Photoplay/Volume 36/Issue 4/Hollywood—A Manless Town

BIG chance for eligible men in Hollywood! Come West, young feller. Take the stars to parties. Be the Steady Flame. Fill up their date books. Preside at their tea-tables.

The picture gals are starved for romance.

Hollywood is a manless town.

Let's look the situation squarely in the face. Let's get out the magnifying glass and the forceps. Lay the false moustache and the poison bottle on the table there. Let me have a bit of twine and an old skate strap. That will do very nicely, thank you.

Now, in the first place, where are all the men in Hollywood?

Yes, yes, I know, a lot of them are at Aileen Pringle's, playing dominoes. But they can't all get in her house, much as they want to.

Where are the rest? They don't become hermits. They don't commit suicide. They don't go in for arson and wake up in jail.

Then why do these picture gals lean wanly on their chins and sigh for romance?

It's as easy to find a young man with enough money to spend and an inclination to spend it as it is to discover a rich man who WANTS to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

CERTAIN blades and ladies are coupled together like freight cars, only more permanently. Certain names just go together. The Smith brothers, Joan and Doug, Wells and Fargo, Gary and Lupe, Trade and Mark, Sue and Nick, Bebe and Ben, Hope and Charity, Jimmie and Myrna, Olive and George, ice cream and cake, Charlie and Virginia. You know what I mean. However, this permanent mating doesn't help the love-lorn gals of the village.

Let's consider the matter with due seriousness.

Here are the unattached young men: Matty Kemp, Buddy Rogers, Nils Asther, Grant Withers, William Collier, Jr., Hugh Trevor, Johnny Hines, Tom Tyler, Pat Rooney III, Ramon Novarro, Billy Haines, Walter Byron, Hugh Allen, William Bakewell, Larry Kent―I can't, for the life of me, think of another.

But the girls! Oi, here you have a list like a ship. Betty Bronson, Josephine Dunn, Mary Brian, Alice and Marceline Day, June Collyer, Gwen Lee, Sally Eilers, Raquel Torres, Anita Page, Lois Moran, Barbara Kent, Alberta Vaughn, Lois Wilson, Mary McAllister, Loretta and Polly Ann Young, Helene Costello, Renee Adoree, Sharon Lynn, Alice White and more―oh, countless thousands more!

These gals appear at an occasional first night, at the local ice cream parlor, at the important party with one man or another. Maybe an affair is rumored and then it's flat as a pancake.

NOR are all the young men I've named eligible, in the strict sense of the word. Nils Asther, as melancholy as a Swedish herring and about as animated as the Rock of Gibraltar, has no use for the average woman. He is not one to flit (fancy Nils flitting) from flower to flower, as we of the old school laughingly say.

Johnny Hines, Pat Rooney III, Billy Haines and Billy Bakewell are a trifle too smart cracking for the languorous ladies of filmdom who crave romance in a large way. Fun is fun, but it's better in vaudeville than under a California moon.

Hugh Trevor, having paid court at the mansion of La Belle Pringle, finds that other women pale in comparison. The remarkable Aileen graces a Tia Juana bar or a theosophical institute with equal gusto. It rather takes the edge off.

Novarro can't be pried away from his little theater, his music and his Europe. Walter Byron is so English that the girls don't know if he's asking them over to tea or if he's just asking them over.

You don't see very much of Hugh Allen, Tom Tyler, Larry Kent and Buster Collier these days. So that leaves, of all that formidable group, only Matty Kemp, Buddy Rogers, Grant Withers.

Matty was once engaged to Sally Eilers. It was the first love for both. Then Sally broke her engagement and allowed the third finger of her left hand to be encircled by a ring that William Hawks bought. But now, so they say, the ring is about to find a good home with Marceline Day. It hasn't happened yet. In the meantime, Sally is occasionally seen with Matty. But Matty beaus 'em all around.

Grant Withers came to Hollywood as a hero of the Pueblo flood. A hero is a hero whether he did anything or not. Grant's ​specialty seems to be those girl friends who look abstracted if any event prior to 1907 is mentioned.

Buddy is a gay blade. He's been reported engaged to Claire Windsor, Mary Brian, June Collyer―but it doesn't seem to stop his solitary cornet lessons.

Now you might include Harry Crocker, except that he's too busy being gag man for Marion Davies' parties. So there you are. Don't come to Hollywood, girls, looking for a man. Get 'em and bring 'em if you're determined to come to the colony.

