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Taylorology Issue 49
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* T A Y L O R O L O G Y *
* A Continuing Exploration of the Life and Death of William Desmond Taylor *
* *
* Issue 49 -- January 1997 Editor: Bruce Long bruce@asu.edu *
* TAYLOROLOGY may be freely distributed *
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CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE:
The Screenwriters Defend Hollywood in the Murder Aftermath:
Gertrude Atherton, Beulah Marie Dix, Elinor Glyn, Frances Harmer,
Rupert Hughes, William Parker, Louis Sherwin, Rob Wagner,
Frank Woods and Thompson Buchanan, Waldemar Young
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What is TAYLOROLOGY?
TAYLOROLOGY is a newsletter focusing on the life and death of William Desmond
Taylor, a top Paramount film director in early Hollywood who was shot to
death on February 1, 1922. His unsolved murder was one of Hollywood's major
scandals. This newsletter will deal with: (a) The facts of Taylor's life;
(b) The facts and rumors of Taylor's murder; (c) The impact of the Taylor
murder on Hollywood and the nation; (d) Taylor's associates and the Hollywood
silent film industry in which Taylor worked. Primary emphasis will be given
toward reprinting, referencing and analyzing source material, and sifting it
for accuracy.
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The "home page" for TAYLOROLOGY has moved and is now located at
http://www.angelfire.com/az/Taylorology
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The Screenwriters Defend Hollywood in the Murder Aftermath
In the aftermath of the Taylor murder there was unprecedented public outcry
against the Hollywood film industry. Hollywood rose to defend itself, and
among the main defenders were the screenwriters, who gave interviews and
wrote articles in defense of Hollywood.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
February 10, 1922
Ruth Snyder
NEW YORK EVENING WORLD
Hollywood gets "Clean Bill" from Gertrude Atherton,
who Praises Movie Folk There
"I did not hear any more scandal during the nine months I spent in
Hollywood than I have heard in other places--not as much, in fact."
The speaker rose restlessly and crossed the room, her tall, graceful
figure becomingly enhanced by a diaphanous tea gown of Azores blue, serving
to conjure a mental picture of the motion picture colony. But Gertrude
Atherton, far from being a cinema actress in real life, is--as very one knows-
-an author of note and an artist of distinction in real life.
We had been sitting tet-a-tete in her cozily furnished sitting room in
the Madison Square Hotel. We decided to talk (at least I had decided to
talk) on some marital question, having, from some peculiar source, divined
the notion that this was one of Mrs. Atherton's favorite topics. But with a
decided and determined downward movement of her arms Mrs. Atherton "bashed"
this topic as too banal...
"Isn't there something else of particular interest we might discuss?"
I suggested...
"Mrs. Atherton thought for a few minutes. "How about Hollywood?"
I nodded approval...
"Hollywood has been very much maligned," Mrs. Atherton went on to
explain. "I can speak at first hand, having spent nine months in Hollywood.
I lived in the head and centre of Hollywood life--the Hollywood Hotel.
It was full of actresses, actors, screen writers, editors, authors and
directors. There was a dance there every Thursday night. A lot of old women
from the East sat on the verandah all day and gossiped. There was a good
deal to gossip about, but less scandal than one would imagine, judging from
the virtuous outbursts over that unfortunate colony of late. One heard of
'wild parties' of course. So one does of other societies where moving
picture folk are not admitted. But dissipation in Hollywood is confined to
small groups. The majority of screen actors and actresses are far too busy,
too hard working, to be able to afford dissipation. Just consider. They
must be on the lot at 8 o'clock in the morning in order to make up and be on
the stage at 9 o'clock. They rarely leave before 6 in the evening. By that
time their one idea is to rest and be ready for another hard day's work next
morning. Moreover, a sequence is not always finished in one day. The actors
of that sequence must come back looking exactly as they did the day before.
If a girl, for instance, indulged in a wild party and arrived with swollen
eyes and haggard cheeks, she would be handed her contract; or, if the picture
were too far advanced for that and the director were obliged to hold up
production for several days--while overhead expenses went on--until rest and
Turkish baths restored her youthful beauty, she would be retained until the
picture was finished, but no longer. She knows that and if she has any
inclination for dissipation she waits until the picture is finished. But as
a matter of fact the actresses in Hollywood are as decent a lot as can be
found anywhere. Several of the more famous actresses have thoroughly bad
reputations--I saw two in a highly illuminated condition myself--but the rank
and file behave themselves far better than many of the young people in
fashionable society.
Mrs. Atherton had mentioned the fact that Elinor Glyn had been at the
Hollywood Hotel while she was there. I reminded her of the different
impression of the American girl which Mrs. Glyn had brought back with her and
which had been incorporated in her article "What is the matter with the
American girl?"
"Mrs. Glyn hardly could have got her impressions from Hollywood--in fact
I don't think she pretended to. She was writing of the American girl in
general. I think she was far more favorably impressed with Hollywood than
she expected to be. I remember we were sitting together looking on at the
Cameraman's ball at the Ambassador Hotel, attended by practically the whole
colony, a very brilliant and interesting affair, when she remarked to me:
'Really, I haven't attended a party anywhere since the war where the women
were as decently dressed and behaved as well as these girls. It is most
interesting!"
"There has been some talk of doing away with Hollywood," I ventured.
"That may be. Colonies are always a mistake. They are too self-
centered. It would be far better if all pictures were taken in great cities
where the people connected with them could have other interests and
diversions. There is but one everlasting topic in Hollywood--moving
pictures. That is unhealthy and stunting to any mind.
"But Hollywood possesses many advantages. It costs little to live
there. Food is cheap. The warm climate makes one fairly independent of
coal. A car can be kept in a garage at from $12 to $20 a month. Here it
would cost $75. People complain of rents, but they are far more exorbitant
elsewhere.
"When all is said," concluded the author of 'Perch of the Devil,'
Hollywood is unique and most interesting, not the pesthole ignorant reformers
are trying to make it out."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
February 28, 1922
OAKLAND TRIBUNE
"Camp Followers" of Hollywood
by Beulah Marie Dix
On February 1, 1922, William D. Taylor, a director of specials, who for
some five years had been employed at the Lasky studio, was mysteriously
assassinated at his home in the Westlake district of Los Angeles. Almost
before his body was cold--almost before we who had known him and worked with
him had realized he was gone--there broke forth through the length and
breadth of this country such a torrent of innuendo directed against the
defenseless dear man and all who were in any way associated with him--such a
flood of malevolent abuse directed against the entire motion picture
profession of which he was an honored member, as in all the many years in
which I have followed the newspaper accounts of criminal cases I have never
seen equaled.
In order to disabuse my friends of the idea that they well may derive
from the press that Hollywood is a sink of iniquity, peopled exclusively by
drug fiends and perverts, I am sending out this circular letter. Please
forgive me for not making it personal. Time is precious, and I want to reach
you all as quickly as possible, to tell you something about William Taylor,
and about Hollywood.
I did not have the pleasure of knowing Mr. Taylor socially. I knew him,
as I have known so many people in my five years at the Lasky studio, in the
way of business. That is, we passed the time of day when we met on the lot,
and we had served together on one or two committees. He impressed me as a
courteous, dignified Englishman, with a touch of the actor in him, and a
touch of the soldier. He was as far as possible from the hard-boiled
roughneck with a megaphone that is the type of director popularized by second-
rate fiction. He seemed, indeed, more like a college professor!
Until he was dead, I never heard a word of scandal breathed against him.
A studio, let me tell you, is a terrible place for gossip. I've heard
blistering tales, of varying degrees of credibility, about all sorts of men
and women. But--
I never heard that William Taylor was, in the argot of the studio,
"a chicken-chaser," i.e., a pursuer of women.
I never heard that William Taylor was a drug addict.
That he had changed his name from Tanner to Taylor, that he left a wife
in the east, who had divorced him, that he had by her a daughter (whom he
supported) were facts, it appears, that were known to the few who were his
intimates. But surely he was under no compulsion to share these facts with
the world. His affairs were his own. His secrets were his own. He kept
them to himself--and in all conscience the world at large, that he barred
from his confidence, has taken a terrible revenge upon him for that
reticence. It is hard enough that while the good that men do is "interred
with their bones," the evil that men do lives after them, but harder measure
still is dealt to this poor soul. Nor merely the evil that he did, but all
the evil that can be devised by gross-minded men and women, who itch to
clamber into a cheap notoriety on the shoulders of the dead, is now his
monument of obloquy.
May God be more merciful to him than men have been!
