Star-dust in Hollywood (1930)

Hollywood — The Stars the audiences of the world were performed less easily. Once we watched him try to mount his horse with a comrade on his back. Another man would have used a dummy. Not he. Nevertheless the trick did not come off : he strained a muscle, and at last three workmen had to urge him upward, the camera, with nice adjustment, cutting off the long lever inserted under his lower foot. If ever Los Angeles and Hollywood, lords of the Pacific coast, decide to erect a huge statue in rival of the Liberty of New York they could choose no better symbol than that of Old Father Time, with the legend : "Eheu! fugaces labuntur anni ! " The stellar system of Hollywood resembles its namesake : it can be resolved into a similar set of orders. There are fixed stars, with varying degrees of brightness ; there are planets, which seem as bright, but whose illumination is borrowed ; there are comets, swooping into the sun-arc's light only to vanish again ; and there is the Milky Way. Behind and outside of these is the immense void. But in Hollywood the proportions between fixed stars and planets is reversed. The fixed are few in number, but they shine by their own illumination. The planets revolve round the director, from whom they borrow most of their brilliance. We may call fixed stars such men as Emil Jannings, Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, Adolphe Menjou, Von Stroheim, and prominent comedians such as Keaton, Lloyd, Lupino Lane, etc. These men belong to the creative side of the films. They are at once inventors and interpreters. Their films express themselves and play to their personalities. These actors are not chosen by directors, nor do they bow to continuity-writers. They supervise and develop their own plays. Thus the work of such men (we are not offering an exhaustive list) has coherence. They are the central figures,