Star-dust in Hollywood (1930)

Hollywood — The Qamera-man director can hash the continuity ; the artist can hash the technical expert; stars can hash both director and artist; camera-man can hash what is left ; and editor or titles finish the remainder. We may be tempted to wonder how the film as a work of art has ever made its appearance. One peculiar aspect of Hollywood, not often commented upon, is its quality as a silver-mine, exceeding, in fact, the output of Idaho, the third greatest silvermining state in America. We can hardly call Hollywood a silver-mine, however ; it should rather be called a vomitorium, forced to disgorge the precious metal that it has digested in its waste film and fixing solutions. Roughly, Hollywood reclaims eight and a half million dollars' worth of silver every year. This silver is, of course, the sensitive material in the photographic film ; on exposure to the light it blackens after development, different degrees of illumination producing different degrees of light and shade. The unblackened silver is dissolved from the films by the fixing processes. Paramount studios alone use some five or six million feet of film per annum. By a simple chemical process the silver salts in the waste material and in the dissolvingbaths are converted back to raw material. SHIFTING A THIRTY-SIX [23i]