Star-dust in Hollywood (1930)

Los *Angeles — Religions peek — third along in the front row. That's Eliza Creechy, that is." She looked hopefully at my face to enjoy my amazement, but I was a stranger and ignorant. "Why," she cried reproachfully, " she was queen of the underworld, she was. Been in the penitentiary lots of times. Dope fiend. She wuz carried here on a stretcher from Los Angeles Gaol, and Sister put the power on to her. She testifies that when she was converted she was so full of needle-pricks that she couldn't hardly find a new place to put a needle into ; 'jections, see. Oh, it will be a glorious ceremony, and a flashlight photo, too. You'll have to get here early if you want a seat." The old revivalist had to be leather-lunged. He dominated his assemblies by the mesmerism of his eye and the impact of his projected personality. He loomed from the pulpit and plucked the weakening sinners from the unleavened mass. At first mere camp-meetings for religious service among the pioneers who had no permanent clergyman in their entire district, the thing grew by stages from the ferocious hell-fire beginnings of Edwards, Pommeroy, and Tucker, to the finally organized conversion campaigns of Billy Sunday and Aimee McPherson. In the old camp-meeting physical excitement was raised to a pitch which under ill-lit conditions did not always redound to the glory of God — physical as well as spiritual excesses stamped them, in spite of the preachers' lurid pictures of hell and damnation. Still, on a certain type of American upbringing and mentality the old revivalism has left its mark ; it has provided a supposedly glorious outlet for those impulses of humanity toward distractions such as the theatre, the dance, and even sexual adventure. The Los Angeles Temple, seen with aloof eyes, is little more than a R [>57]