As you know, my husband, our little daughter, and I have been living
here in Hollywood since 1916. We have seen the pretty town expand, with its
amazing erection of business blocks, of dwellings, of churches. We have seen
it adjust itself to war conditions. We have seen it, in the last months,
struggling with the laxness and lawlessness that have followed on the war,
the country over. Under such circumstances I feel more competent to discuss
Hollywood than some of the writers who, after a fortnight's stay at the
Hollywood Hotel, have published scathing articles upon the town in general
and the picture people numbered among its inhabitants in particular.
Those who have gone in for statistics assure me that the percentage of
arrests for misdemeanors and felonies is lower in Hollywood than in any town
of twice its size. They assure me that the number of schools, public and
private, is exceptionally large and that the average of attendance is notably
high. They say, with good reason, that a city of public schools means a city
of homes, and city of homes means a city of law-abiding, decent people.
I don't claim that Hollywood is peopled entirely by angels. Indeed,
I know of no community in America so blessed. I doubt, however, if it is so
completely overrun with devils as the stories current just now in press and
pulpit would lead one to believe.
The wickedness of Hollywood, as you know, is supposed to come from the
motion picture people. Who ARE the motion picture people? You know, in the
studios of Hollywood and Los Angeles some 30,000 people are employed. Quite
a little army! Among them are electricians, seamstresses, camera men,
writers, carpenters, bookkeepers, painters, stenographers, interior
decorators, a host of laboratory men and women. All these, who derive their
livelihood from the studios, are surely motion picture people. Are they
hopelessly damned? Well, no, there is a chance for them, perhaps, it is
regretfully admitted. The real sinners are either producers, the directors,
and the people who act in the pictures.
What makes a motion picture actor or actress? His (or her) say-so?
Every New Yorker knows that 50 per cent of the men arrested in New York give
their profession to be "stock-broking."
Every old residence of a college town knows that every hoodlum arrested
claims to be "a student." Everyone who has ever smiled at poor human nature
remembers how, in the old days, every little soiled butterfly on Broadway who
had once carried a spear in the chorus labeled herself ever after "a chorus
girl," or, more likely, "an actress."
We have the same phenomenon here in Hollywood and Los Angeles.
A certain type of pretty, weak-headed girl will always gravitate toward the
place where she believes her prettiness can be exchanged for a good time and
easy money. Many, many such girls drift into "moviedom," and the police
matrons of Los Angeles and the Girls Studio club of Hollywood are not able to
head all of them back to home and mother. If such a girl has worked for a
week--even for a day--as an "extra," she is a "motion picture actress" ever
after.
Where such girls come, there come also the men who prey upon them, and
they, too, given one day's [...] themselves the job of "managing" these
girls, are henceforth "motion picture men." These are the pitiable and
sinister figures that follow our industry as inevitably as hordes of
pilferers and pleasure-seeking women follow an army, and for all their
lamentable actions, the industry, to which they do not in any sense belong,
must bear the blame.
The existence of this border of "camp followers" accounts for many of
the charges of irregular living brought against motion picture actors and
actresses, but it does NOT account, I grant you, for all of them. There have
been incidents in the lives of some of the people who are prominent upon the
screen as disgraceful as incidents in the lives of citizens in other
professions. But did you ever stop to reckon what actual per cent of picture
actors and actresses have been involved in scandal? You know the ones who
behave themselves don't get into the papers. When Miss ----- leaps out of
one matrimonial bond and into another with the celerity of a society leader,
the racy tale is "news."
When my dear old friend, Edythe C-----, hurries home from the studio
where she has added another portrait to her notable gallery of grandes dames,
and cooks dinner for the actor husband whom she still adores after twenty-
five years of married life--well, that's not a sensation. Who cares if she
does? When a certain star takes more bootleg whisky than is good for him,
the story is whispered about with unction and hinted at in the press, but
when Jack H----, equally a star, walks down Hollywood boulevard, leading his
baby son by the hand and radiating proud fatherhood in every glance, the
pleasing sight isn't copy.
There are some vicious, weak-headed people in the profession with more
money than brains to use it. There are probably in Los Angeles and
Hollywood, as in other cities of equal size, a small number of unfortunates
(some of them "in the profession") who in the sequel of the Volstead act, are
slaves to the drug habit. There are others who drink far more than is
needful, and whose sole idea of "a good time" is a drunken revel.
These people are not, however, in the majority nor even in a large
minority--and why should a profession be condemned lock, stock and barrel,
because of the lapses of the feeblest and frailest of its exponents. At that
rate, to be consistent, people should boycott the banks because of the
malodorous Stillman case, cease to employ architects because of the ill name
of the late Stanford White, and abolish politicians because of the deceased
"Jack" Hamon.
Of course you are not unfamiliar with that count in the indictment
against Hollywood and the motion pictures to which Dreiser (I regret to say!)
has lately given currency. [See TAYLOROLOGY 41.]
"No girl can succeed in pictures, unless she yields herself to the
director."
This charge, now brought against the pictures as if it were something
quite new in iniquity, has been brought with equal plausibility against the
opera house, the theater, the department store, the business house, even
against our public schools. I fancy that as long as women are women and men
are men, and the power to promote lies in the hands of men, that charge will
be brought forward in every art and industry. Unfortunately there will
always be some truth in it. I don't believe a girl who is an absolute lump
has ever been pushed upstairs by a gratified male. I don't believe a girl
who is an absolute genius has ever been kept down by a disgruntled one. But
of two girls of equal average ability, the one that is nice to her employer--
in some cases, nice to the ultimate--is likely to rise faster than the one
who is stand-offish; whether the business in which she is employed is making
pictures or making pins. Of course it shouldn't be like this, but life isn't
a Pollyanna book, and a great many things are that, in the beautiful words of
Bret Harte, "hadn't ought to be."
It should be noticed also that this tale, to which Dreiser gives such
ready credence: "I couldn't succeed as SHE succeeds, because I wouldn't pay
the price," is the easiest alibi in the world for laziness and mediocrity.
One fact I wish to point out before I close this endless letter. We are
living in a post-war period, in a world that still is suffering from shell-
shock. Read "Ursula Trent," if you haven't already, to see what the reaction
from war conditions may do to a girl. Many of our people, especially our
younger people, have flown to pleasure, not in Hollywood and Los Angeles
alone, but the country over. A freedom of speech and of manner that seems
hair-raising to those of us who cut our wisdom teeth before 1914 is now the
vogue, and to judge by the wails from the East and the cries of "Save the
flapper!" distresses commentators upon men and manners in other circles than
in moviedom. Now it must be remembered that many of our people employed in
the studios besides our actors and actresses are very young people. To make
a good picture one has got to see with young eyes, as D. W. Griffith has
already said. We must have youth in this business, and our camera men, our
property boys, our girl script clerks, even some of our directors and their
assistants, are barely out of adolescence. They take their pleasures (silly
pleasure, perhaps) as so many young folk today are taking them, the country
over. Los Angeles is not the only city where some of the people jazz till
morning and drink perilous bootleg whisky, if they can't get better.
There are about 30,000 people in Los Angeles and Hollywood of various
arts and crafts, including actors and actresses, who are employed in the
studios--genuine "motion picture people," who face unemployment and its
attendant disasters, if the studios are closed--and it is a frozen fact that
a campaign of continuous abuse may end by closing them. Of the 30,000 not
300 genuine picture people (exclusive of the camp follower class) lead lives
of such irregularity as to make themselves conspicuous. Less than one
percent, that is, of the motion picture population. And for the sake of that
one percent, the many decent, law-abiding folk who like myself are residents
of Hollywood, leading their quiet lives and bringing up their children, to
the best of their ability, in the fear of God, are today slandered and
vilified almost beyond credence by a portion of the press that wants, not the
humdrum truth, but the kind of racy story that will "sell the paper" to the
prurient and by a section of the clergy that have found it easier to fill
their places of worship by hawking salacious sensation rather than by
preaching Christ and Him crucified.
Thirty thousand people defamed, execrated, pilloried because of the
frailties of less than 300. Of old ten righteous men were held enough to
save Sodom and Gomorrah. Shall Hollywood in justice be today condemned as a
modern Sodom--because of ten unrighteous?
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
February 20, 1922
LOS ANGELES EXAMINER
Justice and Fair Play for Film Folk,
Fervent Elinor Glyn Plea
by Elinor Glyn
America is supposedly a Democracy. It had a magnificent start, its laws
being framed at a time when the world had emerged into a fair state of
civilization--and yet, as Mr. Brisbane frequently points out in his masterly
leading articles, the most appalling cases of injustice, which would disgrace
a corrupt autocracy, seem to be continually occurring.
