Star-dust in Hollywood (1930)

Star-dust in Hollywood opposite social direction. I should have liked to see myself disguised as the swell. The motor-car scene was finished when I returned to the studio, but already the morning had drifted along and lunch was near. I had accordingly put on my ordinary clothes, my second-best, for, in spite of C 's dictum, I had not thought it appropriate to get into my Sunday specials in order to play a second-rate broker's man. I tried to tell the director that I had the bewhiskered costume in my dispatch-case, but he ran his expert eye over my clothes. " Oh," he said, " but what you have on is exactly right for the part. Stay just as you are." I was filled with a sudden exasperation, not only for my lost yesterday, but also for my second-best. Did I really, in this spick, bandboxy cinema society, where even the men have their hair permanently waved — did I then present so naturally seedy an appearance ? I remembered with relief that the studio had an inside restaurant, for, with the ' mug ' that Alexandre had painted on my own, I could not venture abroad looking for food and must otherwise have gone lunchless. But here were none of the lovely waitresses of Hollywood, here were no sad beauties rejected because of the sheer brainlessness that so often accompanies Nature's perfect handicraft, as though, tired of having created so much perfection on the outside, she had no energy left to adorn the intelligence as well. Here were no golden-haired peris like those who haunted the gates of the Californian movie paradise. My lunch was disturbed by qualms. The ordeal was approaching minute by minute. I had still no idea of what I was to do, for on asking the assistant he had replied nonchalantly : " Oh, a mere nothing. Just a few lines to talk over the telephone. Miss S will give them to you afterwards." [296]