Picture Play Magazine (Jan - Jun 1930)

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The Stroller 61 mering, with vicious blows. The scene was, perforce, stopped. Highly censorable comments were loosened by glib tongues below. Finally the director, in high exasperation, shouted in his most biting manner, "Say, don't you know we've got to make a picture down here?" To which the carpenter responded, with a whack of his hammer, "Yeah? And don't you know I've got to drive this nail !" Endless-chain letters haven't made their appearance in Hollywood for some time, so far as is determinable. But an endless-chain drunkard and bottle collector has. Ten years ago he was recognized as one of the country's leading authors, but drink claimed him. He slipped from fame, and his name was forgotten. But he was a connoisseur of liquors. He loved to contemplate queer-shaped receptacles which had once held rare vintages. So he saved them. He went broke, but saved several hundred bottles. He tried working as an extra, but couldn't make much monev. One day he heard a property man in the throes of disappointment. He couldn't find any strangely shaped bottles to dress a barroom set. So our blithe, young hero stepped forward and lent all his bottles at a price. Soon he was renting bottles to all the studios at fifty cents a day each. Then he added to his stock's merit by filling the bottles with water properly colored. That cost the studios an extra fifty cents a day for each bottle. He made huge sums of money, bought a home, a car, and sent emissaries abroad to smuggle in choice liquor. He drank more and more in a desperate effort to meet the demand— the demand for empty bottles and bottles filled with colored water. He rents the bottles — gets money to buy more liquor — rents the new empties, and buys more liquor. Is this — or is it not — perpetual motion? The only thing lacking to make his drinking more efficient, is to have some one invent a machine that will open his bottles and feed the contents to him while he is prostrate on the floor, with visions of cornering all the bottles in the world and using them to cork the genii of Hollywood. The California tourist season is upon us and, if any readers of this parlous patter are westward bound, let me advise you. There is no fee. If you want to get into the movie restaurants and find good seats, grow a beard. You might pass for a star who has just gone native in some picture. There are several types. The trailing-arbutus beard will gain an entry into Montmartre. The rambler-rose beard is good for a seat in the Coconut Grove. The spaghetti beard will get you a table in Henry's at midnight. The sagebrush and desert growth will get you into the Brown Derby, while the tropical cactus is good at the Roosevelt. Another thing, Malibu Beach is advertised as the exclusive home district for "the fugitives from fame." Be sure you go there — there's nothing to keep you out, except your conscience, and all tourists pack theirs in small candy boxes and lock them up with the silver when they visit Hollywood. Satisfying the demand for empty liquor bottles to decorate studio barrooms. Tourists are advised to cultivate beards — there are privi leges for every variety in Hollywood. The Silver Frame Society, which has nothing to do with frame-ups has, however, taken its place with the royal and honorable society of gold-brick buyers. An alleged newspaper woman arrived here last month with an idea which she sold to several dozen players. For one hundred dollars each she would guarantee that the player's photo would be displayed in picture frames in every department store in the country. One guileless customer went into a department store, and didn't find her photo on display. She started a search for the woman who had taken her in, but found her permanently out. But other victims were uncovered, and now all are members of the Silver Frame Society, Debunked. The lad who makes a living sitting daily in everv seat in a local theater searching for squeaks, is rivaled in his endeavor only by the singer reaching for a high one, and the English actor juggling dialogue full of "aiches." Prospective authors throughout the country have declined almost to dodoism, while embryonic histrionic hopefuls have increased with the prolificacy of amoeba. The studios consider the former a blessing, the latter a curse. Amateur scenarios received by the studios have dropped off ten per cent. At the same time casting-office applicants have increased. On the face of things, it would seem that huge proportions of the population have the movie bug in one form or another. Those who considered themselves handsome and beautiful applied for acting jobs. Those who were too ugly to aspire to the screen wrote scenarios. But the great influx of stage stars to Hollywood, and their seemingly easily achieved stardom, has rekindled the Promethean fires in the faces of the unlovely. On a recent trip across the country I was amazed at the spread of amateur theatricals. I saw such signs as "Silas Hayfield and Marjory Olson, in 'Flaming Bedrooms,' " and I wondered what had happened to the censorship move. Continued on page 109