The New Movie Magazine (Dec 1929-May 1930)

Among the Hollywood Belittlers The Famous Broadway Columnist Traces Some Flip Cracks to Their Source BY WALTER WINCHELL THE average New Yorker is well acquainted with the numerous Broadway columns in the newspapers, but since several of these columns are syndicated throughout the nation, the hinterlander, too, can tell you the latest joke on the Hollywoodenhead. He has read it, probably, in one of these columns. When Winnie Sheehan was in New York we asked him if it was a fact that most of the movie impresarios were dialecticians who made such amusing retorts or cracks. "That's the funniest part about those jokes," replied Winnie; "the magnates who have dialects in Hollywood could be counted on one hand. Seriously, though, Hollywood has few foreign-speaking chiefs. Most of them are actors and actresses. However, when a wisecracker wants to pin a gag on somebody he usually pins it on Carl Laemmlc. who is one of the sanest of the bunch out there and who never makes stupid remarks. Then Sheehan was reminded of a gag. It is the one about Al Jolson, who was at Palm Beach. """pHE famous star encountered a stranger in the foyer *■ of a smart hotel. "My name's Jolson," said Al. "I'm having a good time here — are you?" "No," was the sad reply, "mine's Goldberg, I forgot to change MY name." Marshall Nielan (Mickey Neilan to you!) is blamed for most of the quips that come from Hollywood. Arthur Caesar, who once pot-shot Broadwayites, now is included high on the Hollywood list of belittlers, and then there is Wilson Mizner. whose sayings and puns and jokes will be told over and over again long after he is gone. MIZNER once was New York's best playwright. He joined the Hollywood clan a few years ago. but his stuff didn't impress the men who govern the industry. Why, nobody seems to know, for Mizner's wit, cunning and genius were responsible for much entertainment on Broadway. He decided that the movies didn't want him, so he opened The Brown Derby, the popular rendezvous for the celebrated out there. It has enjoyed huge success. The other week-end an old-timer cornered Mizner. Walter Winchell knows his Broadway better than any other writer. You can depend upon Winchell knowing about it before it happens. "How come you Hopped out here as a scenario writer and become such a big hit as a restauranteur ?" he was asked. "It's very simple." replied Wilson; "I found out it was easier to stick a steak into their heads than an idea." Well, this was a very amusing crack and all that sort of thing, but according to Mr. Sheehan and other executives the lads are funnier on the corner pavement than they usually are on the studio set. But that argument might be combated by reminding him that such humorists as Bugs Baer, Robert Benchley. Dorothy Parker and others who failed in Hollywood continue to draw down huge wages being funny in the newspapers and magazines. TO hear some of the Hollywood mob explain it. out there is takes two years before a player or writer gets wise to the fact that he is "through." Nobody has the courage to tell him that he is, so he keeps trying, trusting that the morrow will bring better fortune. It would be a grand thing if someone went around Hollywood with a wand and touched the has-beens, which would signify that they no longer had any value to the pictures. But even then, one imagines, they wouldn't believe it. Poor Mabel Normand, she suffered so before the end came, but we didn't know her well and we will follow the counsel of Will Rogers, who urged people not to write about her career or passing unless they knew her. "Only those who knew her could write about her," Rogers advised. It was a touching story, however, that Eddie Doherty wrote in one of the New York dailies about her. Doherty told how the newspaper crowd helped make her sick and (Continued on page 97) 45