Star-dust in Hollywood (1930)

The Absorption of c Talk ' our little donkey, had been christened by the Petit Parisien " les recordmen de la lenteur." But Mr Fokker was not to be appeased. Now, in turn, he held an indignant silence till the entrance of the Breakfast Club was reached. The British Navy has, we understand, a humane ordinance which commands that no officer shall address another officer except on matters of pure routine before eleven o'clock in the morning. What grotesque hypertrophy of the gregarious impulse could have dictated the inception of this Breakfast Club? Surely here the clotting instinct had assumed its most incredible aspect. The place reminded Jo strongly, in its aspect and its members, of her real estate outing to the Maori hut. The place was the Maori hut multiplied fiftyfold : trestle-tables and benches were massed under rustic awnings of bamboo and reed ; the members, if they were not all real estate salesmen, looked like the people that an imagination leaning a little toward caricature depicts as typical real estate salesmen, here collected a hundred or more strong, seriously intent on pre-business jollity, jollity by rote from a printed card. A resolute facetiousness shone through a hundred spectacles — square spectacles, hexagonal spectacles, octagonal spectacles, oval and round spectacles, gold, silver, and tortoiseshell. Padded shoulders bumped one another in rhythm as the Los-Angeles-cum-Hollywood Babbitts chanted an opening chorus which contained a strange reference to being " seasick crossing to Dover." And when all had been served with thick plates on which ham and fried eggs were piled they had to stand erect and, clapping one another boisterously on the shoulder, had to shout a familiar greeting : " Hello, Ham ! " To which the reply was : "Hello, Egg!" Few can have realized how horridly appropriate the greetings seemed to the cold, unfacetious observer. An orchestra with tuneless jazz stimulated the consumption D [49]