One of the greatest is going on now.
It is the hysterical, illogical attack upon the moving picture
community, which has sprung forth as the aftermath of the tragic Taylor
murder.
My sense of "cricket" won't let me remain silent about it any longer!
I feel as I did once when I was a child, and hit a big man in the street
with my little parasol, because he was beating a horse carrying a heavy load.
My pen is only a tiny thing, but it is going to run on and write words
to ask those of you who are good, just fellows and true citizens of a great
country, to listen to me and then stop and think for yourselves.
The moving picture industry is, I am told, the fifth largest in America.
It employs countless carpenters, electricians, painters, plumbers, artists,
draftsmen, architects, designers, writers and musicians.
Probably the smallest number of its constituents are the actors and
actresses--and only a fractional percentage of these are lurid figures who
delight in scandalous excesses. But the whole community is being held up to
the English speaking peoples of the earth as a rotten sore on the face of
America!
Can anything be more unjust and illogical?
A mysterious murder is committed, and at once, like a flock of vultures,
irresponsible reporters from the East swarm out to the Coast to get colorful
news to telegraph back to their centers! They may individually be the
kindest-hearted beings who would not hurt a fly--but they do not stop to
think what harm they are doing to millions of their innocent countrymen and
women when they spread hideous tales of dope fiends, parties and other
horrors to ugly to speak of, giving the impression, culled from perhaps one
isolated and probably hugely exaggerated case, that every actor and actress
whom the public has grown to love and admire on the screen hides some
grotesque vice in his or her palatial home, where orgies worse than those of
Rome's decadence are supposed to occur nightly!
NOW USE COMMON SENSE and ask yourselves, how could any business be done
at all, how could pictures be made, how could work be accomplished, if even a
tenth part of what is alleged were true?
Dope fiends cannot come up to time every morning on the set at 9 o'clock
and do a hard day's work; drunken women and men, putrid with vice, cannot
register on the screen for all eyes to testify, as beautiful, fresh young
boys and girls! Directors cannot, month after month and year after year, put
over dramatic action and control large companies of people if they ware
stupid and sodden with whisky.
Use your intelligence, sharp-witted American public! And do not let
scandalmongers get by with all this nonsense. You are not softies to be
gulled by freakish exaggerations. Sift the thing down to probable facts, and
your own intelligence will get at the truth.
I am a stranger who has watched this cinema world for a year now. And
they say that lookers-on see most of the game! It also is my habit to
analyze and make psychological deductions, and I tell you that while it is
perfectly true that there does exist a minute minority of vicious people in
the business, there are hundreds and thousands of good, honest, hard-working
men and women, girls and boys, children--and even animals; whose livelihood
is threatened by the stamp which this injudicious attack upon the community
at large may bring.
So when next you--who read this--are scanning the papers of your home
towns for fresh horrible details about the poor movie world, and nodding your
heads over the imaginary Sodom and Gomorrah of Hollywood--try to remember
that you are helping to take the bread out of the mouths of your fellow
citizens, whose work has given you many hours of pleasure and relaxation and
for which you should be grateful. And above all, you are lowering the
prestige of your country in the eyes of the civilized world.
Punish all offenders ruthlessly when offenses are proved against them.
But do not stab an entire community in the back by spreading insidious
scandal concerning it as a whole.
I--Elinor Glyn--a stranger, who has always loved America, and realized
its greatness, am appealing to you Americans to be just to your own kith and
kin. Because justice and fair play are what the immortal Stars and Stripes
stand for!
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
February 17, 1922
HOLLYWOOD CITIZEN
Defends Films and Hollywood
Miss Frances Harmer, the sweet-faced, white-haired literary adviser to
William de Mille, and Hollywood resident, who has lived long enough to have
known the American stage in comparative infancy, and who numbers among her
friends scores of people of eminence in the world of letters, has taken it
upon herself to write a very effective defense of Hollywood and the motion
picture industry in answer to many inquiries received from literary people
all over the country. Her defense is in the form of a circular letter, and
is so good that it has been mimeographed by the publicity committee of the
Writers' Club for general distribution to members of the club. Extracts from
the letter follow:
"Hollywood is not a hotbed of iniquity or a 'Sodom and Gomorrah,' nor at
all worse than any other city. In fact, its police records show a much
cleaner bill than many cities twice its size. It suffers from several
things. The envy of other cities which, desiring the money brought in by the
motion picture industry, put everything against Hollywood in flaring
headlines and any defense of Hollywood in small type in some obscure space of
the paper.
"There is not any industry in the world which can say 'We number no
sinners.' And in almost every other industry than the motion picture one,
the public at large does not connect human frailty with the work or business
of the culprit. The Stillman case has been a scandal to the full as bad as
any other, but no one says, 'I will never have a banker in my house again.'
There are undoubtedly perverted plumbers, corrupt carpenters, degraded
dentists--no need to go on! But while the public gives just contempt to
convicted criminals in these or any other classes, the work in which the
criminals were engaged is left alone. There are, of course, reasons why the
tremendous publicity which, one must admit, has been sought by the motion
picture industry, throws into relief every motion picture sinner. But,
surely, if people would exercise a little common sense they would see the
injustice of this. They would recall that muck-rakers have exposed appalling
conditions in big department stores. I take this as only one example.
Hollywood is suffering, so it is reported, from the determination of several
other towns to wrest from it the moving picture industry.
"The case of Mr. Arbuckle I pass over briefly, saying that the press has
made the most of it; and that a jealous city has done everything to show the
matter in the worse possible light.
"But in the case of Mr. Taylor, whom I knew personally, admired, liked
and respected tremendously, we find the most despicable lies told and
credited--told by a vicious press; credited by gullible and ignorant readers.
Mr. Taylor's life, during his stay in this studio, was flawless as far as the
eye of his associates could see. Dignity, reticence, courtesy and kindness
marked his dealings with all his fellow-workers. His pictures speak for
themselves. Whether successful or not, they were clean and artistic. I have
never heard anybody say otherwise, though I must admit that I have not myself
seen them all.
"The majority of the motion picture people as I know them--and I
challenge anyone to disprove this statement--are home-loving and respectable.
Hollywood and more and finer schools than any other place of its size; and,
as I heard a brilliant speaker say the other day: 'A city of schools is a
city of children; a city of children is a city of homes; and a city of homes
is the city of a respectable community.'"
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
February 13, 1922
LOS ANGELES RECORD
Movie Morals Pretty Bad
Church Folk Little Worse
by Rupert Hughes
Movie morals are very bad. They are, indeed, almost bad enough to be
described in the words of almost any preacher in almost any pulpit speaking
for his congregation: "Oh, Lord, Thou knowest that we are miserable sinners,
doing those things we ought not to have done, leaving undone those things we
ought to have done."
Moving picture people are nearly as bad as church members. Many of them
are church members. And it has been shown that of the people in the
penitentiaries over 90 per cent have church affiliations, proving that--well,
we'd better not get in too deep.
A moving picture man has recently been on trial for manslaughter--at a
time when only four or five ministers were on trial for murder, not to
mention the murder trial of a clergyman's son who was also the husband of a
bishop's daughter.
I have my suspicions that a good deal of mischief is going on more or
less surreptitiously in moving pictures, although for two years I have been
working about a big studio and have never caught anybody kissing anybody
except as directed in the picture. I can't say as much for any Sunday school
picnic I ever attended.
Divorces are very frequent in moving picture colonies. Hollywood is
getting to be almost as bad as England, Chicago and some other divorce mills,
though it is not yet nearly up to the standard of Indiana, which
statisticians have put far ahead of Japan as a dissolver of marriages.
Some moving picture people have been known to drink recently. This puts
them down with the great majority.
Dancing is indulged in by many and few of them favor the old fashioned
waltz, which is not called that pure, sweet pastime--but which was once
called the devil's favorite device and passion's perdition.
Many moving picture people wear a minimum of clothes, but judging from
the sermons I read about, this is the case with all the women in the world.
In my two years in a picture studio I have not seen a fight (except a
rehearsed one). I have heard less profanity than on a college campus.
I have seen less jealousy than in a convention of college professors or
scientists.
I have seen tens of thousands of feet of film taken with never a
quarrel, never a voice raised in temper, never a dispute that passed the
bounds of artistic debate.
