Pictures and the Picturegoer (Jan-Dec 1925)

SEPTEMBER 1925 Frederick two tables away. A flock of brilliant coloured balloons is wafted by a sudden breeze across the tables and glowing cigarettes burst them to the accompaniment of cries and laughter. Aha, thinks the seeker after a Hollywood Nights Tale! This is th' life! ^\t+ier cafes have sprung up onallsides with the charitable purpose of helping the movie stars get rid of their money. There is the Latin Quarter cafe in an old and abandoned studio, reached by a path lined with plaster casts of the Discus Thrower and Madame Milo. Inside crudely painted walls, balconies, and tiny stall-like private-rooms with intriguing names — "The Pirate's Den," " S.hcba's Shelter," " The Heart's Desire " — greet the eye. Italian spaghetti lures many film favourites here to partake of the humble seventy-five cent dinner. The enterprising proprietor, with a new to increasing his patronage, called upon Famous Players last week and suggested that the company sue him for fifty thousand dollars because a poster of a not over-dressed lady on his walls looked like Pola Negri ! On the theory that it is so Bohemian to go downstairs to eat, the Greenwich Village Cafe was started in the cellar of the Christie Hotel. Last week Clara Bow won a silver cup in a dancing contest there. Many of the stars who come to dine remain to perform — perhaps Virginia Yalli sings a negro croon to her own accompaniment on the ukelele or Ben Turpin rises suddenly from his seat, turns a double flip-flop the length of the dancing floor, disappears into an anteroom to reappear with, a tiger-skin about his waist and do a ludicrous burlesque of aesthetic dancing, while the tourists whisper to one another — "Is that Valentino? Or Von Stroheim?'' ETvery Friday night the Hollywood Legion Stadium is packed with ardent devotees of the manly art of boxing. Conway Tearle. Richard Dix, Harrison Ford. Creighton Hale, always have ringside seats when they are in town, and Viola Dana and Shirley Mason are heard but not seen — if they know in advance when the flashlight is going to be taken ! After Chaplin's fistic encounter with Mr. Julien, the oil magnate, he was given a tremendous ovation when he entered the Stadium. In the story of the night life of Hollywood, the Writers' Club plays an important part. It is the only place in town where people can dine out of doors under the purple Californian skies and among — or is it amid? — the renowned climate. White-jacketed Jap boys move among the tables on the huge veranda, with its spacious openair fireplace, and costly conversation floats from the different groups — " He paid ten thousand for his last screen story "..."• Unblushing Brides ' may not be a good title, but it will get them." In the billiard room several elderly, baldish continuity writers play endless games of billiards, even on Pre-View Picture s and PichureV Nights, when the literal \ colony the iiitcllif/i'iitsiu of the movies ti out to look at a new picture »m directed or acted by one of the mem and preceded by witty remarks bj Rupert Hughes or Milton Sills or one of the other inveterate Hollywood toastmasters. Among the shifting scenes is flung suddenly a glimpse of a New York street, and suddenly all these exiles from Broadway break into tumultuous applause as htimtvth tugs at thei heartstrings for the extcrabl climate, the dear ugliness and th squalid splendour, the quinine an companionship of the City of th son. Among the bronze and purpl hills, the Hollywood Bowl lies stars. And yonder, where cross blazes on the hillside, is t air theatre where — in Holly Wicked — the life of Christ every year by community Summer evenings the blocks about each of these choked with parked cars, the limousines and roadstei of many film stars, who s on the hard wooden bench in the darkness to listen one of the finest symphon Harrison Ford is a regular patron of the Hollywood Legion-Stadium orchestras in the world, or the beautiful words of the Sermon on the Mount. T'he Los Angeles Country Club excludes all people connected with the motion pictures from membership, but there are a dozen others that welcome them heartily, not to say effusively. Among the most popular is the Beach Club, where the film hero, weary of heroing and the screen heroine, worn out by a hot day under the Kleigs, repair for a swim, a shower and a dinner to the accompaniment of the lilt of the waves instead of jazz. The Ship, a cabaret in an old stranded hulk, used to be a favourite resort in the old un-Vol-steady days, when Fatty Arbuckle was king of good fellows in Hollywood night life, but it foundered and sank without a trace in lemonade and one-half of one per cent beer. Culver City boasts the Green Mill, where Harold Lloyd used to dance with Mildred Davis in their courting days. Los Angeles beckons the amusementseeking stars with the beautiful new Biltmore ballroom, the hope of seeing a raid on Madame Zucca's Italian