University of Virginia Library

The train from New York is due. Hollywood prepares to make one of its typical publicity gestures. Not, it is true, of the magnitude or hysterical and blatant quality such as is accorded a Star, a Movie Executive or a Peaches Browning[1], but taken all in all, a nice refined little hullabaloo. After all, it is only an Eminent Author who is arriving in Hollywood. He is met at the train by cameramen, reporters, a star or two, maybe a director, perhaps even the Mayor and a bunch of minor and major Movie folk that the publicity director has managed to round up for the occasion.

For a few days at least our Eminent Author basks in the sunshine and favor of the City of Props. He is wined and dined, photographed, touted, exploited, interviewed, quoted, misquoted. Every prospect pleases. He has a remarkable contract in his pocket. Five hundred dollars a week for the first three months; seven hundred and fifty dollars for the next six; one thousand dollars a week for the next year and so on ad nauseam. Small wonder that he gives forth an interview to the effect that he is charmed with Hollywood and intends to devote the rest of his literary life to the Great Art of Motion Pictures.

Like fun he is! At the end of the three months, he will get a little note to the effect that the option on his contract is not to be exercised by the Producer.

To one author who remains in Hollywood, there are a score who make their silent exit at the end of the three months. Not all go silently. Many fare forth shooting verbal fireworks behind them.

“The survival of the fittest” does not apply in Hollywood, so far as authors are concerned. The touchstone to success is not creative brains, talent, or inventive genius. The inspirational writer, however big his dreams and his product, cannot hope to compete with those possessed of sharp wits, craft, salesmanship, pull, politics, and the thousand and one petty tricks that contribute to one's influence in this game.

About a week after his arrival our Eminent Author finds himself parked in an ugly little office in a noisy rackety-

packetty building. (Some studios are beginning to grant the authors offices as good as the secretaries of the executives.) The refined hullabaloo aforementioned has become a thing of the dazzling past. Our author has been patted on the back for the last time.