Of course unpleasant and evil things happen, just as bad things happen
everywhere as happen in the moving picture colonies. The human vices
flourish normally because the movie people are human, but the human virtues
flourish also for the same reason.
In all comparisons, one should avoid the comparison of real people and
real conditions with ideal people and conditions, because the ideal is only
imaginary. Movie folk should be compared, therefore, with actual classes as
they are. They will not suffer by any such juxtaposition.
Moralists howl at the movies, but they howl without logic. Vices of
every sort ran riot centuries before there were movies. Wicked people enter
the movies, but they were wicked before they entered, and they would have
gone on being wicked if they had stayed out of them.
Pictures intended to appeal to evil emotion have been put on--and will
be put on again. But this is true of books, plays, paintings, what not. One
of the leading New York clergymen was accused by his congregation recently of
trying to draw crowds by preaching salacious sermons. And thousands of
clergymen have made use of the same sensationalism. It is a neat trick to
denounce indecency so indecently as to attract a morbid crowd. Pulipteers
used it for ages before movies were invented. But I feel that the person who
is attracted to a picture, a sermon or a play, because (s)he has heard that
it is spicy, was already so eager for spice that little harm is done, and a
dangerous appetite may be appeased by a little homeopathy.
All new arts, all old arts, like old and new religions, professions,
races, are, and have been, and will be, denounced by somebody, world without
end. If critics could only realize how stale their criticisms are and how
carelessly they have been handled.
While I do not believe in idolizing or applauding whole classes of
people, I am solemnly persuaded that the motion picture people are as good,
as kind, as earnest, as pure of heart, as beneficial to the welfare and
virtue of the state, as any other class. A man, a woman, a girl or a boy is
as safe morally in a motion picture studio as anywhere else. Which is saying
much or little.
The ridicule and abuse showered upon the movies differ not in the least
from the showers that have greeted every other new activity.
I am proud to belong to this world, and am proud of its people.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
February 23-4, 1922
SAN FRANCISCO BULLETIN
Hollywood Truths Fall Far Short of Fancy, Writer Says
by William Parker
(Former San Francisco Newspaper Man and Now a Member of
The Screen Writers' Guild and of the Authors' League of America)
A joke a venerable ancestry but with a slightly new twist has been in
circulation in Hollywood recently. It goes something like this: A man from
the Middle West confides to an acquaintance: "I always thought Sodom and
Gomorrah were husband and wife until just recently when I heard they were
brother and sister."
It is hardly likely that this is the man who has been doing all of the
talking about Hollywood and the motion picture industry, but he has many
prototypes who, like him, have accepted as gospel what is told them.
It was only a short while ago that a young man friend of mine
telegraphed me to meet him at the Arcade station; he was coming from the East
for his first vacation in Los Angeles.
"Well," I said, after the preliminary greetings, "of all the
superlatively advertised charms of California, what do you want to see
first?"
Eagerly he replied: "The hop joints, the dens of vice, the love
bungalows of Hollywood!"
As I led him through the marbel corridor to the waiting auto, he
continued, "I went through San Francisco's Barbary Coast in its palmy days;
I saw Chicago's Custom House Place in days gone by; I was in Tonopah and
Goldfield at the height of their booms; I've read Rex Beach's description of
Alaskan concentration camps, where men were drawn like flies to an unclean
feast; but from what I hear about Hollywood, oh boy, it's got 'em all
skinned! They tell me it's a combination of Sodom, Gomorrah and Babylon in a
Byzantine setting, and that if a Gibbon should write a real 'Rise and Fall of
the Hollywood Empire,' it would be the best seller of the century.
I understand that in Hollywood every motion picture director is a Caesar,
with the things that are Caesar's being rendered unto them; that the managers
are cringing Pilates, who show cowardly compassion for vice and dope, while
Virtue goes hourly to its crucifixion!"
"Friend," I answered mildly, "you don't know the half of it. Come, see
for yourself the truth about Hollywood."
We climbed into the auto, I spoke to the chauffeur and we headed up
Central avenue, a short cut to Sunset boulevard, that broad roadway leading
to the land of dreams--mostly hop dreams, if we are to believe what we hear
nowadays.
A gathering frown of disappointment had begun to gather on the forehead
of my friend as we sped through the wholesale district, over industrial
tracks, past unprosaic cold storage plants and unattractive buildings given
over to the wholesaling of farm implements, oil drilling machinery,
restaurant supplies. Through the historic Los Angeles plaza we sped, a
historic spot, indeed as pictured in the brochures and guide books
disseminated broadcase by an ambitious community.
The corrugations in the brow of my friend deepened when I told him what
it was. I truly believe he expected to see gaily garbed Rudolph Valentinos
twanging liquid notes from seductive guitars while entrancing Nazimovas
gracefully whirled in unison to the strains of "La Paloma." But all he saw
was a crowd of perennially unemployed Mexicans, several watchful-eyed
uniformed police to keep them from gambling, a number of uncomfortable
lounging benches painted a choleric green; and, for a background the whitened
and weather-beaten walls of a chapel, a relic of the padres. Poor Father
Junipero Serra, he didn't think enough of Los Angeles' future even to build a
mission here!
I did not wonder that my friend was becoming disillusioned. Almost
every newcomer does. Then he learns to love the purple hills, the soft gray
tones of the olive groves, the vivid green of the orange trees--(pamphlets
mailed on request by any real estate dealer).
And then--Hollywood!
"You are lucky to get in here," I told my friend as we stopped at one of
the big studios in Hollywood.
"Why so?" he asked as he glanced about him at the fragile skeleton of
composition board, canvas and paint which is to appear on the motion picture
screen as an impregnable wall of ancient Rome.
"Because the business of making motion pictures has reduced itself to a
commercial certainty," I replied to his question. "This has become an
industry of time clocks, requisition blanks, of uninterrupted labor from 8:30
o'clock in the morning to 5:30 o'clock in the evening, sometimes far into the
night. Efficiency experts declare that visitors interfere with the work, so
in this and in several other studios the curious tourist is barred."
"Umph," he muttered. "Where are the bathing girls? I thought every
studio had a flock of them."
"The bathing girl has been relegated to the limbo of forgotten things.
She was a seasonable novelty, coming into style like the short skirt and
giving the public something new to see and talk about."
I called his attention to placards posted in conspicuous places, signs
reading: "Any employee found gambling or drinking intoxicating liquor on
these grounds will be subject to instant dismissal."
"Who," he asked, "is this ferret-eyed little man we have been seeing
everywhere since we came in?"
"That is the man hired by the company to enforce what that placard
says."
On Hollywood boulevard we came upon a motion picture company working in
one of the largest churches.
"You don't mean to tell me," exclaimed my friend in amazement, "that the
pastor gave his permission for this scandalous sort of thing!"
We found the amiable pastor, a man with steel blue eyes into which you
needed but to glance to know he was a keen student of character--we found him
chatting with the leading woman of the company. Truly, a disgraceful
proceeding in its entirety.
"Well," mused my incredulous friend, "I had no idea there were churches
in Hollywood."
To this I remarked, "The pulpit has come to recognize that by means of
motion picture greater moral lessons can be conveyed than through any other
medium. Alert and able ministers in Hollywood have inculcated in the minds
of producers, writers, directors and actors that cheerfulness, cleanliness
and wholesome entertainment is the religious tonic most needed by the world
today.
"There are twenty-one churches in Hollywood. The average attendance at
these churches is 40,000--with Hollywood's population estimate at 70,000;
30,000 of its residents being employed in the studios. One church holds
seven services every Sunday to care for the throngs at its edifice.
At another big church hundreds of persons are turned away at every service.
"One of the foremost actors of the silent drama is an usher and active
member in one of the churches.
"There are ten graded schools and one high school here; we have a branch
of the University of California; there are eight private schools; there are
two daily and a number of weekly newspapers--"
"For the love of Mike," interrupted my friend, "cut out the statistics."
The shriek of a siren rose above the rattle and hum of traffic.
"What's that whistle?" he asked.
"That's at the Hollywood laundry. It blows at 7 o'clock in the morning,
at noon and at 5:30 o'clock."
"Do these kings and queens of the movies go to work, eat and quit work
by a laundry whistle!"
I suppose that back home he had cherished the thought that the
Hollywooders were summoned to the studios and to their banquets by stalwart
glistening Nubians sounding sweet-toned chimes.
"Let's go to a cabaret where we can dance and meet some of the film
Janes," he suggested.
"I am sorry," I told him, "but when Hollywood voted to annex itself to
Los Angeles it retained some of its charter provisions, one of which
prohibits dancing and cabaret entertainment in cafes."
