Kiss Hollywood Good-By by Loos Anita
Author:Loos, Anita [Loos, Anita]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780670413744
Google: 1OIi0XjMeMoC
Amazon: 0670413747
Publisher: Viking
Published: 1974-01-01T08:00:00+00:00
12
IT’S LOVE THAT MAKES THE WORLD GO SQUARE
Early in the 1930s Wilson paid me a compliment that touched me to the heart; he set me straight about his nefarious career. “You’re just a kid beginning to get around.” he told me, “I wouldn’t want my example to give you a wrong steer.” He quoted a saying that had gone the rounds in his heyday, “The lobster is the wise guy after all.” (“Lobster” being used then as we use “square” today.) “All of us are born with traits like optimism, faith, and loyalty,” Wilson continued. “Just don’t deny them for the hollow pretense of being ‘smart.’ ”
Wilson went on to admit that a statement he often made of “work being beneath the dignity of any red-blooded man” was ridiculous. “The con games I’ve invented all took more work than any legal effort. And not one of them ever paid off with anything like permanent cash.”
Disarmed by his frank avowal. I asked wide-eyed. “Why haven’t you followed your own advice?” Wilson’s features broke into that grin, halfway between amusement and resignation, of the fellow who knows that Fate always holds a slap-stick aloft, ready to smack down every wise guy.
“I’ve always been like the rabbit that thinks it can block a Mack truck!”
Wilson made that confession just after he had amassed several million dollars as a realtor in Palm Beach. He had invented a new type of salesmanship which consisted in advertising a strictly local commodity in national magazines. (That scheme is one of Wilson’s gifts to posterity. Advertisements are still published in which oldsters are pictured cavorting in a resurgence of sex on a piece of Florida real estate.) Wilson’s mail-order campaign enabled him to sell lots that never emerged from the tide. He used to boast that his merchandise extended clear to the shores of Cuba.
But in 1927, the Florida Boom burst just as Wilson instinctively knew it would, and after going broke he was hauled into court by a purchaser of one of his underwater lots. The judge fixed an accusing eye on Wilson and demanded, “Didn’t you tell this man that he could grow nuts on his land?” “The gentleman misunderstood, your Honor,” Wilson answered respectfully. “What I actually said was that he could go nuts on his land.” And as Wilson had so often done in the past, he was forced to jump bail and beat a sheriff across the state line.
However, Le Bon Dieu who looks after publicans and sinners had provided Wilson with a gorgeous last frontier: Hollywood.
At the time Wilson arrived there, I was in New York living through the manic era before the crash of 1929. He and I were separated by an entire continent, but we kept in touch. In an effort to establish some sort of kinship, Wilson had taken to calling me “Mama Nita.” The nickname was a double joke; he was too old by a generation to be my son while my wind-blown bob and knee-high skirts would never have been worn by any mother.
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