Sodom and Gomorrah : the story of Hollywood (1935)

CHAPTER IV What Price Ballyhoo? There are literally hundreds of actors and actresses in pictures. If one follows the Lux Toilet Soap advertisements faithfully — and who can escape them — the number of female players alone varies between four hundred and nine and four hundred and eleven, the vast majority of whom, naturally, keep beautiful by using Lux. Yet out of all these actresses there are not more than half a dozen first-rate players. No more than ten or twelve could be termed second-rate. All the rest fall into the third or fourth category — there being no fifth in the critic's vernacular. Since a delicate skin is not a prime requisite of male beauty, the toilet soap advertisements have never concerned themselves with vital statistics on the number of actors. However, most critics hold the opinion that the rate of good players among the actors is a little higher. They do not depend so much upon their willingness to be "reasonable. " Since the public gets few good screen plays and still fewer good players, there has to be some way of putting over these pseudo-artists to the people. It is done by the use of a type of, intentionally or not, profound psychology. As America is without the glamour qualities of a royal family or aristocracy, the motion picture