We drew up, however, in front of what at first glance appeared to be an
Old World inn. Inside we found many of the film folk had already arrived.
It has always been to me--and I have known picture people intimately for
seven years--a novelty to see them as we saw them that day, a busy throng
with cosmetics high-lighting their faces--just from the camera and ready to
go back before it. Here they were eating away, wholly unconscious of their
ball gowns, their tramp make-ups, a tuxedo-ed gentleman seated alongside a
cannibal made grotesque by the addition of a topcoat to conceal the scarcity
of clothing beneath.
It was evident to me that my friend was not enjoying himself as he had
anticipated.
"You can't tell me," he argued, "that these people have due regard for
the conventions. Ordinary people would not come out in public places dressed
and painted like this."
"Listen," I said patiently. "It requires anywhere from thirty minutes
to two hours to put on a make-up and costume. Lunch time--depending on the
sun and other conditions--ranges from thirty minutes to one hour--never more
than an hour. Make-up and costumes are a part of their daily life, just as
overalls are to the laborer."
"But the women smoke in public."
Glancing about the cafe I counted five women smoking cigarettes.
"You will note that two of the women are not in make-up, which puts them
under suspicion of being non-picture people, possibly tourists. The other
three obviously are actresses. But what about it? Is it not a common sight
to see women smoking in almost every first-class cafe? If the wife of a
business man smokes in public is it a reflection on her moral standards?
Then why point an accusing finger at a motion-picture actress because she
does this sort of thing?"
But my friend was not being disillusioned by statistics and moralizing
generalities.
"Look here now, you can't tell me--to be specific--that little Miss
----- ----- is the sort of a girl she should be."
"No," I replied frankly, "she is not. Were Miss ----- ----- an ordinary
girl a good sound spanking would be of vast benefit to her and to the motion
picture industry as a whole."
"It is so easy--" there was a sneer in his tone, "--then why isn't it
done?"
"I will tell you why. In the days before motion pictures came into
vogue, Mama ----- -----, a blue-nosed Yankee woman, was a stock actress of
mediocre ability and with a sniveling brat on her hands. She never knew
whether her next week's booking would be in vaudeville or the poorhouse. Can
you imagine Mama ----- -----'s feelings when this same brat jumped into
public popularity and a large salary because of a winsomeness which appealed
to motion picture audiences! Mama ----- ----- now has diamonds, limousines,
a mansion and an English accent. And you would ask her to spank the source
of this luxury!
"There is an accepted belief that the motion picture industry has raised
certain popular actors and actresses to their high positions. The public,
the movie fan, has reared most of these idols; and I have yet to see an idol
without clay feet. But do not forget that there are prominent actors and
actresses who have won their way to fame by dint of hard labor. This type of
actor and actress is respected and encouraged by the picture industry. The
other type is the cross we bear, a type wished on us to our seeming
everlasting damnation by a public woefully deficient in its ability to
discriminate between talent and trickery.
"Is it fair, I ask you in all earnestness, to believe that because a few
have touched pitch we are all defiled?"
"Gee whiz," ejaculated my friend mournfully as the waiter set down our
orders, "you have certainly ruined my vacation. I came out here to learn all
the 'dirt' about Hollywood."
"I am very sorry to have spoiled your vacation," I said regretfully.
"But you have learned the truth about Hollywood."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
February 20, 1922
NEW YORK WORLD
Hollywood, Almost Free of Crime,
Defended Against Lurid Charges
by Louis Sherwin
Can you imagine dear old Flatbush or Upper Montclair waking up one
morning to find itself infamous all over the land as a harborer of the seven
deadly sins, with every apartment its own love cult and a hop joint on every
other side street? That would not be a lot more absurd than what has
happened to Hollywood and the film industry.
This Hollywood that the newspapers of America, especially of the Middle
West, have been describing as a cross between Sodom and Ninevh, is as quiet,
dull, prosaic--and, I must confess, tiresome--a suburb as you could imagine.
Therein lies the irony of the situation.
Hitherto the worst affront the local pride has had to endure was the
sneering of Easterners who found the place deadly slow. Today the movie
people, Hollywood--in fact, all Los Angeles--are mad, fighting mad.
Until recently the gibes at Hollywood life and naughty goings on in the
movie colony have been passed off as a joke. But the mess of unsavory
fictions with which the country has been flooded as a result of the Taylor
murder case has proved too much. For once the victims are preparing to hit
back.
They claim the situation affects not only the half million people of Los
Angeles and a few thousand engaged in the cinema industry, but it affects
everybody in the United States who does not care to have his reading, theatre-
going, diet and personal habits, regulated by the hybrid union of Church and
State.
Some newspapers have talked about "revelations of depravity among movie
people arising out of the Taylor case." The truth is that there have been no
revelations. Not a single fact along these lines has been unearthed by any
reporter. Lacking facts, certain correspondents have sent broadcast the most
amazing farrago of fabrications, innuendoes, generalizations and downright
lies.
The Taylor murder so far is as complete a mystery as you will encounter
in American history. In order to keep the story alive there have been hints
of dope rings, love cults and outright accusations of a conspiracy of silence
among the movie people.
The fact is that Taylor was a gentleman, and a certain type of mind
seems not to know that a gentleman does not bandy his private affairs about
for the gossips. Consequently very few of his friends--let alone his
colleagues--knew that his professional name was different from his
patronymic. If they had known, they would not have thought anything of it,
as nearly half the people in the show business and a fair percentage of
writers adopt professional names for the most commonplace business reasons.
The foregoing will merely illustrate the far-fetched absurdity of the
accusations and canards that have been published. The truth about Hollywood
is so far from the hectic idea that people have conceived of the place that
it is almost laughable. It is not, as generally supposed, a colony of cinema
people lurking in the foothills for the purpose of riotous living. It is a
residence district, virtually a suburb, of Los Angeles with a population of
70,000. Of these only some 20,000 are connected with the movies.
There is absolutely no night life in the place. Drive down its main
street at 11 p.m. and you will be depressed by its quiet and sleepiness.
There is not a single public dance hall, not a single cabaret, nor any
restaurant with a dance license. Before it became part of Los Angeles,
Hollywood was a Prohibition town--fifteen years ago. There is only one
poolroom and one bowling alley. The fact is that night life in Hollywood
would make a Sunday afternoon in London look feverish.
I am not trying to suggest that it is a community of plaster saints.
Wild parties are given--some, but not all, by movie people--ranging from the
home brew fest in the four-room bungalow to the Scotch and champagne jags in
a few of the larger homes. Undoubtedly there are people here who use drugs,
but where are there not?
Arrests for felonies average less than three a week, and half of these
arrests are made at the request of outside communities. Of the persons
arrested for offenses other than traffic violations for many months past, not
a single one has been actually employed in motion pictures. Practically
every arrest in Hollywood for felony is a floater.
New York people will be more inclined to sympathize with the inhabitants
of this place than the rest of America. America judges New York by Broadway,
and Broadway, as we all know, is supported for the most part by pious
hinterlanders on the loose.
Until the Arbuckle case no person engaged in pictures--I mean actually
making his or her livelihood in the industry--had been even as much as
charged with a crime.
Moreover, while there are now three cases of what the French call
"crimes passionnels" occupying the Los Angeles papers, in no one of them is
any movie person involved. Los Angeles has its full share of these cases,
but in no case have people in the cinema industry been concerned, let alone
being guilty. The courts are crowded with divorce cases, as elsewhere in
America, but comparatively few of them concern picture people.
In short, the latter are no worse and no better than people in the
banking, plumbing or farming business. Of course, the publicity they have
put out about themselves is largely to blame for the odium they have
incurred, and for this they have themselves to thank.
The public loves to read about big figures, so it has been surfeited
with tales of swollen salaries, extravagant living, ostentatious automobiles
and garish homes of the movie folk. But, as a matter of cold fact, all that
sort of thing belongs away back in the past.
Salaries have shrunk extensively. Most of the people in the business
are broke, having been out of jobs anywhere from three to ten months. Only
the frugal are really ahead of the game.
The Producers' Association, the Screen Writers' Guild and the Directors'
Association have girded their loins for a scrap. In self-defense the Los
Angeles Chamber of Commerce, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, women's clubs
and other organizations are backing them up. In future any man bringing wild
charges against this profession and the community in which it is located will
be called vigorously to account.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
February 25, 1922
OAKLAND TRIBUNE
The Shame of Sleepy Hollywood
by Rob Wagner
We are the only people in the world who estimate beauty in terms of
cost. Imagine, if you can, a French guidebook referring to Notre Dame as
"our $10,000,000 cathedral," and the Mona Lisa as "the most heavily insured
picture extant." Yet scattered all over this land of boost and plenty we
have our "$5,000,000 state houses," "$2,000,000 theaters," "$100,000
libraries" and "$50,000 orchestras." Money is our measure of success,
material or artistic.
