Tales of old Hollywood are always entertaining – even when they’re apocryphal

Despite being known as a visually driven town, Hollywood has a rich oral history. This may be due to the fact that it is (like most literary communities) a small, gossipy village in which everybody knows everybody else and what everybody is saying about them. It also testifies to the fact that while Hollywood’s ‘players’ may often produce stupid films, they aren’t actually stupid themselves. Most of the time they know exactly what they’re doing – which is what makes them so perplexing.

According to this hefty book, which assembles more than half a century’s worth of interviews conducted by the American Film Institute, Hollywood’s early days weren’t as glamorous as the later ones, but they certainly seemed a lot more fun. As Henry Hathaway recalled of the early 20th century, after Carl Laemmle established Universal Studios in the San Fernando Valley, the industry attracted bright, restless people who had trouble keeping their jobs:

They were the kind of people who didn’t give a damn if they were broke one day and they drank a lot. They always needed money. They were always broke. No matter what they made, they spent it. That was sort of the demeanour of everybody in the business: spent every goddamn thing they made.

The industry was soon producing streams of movies to feed an ever-increasing consumer hunger, and competence was regarded more highly than artistry. The more movies Hollywood produced, the more money it made – whether the movies were good or not.

Those who grew up with the industry were intelligent, adaptable, adventurous and, according to the great early silent film actress Gertrude Astor, well-fuelled with cheap alcohol, even during Prohibition:

Everybody was stewed up on hard cider… they used to keep it in jugs in their dressing rooms.