Star-dust in Hollywood (1930)

Hollywood — The Stars must not betray. Hence the muted struggle that we have depicted in Von Sternberg's Docks of New York. The principal actors in that play hated their parts. For these parts threatened to lower their image in the eyes of their public. Miss Compson did not mind acting the part of an immoral woman ; indeed, she rather specialized in prostitute parts, and one expert assured me that she had a positively adorable way of waggling her behind. But she did not like being exhibited as a wretched and unsuccessful prostitute. Bancroft did not mind being a brute, providing that he could reveal his heart of gold during the last reel, but he did object to being a dirty stoker without relief. However, in his next film he was a millionaire. There is little or no Bohemianism in the real sense of the word. In Paris among the artists one realizes that when a painter becomes successful he slips out of Bohemianism as rapidly as he can. Few Continental artists were born in comfortable circumstances, and to them wealth and recognition by the wealthy bourgeois are the heights of romance. Bohemianism is used only to gild the pill of unavoidable poverty. Here the same conditions are the rule. Stars may fling their money about. They may indulge in wild extravagances and show, but they are not Bohemian. By Hollywood conventions they are conventional. As we have already said, it is difficult to associate on a friendly footing with people earning £2000 a week, more especially if one owns an eight-year-old car, and lives in a bungalow court. We indeed offer but a worm's-eye view. But even from the worm's-eye view the excessive madness and the excessive badness of the place were open to doubt. Naturally there are both madness and badness. Excessive wealth and uncontrolled opportunity are bound to develop them. One magnate, we were told, had murdered a man too attentive to his woman. In several cases inconvenient l [161]