Photoplay (Jan - Jun 1932)

and Connie Bennett going for a huge stack of griddle cakes, he would change his mind. You can still walk the Streets of Hollywood without danger of being hit by discarded waffle irons, thrown out the windows of the Hollywood elect. A( JASTING director put in a call for one hundred "tough" characters for a picture. They were used in a women's prison story. The types were so real that they stole twenty poeketbooks, fourteen coats and one revolver from each other. I HAD a pleasant little duty to perform the other day that gave me quite an emotional thrill. It was the presentation of the Photoplay Magazine Gold Medal to Carl Laemmle, head of the Universal Company, for the production of "All Quiet on the Western Front," the best picture of 1930. In my talk I recalled that this man has survived in picture activity all the outstanding figures of the early days of motion pictures. One by one they have retired, died, or faded into obscurity. I refer to the days when a sturdy little group of independents fought with fang and claw against the old General Film Company, which claimed control of the vital motion picture patents. William Fox and Carl Laemmle were the leaders of the insurgents, and the "Trust" declared them outlaws. TODAY William Fox is playing golf on his Long Island estate. He sleeps soundly and with a smile on his face, undisturbed by the financial crisis through which the picture business is struggling, secure in the millions he made and kept. "Uncle Carl" sits, a diminutive figure, behind a big mahogany desk, and thanks the God of his forefathers that he doesn't own a single motion picture theater, and that his pride and joy, Carl, Jr., has, at the age of twenty-two, become one of the most successful producers of Hollywood. Carl Laemmle had tears in his eyes as he accepted the Gold Medal. Then to hide his emotions, he asked, "How is Boh East man?" I told him Bob hadn't been feeling so well lately. "Well." said Carl, "I'll see him at the Kentucky Derby, anyhow. We meet there every year. Ask him to tip me off if he has any hunches." THE name Robert M. Eastman has for years been beside mine at the bottom of the index page of Photoplay and, I hope, will be there for many years to come. He is the man who first envisaged the publication for what it is today. His faith in it, backed by his money, was almost fanatical. Coming from Minnesota to Chicago as a young journeyman printer, he built the W. F. Hall Printing Company into one of the largest and most efficient in the world, and while he has now turned the active 26 administration of the huge business over to his organization, the man's indomitable spirit is behind every revolution of every giant press. ' PHOTOPLAY celebrated its seventeenth birthday recently and I received this wire from him: "Kay Dee tells me Photoplay is seventeen v cars old today. Jim. and isn't she a beauty? I always knew, even as a colt she would he a winner." Bob's outstanding interests in life, after his family, are his printing plant, his famous racing horse, "Mike Hall," and Photoplay. I like to think Photoplay is his favorite, for he saw it through from a bankrupt little pamphlet of 13,000 circulation to its present prosperous 600,000 read by two million picture devotees scattered all over the world. INCIDENTALLY, Bob Eastman is the arch villain who started night life in the picture colony, seventeen years ago. He gave the first big party. We had just reorganized the magazine when Bob thought we had better go out to California to look the picture business over. I will admit now, for us both, that we had an idea the trip would not be all hard work. As we started out on our daily labor of investigation, Mack Sennett's studio was always the first stop, and almost every evening would find Mack, Ford Sterling, Roscoe Arbuckle. Mary Pickford and her charming and clever mother, Charlotte, Mabel Xormand, Owen Moore, Charlie Murray, Mr. and Mrs. Eastman and myself gathered around a big table at Al Lew's restaurant. BEFORE we left. Bob threw a big party at the Old Log Cabin on West Adams Street. He was the richest man the group had ever known, and the party for fifty must have cost as much as one table for eight at the swanky Mayfair of today. We had champagne and beer, and didn't have to watch the door for a Federal raiding party, nor drink for the pure joy of breaking any laws. They didn't sell hard liquor in California even in those days, and nobody wanted it. Congenial folks could get a little mellow then without getting piflicated. IF you are wondering about the identity of the " Kay Dee" whom Bob Eastman mentioned in his birthday telegram, look at the initials of the third party at the bottom of the index page. Kathryn Dougherty. She was a kid bookkeeper when Bob and I went off on that first visit to the picture colony and she was sitting on the lid of the business in our absence. She is still holding down the lid today, the best known and most beloved woman executive in the publishing business. It seems that I have been talking a lot about ourselves, but only once in a lifetime do we have a seventeenth birthday.