Star-dust in Hollywood (1930)

Star-dust in Hollywood the flappers of Oshkosh or no. There was no doubt in our minds, in spite of Mr L 's reputation as a serial writer for the more wealthy of the popular magazines, that a movie story by him might well be less suitable for film work than one of a young hack writer in the Stenographic Department. Miss Wynne left California soon after our visit. She had enjoyed her six-months change and had earned her £1440 as well as the trousseau, but of all her stories not even that of the young man and the milk-cart reached production stage. Somewhere in the hands of the continuity-man it faded and disappeared. Isaacs too, a brilliant young Chicago Jew, was retained for eight months, his salary amounting to some £2000, and yet of all his trial stories not one was finally shot. And both Miss Wynne and Joseph Isaacs were picked out from among young American authorship and financially abducted across the continent. Sam Ornitz had been luckier. He was the author of two novels, the first a brilliant and human study of the rise and fall of a corrupt Jewish lawyer-politician, a study which Sam's own upbringing, his early companionships, and his final experiences in New York had allowed him to present with all the truth of portraiture from life. The second novel had been more ambitious, the study of a Roman Catholic in the States. It was marked by a powerful sense of finesse, combined with the invention of words and of drama, distinguished in its sense of character-drawing and analysis. But neither novel, we must confess, would have suggested to us that here was a predestined writer of film stories. There was a grimness even in his humour that seemed to promise ill if employed for the task of enthralling the young women of Oshkosh. His characters were depicted with such unrelenting realism that an unobservant public might have mistaken them for grotesque caricature. And, indeed, Sam Ornitz's first story had not been accept [120]