Star-dust in Hollywood (1930)

Chapter IX HOLLYWOOD— THE STARS r~* TARS j mere human beings, often imperfectly educated, /"~5 ) who earn from a thousand pounds a week and upward, are difficult to meet on equal terms. According to the opinion of the publicist or the satirist respectively, there are only two lenses by which they may be observed clearly : the magnifying close-up or that diminishing glass, the bottom of a whisky tumbler. The first star with whom we came in contact showed himself in both lights soon after our arrival. We had been engaged to lecture at the Friday Morning Club, a weekly orgy of lectures and lunch for the seriously cultured among the Los Angeles ladies. This inhalation of culture started at 10.30 in the morning. Until lunchtime an expensively hired lecturer talked in the big theatre. Afterward the whole gathering was elevated two storeys to an equally large lunch-hall with a low balcony. Here an elaborate but strictly non-fattening lunch culminated in more talks delivered from the balcony to the replete but still cultureavid members. We do not know if a correspondence in subject was designed between the before-lunch and the after-lunch lectures. As a rule we think not. On the day that we lectured before lunch on " the artistic intelligence of the illiterate " we were, after lunch, followed by Mr Tom Mix, the well-known cowboy impersonator — the two-gun man, the rescuer of distressed damsels from nefarious cattle-lifters — the man whom no odds could daunt, no frowns of fortune dismay. First Mr Mix's publicity manager took the stand. He eulogized Mr Mix, judiciously staging a speech which he [146]