Tawdry tales of Tinseltown

This is a very odd book that Jean Stein has compiled — about the evanescent splendour of Los Angeles, which only occasionally touches on the film industry. Its setting’s most memorable landmark appears to be the name of one of its districts, written in enormous white letters on a hillside. That, and various opulent houses, preserved in one movie after another and generally concealed from public view. Stein’s subject is the failure to leave any kind of a mark — despite huge spectacle and expenditure; and witnesses are reduced to repeating over and over again,‘Well, you should have been there at the time.’

She tells five stories. The first concerns the Doheny family, whose wealth derived from Los Angeles’ main commodity before films: oil. The patriarch, Edward L. Doheny, was the principal operator in the Mexican and Californian oil fields until the 1930s. (In the 1920s, Los Angeles wells produced 20 per cent of the world’s oil).