Star-dust in Hollywood (1930)

Star-dust in Hollywood not be understating matters if I say that our lecturers for to-night have opened up new horizons for travellers and have shown us new aspects of foreign study. Their books are the ornaments of every well-stocked library in America. In fact, I feel that I should not take up a moment more of your time than is absolutely necessary, and now have the greatest pleasure in introducing to you this world-famous couple, Mr and Mrs . . . ahem ! . . . Mr and Mrs . . . Mr and Mrs ... oh ! what are your names? " The lecture-agent in New York had been a little coy of us : so many English lecturers of late had been unsatisfactory ; the big names did not always guarantee an effective presence on the platform or a carrying voice. Of many a poet we should reverse the first rule for Victorian children : " They should be seen but not heard." But after we had enticed the agent to a New York flat and had got him prancing like a bear round the room to the throb of a Spanish farouka we knew that he was won. In fact, next day he invited us to play to his staff in the office, where he celebrated the event by sending out for ice-cream, which was served all round. In the middle of this impromptu feast two of the sternest of club women stalked in. The lecture-agent at once introduced his new discovery, ourselves. They inspected us from head to foot with the critical eyes of a housewife examining a fowl on the poulterer's stall. " Of course," they said, " you do it in costume." " Certainly not," we retorted. However, without costume we had by now managed to lecture our way across to California ; we had lectured to women's clubs, to musical and art societies, to a university, on a Sunday evening in a Unitarian church, at a Working-man's Institute. How or why some of these clubs or assemblies paid the fee of £30 for an hour-and-a-half talk was a mystery to us, although, on our part, after having paid the agent's [52]