled as the shop girls — and they are almost paralyzed. But the ones who have arrived, "the stars," do not stir my imagination so much as the girls who trudge along Wicked Boulevard with stories in their faces — stories of success and failure, of hope and humiliation. For it is these girls — the never-ending procession of them — who have built Hollywood Boulevard and made it the fascinating, glamorous, wicked thoroughfare it is today. DIRECTIONS FOR SUBSCRIBING TO NEW MOVIE If you want the convenience of a below with your name and address, add 60c for Canadian duty. Fore subscription to New Movie, send us The yearly subscription rate is $1.00. gn $2.00, including postage. the coupon In Canada, TOWER MAGAZINES, INC. 55 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. Please send me New Movie for one year. 1 money-order) for my subscription which 1 am enclosing $ (check or in with the would like to have beg issue. State. . . 60 The New Movie Magazine, January, 1935