Hollywood and its civilization

GYORGY HALASZ

A scientific analysis of the world's wonderland and the tribal manners and mores current therein, together with the observations of an intrepid explorer who has lived with the natives in order to lay bare their curious lore

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Ever since its discovery in the second decade of the present century, a singular civilization has flourished in Hollywood. Although it exerts a profound psychological influence upon the rest of the globe, no study of its people, and of the civilization itself, has been available. Tt is the modest aim of this paper, if not to remedy this situation, at least to take the first fumbling steps in that direction, by giving a brief summary of an anthropological survey of Hollywoodite civilization.

"Sexual Life in Hollywood," the second half of this study, will appear next month.

I.—THE PEOPLE

1. ORIGIN, HABITAT, AND GENERAL TRAITS. Hollywoodites are of splendid physique and fair complexion. Although they are of divers ancestry, they exhibit homogeneous features as if inbred for centuries. The males, known as "actors," are tall and handsome, with strong, white teeth: the females, commonly known as "actresses," exquisitely beautiful, dainty, with fragile bone-structure and well-shaped hands. The average male Hollywoodite is taller and heavier than the average American, the female smaller and much lighter. * They are cleanly and very particular about their personal appearance, and, like most Melanesians, care a great deal for ornament. Both sexes spend a considerable part of the day beautifying themselves. The females use mostly natural beauty aids: they drink goat's and cocoanut milk, spread the whites of birds' eggs on their faces, rub salt or strained honey into their skin, cover themselves with vinegar and olive oil, and wash their hair in rain water.** The culture of the hair is especially widespread: many males wave their hair, while the females, like the Fiji Islanders, bleach theirs to a uniform hue somewhere between the color of straw and that of a light cocker spaniel. As a rule, they are, like the Papuans, rude, merry and boisterous, but amenable to discipline in regard to work. Their chief psychical characteristics: mercurial temperament, erratic apperception and unstable Verstand, may be traced to the cataclystie climatic and seismological disturbances common to the region which, during the author's sojourn alone, killed nearly two hundred people and caused millions of dollars of damages. The average male Hollywoodite is 37.2, and the average female 28.5 years old.

With negligible exceptions, the present inhabitants are not of indigenous stock. They have migrated from all parts of the world, but particularly from the North American Continent. An inconsiderable proportion of them are first settlers in the sections they inhabit, but the majority of immigrants have displaced the aborigines.

* The measurements of 100 actors and 100 actresses have been compared to the findings of Dr. E. A. Hooton, Professor of Anthropology in Harvard University.

* * Louella O. Parsons in the Los Angeles Examiner and E. V. Hurling in the Illustrated Daily News.

2. EDUCATION. Education in Hollywood presents the same features and principles that form the foundation of the educational systems of most primitive societies. The young are instructed in reverence of established tribal traditions, worship of the great, subordination to the elders, relation of the sexes, and an unquestioning belief in the superiority of their race. There is one feature, however, so unusual and strange, that the conclusion that it is characteristically Hollywoodite is both inevitable and understandable. This is the fact that an unusually large proportion of the females have been given claustral education.

More than one-quarter of the actresses (27%) have been brought up in convents. While the ratio, in the United States, for instance, of parochial schools to public and private ones is 1 to 25.6, the ratio of convent-educated actresses to non-convent-educated ones in Hollywood is only 1 to 3.7. Considering that the work to which they devote their lives is scarcely that of a young priestess or a postulant, it would be of interest to examine the effects of a Catholic education upon those females whose youth was spent in an atmosphere of the utmost piety. We find * that 2.7 times more convent-educated actresses have stayed single than non-convent-educated ones. Of those who married, 52.5% were divorced at least once, and 37% are still divorcees, as opposed to 33.7% of those educated by the laity. 20.5% of the non-convent-educated females have children, as opposed to only 14.8% of their sisters.

3. THE NAME. More than half of the actresses and fully one-third of the actors carry names that have been changed wholly or in part.

Like the natives of the New Hebrides, many Hollywoodites change their names when they become rich; it is, in a sense, their announcement of this new condition. Others assume new sobriquets because they believe the old ones to be hoodooed. By far the most common reason, however, is, as with certain North American Indians, initiation into the tribe. Since upon this occasion the individual is supposed to be re-born, his baby-name is discarded and his new "nikie" name proclaimed. This "nikie"* name may be either completely new, taking the places of both the given and the family names, or only partially so. Thus, for instance, Augusta Appel has been changed to Lila Lee, Violet Krauth to Marian Marsh, Marie Adrienne Koenig to Mae Murray, Viola Cronk to Claire Windsor, Marie Osterman to Raquel Torres, Ann La Hiff to Nancy Carroll, Ruby Stevens to Barbara Stanwyck, Billie Cassin to Joan Crawford, Jacob Kranz to Ricardo Cortez, Leo Mielziner to Kenneth McKenna, Nicholas Pratza to Nick Stuart, and Lewis D. Offield to Jack Oakie; and these "nikie" cognomina: March, Basquette, Oliver, Valii, Morgan, Douglas, Alien, D'Arcy and Muni, have taken the places of Mclntyre-Biekel, Belcher, Nutter, McSweeney, Wuppermann, Hesselberg, Van Matatimore, Guisti and Weisenfreund, respectively.

*100 female Hollywoodites, selected at random, have been examined.

Certain of these transmutations may seem rather meaningless to one unfamiliar with the mores of these strange people. Thus, for instance, while Joseph Paige, born in Albuquerque, N. M., assumes the "nikie" name "Don Alvarado," Señor Luis Antonio Damaso de Alonso takes that of "Gilbert Roland."

