GROWN-UP CHILDREN OF HOLLYWOOD.

Hokitika Guardian, 14 January 1928, Page 4

GROWN-UP CHILDREN OF HOLLYWOOD.

By IRIS BARRY, the film critic of “The Daily Mail,” who is visiting Hollywood to study conditions there.

HOLLYWOOD, California. It would he impossible without visiting California to believe how closely films coming from Hollywood do actually reflect not The imagination of an ambitious but childish adult, but the reality of life here. Fifty years ago the Indians whose land it was had only just been dispossessed. To-day it boasts over a million and a quarter inhabitants, who count, more dollar millionaires per hundred than any other part of the United States. There are said to he three motor cars to every resident. The growth of this district of noilvoaux riches can almost he seen, so rapid it is. Nine months ago, for instance. beyond Santa Monica, where the film folk and others have luxurious f loach-houses, there were bare hills. To-day a new. expensive. elegant, residential district exists there; little palates are springing up every day. The tops of hills are being blown off by hydraulic guns, valleys filled in. gardens laid out. streets built, Y'atei and electricity supplied. This now house is being built for a young bachelor, "four years ago a shop assistant, to-day a multi-million-

aire. The one next it is lor a film star, three years ago lucky to get six pounds a week, non the owner ot bur cars and five different residences, and a. mighty speculator in slocks anti shares. Tf Madame Ronipadotir were alive she would he enviously startled at the position and power of the liit.le flapper who owns the property next door ; and the flapper would regard the Pompadour as an old-fashioned, ‘lull snob.

few are poor in fihudotu long: there is no accommodation for poor people, they die or go away again except for the tragic creatures who hang on by the skin of their teeth as extras in film studios. Now and again one of these makes his or her way through the molt into the auriferous regions' of stardom. All of them, therefore, starve, wait, and hope. Domestic servants are paid incredible salaries and no one can keep servants, ibeeause they come out as servants and pass on to better things. This 1“ the life which the films mirror; a life where the intellect exists only for material things, where every fairy-tale comes true, scullery maids really end up in ermine, heroes have limousines and racing cars, and heroines 11 ‘ir orchids and pearls. There is i:•> leisure in these films, no home life, because no one has a home; only new expensive houses, all ol which look exactly like the interior of houses on the screen. There is no sensitiveness, no faucifillness, hut a. great deal of good nature. broad hospitality, high spirits, energy, self-importance, and superficial emotions.

Grown-ups. with the ideals and nior als of children, romping tirelessly ii a magic garden city which has growi up overnight. . . under dark hill that have seen the Indians come am seen them vanish, beneath the sunn

stars that shine iiatieutly down on tin big and little cinemas cf England where the voice ol Hollywood speak:

in no uncertain tones and sometime; I in a way that grates most cxeruciat | ingly upon I lie car! \Ye need other films than these; am po one would affirm this so emphati- | ~nlly as the average citizen of tin Fniled States, who has a contempt and horror of Hollywood’s lilmdom past an Englishmen s belief.