All That Glitters: A Novel by Thomas Tryon

Author:Thomas Tryon [Tryon, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781480442290
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Published: 2013-09-24T04:00:00+00:00

MAUDE

AS A BOY, I used to get a thrill on Monday nights when that crisp, patrician voice of Cecil B. De Mille would come over CBS radio to proclaim

LUX… PRESENTS… HOLLYWOOD!

What those three ringing words meant, only those who likewise heard the Lux Radio Theatre can know. It was true: a soap manufacturer was presenting to the radio-listening nation the glamorous Hollywood everybody worshipped and adored and couldn’t know enough about. In a brief fifty minutes they’d wrap up the whole sad tale of Dark Victory or Stella Dallas, tears, sobs, and all, at the end of which C.B. would come on and chat intimately with the stars, Stanwyck or Davis or whoever, and you felt sure that, while broadcasting, Stanwyck was wearing a slinky satin dress and fox furs (she wasn’t) and that Davis had a block-long limousine waiting to take her out dancing (she didn’t). Magical place names like “Hollywood and Vine,” “Del Mar,” and “Trocadéro” and “Lucey’s” and “Toluca Lake” and “Culver City” and “La Brea Tar Pits” sent tremors through you. You got glimpses of the real thing you’d already discovered in such movies as A Star Is Born, or in the MGM newsreel when they concreted Mickey Rooney’s footprints at Grauman’s Chinese. Out in Hollywood everything appeared to have streamlined curves—buildings and women alike; it was all chrome strips and restaurants built to look like men’s derbies or club sandwiches without the mayo, and the smogfree California air was filled with the promise of orchids and diamonds: the Land of Dreams. Just follow the Yellow Brick Road with Judy, leave Kansas and Auntie Em behind and come, not to emerald Oz but to silver Hollywood, where you, too, could press your hands and feet in wet cement.

Well, don’t kid yourself. It’s gone now; it’s all gone. I don’t mean just Grauman’s, I mean Hollywood. Tinseltown. Glitter City. Ham Burg. As gone with the wind as, well, Gone With the Wind. The place is there, five square miles of it, eight miles from downtown L.A. as the crow flies. Look on the movie-star maps, you’ll still find it, but don’t look for Carole Lombard’s house, don’t look for Dolores del Rio’s or John Barrymore’s, don’t look for Bill Powell’s. The houses may be there still, only Carole ain’t home, Bill won’t answer the door, Dolores blew town years ago, Barrymore—forget it; they all went with the wind, too. The nights no longer twinkle and shine when the stars come out—the movie stars, that is. The air no longer exudes that heady, sweet perfume, nor does it bear upon its breath the sultry strains of Latin music along the Sunset Strip; Lina Romay does not shake her fringes while Cugie caresses his pet Chihuahua. No, no, all that is gone and will not come again, nothing will bring back those golden days, nothing will even nearly approximate them. Those were the days of cream and butter, these are the days of skim milk and oleo. Somewhere along the line Hollywood got real, got grim.

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