A Broadwayite in Hollywood
by O.O. McINTYRE
Drawing by William G. Haworth
Say what you will about Hollywood, says this famous visitor, there's no spot in America today that offers so much hope or so much chance for quick fortune. Nor is any place more friendly or truly cosmopolitan. In fact, it's a grand town!
HOLLYWOOD IS many things to many people. To me it is whoopla, the spirit of Mardi gras, as definite a slice of our national consciousness as Broadway, Palm Beach or Coney.
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See page 119
for key to movie stars caricatured here.
continued on page 119
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Say what you will-and it needs no defense of mine-no other spot in America offers so much hope, so much of quick fortune, or so beglamours its successful. And no city I know is so tolerant. The target for mud-slingers for years, its escutcheon is unmarred. Within its friendly borders I have yet to hear the vile gossip or witness the debauchery of Broadway, or, for that matter, of Park Avenue.
I journeyed to Hollywood, a bit acrid with the depression's aftertaste. Back East many of my friends had caroled their swan song and were sitting around waiting for heaven knew what. Either Hollywood is an excellent actor, or it has hidden its scars.
I found it the most "joyous community since the Paris of 1927. Paree! Paree! Indeed, Hollywood at the moment expresses the effervescence of prewar Paris. It is opening bright cafes, rearing castles in the Beverly canyons and meeting life with arms wide open. And a laugh.
I was surprised to find out how much of a funk I was in. At first I attributed sudden buoyancy to sunshine. But after all, we have sunshine in New York. Actually, I was caught up in the contagion of a different viewpoint. Hollywood does not believe that civilization is finished and that we are slipping back into primeval ooze.
Oh, yes, Hollywood had its depression. Its banks burst like a string of firecrackers; its studios closed and salaries were scaled downward. But it has dusted itself off and is out there dancing again.
There are reasons why old-established performers of Broadway such as Will Rogers, Joe Cawthorn and Frank Graven are so happy in the movies. Aside from bigger salaries, they have homes of their own, delightful gardens, golf and tennis, swimming pools in their yards and work the year around.
There are no sleeper jumps, split-weeks, tank-town hotels and inevitable lay-offs. And the publicity the actor craves is in overplus. His name lights up a thousand theaters in a single sweep. They are applauding him in Shanghai as well as Walla Walla. And if his ears tingle for the out-front handclap, there is always the opportunity for the personal appearance.
I have not met a performer who longs for "the good old days" of Broadway. Not one. And most" of the legitimate theater's very best are in Hollywood.
I have lived in theatrical hotels in New York and elsewhere, and I know their early morning misery. The shudder at the morning-paper announcement that the show is going on tour, or the fear of the back-stage bulletin board's closing notice. Always the atmosphere of apprehension.
Hollywood mornings, the same people are either at the studios, disporting on the sands at Santa Monica and Malibu, exploring the arroyo trails on horseback or playing golf or tennis.
Hollywood, too, is no longer a far outpost where isolated people of the theater must huddle together for companionship and confidences. All the world and his wife drift here, for Hollywood has become as much a part of the American scene as Washington and New York. One finds Einstein chatting informally in Doris Kenyon's gardens. George Arliss is lunching with this duke or that lord. Doris Duke is at Marion Davies' dinner party. E. F. Hutton's yacht tugs at anchor in the harbor while he makes the rounds of the studios. Irvin Cobb is now a permanent resident. H. G. Wells is at a Brown Derby table talking to Chaplin. Broadway's most stubborn hold-out against Hollywood, George S. Kaufman, is bungalowing at the Ambassador.
Hollywood, indeed, has become as cosmopolitan as New York, Paris or Peking. But with a naivete that not one of those cities has attained. I have seen Chevalier at the height of his celebrity on the Champs Elysees, eyes front and stiffly conscious of his popularity. Out here a truckman, recognizing him at a stool- counter hamburger hutch, slaps him on the back with "Hi, Frenchie, how's the going? And the star's generous mouth curves into a warming smile.
Nobody would think of walking up to a matinee idol in New York and asking him about this, that or the other. But Hollywood incubates frankness. I was talking to Adolphe Menjou on a street corner when an Iowa flivver drew up at the curb. A gentleman with a round hair cut and his wife stepped out. "We recognized you," they said to the actor, "and want to shake your hand." And having done so, they drove on.
Hillbilly stuff, one might say. But the lack of it has made New York the brittle, uncompanionable city it is for the stranger. Few people pay a second visit to such restaurants as the Brown Derbies, the Vendome, Victor Hugo, Al Levy's or Sardi's without being addressed by name. It is a hospitable gesture only the very smart and exclusive restaurants have learned in New York.
Hollywood's chief diversion of evenings is the dinner party and so early to bed, for many must be off at sunup for the studios. The dinners are never so formal as those of New York -although the hosts and hostesses and most of the guests are New Yorkers.
Almost instantly a dining room takes on the chirp of an aviary. No sooner than that, Janet Gaynor and Mrs. Warner Baxter and I were bragging about the several virtues of our dogs, the safety of our investments and the fiendishness of restaurants in omitting cinnamon from apple pie.
It would have taken five dinners or more to have reached that dinner-table intimacy in New York. At another evening spread we had not reached the coffee before Theda Bara and I exchanged a couple of harmless honeys that would only have been possible after a two-year acquaintance in New York.
Hollywood cracks the ice of aloofness with a quick skush. I don't ever recall anyone sending me flowers in New York. But out here they came from Genevieve Tobin, Betty and Will Rogers, Joan Bennett and Gene Markey, Adolphe Menjou, Doris Kenyon, Rob Wagner, W. C. Fields, and even Ted Healy. What is that mug gettin'-sentimental?
In fact, flowers came every day of our stay. Also fruit, books and candy. It is nothing unusual. It is just usual Hollywood. And anyone who says he doesn't like it is a heel.
Most of the gibes at Hollywood, it must be remembered, have come from writers and actors who came out here to receive more money and do less work than at any other time in their lives. And, having failed, went home to jeer. No one who has made the grade has anything but praise. How could it be otherwise?
There is no denying it is a strange community, sometimes a little balmy. But for those who have used their talents as an alpenstock and scaled the Matterhorn, there is no place to equal it. No place so free from professional jealousies and the small bickerings that so torment the true artist.
Hollywood has shops as smart as those of New York or Paris. Its welcome on the mat is as sincere as any I ever encountered. It has residential splendor the Riviera cannot surpass. It has restaurants equal to those anywhere else in the world. It has flowers, fresh fruit, motor drives, golf courses, polo fields and surf bathing that are unmatchable.
Oh, yes, sunshine, too. And Sam Goldwyn
What more could one ask?
KEY TO MOVIE STARS
Page 70, left to right,
(top row) Mae West, Gary Cooper;
(second row) Greta Garbo, Marion Davies, John Barrymore
(third row) Jimmy Durante, Baby LeRoy, Lionel Barrymore and Constance Bennett.
Page 71, left to right,
(top row) Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Ronald Colman, Helen Hayes, Johnny Weissmuller, Lupe Velez;
(second row) Mary Pickford, Leslie Howard, Kay Francis, Fredric March, James Cagney, Charlie Chaplin;
(third row) Maurice Chevalier, Ruth Chatterton, Wallace Beery, Jean Harlow;
(bottom row) Bing Crosby, Katharine Hepburn, George Arliss, Shirley Temple.
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