We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
Hollywood
Scares HELL
Out of Me
It takes a brave man to admit he's scared. Dick is not only brave, but honest
By DICK ARLEN
As told to Oliver Wallace
RECENTLY, a friend of mine wrote a piece for the papers in which I was flatteringly extolled as "an actor who had conquered Holly. wood." In terms of high eulogy, he pointed out that Dick Arlen had handled his career as a business man should handle his investments; that this same miraculous Arlen had made a success of his marriage in a town where they just didn't grow that way; and that, now, after eleven years in pictures, he need never worry another day. Everything he owned was clear . . . there was a trust-fund in the background and money in the bank.
It was a swell story. Unfortunately, however, I don't even know the guy he was writing about . . . this lucky Arlen fellow ... it must be two other chaps!
If such a Dick Arlen exists, he lives right there on my friend's typewriter. For, while I contemplate his list of facts and realize, flattered, that they are more or less accurate, I still can't reconcile his picture of this all-conqueringcaptain-of-his-Hollywood-soul with the floor-pacing, hair-pulling, nail-biting person I know myself to be!
After eleven years in Hollywood ... it still scares Hell out of me! Though advertised as one "... managing his career like a business man . . .", I have never made a professional move that hasn't been accompanied by uncertainty, advice from everyone I know (including two maiden aunts in Duluth) and a slight hysteria plus a running fever.
If my marriage has been a success, all I can say is thank God for Jobyna, who has more than had her hands full for the eight years she has been wearing my name.
For the trust fund and the cash in the bank, which have somehow miraculously escaped both the stock market and Caliente, I am also grateful and mildly surprised. But even these two comforting boons to my peace of mind will never bring true those optimistic words of my writer friend: He need never worry another day in his life!
I promise you that I shall continue to worry every remaining day I live.
Worry is not a depressed state of mind with me . . . it's a talent. Only those born with the gift can even approach the fine art with which I be-devil myself. Those -new patches of grey over my temples are not service stripes from the calm life I lead. They've been jittered there!
In some other walk of life ... in another town ... I might be able to look back over the work I have accomplished in Hollywood and feel a fair amount of security, peace of mind and even a pardonable pride. But Hollywood is synonymous with uncertainty . . . and the movie business is a game without rules. It is the only career you can name that recognizes no precedent. You cannot say to a young {Please turn to page 48)
Arlen, their son. How long you can ollywood is sheer luck, Dick says. And things that has him scared.
The New Movie Magazine, July, 1935
17