Madame Eulalie’s Rare PlumsThe Daily Mail, December 6, 1929
P. G. WODEHOUSE, the famous humorist, after visiting Filmland, tells us of
The White Slaves of Hollywood.
EVERYONE who is fond of authors—and, except for Pekingese, there are no domestic pets more affectionate and lovable—must have noticed how scarce these little creatures have been getting of late in the Eastern States of America.
At one time New York was full of them—too full, some people used to think. You would see them frisking in perfect masses in any editorial office you happened to enter. Their sharp, excited yapping was one of the features of the first or second act intermission of every new play produced on Broadway. And in places like the Algonquin Hotel and the Coffee House Club you had to watch your step very carefully to avoid treading on them.
And now what do we see? Just an occasional isolated one sniffing at his notices, and nothing more.
Time after time I have had fanciers come up to me during the past year with hard-luck stories.
“You know that novelist of mine with the flapping ears and the spots on his coat,” says one. “Well, he’s gone!”
“Gone?”
“Absolutely vanished. I left him on the steps of the club, and when I came out there were no signs of him.”
“Same here,” says another. “I had a brace of playwrights to whom I was greatly attached, and they’ve disappeared without a word.”
Well, of course, we took it for granted that they had strayed and had got run over, for authors are notoriously dreamy in traffic and, however carefully you train them, will insist on stopping in the middle of the street to jot down strong bits of dialogue just as the lights are changing. It is only very recently that the truth has come out.
They are all in Hollywood, making Talking Pictures.
✣ ✣ ✣
With the advent of the Talkers, as might have been expected, radical changes have taken place in Hollywood. The manufacture of motion pictures has become an infinitely more complex affair. You know how it was in the old days. Informal. Casual. Just a lot of great big happy schoolboys getting together for a bit of fun. Ike would have a strip of celluloid, Spike a camera, and Mike a friend or two who liked dressing up and having their photographs taken, and with these modest assets they would start the Finer and Supremer Films Corporation De Luxe and clean up with Orgy Scenes and Licentious Clubmen.
For Talkers you require much more than that. The old, simple era has passed. You can’t just put on a toga, press a button, and call the result The Grandeur That Was Rome or In The Days Of Nero. An elaborate organisation is needed. You have to surround yourself with specialists—one to put in the lisps, another to get the adenoid effects, a third to arrange the catarrh. And, above all, you must get hold of authors to supply the words.
The result has been one of the gravest scandals that have ever afflicted the body politic. And, to correct this scandal, it is time that some fearless square-shooter stepped forward and spoke in no uncertain voice.
In the first place, Hollywood is no fit spot for an author. The whole atmosphere there is one of insidious deceit and subterfuge. In Hollywood nothing is what it affects to be. What looks like a tree is really a slab of wood backed with barrels. What appears on the screen as the towering palace of Haroun-al-Raschid is actually a cardboard model occupying four feet by three of space. The languorous lagoon is a smelly tank with a stage-hand named Ed. wading about in it in a bathing suit.
Imagine the effect of all this on a sensitive-minded author. Taught at his mother’s knee to love the truth, he finds himself surrounded by people making fortunes by what can only be called chicanery. He begins to wonder whether mother had the right idea. After a month or two of this sort of thing could you trust that author to count his golf shots correctly or to give his right circulation figures? Answer me that. Or, rather, don’t. It is not necessary.
In the second place, if motion picture magnates must have authors they should not keep them in hutches. In every studio in Hollywood there are rows and rows of hutches, each containing an author on a long contract at a weekly salary. You see their anxious little faces peering out through the bars. You hear them whining piteously to be taken for a walk. And does the heart bleed? You bet it bleeds. A visitor has to be very callous not to be touched by such a spectacle as this.
After all, authors are people. They are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It cannot be right to keep them on the chain. Surely some sort of an honour system would be possible.
I do not say that all these authors, or, indeed, a majority of them, are actually badly treated. Indeed, in the best studios kindness is the rule. Often you will see Mr. Warner or Mr. Lasky stop and give one of them a lettuce. And the same may be said of the humaner type of director.
In fact, between the directors and these authors there frequently exists a rather touching friendship. I remember Mr. King Vidor telling me a story that illustrates this. One morning, it seems, he was on his way to his office, preoccupied, as is his habit when planning out the day’s work, when he felt a sudden tug at his coat-tails. He looked down and there was his pet author, William Edgar (“Strikes a New Note”) Delamere. The little fellow had got him in a firm grip and was gazing up at him, in his eyes an expression of dumb warning.
Well Mr. Vidor, not unnaturally, mistook this at first for mere playfulness, for he had often romped with his little charges. Then—he does not know why—something seemed to whisper to him that he was being withheld from some great peril. He remembered stories he had read as a boy—one of which he was even then directing for Rin-Tin-Tin—where faithful dogs dragged their masters back from the brink of precipices on dark nights.
Scarcely knowing why, he turned and went off to the cafeteria and had a small malted milk. And it was as well that he did. In his office, waiting to spring, there was lurking a foreign star with a bad case of temperament, whose bite might have been fatal. You may be sure that William Edgar had a good meal that night.
But that is an isolated case. Not all directors are like Mr. Vidor. Too many of them crush the spirit of the captives by incessant blue-pencilling of their dialogue so that they become listless and lose ambition and appetite. Neglect is what kills an author. Cut his stuff too much, make him feel that he is not a Voice, give him the impression that you think his big scene all wet, and you will soon see the roses fade from his cheeks.
(To be continued to-morrow.)