Screenland (Nov 1939–Apr 1940)

HollyWOod at High NoOn Continued from page 33 Derby are now done in the paper he picked. I've seen Warner Baxter swamped in travel folders and Baedekers and general travel information. All the excitable, irritating odds and ends and all the big decisions fall into the noon hour. Everything is more intense then, more emotional. There's something about the semitropical Hollywood mid-day that is reality and drama in itself. It's so definite, so true. It's the one thing that isn't phony or affected. You can see all of Hollywood then as it actually is, over-publicized, gauche, eager for newness, worshippingbeauty and ability. You can feel its jealousies, its hates, its heartbreaks, and its happiness. You can see your favorites as you never thought you'd see them. You can get a vivid picture of its almost primitive enthusiasm. Everything, undisguised, comes to the glittering surface at noon in Hollywood. There is as much acting here, good and bad, during lunch time as you've ever seen on the screen. I've seen Paul Muni in the role of Beethoven these many months before he will appear as this genius in film. I sat through an intensely interesting hourand-a-half luncheon, and over meager, cold vegetables with sour cream dressing heard Muni and his wife Bella dissect emotions and sonatas and camera angles. I heard him read lines for the right inflection. I saw the pain of Beethoven in Muni's face as he strained to hear notes that were dead to his ears. I've already seen Muni as Beethoven. And just recently I saw either half of a very young and a very pathetically separated screen couple spend a whole lunch hour in an unreal, sophisticated act for the benefit of all who cared to see. They sat on opposite sides of the Beverly Hills Derby, each appeared very gay and twentieth century, each with a brand new companion, and each one not knowing that the puzzle and the unhappiness of their predicament was plainly visible in their faces. The striving for married happiness here proved too much, even for this young enthusiastic pair. I know they tried very sincerely. I've seen acting here at lunch time that you wouldn't tolerate on the screen. I've seen a quite unimportant young actress sweep into the Beverly Hills Derby with all the flourish of a burlesque queen. In the same breath, with a voice reminiscent of an eagle protecting its young, I heard her demand a good table, insist on an engaging waitress, choose something impressive sounding on a plate to toy with (she didn't dare eat lunch) and then defiantly and expectantly survey the room for the effect she had created. Not long ago I overheard a star that you've all known and admired for years put on an actressy, dramatic monologue that she never will equal on the screen for me. It gave me goose skin and a tingle up and down the spine. It was improbable but it was thrilling. And it was typically Hollywood at high noon when nerves are as taut as piano strings. She madethe possibility of her being poisoned imminent because her maid had forgotten to pack one item of her specially prepared home-made luncheon. The maid had substituted from the studio commissary. The actress' flow of words had all the throaty drama of an unjustly condemned woman asking a jury to spare her, life. Her words clicked with the fury of a machine gun. This idol of the working girl was without a scrap of her varnished screen glamor at that moment but I have never seen her more genuine. She was magnificent. Really delicious food can be had at luncheon but it is of no importance. Everything is too aquiver with a kind of predatory expectancy. Gossip is an integral part of the restless excitement of the midday here. Amusingly and viciously it is drooled over vegetable salads or nutburgers or corned beef and cabbage or sole mcuniere. Everyone seems waiting for something brilliantly startling to happen. And yet there is a dealing in plainer reality, too. I've seen Barbara Stanwyck spend her entire lunch hour planning a party for a club of underprivileged girls that she founded, when that important time should have been filled with pressing business decisions. I've seen Cary Grant dismiss an agent waiting for his endorsement of a nationally advertised product with a very substantial check. Cary chose to talk to a young man who needed talking to by someone he'd listen to. The young fellow' had run away from home to find easy money in Hollywood and his family didn't know where he was. I've seen Leslie Howard leave the set of "Gone With the Wind" and spend his entire lunch hour writing and making notes on "The Man Who Lost Himself." He will write the production for the screen, direct and produce it as his next picture. I've watched stars, for charity's sake, act as waitresses at the Assistance League dining room. And I saw some ill-bred touri.sts, not long ago, let Penny Singleton^ know that they were frankly disappointed in getting stuck with her. They wanted_ Myrna Loy or Garbo, no less, to serve their table. Courtesy here at lunch time seems somehow in direct ratio to the nicety of table manners. Beware of anyone who eats peas with their knife. The entire town is frankest at noontime. Most interviews are arranged for the lunch hour. Stars become very confidential over food. But upon reading the story at a more subdued hour, all meaty, really important statements are promptly cut from the manuscript. It's a sort of patronizing game of Indian giving and all writers learn to play it quickly, and to the particular advantage of the career in hand at the moment. The noon day is steeped in the desires, the criticism and the curiosity of millions of people who demand to know everyone of Hollywood's fascinations. All the four-figure weekly salaries here and the yachts, the horses, the homes, the imported motors and the ranches ; all this, coupled with very irregular working hours, combine to make the noon day the biggest business hour of the twenty-four. I've seen stars beleaguered with wild cat schemes by salesmen, business managers and relatives. I've been present during the supposed rest period of lunch time and watched the purchase of jewels and furs and annuities between bites of filet mignon or an avocado sandwich on rye. I've been present at the selling of horses, real estate and crops of citrus fruit. Believe it or not, I've seen a salesman, in deep earnestness attempt to persuade a top-notch feminine star, since gold cannot be hoarded, to invest her money in pellets of platinum to keep conveniently in a safe deposit box. The Vine Street Derby is the big business luncheon spot. Producers, directors and stars are almost automatically given convenient telephone connections in their booths, with their menus. You always see the big New York bankers at the Vine Street Derby. When there is a financial shake-up in some studio and eastern brains have to come out to confer, you see them there. They invariably are with the topnotch, most popular golden girls of the screen who sparkle almost audibly. It's good publicity and good business for every one concerned. The longer I live in Hollywood the more I am convinced that acting success here is one part glamor and the rest wholly good business ability. There is no luncheon spot anywhere quite like the Vine Street Derby. The combination of brains and beauty here at high noon is positively Machiavellian. They have waiters rather than waitresses here, and these men know every feud and place the counterparts in the "blind spots." The prominence of the caricatures of every screen player on the walls registers their up-to-the-minute importance or failing. You can see the beginnings, the endings, and the middle portions of a dozen different conniving intrigues here, each day at lunch time. Notes and drawings, telephone numbers and even songs written and left on the table linen are amazingly informative and sometimes embarrassingly amusing. It's not unusual to see a chorus stepper lunch International Fearing for her safety because of European hostilities, Annabella flew across the Atlantic to get daughter Ann, who was in France, and brought her to Hollywood. Ann's lucky to have Tyrone Power for a stepfather. ing with a titled European and many is the unknown girl who, over lobster Newburg here, was assured that she would be signed to a contract, and the New York office couldn't do a thing about it. Lately I've seen both Clark Gable and Carole Lombard at lunch at Ruby Foo's (this is the old Vendome) with decorator Tom Douglas and a few days later with Bill Haines at the Victor Hugo. They are deep in the business of buying advice and decorations for their ranch home. I can't quite see streamlined, brittle Lombard on a ranch, even a very exceptional one. But they seem happy as larks. The noon hour is the time for smart salesmen to pull their high-pressure tricks. Not long ago a young actress at Paramount left the lot at noon to buy some cough drops and came back in her own brand new, just purchased limousine. No one was more surprised than she. The showing off of wits and clothes and wealth is at a peak at lunch time. You can sense a little, then, of how the adulation 74 SCREENLAND