Star-dust in Hollywood (1930)

Hollywood — *.Acting on the Film However, on the following morning we received a telephone message : " This is Mr Cruze's secretary speaking. He wants to know if you would play your instruments in a scene for his present film. . . . All right, come down to the studios to-morrow.' ' The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios were ten miles away from Hollywood, at Culver City, where half a dozen of the more important movie lots were concentrated. The M.G.M. had an immense lot clustering round the characteristic water-tower and showing to the road a broad Corinthian front, with tall Greek colonnades under which Plato himself might have walked, contrasting oddly with the factory-like interior, out of which large, lumbering lorries loaded with strange apparatus were passing into the road. On this occasion we came in by no clattering or buzzing visitors' door, but went to the artists' entrance at the side and there lined up with a few dozens of our kind. We spoke our names through a pigeon-hole and were given tickets to the wardrobe-keepers. Within we saw little of the decorative quality that characterized the Paramount. The Corinthian front had no false photographic back nor decorative garden with fountain ; no architectural fantasies diversified the facades of the stars' dressing-rooms. Jo and I at once parted company, she to the women's, I to the men's wardrobe. A long counter stretched down the room. Men of all kinds, from smart young American lads, their hair carefully set in artificial permanent waves, to rough Mexican hobos from the slums, thrust forward tickets and clamoured for costumes. Behind the counter a number of broad posts were placed, just distant enough from one another for a man to pass between and from the back of the posts to the depths [x99]