II.—COMMUNAL LIFE

4. WORK. As is the case in parts of Micronesia, New Zealand and Africa, the economic incentives in Hollywood are not merely utilitarian. The products of Hollywood industry, as the products of primitive industries in general, far from being made with the minimum of effort required for their utility, show a lavishness of detail, of decoration and pedantic finish.

Since all Hollywoodites are engaged in the sole industry of the colony, the manufacture of motion pictures, work is communal, for conversation, jokes and mutual interest relieve the tedium of solitary labor. This is not so merely because work in company is a most efficient stimulant. Hollywoodites need no coercion, social or otherwise, to work. They are passionately devoted to their labor and would rather lose a limb than be prevented from working. No matter where they are, their mind is constantly on their duty, and matters pertaining to it form their sole topic of conversation. The following verbatim quotation from the local court records* attests illustratively to the Hollywoodites' zealous reverence for work. An actress,** on the witness stand, tells of a beating she suffered at the hands of an actor, himself the victim of assault. She is questioned by the District Attorney.

♦"Nikie" is an Omaha Indian word, and it is used here because the English language has no equivalent for it.

Q. And he just up and smacked you and that was all there was to it?

A. Yes, sir. It was pretty brutal. He not only smacked me, but he just threw me down in front of my house and sat on top of me and beat me up all over the street and grabbed me by my hair. It's a wonder I didn't die. Luckily I think the good Lord above must have had His arms around me (and here there was a pause), because many a woman would have died.

Q. Have you had an argument or did you have any idea why Mr.—struck you?

A. No, sir.

Q. He didn't just approach you and haul off and smack you without provocation?

A. We had been to someone's house and lie had got in an argument with someone and left and insisted that I leave right then and there. 1 said, "Now calm down. A lot of unkind things have been said. It is no way to run out of someone's house." And Mr.—is very hot-headed and he has got a very bad temper. He just rushed out of the house which was in Beverly Hills and walked all the way to my house. I didn't gel home until several hours later and there he was. He didn't say, "Why didn't you, or where, or what—." The minute I opened the door he blacked this eye right here so I couldn't see. I begged him, "Johnnie, what are you doing, you must be mad, I have got to work tomorrow."

♦The State of Californiavs.Martin Block and Russell Brown. ♦♦Alice White.

5. WAGES AND COST OF LIVING. Wages, expressed in U. S. dollars, are very high. The minimum daily wage for the commonest type of labor, in which the worker does not even need to open his mouth, is $5. As soon as he is compelled to speak even as few as two words, he is paid $15 a day. Out of less than 14,000 wage-earners, about 600 earn from $300 to $500 weekly, about 400 from S500 to $750, about 200 from §750 to 81000, about 100 from 81000 to 81500, and the weekly average earnings of about 60 runs from 83000 to 810,000.

Continued on page 68

♦The italics are the author's.

Continued from page 19

Here is a budget filed under oath with a Superior Court Judge in a separate maintenance suit brought by the wife of an actor.*

Table 1.—Minimum Monthly Expenses of a Single Woman in Hollywood.

Food, 8250; clothing, 8500; auto-mobile upkeep, $146; gasoline, $30; maid, 840; gas and electricity, S25; laundry, S20; interest on home, 880; house furnishings, 8200; telephone, i 820; gardener, 810; entertainment, 8100; miscellaneous expenses, $100; taxes, $40; total, 81561.

Considering the budget of a couple, most of these items, except gas, electricity, interest, taxes, telephone, gardener and maid,** are doubled. On this basis we find that it comes to $2907 per month, exclusive of insurance, doctor's and dentist's fees, travel, water, etc. It includes merely the bare necessities of living.

If the family has children, the problems of meeting the high cost of living are made considerably more difficult. Again we shall take recourse, in determining the expenses, to a court order. Filing an opposition to the accounting made by his divorced wife in support of their two children, a Hollywoodite*** recently objected to the mother's spending 8765.50 and 8779.68, respectively, when the divorce court allowed only 8500 per month for each boy, and asked for a reduction. After due consideration of the circumstances, the court ordered the monthly expenses for each boy cut to S350. This, then, was estimated by the State of California as the minimum monthly cost of raising a child in Hollywood.

More than three-quarters of the judicial cases in which Hollywoodites are involved, are concerned with money. One Hollywoodite, for example, sued another, who had killed his wife in an automobile accident, for 8250,525 damages.**** Of this sum, he claimed 8250.000 for being bereft of bis wife, and 8525 for funeral expenses.

The Judicial Cases include, among others: murder, 1%; assault with deadly weapon with intent to kill, 1%; battery, 4%'; resisting officers of the Law, 3%2; manslaughter (traffic), 3%; drunk driving in an airplane, 1%; breach of promise, 7%3; alienation of affection, 4%; plagiarism, 4%; slander, 1%'; disputes over property settlements as result of divorce, non-payment of alimony, etc., 7%; suit by parents to compel actress to assist in their maintenance, 1%; disputes between actors and agents, 11%; disputes between actors and employers, 4%; voluntary and involuntary bankruptcies, 8%.

♦Roseoe Ates.

♦♦For two, one gardener and one maid are sufficient.

♦♦♦Colonel C. S. Chaplin.

♦♦♦♦Raul Roulien vs. John Huston.

1 One of these charges was raised against an actor who blackened the eye of ids hostess during a dinner party at her home.

2 These offences consisted of kicking or slapping policemen, or hitting them over the head with bottles full of milk. The defendants in each instance were actresses. 328.5% of these suits were withdrawn before trial because the defendants married the plaintiffs.

3 For calling another man "$2-a-da.v bum." (Prinz vs. Oakie.)