Star-dust in Hollywood (1930)

Chapter XIII HOLLYWOOD— THE CAMERA-MAN y^NNE of the publicity men working for the United ( ^ I Artists was not as other publicity men. He had not, ^-^ in the modern mass enthusiasm so stimulated in America, elevated his task into a matter of worship. He was a friendly young man, who did not daily utter his profession of faith, which, instead of " I believe in Allah, and in Mohammed the prophet of Allah," is, " I believe in the Movies, and in Publicity the prophet of the Movies." He had other ambitions. Literary desires and a passion for the real truth of Early Western Romance had bitten him. He had written biographies of those rather uncongenial celebrities Billy the Kid and Wild Bill Hickock, and at the moment was working out a novel which dealt, rather rashly perhaps for a man in his position, with the actual facts about the murder of a well-known Hollywood director, an affair which had almost implicated several well-known female stars. I was sketching a huge ballroom scene, a picture of glittering gaiety in a palatial hall which exhibited its structure of flimsy lath and plaster wherever the eye of the cameras could not reach. This play was interesting apart from its scenic effects, for it had two rival feminine stars. The one was by birth French, who was self-dazzled, and therefore rendered very disagreeable, by her own eminence, a nationalistic trait. In fact, she had but recently returned to active work, having spent some six months on the Black List for * temperament.' The other, a wild young Mexican actress of no education, picked up by a touring director from some third-rate Mexican cabaret, had not yet slurred off the 03]