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THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS OF HOLLYWOOD
some glamour. Now we try to convince the world that we are all ordinary, decent folk. Nothing could be more harmful to the Hollywood legend."
The changes which have taken place in Hollywood were inevitable. As the picture business became more scientific, there was less scope for the irrational, intuitive individualists who made films on hunches. The result is that today Hollywood films are better; but anecdotes about Hollywood are fewer.
There was a period when a girl could become a star on the strength of a smile and two facial expressions. Now a little more is required. Also, it takes longer to become a success today and people are therefore more prepared for fame and less likely when they get it to throw their money around in a wild, reckless and vulgar way.
Seeing ex-movie idols ending their lives in State or charitable institutions must also have an inhibiting effect on the current idols and inspire in them a degree of thrift and caution.
Laudable as most of the changes are, I cannot help feeling that in a way it is a pity the business should have become so respectable. The early days of Hollywood, one feels, were at least amusing.
In his autobiography A Tree is a Tree King Vidor, a veteran Hollywood director, has some stories to tell which give the flavour of the place in the days of John Gilbert and Lillian Gish. He makes it sound fun.
Vidor had to direct Laurette Taylor in Peg o' My Heart. She was forty-two, looked seventy in a screen test — and was supposed to be eighteen in the story. An agereducing gadget was devised. A spotlight, with rifle sight attached, was focused on Miss Taylor's face, the operator keeping a bead on her all the time. "This served to burn out some of the lines around the eyes and created a false but perfectly formed jaw and chin shadow," says Vidor. The result : Miss Taylor looked sixteen.
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