Star-dust in Hollywood (1930)

Star-dust in Hollywood notice-boards to which strips of newspaper were fixed with drawing-pins. Here were displayed all yesterday's news about the movie world, gathered from all the newspapers of the United States. Scandals great or small, divorces, engagements, law-suits, indiscretions, confessions . . . here the publicity doctor kept his finger on the pulse of the public. One was a clipping in verse recording a quarrel between Adolphe Menjou and a firm of shirt-makers : Adolphe Menjou's so gay to-day ; Now, what d'yer think of that ? Because in all Los Angeles There's no Menjou cravat. Max Goldman and George Wenzel Can't manufacture ties And sell them as Menjou cravats Of various hues and size. Judge Edwin Hahn's so ordered No man shall now bedeck His lowly Adam's apple In ape of Menjou's neck. . . . [etc.] Here was the department that watched over the effect of the stars' behaviour, the result of their divorces or immoralities on the box-office receipts, for apart from receipts nothing really matters. Here indeed was the force that kept the stars suspended in the firmament, or which, with one blow of that secret bludgeon called the Black List, could swipe them from the heyday of their brilliance into bitter obscurity. Here was the real autocrat of the film business. Stars and directors might well boast of their huge incomes, might parade in the limelight and reap the headlines, but without this quiet corner of the Mexican palace there would be few headlines and little limelight. They were only puppets after all ; here were the puppet-masters. Von Sternberg might well give us permission to make drawings on his sets, but here Mr Dick, with a twentieth part perhaps of Von [96]