Screenland (Sept 1922–Feb 1923)

he is not related to someone already on the inside, if he has not made some social connection with gomeone who is already on the payroll, he is likely to starve to death if he depends on the studios for employment. If he hangs around long enough, spends enough money entertaining the studio people to whom he does get introduced, if he has the wherewithal to stick it out and to make -a splurge, he may get a job when a shake-up occurs. How to Ruin a Writer t§>HAKE-uPS are the least exciting occurrences in the studios. Good newspaper men, for instance, believe that fame and fortune lies in waiting for them in the publicity jobs. By dint of persistence, good cheer (in liquid potions), and the knack of catering to the vanities, a good newspaper writer from the East gets a job' at three times his normal salary. He believes himself to be in clover. He buys a car and pays a big installment down. He rents a stucco bungalow in a Spanish court. He thinks he is sitting pretty. He turns out some good copy, gets into the local papers with much regularity because of his naive slant on the movies, has some handsome cards engraved, sends telegrams, letters and newspaper clippings back East to the home folks, and wakes up two months later to find that overnight the boss has returned from Europe with indigestion from eating snails, has fired the whole bunch and put in his New York cousins and their cousins in all the publicity jobs. Thus is an ever-fresh viewpoint maintained in the studios. The newspaper man goes to another studio on the strength of his experience with the first one ; works three months or so, gets the boot in one of the half dozen stereotyped fashions, and' journeys on — and on — and on — spoiled forever for a fortydollar-a-week job as a beat reporter, yet infinitely soured on studio life. The same applies to all phases of the game. It is a heartless, crushing game, in which fresh material is forever being ground through the hopper and turned out as unidentifiable hamburger meat. No wonder the studios manage to turn out such similar material. The formula is so often the same. 36 Eminent authors are caught with the same honey in the same trap. The full publicity value of their names is squeezed out of them, and they are left high and dry in most cases. Only one eminent author has survived the system' — Rupert Hughes, who has learned to do what the movies want him to do, rather than what his literary conscience tells him to do. The story they tell of Maeterlinck is typical. Maurice Maeterlinck was a name to conjure with a few years ago. It stood for everything that the Maeterlinck symbol, the Bluebird, stands for — happiness, sweetness, wholesomeness, foreign charm and mystery. He was a good bet, so Goldwyn brought him over here. He came, leonine, masterful, with a little eighteen year old bride clinging to his arm. His coming was heralded the length and the breadth of the land. He was photographed in every conceivable attitude except in bed or bathtub. His going back to France was another matter. No trumpets sounded ; no pictures showed him kissing an ecstatic hand to the receding shores of America. Maeterlinck departed, figuratively speaking, between suns, his enthusiasm flagging like the tail of a whipped dog. Maeterlinck had failed to make good in the movies I He wrote, as Goldwyn is reported to have told in Hollywood to his sympathetic colleagues, a story all about a bee, and who could make a film hero out of a bee, mourned Goldwyn. Maeterlinck and Publicity JJ_j/iD Goldwyn expect Maeterlinck to write a good motion picture plot? Not in a million years! The poor Frenchman was simply a pawn in the great game of publicity, a figure against which the Goldwyn Lion could be photographed. Goldwyn could not have gotten his picture or name in every magazine and newspaper in the United States, without some such dodge. Standing up beside Maeterlinck, shaking hands with Maeterlinck's child wife, Goldwyn became news — news — news ! That is the answer to the eminent author's furor. It was expected to die a natural death when the publicity value was gone. These eminent authors were too temperamental to be handled as hack scenario writers. They would have demanded too much co-operation, would bave held the producers too closely to the story. And so they were brought to Hollywood, made a great fuss over in print and news reels, and then allowed to slink, away, beaten, in the dark. How Cohen Was Used (O^ctavus Roy Cohen, who had a tremendous vogue in the Saturday Evening Post, with the cleverest negro comedies ever written, was brought out with fanfare and blare of trumpets. Whole columns of newspaper publicity were reaped by the insatiable studio which announced his connection. Cohen wrote and wrote until he must have been sadly affected by writer's cramp, or typist's rheumatism, and one lone lorn comedy of his was put into celluloid. Whether or not it was ever released no one can seem to remember. At any rate, Cohen went back to "Bummin'ham" and after a; long time succeeded in getting back into the Saturday Evening Post. His contract Avith Goldwyn, it is said authoritatively, called for his exclusive services, but he was to be paid for only those stories which were available. The word went out in Hollywood — never in print — that Cohen could not write screenable plots. Those who have read his Post stories know that he is a master plotter. After Cohen had gone home a big packing box of his rejected manuscripts was boarded up and sent on to him — worthless to him, of course, because written especially for the Screen. After the eminent author's scare was over, the same hack writers in the same jobs continued to write the same shopworn plots in the same shopworn manner. Love Always Potent A nother and less widely publicized form of studio politics is delicately summed up as boudoir politics. In an effort to clear the fair name of Hollywood, much has been written about the absurdity of a girl's believing that she has to sell her virtue for a job in the movies. The extra girl, of course, would be absurd to offer herself in exchange for a seven-dollara-day job — in most cases. But there are innumerable instances, so well known in Hollywood that they are not even mentioned any longer, where a star's judicious