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Hollywood — First TDays o?i the 3\dovie Lot
of the country squire ; his full-bottomed, well-creased flannel trousers, white with a narrow blue line, hinted at the fashionable beach club ; while his shoes, white buckskin with black decorations, lent a touch of lawless fantasy. However, on Mr Ornitz's introduction, he greeted us almost as though we were equals, which, we may add, from a man earning his two thousand dollars a week, to a pair of stony-broke painter-authors sneaking into Hollywood without heralding trumpets or headlines, was really a tribute to the democracy in his character.
And here we should insist that Kings, Cabinet Ministers, and Importances of Hollywood are unable to be all things to all men. Their greetings, which may be divided into four categories, are bound to be carefully calculated. First, of course, comes their intimate friends. Then, with the exception of Kings, they have those to whom they must be cordial from motives of personal interest ; then those to whom they must be polite from motives of general interest. Beyond these stands the rest of the world, which must be held at arm's-length. For Hollywood, that repudiates neither the Flesh nor the Devil, is afraid of the World. The World, like a tame tiger, must be amused, placated, pandered to, but it must be kept off. For in a trice the World would open its mouth and swallow Hollywood entire.
The World cannot be convinced that, given a chance, thousands of its members are not just as capable of earning a thousand pounds a week as those that actually do. Luck has plucked out a few stars, comets, planets, but who knows what the Milky Way might not contain if only it could be disentangled? In the World's eyes the task is too easy for the rewards. So, in order to defend itself, Hollywood has to be suspicious of and unfriendly to uninvited intrusion.
Any prominent Hollywood character is like a man clinging to a cliff. From every side envious or pleading hands are stretched out toward him. The first would thrust him down
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