Star-dust in Hollywood (1930)

Star-dust in Hollywood everyday inhabitants of California showed an appreciation of the much-advertised climate by using it as little as possible. However, at last, in Blank Avenue, Jo and the doctors wife discovered a court that showed some pretence to spaciousness. It was built of wood coloured in a tiger-like combination of black and vivid orange. A nice space of lawn separated the rows of bungalows one from the other, and in the centre of the lawn was an ornamented bird basin, although since it was usually dry the birds had little benefit. Cypresses stood at the corners of the lawn, aloes or yuccas along the centre line, and two enormous banana-trees made one feel that the tigers had outgrown the jungle. In a quaint old book on hawking the author warns the hawk-owner against allowing his hawk to lay an egg, an accident which comes of " too much daintyness and lustful pryde," and which may cause the bird's death. One of the banana-trees celebrated our arrival with a similar accident which had a like fatal result. It thrust up a tall spike of unremarkable bloom, very popular with the bees; the spike changed slowly into a cluster of hard green bananas which drooped more and more weightily from the bouquet of broad, flat leaves. But though the Californian sun could thus excite the " lustful pryde " of the banana-tree it was powerless to bring the crop to ripeness. After this effort the tree withered, and had to be cut off, leaving our tigerish dwellings sadly lop-sided in jungly atmosphere. But our friend the doctor suddenly decided to doctor no longer, and to become instead the promoter of a Swedish ice-box company. He passed me on to the best heart specialist of Los Angeles, a Jewish humorist and humanist, who, with the broad liberality of a Lessing's Nathan, visited me thrice a week and refused all fee other than a modest sketch. [20]