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Golden Rules for Writers
Gladys Unger, playwright and author of “Romance,” “Starlight” and many other well-known plays, gives the following recipe to aspiring movie writers:
“Study pantomime, fencing, boxing, Yiddish, Russian, and German. Forget English, American, reading, and writing.”
The situation is not devoid of edification to the author. He is filled with unholy joy and admiration as he scans the patent medicine advertisements of his new contemporaries.
Thus another Susy Swipes. Her number is legion in Hollywood. She is perched on the softest and plumpest of the seats of the mighty, and sometimes, so I have heard, she is perched upon the knee of a movie executive.
Irvin Cobb[3] is credited with a classic utterance at the end of a chaotic conference. I dare not misquote him, but I do know that his words conveyed a cordial invitation to the manhandlers of his brain product to cut a chunk of their throats and take the trail to a certain city whose temperature is high.
Michael Arlen left Hollywood gasping and smarting.
Hergesheimer studied Hollywood through his shining specs, with resulting excellent publicity for the charming Aileen Pringle. Clever girl, Aileen. The first of the stars to become known as “The Authors' Friend!”
George Jean Nathan dodged the limelight in the company of a modest blazing star.
Laurence Stallings chucked his tongue in his cheek. Occasionally gargantuan laughter proclaimed his appreciation of the whole large humor of Hollywood.
Once, as scenario editor, I recommended Ellis Parker Butler's classic: Pigs Is Pigs.” I was shouted down with the objection that the censors and Will Hays[4] would never stand for a picture about hogs.
Dixie Wilson blew into Hollywood—if one of bouffant form may be said to blow, waving triumphantly an extraordinary contract. No mere scenario writer was this girl from the Ringling Circus to be, but a full-fledged director—so said Dixie. Three or six months later, Dixie exited as silently as a mouse.
Carl Van Vechten peeped in at the window, cocked a quizzical eyebrow and, tongue in cheek, extolled the virtues of the movie city, which he proposed to send down to posterity via the pages of his next book.
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