Screenland (Nov 1940-Apr 1941)

FRED ALLEX hates Hollywood. He admits it without any heating around a diplomatic hush. It isn't an all-consuming, long-growing hate nursed upon revenue upon fears and frustrations, the kind that sends people reaching for a stiletto or a bottle ot arsenic Rather it's a cool, rancor-free, instinctive hate, the kind that causes people to say: "I hate the Midway, or I hate the Boston Post Road," or "I hate bread pudding. Fred has been to Hollywood three times to make a picture He hopes there'll' be no fourth. With each visit hi^ dislike of the place has increased until today not even the presence there of Jack Benny and his violin, to say nothing of his barbecue pit. can alter his feeling. His feeling toward the film capital is based upon his sense for the fitness of things. As a fellow who strives continuously to find order in his life and his fun, who likes to know where he's going and what he's going to do when he gets there, Hollywood "just doesn't make sense. "Life revolves about a camera out there, but Hollywood is out of focus," is the way he puts it. "Take this newest craze, the barbecue pit. People can't be satisfied with a swimming pool or a racing stable. Xo, they ve got to have a barbecue pit in their back yard. And it s always the best and biggest barbecue pit until the next one is built day after tomorrow." Fred relates that he was invited to a barbecue party in Tack Benny's back yard. He had been seeing Jack Benny all day long at the Paramount studio, had gone over and over and over again some lines, some business in their new co-starring picture, "Love Thy Neighbor." But that wasn't enough. He was supposed to spend an evening, too, with Benny — in the latter's back yard. "Jack told me there would be about eighty persons present and that it would be formal. I should dress for it. I said, 'You mean I The famous radio star and Bennybaiter breaks down and tells us, in the season's most hilarious and shocking interview, his real reasons for hurrying out of Hollywood as fast as final scenes were finished for ,Jtove Thy Neighbor" Fred Allen may hate Hollywood, and -feud with Jack Benny — but somehow the boys have turned out a howlingly funny film in "Love Thy Neighbor." Mary Martin, who's pictured with them at right, is their intrepid heroine. dress formal to horse around in a back yard among smudge pots and steaks and flies and ketchup ?' He said, 'Certainly.' I didn't go. You can see how topsy-turvy it all is, how reverse to sensibleness. People used to eat indoors' and go out to the back yard for, well, other things. But in Hollywood they eat out in the back yard and*go indoors for, well, they have been known to use the telephone, too." t One of his pet aversions to Hollywood is the appalling lack of opportunity at night for diversified entertainment." There's no place to go but a preview or a restaurant. "So what do you. do? You go to a preview or to Ciro's and look at the same people you looked at the night before. There's only one word for it — monotonous. At least, that's the word that comes to me. Out there, they go in for the superlatives. Enthusiasm is a commodity, and last night's preview is always the biggest preview Hollywood has ever had. Hollywood is always steamed up. It talks always in press agent terms." He explained that he and Portland Hoft'a — Mrs. Allen were criticized because they stayed home. They didn't keep a car and they seldom went out to eat. They would have gone out to plays and concerts had there been any to go out to. "A preview is Hollywood's nightly institution," he said. "Hardly would I get settled down for the night to see what' the headlines were about when Fd be distracted by the beams of powerful searchlights crisscrossing in the sky. Usually it (Please turn to page 82)