It is easy, therefore, to understand how the bell-ringers of the movies
should have seized upon these fiscal superlatives to exploit their wares.
It was the one measure everybody was sure to understand. And so for years
our peppy Barnums have been regaling the villagers with tales of Marie Hoppe-
Head's $25,000 Pekinese pups, the $50,000 sable coat of Gloria Gorgeous, and
Harold Handsome's salary that, if placed end to end, would reach from here to
Helen-gone.
Unfortunately, however, these stories have had unlooked-for effects.
If you had read every day for six years that plumbers were earning $5000 a
week salaries, you would soon begin to hate plumbers, howsoever beautiful
they might be. This would be especially true if you thought their plumbing
was inadequate. Every day I meet charming, but indignant people who say,
"I have just read that this little blonde pinhead, Edythe Excellent, is paid
$500 a week. Well, I hope the poor fish chokes, and I hope I get my hope."
And so because of our extravagant boasting a righteous jealousy was born.
Then, again, if you had been fed up on stories of how our expensive pets
dined on goldfish and bees' knees and shampooed their curly locks in
sparkling Mosella and green Chartruse, it would be easy to believe that they
would go the limit of sensual indulgence in hooch and hop.
It has taken an unhappy tragedy to one of our directors to reveal just
these states of mind; and nobody has been more shocked by the results of our
silly publicity than the motion picture people themselves. Eastern
newspapers now drifting back to California are painting pictures of a "movie
colony" that surpass anything our wildest directors ever put on the screen to
show decadence and crime.
This "colony," it seems, lies somewhere in the foothills of Southern
California, far from the restraining contact with ordinary civilization and
immune from the social standards of Iowa and Illinois. Here, within its
sacred enclosure, the film folk live in a gorgeous splendor that would have
made the Babylonians seem like unimaginative pikers, their isolation
permitting them to enjoy a code of morals that only a regiment of morons
could cherish.
This modern Gomorrah is known the world over as Hollywood, and,
according to population imagination, its streets are lined with dance-halls,
cabarets, magnificent gambling joints and opium dens, the denizens of the
film colony working but one or two temperamental hours a day, devoting the
other twenty-three to delicious sin. Movie queens, in inlaid limousines,
roll through the golden avenues to meet wicked directors intent upon their
happy ruin, bathing parties nightly plunge into tanks of eau-de-cologne,
while beautiful "snow birds" attend cocaine parties at which the Japanese
servants administer drugs from silver needles; while every morning the
police, seizing the blonde curls of your beautiful film favorite, drag her
from some subterranean hop-joint.
Thus we see what great wealth and prohibition have done to a colony of
erstwhile "chambermaids and switchboard girls" from the innocent Middlewest.
One eastern paper goes so far as to say that "the needle-hounds of
Hollywood order their drugs over the telephone like groceries."
It seems too bad to spoil this vivacious picture of dear old Hollywood,
but, after all, maybe the truth will be quite as interesting. And so, as my
heroin seems, for the moment, to have lost its efficacy, permit me during
this lucid interim to paint Hollywood as it really is.
In the first place, the district of Hollywood is not a detached
"colony," but an integral part of a great city of half a million souls,
mostly undrugged. And this city, largely populated by Iowans and Kansans,
with the austere morality of the prairie, would hardly tolerate a modern
Sodom right "in its midst!" Hollywood is as much a part of Los Angeles as
Harlem is of New York, even its residents being quite unaware of its
artificial boundaries.
Nor are the motion picture studios entirely confined to this district,
for three of the largest are miles away in Universal City, Edendale and
Culver City. The truth is that, though many of the motion picture people
live in the Hollywood district, they are scattered all the way from Santa
Monica to Pasadena.
So much for the geography of Hollywood. And now as to its character.
Well, first of all, it is what is known in Los Angeles as a "high-grade
residence district" of homes, with only enough stores to attend its homely
wants. It hasn't, and never has had, a public dance-hall; there is not a
restaurant or cafe with music, and dancing is forbidden the guests; there is
not a cabaret or a roof-garden, a hopjoint or a house of prostitution. There
is but one poolroom, and that upstairs, and one bowling alley, and that in a
basement--for our Sodomatic ordinances forbid these evils on the ground
floor!
But no doubt you have read of a competing group of Babylonian hotels
battering off our rich degenerates. The fact is, there is just one large
hotel--the old, rambling frame "Hollywood," palm-shaded and quiet, in which
ancient and honorable Eastern ladies do a stupendous amount of knitting and
numberless drop stitches, and night life in Hollywood is about as exciting as
Sunday in Zion City.
Ha, ha! but now about its secret sins? May it not be true that there is
an underground life among these cinemaleptics of which I wot not? Possibly.
And so the other day I took a fortifying sniff of snow and set out for police
headquarters, where to learn from our alert guardians the real truth of
Hollywood's carnival of crime.
"Capt. Horn," says I, "I am the special correspondent of the Denver Dirt-
Disher, and I want the real dope on Hollywood."
"Why take any more?" he answered wittily. "You can't improve on the
phantasma you've sent out already. But if you really want the truth we might
go over the records."
The last five months was all we had time for, but in those five months
I learned these police facts: There had not been one arrest for prostitution
or peddling narcotics, not one complaint from any resident regarding a "wild
party," and not one call to raid a single house or apartment. Arrests for
felonies averaged less than three a week and half of these were made at the
request of outside communities. Of persons arrested for offenses (other than
violations of the traffic ordinance) not one was employed in the motion
pictures.
"And you might add," grinned the happy captain, "that there hasn't been
a murder in Hollywood in ten years."
"Well, if all you say is true," I shot back, "why have you a hospital
for drug addicts here?"
"Say, child," he replied, "that hospital has been here for eighteen
years--ten years before there was a motion picture studio, and its patrons
come from Denver, Chicago and points east."
Capt. Horn is the worst material for a bright newspaper fella I have met
yet.
No, brother--judged by carnival standards--Hollywood is duller by far
than Flatbush or Ypsilanti. About all you can get after 10 p.m. is a malted
milk and the services of an undertaker.
But churches! I can literally exclaim, "Holy smoke!" for one church has
to hold seven masses every Sunday to attend the spiritual needs of its
devotees, while another cult has one of the largest congregations in America,
a roll-call which would read like a "Who's Who in Filmdom."
Of course we have our share of bad eggs--eve as your town. We have
cowboy actors who wear precious stones in their dentistry, and a small
assortment of get-rich-quickers who do not behave prettily at times, but
these few half-baked walkof
fs are not peculiar to the motion picture
industry. Bankers, and even plumbers, sometimes fall by the wayside.
In fact, I know of eight or ten near-film favorites, three of whom are
stars of about the fourth magnitude, whose definition of fun is to get quite
drunk at dinners and throw things about in childish abandon; but a friend of
mine who attended one of their parties told me it was utterly witless and
only mildly obscene.
However, some day one of these alcoholic baby dolls is going to pull
something in public or shoot up her cutie at an exclusive revel and then once
again you will be fed up on news of how the whole of Hollywood is drug soaked
to the ears. Thus will 30,000 workers in the great eighth art have to pay
for the lapses of less than a third of one per cent. The embarrassment we
suffer for our bad eggs is that they have been perched so high that, when
they fall the disgusting aroma is noted all over the world.
But how about their salaries? I hear you ask. Well, it is in this
department that our publicity hounds have exaggerated the most. Charlie
Chaplin's "million-dollar yearly salary" was the sheerest bunk. He did not
receive one-quarter that sum, and from this must be deducted the cost of
production (and if you know anything about such things you'll know it is very
high) and last, but by no means least, the income tax, which is collected
with almost diabolic enthusiasm. It is true certainly spectacular stars have
purchased red-white-and-blue automobiles of sensational design and fabulous
cost, but you would be amazed at the number of these gasoline chariots that
have reverted to the original owners after the first small payment. This is
especially true since the grand shaking down of a year ago. As for the other
functionaries of the industry, the technical staffs, cameramen, etc., they
receive about the same wages as in any other industry. It is also true a few-
-a very few--exceptional artists may earl $50,000 to $100,000 a year, but so
do they in literature, music, law and engineering.
