***************************************************************************** * 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 * ***************************************************************************** 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 ***************************************************************************** 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. ***************************************************************************** ***************************************************************************** The "home page" for TAYLOROLOGY has moved and is now located at http://www.angelfire.com/az/Taylorology ***************************************************************************** ***************************************************************************** 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 walkoffs 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. ***************************************************************************** ***************************************************************************** Back issues of Taylorology are available from the gopher server at gopher.etext.org in the directory Zines/Taylorology; or on the Web at http://www.angelfire.com/az/Taylorology *****************************************************************************