Star-dust in Hollywood (1930)

Hollywood — The Stars criticisms, or who use headaches whenever they desire an outing with a friend. Six months on the Black List has reduced many a neurotic star to very normal humanity. " Yeah/' we heard Mr Dick say once, " So-n-so is beginning to think he's about the biggest noise this lot can hold, 'cause he's got a booming contract. Thinks he can pull any stuff he likes. He simply don't know we can break him any day we want to, see? He's been living with a girl out at Beverley Hills, and he don't know that we're wise to it. When his time comes he won't have enough yap left to scare a Pekinese." Rudolph Valentino himself was placed for a period on the Black List to make him properly humble. Yet even a contract with submissive observance of the Purity Clause cannot ensure work for the stars. They have to be picked by a director or a supervisor and assigned to a film. A contract may assure a certain income, but it cannot assure the much more important thing, a regular appearance on the screen, which means the preservation of their public. For that they depend on personal contacts, parties, and the -premieres^ or first nights of important films, when the whole galaxy of Hollywood gathers at the movie house and when tall searchlights sweep the sky as if to announce the news to the distant and indifferent rivals in the profound blue overhead. Thus, the stars have not only to work during their days, but must give up their evenings to yet more strenuous shining. To Hollywood a star more or less is a thing of little matter, even though she may be paid on a contract that gives her, say, ^400 a month as a retainer. The victims or favourites are picked out by chance with an indifferent hand. It plucks half a dozen authors from New York, pays them £60 a week, [167]