Star-dust in Hollywood (1930)

Hollywood — The ZMadness of ^Movietone loiter on the lots studying movie technique, or gossip with all comers. With him, as with most of the imported ones, we found bonds of sympathy and mutual friends. His task was beset with obstacles. The man who had cornered control of all movietone mechanism was jealous of his stage experience, and, fearing that Milton's craft would make his own appear thin, he contrived, as long as he was able, to keep the New Yorker from getting his apparatus and from developing his ideas. However, the latter had promised us the freedom of the stage as soon as he came into his own, so we watched the reinforced-concrete walls sprout with an interested anxiety. Our sudden decision to return to Europe still found Robert Milton lacking a stage, and we had reluctantly decided that we must go without having seen any work in the movietone when accident did for us what design could not accomplish. Feeling grateful to Mr Dick for his unfailing helpfulness and good nature, and also for the numerous stillphotographs that he allowed us to take away, I gave him a lithograph of Spain, a girl singing with peasant guitarists grouped about her. That day while we were at lunch the superior publicity man burst upon us. "Look here!" he exclaimed. "What is that picture youVe given to Dick? I didn't know that you could do things like that." " It is a lithograph," I explained, " drawn directly on to the stone, hand-printed, editions limited to thirty copies, and the stone afterward spoiled." "I'm crazy about it," he said. " You don't know how it attracts me. Why, I've just offered Dick fifty dollars for it, but he won't sell. The fact is that my wife's birthday is soon, and I want to give her something different. Now, look here, have you got any more of those things? If so I'll buy one, or, if there is anything that I can do, if there is anything [277]