Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Jul 1929)

83 Tke Hobos of Hollywood The waifs and strays of the movie capital form one of its least known, but most interesting groups. H.A.Wood mansee Illustration by Lui Trugo HOLLYWOOD abounds in hobos of a sort. It is thronged with men and women who can't get work in pictures, due to the increasingly overcrowded condition of the business, and either can't or won't work at anything else. And many a white-collared lounger who poses as a motion-picture worker, although chronically jobless, has a harder time of it than the shabbiest "bindle stiff" ever chased by a farmer's dog. Some one has said that Hollywood has made more bums out of good men than liquor ever has. Literally thousands of persons who once had prosperous days in the studios, or even worked for a few weeks as extras, wait month after month, year after year, for another chance. Some are lucky enough to find other work in a city where employment is scarce, while they are waiting. But hundreds are forced into the hobo class. Some take to dissipation and drugs, and the activities of the underworld. Even those who follow the straight and narrow path are eventually demoralized by chronic unemployment. Many desperately try to keep up a front. They get clothes, and even big cars, on credit, and run so far into debt that they can never get out. The life of the Hollywood hobo is a gamble, and he has a gambler's optimism. He often talks cynically of his one chance in a thousand of getting somewhere, and yet he waits for a lucky break — and waits and waits. It is a wonder how some of the jobless manage to go on living year after year. The Hollywood hobos have a hundred ruses to live without cash. Many make a practice of skipping out of their lodgings when they have stalled off the landlady to the limit of her endurance. Some run up board bills at lunch rooms, with the promise to pay when they get the big job they are perpetually hoping to land. Some do not hesitate to commit petty larceny. In the old days they could legally ease the pangs of hunger at the free-lunch counters in the Hollywood saloons, but now they must raid orange groves, or frisk milk bottles off doorsteps. Some pass worthless checks ; in fact, many a shopkeeper has a drawerful of checks that have "bounced back" on him. Some of the merchants of Hollywood play the role of good Samaritans to the starving, in spite of the fact that they have lost hundreds of dollars by trusting these "motion-picture workers." But it becomes increasingly difficult for the jobless to exist in the movie town. Often the destitute double up on rooms with their luckier friends. Sometimes the occupant of a hall bedroom will have three or four pals sleeping in his room, draped across the chairs, or sprawled out on the floor. And occasionally such a benefactor will awake in the morning to find that his roommates have sneaked off with his clothes and belongings. Sometimes the more ambitious of the unemployed work on "spec," or speculation. That is, they work in various capacities on a quickie, with the understanding that they will be paid if the picture is sold. Usually it is not, and if it is, often the producer tries to sidestep his obligations. Only a small fraction of the number of extras who cling like leeches to a Hollywood future can be employed. Unemployment is general in all branches of picture work. "The panic is on" is the slogan of the crowd. "Pictures have never been as bad as they are right now," the jobless tell each other, month after month. Poverty Row, the center of small studios, is a favorite hang-out for the Hollywood hobos. Here they mingle with the more successful, who are employed in the studios at least part of the time. Deprived of the cheer of the old saloon — although Hollywood has its bootleggers for those who can pay the price — they seek the price of "coffee and " and set themselves up at Ma Marsh's combination lunch counter and pool room, or Raphael's dug store, presided over by Maurice Raphael, the "mayor" of Poverty Row. Or they can sit outside on the "mourners' bench," that throne of the jobless. Poverty Row is full of interesting characters. There is, for instance, Luke, who was a steady-working prop man until he stood too close to an airplane propeller which was furnishing the wind in a movie storm. Luke wears a metal plate in his skull to cover the place where the propeller blade chipped away the bone. He isn't of much use to the studios now. And there is Jim, who used to earn a regular living cleaning windows, but is now a "scenario writer." To all who will listen, Jim talks expansively of writing a sequel to the current film hit. He once talked a Poverty Row producer into buying a story, but the producer later discovered the story, word for word, in a magazine ; and it was not under Jim's name. There is Jerry, who lives in the days of his theatrical triumphs of the '90s, and has a scorn for movie acting. But he waits for studio calls that seldom, if ever, come. Tom is a "director." Back in 1917 he actually did direct a couple of pictures. Since then he has lived on the gullibility of his creditors and the generosity of his friends. He is always "preparing" a big production. Harry is a once-popular, two-reel comedy star who hasn't worked in years. He loves to tell how he used to "panic 'em." Jake is an orthodox hobo who bummed his way round the world, and finally settled down in Hollywood, because of the mild winters, and the possibility of getting easy work as a movie type. Anything suits him, if there is no work attached. Continued on page 115