Thus we see--if you believe me, which you probably won't if the poison
has sunk too deep--that Hollywood is in almost ridiculous contrast to its
popular conception.
But if your beautiful little town is as dull as I say it is then "what
do the film folks do o' night?" Well, they flock to the movies, especially
the pre-views. Many of the stars, like Doug and Mary, for instance, have
projecting machines in their homes, where every evening they enjoy with small
groups of friends the latest releases. Then there is one playhouse, the
Community theater, where the high-brow drama is enacted by former stage stars
without compensation. One dreadful relaxation I am compelled to admit. The
Wednesday night fights at the American Legion are attended by a large
audience of film people of both genders, even the ladies of the research
department growing quite excited when the bouts are particularly lively, but
as one of our local ministers says: "The soldier boys must have their fun."
But to offset these debauches, I must also mention the Pilgrimage Play,
America's Oberamagau, which is shown in the Hollywood bowl to thousands every
season, and the theosophical plays of the Krotona Institute that is situated
right in our midst.
But now for a confession, for it isn't fair to speak only of our
virtues. It is perfectly true that certain landlords refuse to rent to the
movie people. You see Hollywood has 70,000 souls, counting oversouls and
insoles, and most of them have come here because of its dolce far niente
quietude, and, alas, I'm afraid we sometimes break in upon their magnolia-
scented dreams. Of course if they built their darned old bungalow courts
with at least the privacy of chicken coops it would be all right, but if I
was an old codger from Keokuk who had come here to rest I wouldn't care to be
squeezed in between a heavy and custard comedian who might play the saxophone
or pinochle up to 10 o'clock at night.
These foolish outsiders, who insist upon horning into our "colony,"
ought to know that actors, artists and writers act like a lot of children
when they get together. Furthermore it must be remembered the southern
branch of the University of California is in Hollywood, and you know how
quiet 3700 students are likely to be. A flat, a duplex house or a bungalow
court is no place for a nervous wreck--in Hollywood. Why, I've been to
parties where in inspirational orchestra developed that played upon
everything from empty milk bottles to frosted lamp shades; where we played
charades, squat tag and puss-in-the-corner. They were noisy but they were
fun.
On last Halloween we--the Mrs. and I--gave a party which at its height
included the grand old game of postoffice, and when I blushingly went out to
get a special delivery letter from one of our prettiest movie queens you
could have heard the squeaks of merriment a block away.
No, we are not the quietest neighbors in the world, but the Killjoys,
who never laugh unless alcoholically propelled, quite misunderstand our
exuberances. In these dour times the spirit of play ought to be kept alive--
and we are doing our darndest.
Besides these little home affairs, where everybody burst into song on
the slightest provocation, we have beach parties up and down the coast and
barbecues in the hills, for even movie people regard their time at the
studios as work and seek relaxation the same as brokers and chiropractors.
Outside of two or three big balls a year given by the directors,
cinematographers and the writers, our greatest social brawls are at the
Hollywood hotel, dubbed by the newspaper comedian as "Passion's Playground."
Here last winter one might have seen Elinor Glyn one-stepping with Sir
Gilbert Parker, or Rupert Hughes sitting it out with Gloria Swanson, Lionel
Belmore prancing about with Marjorie Daw or Milton Sills dancing with his
wife. In fact, wives seem to be quite au fait in Hollywood, however,
notwithstanding, but.
Here is a bright and crushing observation that has just occurred to me.
During the past three years a perfect army of "imminent" authors has lived in
Hollywood and only one of them has written unkindly about our town, and he is
a terrible old grouch who would muck-rake the Epworth League. And, remember
this, these authors are professional observers, yet they haven't observed any
of the gorgeous drug debaucheries that a lot of "special correspondents" are
recording in the news syndicate.
No, puzzled reader, these tales of "love cults" and "dope rings" are
just good old newspaper hokum. The only real evidence I can offer in the use
of narcotics is the hectic nonsense emanating from the drugged sconces of the
newspaper fellows, who have been looking at Hollywood through dope rings of
their own blowing.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
March 1, 1922
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
"Wild Orgies of Hollywood are Only Dreams"
Film Folks Leading Clean Lives, Writers State
by Frank Woods
President of Screen Writers' Guild of the Authors' League of America
and
Thompson Buchanan
Chairman of the Writers' Club
When William Desmond Taylor, motion picture director, was found murdered
by an unknown assassin, nobody could have realized that the mystery would
resolve itself into a newspaper trial of the film industry and of Hollywood,
the chief center of cinema production. Such, however, seems to have been the
case. This quiet and beautiful section of Los Angeles has been treated to a
drenching of slander unequaled in American journalism, while film people
themselves have been pictured largely as drug addicts, drunkards,
profligates, and degenerates.
If a half, or a quarter, or even a tenth of this muckraking is founded
on fact, then the people engaged in making motion pictures, particularly the
stars, are of the wrong class and ought to be eliminated. If, on the other
hand, the charges are untrue, a fearful injustice has been done to an
innocent community and to 30,000 hard working, decent living, normal minded
men and women engaged in a legitimate occupation.
The injustice is all the greater because slander travels with such speed
that truth may never overtake it.
What is the truth?
The film industry numbers among its thousands of actors, directors,
writers, artists, photographers, mechanics, and managers, a small percentage
of undesirable people, the same as in any other art, profession, class,
business, or occupation. On the whole the percentage of undesirables in
pictures is somewhat less, for reasons to be stated, than is found in other
classified occupations. Certainly the proportion is no greater, and must be
considered amazingly small when the nature and the rapid and unorganized
growth of the industry are impartially considered.
Naturally one might suppose that a new industry, recruited
indiscriminately, would attract to itself the least stable types of people.
Add to this the fact that the average pay is high, too high, perhaps, in
exceptional cases, but not nearly so high in the main, as has been popularly
supposed, considering that employment is precarious.
With these two conditions--a restless, temperamental, and unstable class
of people to deal with, and high, even extravagant rates of pay, we might be
perfectly justified in believing many, if not all, of the wild tales that
have been told about the industry.
On the contrary, the result has been largely the reverse, and for this
there are three perfectly sound reasons. First, there has never been absent
during the last eight years earnest, effective welfare work conducted by
people within the profession, while in the management of the larger companies
there has been stringent control of studio conditions, growing stronger and
stronger as time goes on.
Second, work in pictures is exacting and mentally and physically
exhausting--so much so that a great majority of the active workers have no
time, strength, nor inclination for the revelries and orgies which have been
pictured as the rule rather than the exception.
Third, speaking now of the players, the camera is relentless, and no
actor or actress, especially the younger ones, whose faces are literally
their fortunes, can remain long in the spotlight and at the same time give
way to any sort of self-indulgence. This last point alone is sufficient to
prove the general falsity of the sweeping charges and impressions that have
been spread broadcast in certain newspapers. Make no mistake about this:
habitual depravity on the part of any player brings its own sure and swift
punishment.
The results of excesses cannot escape the camera, and this fact alone
has kept many a pretty girl or handsome boy from performing professional hari-
kari. Those who have been weak enough to fall have fallen and disappeared.
If there are others who are weak, they also will fall and disappear. Such is
the natural law, and the players know it. The vast majority of them act upon
it, although now and then there is an exception.
The proof that film folk are mainly as I have represented them is found
in the true picture of Hollywood as it really exists. Hollywood, which
houses the greater proportion of people engaged in picture work, is a live,
normal business section of Los Angeles. It is not a "camp" nor a "colony"
nor a segregated district. It is a hustling community, growing rapidly and
justly celebrated for its civic activities, in which picture people
participate along with their neighbors. The Hollywood Woman's club, the
Writers' club, Masonic temple, the Chamber of Commerce, the Bowl, a great
outdoor auditorium, numerous banks, churches, schools, a university, business
blocks, library, etc., all attest to its live but normal and wholesome
character. The only small things about Hollywood, and these are the most
significant of all, are the night resorts and the police force.
Of "night life" in Hollywood there is absolutely none. One bowling
alley in a basement, one billiard hall on a second floor, five motion picture
theaters, and one stadium where boxing bouts are conducted once a week by the
American Legion are the sole amusements. There are no cabarets, cafe dance
floors, drinking resorts, houses of ill repute--nothing at all of this
character.
As for the police, to which I have referred, let Police Captain George
K. Home speak for himself.
"Now, as to Hollywood being 'drug crazed' and full of 'wild night life.'
