Star-dust in Hollywood (1930)

Star-dust in Hollywood God Himself saying to me : * Tom Mix, retire ; your work is finished/ " Amid the rounds of applause that greeted this convincing statement the older and more puritan of the members dropped tears of joy into their coffee-cups, thanking heaven that this one was not as others — not as Charlie Chaplin, for instance, a film of whom had been refused in Chicago because in one of the scenes a bowl of goldfish was upset into his trousers. This in Chicago, ruled by corrupt politicians, bankrupt so that it cannot pay its school-teachers or hospital staffs, the native haunt of murderous gangsters, who are winked at by the police and by many of the justices ! Mr Mix was clearly presenting himself to the ladies of the Friday Morning Club by the magnifying end of the telescope, but a few weeks later the telescope was reversed when Mr Mix was hauled before the courts for ' plugging ' a girl dancer in the eye at a booze-party. Before the court Mr Mix did not present so heroic a figure. He no longer seemed to be the ideal of young American boyhood. In the box he protested that he was not a rough character at all, but an actor, and that, in spite of his film heroics, he had never exchanged an angry blow in his life. The damages claimed were large, and Mr Mix was ready to swear that he was a person of very little natural courage, psychologically incapable of ' plugging* a woman in the eye. . . . All his life he had tried to avoid anything unpleasant. . . . Luckily, the members of the Friday Morning Club did not recall this champion of Prohibition to explain his presence at what was obviously a very hot party. There is a saying in America : " You can't condemn a million dollars." Mr Mix was acquitted. Of nine other stars whom we came to know only two had been actors. One had been an acrobat, one a music-hall [150]