Hollywood History

Social Issues in Movies
(Stage Magazine, 1938)

Aren’t you tired of Hollywood’s socio-political rantings?

•Nuclear power…………….They’re against it (The China Syndrome).
•Antisemitism……………….They’re against it (Gentleman’s Agreement).

•Alcoholism………………….They’re against it (Lost Weekend).
•Racial segregation………..They’re against it, but in 1915 they were for it (Birth of a Nation).

One glance at this 1939 article and you’ll be able to blame it all on the poet Archibald McLeish (1892 – 1982) who clearly advocated for political posturing in American movies.

No doubt, McLeish must have been very happy when Warner Brothers released Confessions of a Nazi Spy in April of 1939; it was the first Hollywood film to take a swipe at the Nazi war machine.

Ode to the Hollywood Agent
(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1942)

The literati have all agreed: there is no doubt that if Shakespeare were alive today he would live in Beverly Hills, California. He would dwell in a 1930s split-level Persion-conversion, probably on Palm or Roxbury. As a well-compensated screenwriter he would churn-out the standard plots that were expected of him: fish-out-of-water dramadies, romcoms, and (under assorted pen names) a few reality shows; and like the poet whose work is attached, he would write about matters unique to Southern California -valet parking, Cobb Salads -and in this case the Hollywood agent.

This poem was written by Sydney King Russell (1898 – 1976), who, like Shakespeare, knew that if you’re going to write a poem about Hollywood agents, you’ll need to crack open the ol’ rhyming dictionary to see what rhymes with ten percent.

When Prestige was Thrust Upon Hollywood’s ”Cameramen”
(Stage Magazine, 1937)

Shortly before this article went to press, that particular member of the Hollywood film crew called the director of photography (DP) was treated a wee-bit better than other crew members were likely to be treated (but not that much better). Granted, the director and producer knew his name and his body of work – but his screen credit was still mixed among all the other names of the crew (if listed at all) – and this article points out that much of that changed in the Thirties.

Cosmetic Surgery in Hollywood
(Photoplay Magazine, 1930)

Published in a 1930 Hollywood fan magazine, this is the story of the earliest plastic surgeons and the rise of cosmetic surgery in Hollywood:

Telling the actual names of all the stars who have been to the plastic surgeons is an impossible task. They won’t admit it, except in a few isolated instances…It is only lately that a few of them are beginning, not only to to admit that they’ve had their faces bettered, but to even go so far as to publicly announce it.

Hollywood’s Case Against Monogamy
(Photoplay Magazine, 1938)

Technologies change, power changes, tastes change, but if anything has remained a constant in the West coast film colony it has been the fickle romantic tastes of all the various performers, directors and producers who toil in the vineyards of Hollywood. An old salt once remarked that if a Hollywood marriage lasts longer than milk it can be judged a success; with this old saw in mind, a wise anthropologist sat down, put pen to paper and seriously attempted to understand mating habits of Hollywood, California.


Click here to read a 1938 memoir by a Los Angeles prostitute.

Angela Lansbury Arrives in Hollywood
(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1945)

Those sly dogs at SCRIPT MAGAZINE! They printed the smiling mug of the twenty-five year-old Angela Lansbury (b. 1925) on the cover of their rag, briefly praising her for being the youngest performer to have ever been nominated for an Academy Award (she soon won the 1944 Best Supporting Actress statue for Gaslight), and ran a profile of the lass on a page eight article that was misleadingly titled Our Cover Girl, only to devote 85% of the columns to an illustrious forebear.

Mickey Rooney, RIP
(Collier’s Magazine, 1940)

In 1940 Mickey Rooney (né Joe Yule, Jr.; b. 1920 – 2014) had replaced Shirley Temple as the number one box-office draw, after having steadily performed before the cameras from the age of six onward. Rooney had been jockeying for first place since he began playing the title roll in the Andy Hardy films just two and a half years earlier.


With the onslaught of the Second World War the sands of Hollywood shifted beneath his feet, creating a plethora of new stars and the need for different sorts of films – from that point on he only appeared in supporting rolls. In 1982 Rooney remarked:

When I was 19 years old, I was the number one star of the world for two years. When I was 40, nobody wanted me. I couldn’t get a job.

Charlie Chaplin Joins With Pickford, Fairbanks and Griffith to Form United Artists
(Film Daily, 1939)

Restless with the manner in which the film colony operated, Chaplin joined forces with three other leading Hollywood celebrities to create United Artists; a distribution company formed to release their own films. Attached is a printable history of United Artists spanning the years 1919 through 1939 which also outlines why the organization was so original:

[United Artists] introduced a new method into the industry. Heretofore producers and distributors had been the employers, paying salaries and sometimes a share of the profits to the stars. Under the United Artists system, the stars became their own employers. They had to do their own financing, but they received the producer profits that had formerly gone to their employers and each received his share of the profits of the distributing organization.

Charlie Chaplin Joins With Pickford, Fairbanks and Griffith to Form United Artists
(Film Daily, 1939)

Restless with the manner in which the film colony operated, Chaplin joined forces with three other leading Hollywood celebrities to create United Artists; a distribution company formed to release their own films. Attached is a printable history of United Artists spanning the years 1919 through 1939 which also outlines why the organization was so original:

[United Artists] introduced a new method into the industry. Heretofore producers and distributors had been the employers, paying salaries and sometimes a share of the profits to the stars. Under the United Artists system, the stars became their own employers. They had to do their own financing, but they received the producer profits that had formerly gone to their employers and each received his share of the profits of the distributing organization.

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