Disappointment

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 236, 24 December 1927, Page 21

Disappointment

Those Who Will Never Be Stars ! HOLLYWOOD SIDELIGHTS No movie could ever set forth the misery of the hosts at the Hollyt cood, Los Angeles, film studios seeking the job that never comes—except to a comparative fete. Take the figures supplied by Mr. Dave Allen, head of the Central Casting Bureau. Over that period the average number looking for employment was 14,000. Worked out at per day the total required was 785. How do many of them contrive to exist? “This morning,’’ remarks an American writer, living at Hollywood, “my milkman came half-an-hour later than usual. He explained. “It's orders! People have been complaining their milk is being stolen. It grot so bad we had to hire detectives to watch. They say half the movie extras in town are trying to live on what milk-bottles they can cop off back stoops early in the mornings.’ ” Details of the position at Hollywood show that this is by no means an overdrawn picture. Hopeful to the Last “In any other profession.** says Mr. Allen, “a boy or a girl would give up after six months of failure and try something else. But not in this one. Actors are the most hopeful people in the world. "They think that to-m‘orrow their chance will come. “And when it does come to on*extra, a thousand others who will never get anywhere in the business cry, ‘There row! All I have to do is to wait, and the same thing will hapi pen to me.’ They’re afraid even to get : other work temporarily for fear the I casting director will forget them, or somebody else will take their place in the waiting Hne.” Hungry people often come to Mr. Allen for work. One man took a revolver from his pocket when he was told there was no part for him. ‘Tm desperate.’* he said; “I haven’t eaten for days. I’ve got to get work, or IT blow my brain" out here and now.*’ Mr. Allen thrust a two-dollar bi! into his hands. An hour later he saw “the desperate man” blowing the two dollars in the most expensive restaurant in i Hollywood*. The Fashion to Starve “As I was talking to a director." r* - lates an inquirer into the situation “the phone rang. “He listened without speaking, and hung up the receiver with a sigh That girl has been pestering me for two years,’ he said. 'She hasn’t n chance. You ought to see her. But she won’t give up. She’s read that took Alice Terry five years to brea in. The town is filled with people like her.’ “The stories of most successful staragree so closely on the point of their 1 earlv privations that many young players think the hunger-formula alI ways leads to final tame. It has be- ! come rather a smart thing to starve for one’s art in Hollywood.