This problem is more acute than what to do with a bum larynx that won't say "mammy" when it sees a microphone.

You might think that the situation doesn't exist. You might accuse me of making this up just to amuse myself. I assure you that it doesn't amuse me. Haven't I heard Josephine Dunn cry to the heavens for a steady flame? And Gwen Lee moan at the sad fate that leaves her as boyfriendless as a slice of cinnamon toast? Renee Adoree has a yen to find some nice bozo to take her places and do things for her.

BUT where are the men to be found? In the first place, there are more women than men. More girls think they have a chance in Hollywood than boys. And, in the second place, the men who are in Hollywood are surfeited with beauty. Nowhere in the world are there so many eligible, attractive, well dressed, smiling young women. Beauty is as dull as sin.

Everywhere you look you see gorgeous blonde heads. Deep black eyes. Velvet skins. Alabaster shoulders. By all the gods, Laura Jean Libby in a former incarnation visited Hollywood and found her adjectives. Thus the men become indifferent, selfish. They go ham actor.

Picture, if you can, the typical Hollywood man. He sits upon a large throne of his own making. It is gilded with his own imagination. He is as supercilious as a hotel clerk. And his attitude is that of "Why shouldn't these dames pay for their own meals? I'm taking 'em out. They've got a chance to look at me through seven courses." He walks the boulevards and accepts, as his just due, the adoring glances cast his way. Hasn't he a perfect profile?

Isn't that enough to satisfy the most exacting damsel?

And the actresses have a fine contempt for their fellow actors. Deep, deep in their hearts they hate them. Yet they can't lower themselves by appearing socially with any lesser lights.

Now, here's where the visitor within the gates comes in. There's nothing romantic about being kissed by a man who has just kissed you all day in front of a camera.

The girls meet the Eastern trains like flappers meet fleets. They're looking for any young man with a million dollars. Or any young man on expense account. Or any young man with a nice manner. Or just any young man.

THERE are now in Hollywood four foreign gentlemen, known as the four Spanish boys. One of them, it seems, is a big beet sugar daddy. Literally. He owns sugar, lots of it, in Cuba. The rest of them are equally well sugared. Nobody knows exactly what they want of the film colony. But they entertain the picture gals.

They arrive in great style at Montmartre. There is a general air of sprucing up. Thousands of powder puffs scamper across thousands of noses. And the girls, loitering over their coffee, hoping that something will happen, say in very much the musical comedy manner, "The Spaniards, the Spaniards," and they almost add the accepted tra-la.

The big butter and egger, Townsend Netcher, cut a swath for quite a while in Hollywood until Constance Talmadge decided that he was no good running around loose and attached him. They are married now.

A CERTAIN personable young man from New York came to Hollywood to represent a well known advertising company. His expense account was unlimited. Word of this spread among the gals. He has more dates than he can keep, because he has New York manners.

The picture men, bored with beauty, as I've said, forget those little details which Elinor Glyn says every woman loves. They forget to send flowers, to provide cigarettes, to order a meal properly. And that's where the out-of-towner excels.

But the out-of-towner goes away eventually, leaving the situation exactly as it was. And Hollywood remains a manless town.

But there is a nice code of ethics among the girls. Knowing how hard they are to get, the ​menless women are careful not to infringe upon the rights of the girls with boy friends.

Those who don't go in for the code are ostracized. Alice White doesn't exactly conform to the rules. She gets 'em when she can and how. And she takes 'em away from the other girls if the opportunity presents itself. As a result, this blonde vamp is hated by the sisterhood.

Joan and Doug, Gary and Lupe, Sue and Nick, Bebe and Ben have a better chance for happiness in Hollywood than anywhere else. The wild sirens are not allowed to do their wildest.

The unattached young women respect the ingenuity it required on the part of the lucky femme with a boy friend.

So come to Hollywood, young man, and bring your purse along. And stay, oh do stay!

For there are plenty of girls on the shelf. There are plenty of them who want Romance and a Moon and Young Love and all the other things Marian Harris sings about.

And who in Hollywood can give romance? Ham actors? Conceited, selfish actors who don't know what it means when the lady of that particular evening says pointedly, "I'm wearing an orchid dress tonight"? Men who talk about themselves and demand an audience along with every bowl of chili they buy?

In the strictest sense of the word, Hollywood is as manless as ringside seats at the weekly prize fights.

That romance you see is only for the camera.