Madame Eulalie’s Rare PlumsThe Daily Mail, December 7, 1929
P. G. WODEHOUSE, the famous humourist, continuing his account of the condition of British authors in Filmland, writes on
The FATAL LURE of HOLLYWOOD
THEY tell me there are authors who have been on salary for years at Hollywood without ever having a line of their work used. All they do is attend story conferences. There are other authors on some of the lots whom nobody has seen for years. It is like the Bastille. They just sit in some hutch away in a corner somewhere and grow grey beards and languish. From time to time somebody renews their contract, and then they are forgotten again.
Conditions being as I have described, it may be asked, Why do authors go to Hollywood? The answer can be given in a single word—Coercion.
In fairness to the motion picture magnates, I must admit that they very seldom employ actual physical violence. Occasionally a more than ordinarily obdurate author will be sandbagged in a dark alley and shipped across the Mojave Desert in an unconscious condition, but as a general rule the system is more subtle.
What generally happens is this. A couple of the great film barons—say, Mr. Lasky and Mr. Zukor—will sight their quarry in the street and track him down to some Bohemian eating resort. Having watched him settle, they seat themselves at a table immediately behind him.
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For some moments there is silence, broken only by the sound of the author eating celery. Then Mr. Lasky addresses Mr. Zukor, raising his voice slightly.
“Whatever was the name of that girl?” he says, meditatively.
“What girl?” asks Mr. Zukor, taking his cue.
“That tall, blonde girl.”
“What tall, blonde girl?”
“The one in the pink bathing-suit at that Beach Club party.”
“You mean the one with the freckle in the small of the back?”
“A freckle? A mole, I always understood.”
“No, a freckle. Just over the base of the spinal cord.”
“Well, be that as it may, what was her name?”
“I forget. I’ll ask her when we get back. I know her intimately.”
Here they pause, but not for long. There is a sound of quick, emotional breathing. The author is standing beside them, a rapt expression on his face.
“Pardon me, gentlemen,” he says, “for interrupting what was intended to be a private conversation, but I fancy I overheard you saying that you were intimately acquainted with a tall, blonde girl in the habit of wearing bathing-suits of just the type I like best. It is for a girl of that description, oddly enough, that I have been scouring the country for years. Where may she be found?”
“In God’s Back-Garden—Hollywood,” says Mr. Lasky.
“Pity you can’t meet her,” says Mr. Zukor.
“If you were by any chance an author,” says Mr. Lasky, “we could take you back with us to-morrow.”
“Prepare yourselves for a surprise, gentlemen,” says the victim. “I am an author. J. Montague Breamworthy. His powerfully devised situations—N.Y. Times. Sheer, stark realism—Herald-Tribune. Not a dull page—Women’s Wear.”
“In that case,” says Mr. Lasky, producing a contract, “sign here.”
“Where my thumb is,” says Mr. Zukor.
The trap has snapped.
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When this plan fails sterner methods are employed. The demand for authors at Hollywood has led to the revival of the old press-gang. Competition between the studios has become so keen that nowadays no one is safe even if he merely looks like an author.
I heard of one very interesting case. It appears that there was a man who had gone out West hoping to locate oil. He was, indeed, one of those men without a thought in the world outside of oil. Give him oil and he was happy. Withhold oil from him and the sun went in and the bluebirds stopped singing. The last thing he had ever thought of doing was to be an author. With the exception of letters and an occasional telegram of greeting to some relative at Christmas he had never written anything in his life.
But, by some curious chance, it happened that his appearance was that of one capable of the highest feats in the way of dialogue. He had a domelike head, tortoise shell-rimmed spectacles, and that rather cynical twist of the upper lip which generally means an epigram on the way.
Still, as I say, he was not a writer, and no one was more surprised than himself when, walking along a deserted street in Los Angeles, thinking about oil, he was suddenly set upon by masked men, chloroformed, and whisked away in a closed car. When he came to himself he was in a hutch on the Fox lot with a pad and a sharpened pencil before him and stern-featured men were telling him to get busy and turn out something with lots of sex in it, but not too much, because of Will Hays.
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The story has a curious sequel. A philosopher at heart, he accepted the situation. He wrenched his mind away from oil and scribbled a few sentences that happened to come into his head. He found, as so many have found, that an author’s is the easiest job in existence, and soon he was scratching away as merrily as the oldest and highest browed inhabitant. And that is how Eugene O’Neill got his start.
But not every kidnapped author accepts his fate so equably. The majority endeavour to escape. But it is useless. Even if the rigours of the pitiless California climate do not drive them back to shelter, capture is certain, for the motion picture magnates stick at nothing.
When I was in Hollywood there was much indignation among the better element of the community over the pursuit of one unfortunate whom the harshness of his director, a man of the name of Legree, had driven to desperation. He ran away, and, if I got the story correctly, they chased him across the ice with bloodhounds.
The whole affair was very unpleasant and has shocked the soft-hearted greatly. So much so that a Mrs. Harriet B. Stowe, of 3410, Sunset-avenue and Beverly, told me that if she could fix up the movie end with Metro-Goldwyn she intended to write a book about it which would stir the world.
“Boy,” she said to me, “it will be a scorcher!”
And there the matter rests.
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Such are the facts. As to what is to be done about it I confess I am a little vague. I can only recommend author-fanciers to exercise from now on incessant vigilance. When you take your pet for a walk keep an eye on him. If he goes sniffing after strange men whistle him back.
And remember that the spring is the dangerous time. In the spring authors get restless and start dreaming about bathing parties. It is easy to detect the symptoms. The moment yours begins muttering about the Golden West and God’s Sunshine and Out There Beyond the Stifling City put sulphur in his absinthe and lock him up in the kitchenette.