The New Movie Magazine (Dec 1929-May 1930)

The talkies have moved outdoors. In Old Arizona" started the march to the mesa. Now the William Fox studios have made "The Lone Star Ranger" with all the accompanying sounds, starring George O'Brien. Here's a striking scene on the edge of the Bad Lands. Came the Yawn {Continued from page 51) enjoy the lovely sunshine and beauty of California, are not swayed to sudden extravagances by sudden large salaries. Florence Eldredge and Frederick March, Marian Spitzer and Harlan Thompson, a couple of dozen others, live in Hollywood with a servant or two apiece, and charmingly and smoothly run homes. They enjoy tennis and bathing and golf and books. They give small dinners and the usual run of parties that people give in any pleasant, human community. And there is John Colton, who is as pleasant in Hollywood as in New York. Louella Parsons and Beulah Livingstone can write of the stars and keep their perspectives. These people are the exceptions. They live nothing like the Hollywood folks who learned from the movies. The average Hollywood success — the Hollywood star — is entirely without background. These stars reach Hollywood with two assets — conceit, which includes the desire for exhibition, and a face and form that happens to photograph well. Occasionally the . stars who arrive via the stage add fairly pleasing voices and little tricks of stage presence to their assets. Other stars, besides taking good pictures, have proved pleasing, in a more personal way, to someone in authority. So, there you have them. Ordinarily, these girls and men would have been — and sometimes were — servants, baker boys, bootblacks, telephone girls, wait resses. Folk say it is "sweet" because they do not try to conceal an origin that there is no possible chance of concealing. Some of the girls had slightly better backgrounds. They were from vaudeville, from show families, or were stenographers or file girls. And some of the men were camera men or shoe clerks or elevator operators. They had been poor, and culture, because it was unknown, was undesirable. Their people still occupy humble positions unless prosperity has carried the whole family up on the wave. THESE young people are good looking, of course. Full of a desire to exhibit themselves, perferably before a camera. They now find themselves earning fabulous salaries. Why bother about manners, culture? They arrived, didn't they? Whole armies are hired to write interviews about them, to write stories for them — so they, can strut before an admiring public. From being nothing at all on nothing a week, there are contracts, flattery, adulation. There are the usual sycophants that spring up over night, crawling with praise. Heads are turned completely. No wonder most Hollywood stars are bad-tempered, unbelievably conceited. The stars, wealthy for the first time in their lives, find houses to live in, Hollywood houses. Already these incredible edifices have been prepared for them by canny real estate dealers or by other movie stars who can no longer afford them or who learned that money can be made even faster in Hollywood real estate than in picture studios. THESE remarkable houses are usually huge and of Spanish or English influence, badly overdone. They go in for rough walls and beamed ceilings and archways and sometimes there are swimming pools and tennis courts and rather weird landscape gardening. And inside, there is a perfect rash of over-stuffed furniture, too elaborate in velvet and brocade and tassels. And over-trimmed lamps and over-ornate hangings and over-decorated boudoirs. Just the place for entertaining! So the stars entertain with "little dinners at home." Of course, knowing no one but stars and people connected with the motion picture world — with an occasional visiting celebrity thrown in as extra red meat — the conversation must necessarily more than just smack of the studios. I believe there is a fine if anything except studio gossip is mentioned, though an occasional reference to the newest boot-legger — not boot-licker — and perhaps to the plays in New York is allowed. The Hollywood cooks are good, even though the majority of the guests may be dieting — and talking about it. The service is as meticulous as if the servants were in front of a i amera registering how a well-trained hutler (Continued on page 119) A colorful character study of RUTH CHATTERTON in next month's New Movie Magazine by ADELA ROGERS ST. JOHNS 116