Star-dust in Hollywood (1930)

Los Angeles — %eal Estate some vague allusions to having as neighbours Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. She expected a tour in a char-a-banc, and had already imagined herself studying the psychology of the Middle Western farmer and his wife on a real estate jaunt. Instead, on the appointed morning a young man, corpulent and flabby, with unintelligent eyes, pressed the bell. "Mrs Cora J. Gordon?" he asked. "Well, I've called for you in my car to show you over that piece of real estate you were thinking of." The car was a shabby Ford, which clattered along waving its mudguards in a rather helpless fashion like an old woman sure she will lose the train. It emphasized our social position. Having a permanent address, we were perhaps a little too promising to be massed with herded casuals in a char-abanc ; but, having so modest an address, we were worth neither Buick nor genius at salesmanship. The dweller in a fifty-dollar-per-month bungalow is rated as an individual of probably simple mind and easy game. In spite of the fact that the man hardly looked up to the standard of the minimum wage-earner, he carried an air of careless superiority, having imagined himself as the great America he-salesman hero, and as he drove Jo along straight road after straight road, bordered everywhere with grass plots, thin palms, aloes, and bungalow courts, he talked, rather like a schoolboy who has learned his lesson clumsily, of the marvels he was going to show her, the world necessity of making one's residence in Los Angeles, the speculative wisdom of investing in land, the delight of living within your own investment and looking after it, and, above all, on the publicity value of having the Fairbanks as neighbours. " You'll find them just lovely folks," he said impressively. 14 Say, though, that's the entrance to the Hollywood Bowl, but I guess we haven't got time to go in there now." [57]