The seven deadly sins of Hollywood (1957)

THE BRITISH IN HOLLYWOOD be just something seen periodically through the window of your car. Its sins are not so much those of riotous living but of not living. If we consider why such different people as Tyrone Power, Ingrid Bergman, Douglas Fairbanks, Jun., have fled from the bee-hive in which they were nurtured we discover a common denominator in their motives: boredom. The deadly sin of boredom. Hollywood has inspired as many similes and metaphors as Roget's Thesaurus (understandably since there are about three hundred foreign correspondents stationed there who must continually make the place sound exciting to retain their jobs). I would like to apply a simile to the place that I don't think has been used before: it strikes me as being very like a bad Chekhov play in which there is a great deal of talk but nothing ever happens. All of Hollywood's more publicised sins are, I think, the result of boredom. Promiscuity is such a popular pastime because once shop talk has been exhausted there really is not much else left to do. Getting drunk is another way of taking the edge off boredom — and so is socking people on the jaw. I do not know to what extent TV alleviates boredom (or promotes it), but it is watched assiduously: it is at least less predictable than the average conversation. You see, there really is not much to talk about. In the studios you have a good day if you have managed to put two minutes of screen-time on film ; all day you have played the same tiny scene over and over again. And, likely as not, it is a scene you have played in a dozen previous films. In the evening at home the domestic scenes you play are equally repetitive. If you have guests, they are likely to be other actors or directors or writers or agents. You know exactly who you are 83