Life — August 2, 1929 — page 28: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

26 OR an hour I’ve been sitting in a bathing suit under a Califor- nia umbrella all humped up like a camel, nibbling at the loose end of a hangnail and trying to write some- thing snappy for Lire. With my usual flair for putting my foot in it, I told the editor the other week if he would send me to Holly- wood I'd send him back some cracker- jack pieces. It seemed to me theatri- cal performances for the summer had been truncated—I've been aching for a spot for that one—to meet the claims of the talkies. “All the actors and the real news are out there right now,” I pleaded, plucking a bit of fluff off his coat lapel and twisting the toe of my shoe. “You can’t possibly do worse there than you have been doing here,” he said in a voice that had all the ear- marks of a sneer and with that I gave him a playful push and we began leaping over chairs and desks and chasing each other around the room. Me and him, heigh ho and lack-a-day! That in a very brief outline is how I happened to come west and here | am already delirious and as free of ideas as a flea is of high bicycles. In the first place, I had only been here three days when I took an earthquake smack on the chin. Tt was 9:00 a. ot. when the room be- gan to sway, the wall pictures to Charleston, the dog to bark and it is a good thing I hadn't eaten breakfast. I suspected one of those ailing clams you sometimes pick up the night be- fore and resolved right then to be a better boy, help old ladies across the street and write to the folks. "Madam, your husband was killed in a train wreck? “BIRO OF PARADISE® A few minutes later, as we say at the studios, came the calm. The valet, anyway he takes the egg spots off my vest, dropped in. “Quite a tremble,” he observed. “My mood is too Euripidean for your high-blown optimism,” I snapped. “That was an earthquake and go tell the Chamber of Commerce to pull in its neck.” When I get excited that way I don’t know my own strength. Neighbors call me “Old Fury.” You'd think an earthquake would be enough to give a guy the scream- “The best thing make it up with your ing meemies, but on top of that they had to fill the town with visiting Elks. Every time you look out the window a new delegation, led by a big brass- band, goes prancing by. All this gives you a sketchy idea of what I am up against. Firs, an earthquake, then Elks raising Ned. It is terrible to be literary. Sometimes I wish, as do so many others, I had stuck to the delivery wagon. Sull, if I had I would have gone on to the end without seeing Willie Col- lier’s shirt. T ran across him in a hotel lobby. It was an orange and black striped creation especially de- signed by the American Awning & Tent Co. at, I understand, the sugges- tion of Valeska Suratt. He told me he had gone definitely Hollywood, thumbed his suspenders, teetered back and forth on black and white golf shoes and invited me out to his Spanish castle with a patio. That’s what happens when a bang-up comedian goes talkie. New York Life I do not know what all this new movie experimentation will do to the legitimate theatre but after learning to be a detective in twelve lessons and prowling about the Cinema Belt it is my deduction that Hollywood has swung one from the ankle. They are grabbing off all the top-notchers. [ dare anyone to think up a better come- dian than Walter Catlett. Well, you will find Walter at a glass. top desk with a row of push gadgets in a talkie factory. And if the theatre has an actor with a greater middle. class appeal than Eddie Dowling I'll kiss One Eye Connelly on both cheeks in front of the Paramount Building any Tuesday morning at 10:18, Walk up Hollywood Boulevard on a sunny morning and you will likely see Eddie swinging along as noncha- lantly and as happily as he did across Forty-second street—and if you speak to him about Broadway his face clouds up with one of those “I seem to recall the place vaguely” expressions. Broadway, of course, may recover but honesty compels the reluctant confes sion that from here on my little sand- dune it looks a trifle shot. When on every hand you see such talent as Marie Dressler, John Barrymore, Ina Claire and a list of that calibre as long as your Aunt Emma's tippet—and more arriving daily—punching the clock it makes you think. Something had better be done and quickly or Lire is not going to need a dramatic critic much longer for there will be no drama to review. Either that or I am wrong again as usual. what! Aman pat hanged himself in your cellar? Did you cut, him "No. He wasnt dead yet.” comicbooks.com