Star-dust in Hollywood (1930)

Los iAngeles-cu?n-Hollywood exaggerated amount of respect to the word (which really mattered little) and no respect at all to the image (which mattered much). During the afternoon the road was encumbered with ponderous lorries bringing up an electric-lighting plant, engines, dynamos, and batteries of powerful arc-lamps that after dark illuminated this piece of decorator's whimsy with the concentrated power of their carbon candles. Malay pirates, plumed and accoutred like Zulus, manoeuvred on the beach as though they paid respect to some pirate sergeantmajor ; a spectacle which saddened us so much that we returned home and made rude remarks to Ornitz on the subject ; with a sequel to be recorded later. Once again we took a drive along this Palisades road ; this time a pleasure-trip on Independence Day, down to the sea in cars. An engineer friend and his wife invited us as an experiment in democracy to drive with them. If the English take their pleasures sadly the Americans have raised carjaunting to a most dismal craze. To work up a conviviality proper to Independence Day we joined a procession of cars, bonnet to spare tyre, like a line of processional caterpillars, that crawled along the sea-front for some fifteen miles at an average speed of five miles an hour. All the way we breathed one another's exhaust gases mixed with ozone. Then, having come to the end of the road, we turned back and crawled home. We estimated that about a tenth of the car-owning population of Los Angeles joined this melancholy and insanitary procession. We have, it is true, a penchant for insanitary experiences, but only because they are so often amusing. Sea and climate are the lures that bring the hundred and sixty million dollars' worth of tourists to Los Angelescum-Hollywood. The sea is certainly enjoyed. It is enjoyed en masse with a lusty, pagan abandon, though year by year, [137]