In this twenty-three miles which my department covers there is a total police
personnel of less than seventy men! Five of these patrol the San Fernando
valley district, twelve miles from Hollywood. Ten more are assigned to
traffic duty on busy corners and before schools. The remaining fifty-odd
cover the whole district, without even a police or fire alarm system to aid
them, relying upon the upright character of the residents to keep us informed
of crimes and fires by telephone.
"For comparison's sake let us refer to the Wilshire district of Los
Angeles, a district only twelve miles square, solely a residence district,
and without a business section. It is patrolled now by 113 men. If
Hollywood had the same proportion of police to the square mile as has the
Wilshire district we would have a force of 216 men here instead of an actual
Hollywood force of fifty-five men.
"Why has Hollywood such a comparatively small force of police? Because
Hollywood, being a high class residence district, peopled by a home loving
and law abiding population, is practically free of all crimes of violence!
"The best index to the moral character of a community is its police
records. Here is the complete and final refutation to the wild stories the
eastern newspapers have published. Our police records, covering this
district with its 70,000 people, including the people in its twenty-two
motion picture studios, show that:
"In the last ten years there has been no murder in Hollywood.
"In the last five months there has not been an arrest for prostitution
nor for peddling narcotics.
"In the last five months the Hollywood police have received no
complaints from any resident of any wild party being held within the
precincts of Hollywood, and have not been called upon to raid a single home
or apartment.
"Arrests for felonies average less than three a week, and half of these
arrests are made at the request of outside communities.
"Holdups and crimes of violence are practically unknown in Hollywood.
"Of the persons arrested by our officers for offenses other than
violation of the traffic ordinance, for many months past not a single one has
been actually employed in the motion picture business.
"Practically every arrest in Hollywood for felony is a 'floater' who
happens to drift into the district, attracted by its evident prosperity.
"In the face of these facts, it seems nothing short of criminal that
unprincipled newspaper space writers should be allowed to send out their
lurid and ridiculous stories."
After reading this clean bill of health, one may well wonder where all
these slander stories have come from. How can there be men and women writers
anywhere on earth base enough to invent any or all of the lurid stories that
have been printed so generally about Hollywood and the film people?
This is a proper question to ask and one that deserves a frank and
complete reply.
Let us go back to the Arbuckle case. The unfortunate affair in which
Arbuckle became involved took place in San Francisco. Everybody has heard of
the intense jealousy that exists between the two great cities of the Pacific
coast--San Francisco and Los Angeles. No doubt this had much to do with the
virulence of the carefully fostered newspaper prejudices in San Francisco
against the defendant and perhaps, also, his strange silence under advice of
counsel led many people to believe in his guilt, but most significant was the
fact that the district attorney had political aspirations and he saw a chance
of catering to the reform elements of his city by painting Arbuckle not so
much a murderer as a debauchee. He used the newspapers to try this side of
the issue and found the sensational press of the entire country more than
willing to help.
Arbuckle's mode of living, which was too often the same as that of
thousands of young men of other stations in life who, like him, have too much
money, was nevertheless indefensible, and somehow, some way, the impression
was conveyed that he was a fair example of the film folks' depravity.
When the Taylor murder broke, not in Hollywood but in Los Angeles
proper, the press was ripe for sensational developments. The Los Angeles
newspaper offices were flooded with urgent queries from newspapers in all the
large cities. The murder at once took the form of a mystery and it is still
at this writing, to all appearances, unsolvable.
With no evidence pointing to any person as the murderer the detectives
and the press invented theories, some of them remotely plausible and others
wildly impossible. These theories were often bolstered up with imaginary
suppositions and implications of guilty knowledge on the part of persons
really eager to help solve the mystery but unable to furnish any valuable
facts.
Taylor, himself, who had been a man of exemplary habits, fine
deportment, and high ideals, turned out to have had an adventurous past.
He had taken a stage name, like many others of the theatrical profession, and
this was made much of. Days passed and still there was no evidence
discovered bearing on the cause of the murder.
It was then that the theory was invented that there was a conspiracy of
silence, although Los Angeles publishers claim that this charge came from
newspapers in other cities. Its publication here cause intense surprise and
indignation. The Writers' club of which Taylor was a member, offered $1,000
reward for evidence leading to the apprehension of the murderer and the Lasky
company offered $2,500 more. To complicate the entire situation, there were
two detective forces, that of the city and the sheriff's office, working on
diametrically opposite lines, each eager to maintain its own hypothesis.
It came to be a dull day with those who had been at all familiar with
the dead man when each one was not questioned by at least one or two
detectives. The press called this "grilling," as if every person examined
were a potential criminal. Finally the district attorney took charge of the
investigation, examined everybody again, and announced that not one bit of
evidence had been discovered implicating anybody as connected with the crime
or even of having guilty knowledge of it.
So much for the Taylor murder. The deliberate besmirching of Hollywood
and of the film people as a class followed as a so-called sidelight on the
mystery.
There were two reporters here from Chicago, Edward Doherty and Wallace
Smith. They were here to report the unsavory Burch and Obenchain trials, and
when these seemed to be flattening out, the seized on the Taylor mystery as
an excuse for digging up and rehashing all the dead scandals of the picture
people that had accumulated in the last ten years. There were only a bare
half dozen of them, but they were embellished, added to, and enlarged until
they read like juicy stuff.
Added to these were alleged interviews with Jap[anese] butlers and the
like, pure fiction, and other out and out inventions, all of which, sent out
in a series of special stories and published in widely scattered syndicated
papers constituted an injurious indictment that might easily impose upon
editors and the public.
To refute the slanders, the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and other
civic authorities, not connected in any way with the film industry have
joined in circulating a strong statement denouncing the lies and bearing
witness to the decency and worthy character of film people as a class.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
February 10, 1922
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Police Hunting for Scandal Instead of for Assassin
Says Defender of Hollywood
by Waldemar Young
Former Dramatic Editor of The San Francisco Chronicle,
now prominent continuity writer for motion pictures.
Another scavenger's holiday. William Desmond Taylor was in life a man
respected by his associates. He was an artist of high ideals. He was hard
working, earnest, capable. He was a gentleman. But he was a motion picture
director.
So out come the scavengers to burrow in the garbage can, seeking
morsels, titbits, little delicacies of ripe dirt to roll their tongues
around. Out they come, headlong, before the corpse is cold. They wallow in
a mud of their own making. They drag a man's name through that mud. With
the vicious glee of the virtuous they make great sticking plasters of the mud
and hurl them broadside at the motion picture colony.
Instead of concentrating all their efforts toward finding the assassin
and trying him for murder, they drag the dead man forth and put him on trial.
He has committed the crime of being shot down without warning from behind.
Away goes his name through the mud, swishing, swashing. Why? Because he was
a motion picture director. It is always open season for anyone connected
with the motion picture business.
Having put him on trial instead of his assassin, what have they found?
The one outstanding fact that he had taken stage name, a very common thing,
indeed, in the profession of entertainment. They make this the basis for a
claim that he had led a dual life.
Puerile, imbecilic, certainly.
But the scavengers must have their holiday. The found some letters.
These proved nothing. They were not even very entertaining. So the
scavengers, for want of better sport, have turned their mud guns on the
picture colony and there is a great splattering.
Is this fair?
There are estimated to be about 30,000 persons engaged in the picture
industry in Hollywood and its environs. Ninety-nine per cent of these, I
venture to say, lead lives as clean and as decent as the best of people in
other professions and other industries; they are "just folks." The other
one per cent are more noisy, I think, than vicious, they can't be very
wicked. They are too open about it. They flaunt their peccadilloes with a
too-apparent wish to have them noticed. They wear noisy clothes, ride in
noisy cars, live noisy lives.
By the very nature of their employment, everything they do receives
publicity. They are definitely in the public eye, under a microscope. Press
agents record their smallest fads and fancies. Every move they make comes
out magnified, exaggerated.
And, of course, the bad comes out with the good, magnified, exaggerated.
A home brew party in a four-room bungalow becomes "a Neroesque orgy in a
mansion." The tongues of the righteous wag.
But the noisy ones are no worse than their own prototypes elsewhere in
every community.
It is simply that more attention is attracted to them. It is the price
of publicity.
Hollywood, I should say, is about the average American community.
A campaign of calumny against Berkeley, against San Jose, against any city
of the size you can name, would have just as much reason for being as the
present campaign against Hollywood.
And there are just as many honest, decent men and women in the picture
business as in any other business, even if they do not go around with pious
looks mouthing the scavenger's chant, "I am holier than thou."
People in glass houses shouldn't make home brew.
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