Los Angeles Times, July 13, 1930
 

P.G. AIRS VIEWS ON HOLLYWOOD

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Wodehouse Wit Scintillates Here at High Price

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Film Colony Declared to be “Most Astonishing”

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Butler Written Into Picture By Jeeves’s Creator

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BY ELENA BOLAND

It is all most astonishing, this Hollywood seen through the cheerful eyes of Wodehouse, P.G. to the public—Pellham Granville to the family. The city spells romance to the British humorist, whose wit is repaid by the highest price in the literary world. It is a “most astonishing” place—where one can swim in his pool all year round if necessary, can find English towns, tropical jungles, snow-tipped mountains, right in the studio’s back yard; where one can ask for anything—yes, anything—and have it in no time with a smile for the service.

And the astonishment of Wodehouse, P.G., steadily increases as he sits in his Beverly Hills manor penning high-priced dialogue for what he finds grand fun—talkies. For six months, at any rate, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer are assured the drolleries that have made P. G. Wodehouse one of the most popular short-story writers, novelists and playwrights of two continents. The first screen to be brightened by his wit will be that on which “Those Three French Girls,” starring Jack Buchannan, a countryman, is shown.

LIKES JEEVES BEST

Of all the characters so jauntily jotted down by Wodehouse—innumerable Archies, Freddies, Bertie Woosters, who cheerily infest London society—his favorite is Jeeves, the butler blameless.

“I have studied butlers,” startled the author in a moment of mental research. “In fact, I might say I have made them a life study. Before the war they were usually in the prime, contented about the house and satisfied with the master’s wine. But after the war youth entered the service. These men now must be in their middle thirties, quick, alert, with a dash to their grooming and a class pride.

“I have written a butler into this picture. There simply had to be one. It wouldn’t be proper to show an earl’s son without a butler somewhere about. And now he has grown to be the most important person in the film.”

SONS GO SERIOUS

P. G. Wodehouse’s interest has always centered on youngest sons, a species which, he sighs, is fast becoming extinct. That is, youngest sons in England are no longer let loose on a life of graceful idling. They have, it seems, gone serious, or into business, and thus, Wodehouse grows wistful, is fading most of the color from London society.

The speech which falls so trippingly from the Wodehouse pen is known in England as slang.

“But very different from your American wisecracks, not so varied nor so changeable. I find that in America one must keep ahead of the times in order to keep up with them; an expression new today is old in a month. While at home there is very little change.

Wodehouse likes very much to write of Americans, but Americans like him to remain English. He learned that when he first visited this country in 1909. So, unfailingly agreeable, the ruddy-cheeked, merry-eyed author has continued to write misguided nephews of rich uncles in and out of trouble, musical comedies and prose these many years. Now that he has got them in the movies, which have so stimulated his own imagination, even Wodehouse daren’t guess what they will do next.

 

 

Printer’s errors not corrected:
Pellham Granville should be Pelham Grenville, and he was Plum or Plummy to the family.
Jack Buchannan should be Jack Buchanan.

Notes:
Wodehouse’s first visit to America was in 1904.
In the event, the lead male role of Those Three French Girls was played by Reginald Denny.