Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1931)

Th ese 'A Above, Dorothy Sebastian in the part that was to make her a star — the part she didn't get, after all! A scene with John Barrymore in "The Tempest." In circle, little Camilla Horn, the German girl who was given the role when Dot was eased out It's a brutal place, this jolly Hollywood, where the sun always shines and fame is given and snatched away between breaths By Kay Evans It is not, really, the producers who are heartless brutes. It is the town itself. It is the form of the fourth largest industry. Other businesses are not so personal. The films deal with emotions and hopes and dreams instead of buttons or linoleum or automobile accessories. E FOUR men sat at a bridge table. " Three spades," said the first. " Pass," said the second. The third looked up. "By the way, Mabel Doakes' contract is up at my shop. I'm not renewing. She's a bad actress. She cost me a lot of money. Pass." "Thanks for the tip," said the fourth. "I was going to sign her for a part in our new vehicle. Four diamonds." They were four of the biggest executives in Hollywood. Each controlled the destiny of one of the major studios and there, over a bridge table, they had put the professional finger on the mythical Mabel Doakes. She may or may not have been a bad actress. She may or may not have cost the producer a lot of money. But the executives did not stop to ask for motives. She was doomed. It was enough. It is done like that in Hollywood, the cruelest town in the world. As finally, as brutally, as that. And Mabel's heartaches, her sleepless nights, her pitiful alibis to her friends — these are but the tiny threads of suffering in the merciless pattern of Hollywood. F the president of a soap factory makes a mistake it costs him merely a million cold dollars, perhaps. If a picture executive uses a little bad judgment he not only sacrifices his money but the hearts of dozens of people as well. It is this, this distinctly personal, emotional element, that makes Hollywood as brutal as a black snake whip. A girl named Lucille Powers fought her way along the perilous path that the extras tread. At last came her big chance, the chance she'd been waiting for all those months. She was given the leading woman's role in "Billy the Kid," a big special picture. It was filmed. She did good work. But when it was put together and the powers that be looked at it in its rough state they found that she was not mature enough for the part, not yet wise enough in all the tricks of the camera. It was nobody's fault. Heaven knows, the producers would have prevented such a catastrophe to their pocketbooks if they could. Lucille was replaced by Kay Johnson. The executives were out a good deal of money. And Lucille suffered that deep seated heartache of the ambitious person who has tasted the first sweetness of success, only to have the cup snatched away. And there have been others — so many, many others. Do you remember the story of Dorothy Sebastian and the leading role in John Barrymore's picture, "The Tempest"? I shall never forget the day she got it. "It's going to make me a star!" she said earnestly, her eyes swimming with grateful tears. She played in the picture for five weeks and did the best work of her career when Director Tour jansky (a Russian who had just had his first big American break) was taken off the picture and another director put on. Just at that moment Camilla Horn arrived from Germany and the studio wanted to give her every advantage. So she replaced Dorothy, who had said, " This part will make a star of me." The fate of some of the foreign importations is woven into the tragic history of Hollywood. Perhaps nothing was so cruel as the bringing to this country of Eva Von Berne, an