Continued from page 1.

The growth of the movie industry brought more people and money to the Los Angeles area. As the movie industry grew, related industries, including costume and prop stores, expanded. Between 1917 and the early 1930s, the number of restaurants and lunchrooms quadrupled. They spread, as did nightclubs, from the Spring Street area in downtown Los Angeles to two major sections of Hollywood. The blocks around the intersection of Hollywood and Vine in downtown Hollywood contained luxurious hotels, elaborate beauty parlors, shops, and widely publicized restaurants such as the Brown Derby. The old town of Sherman, later to become West Hollywood, clustered its stores, nightclubs, and restaurants in groups along Santa Monica and Sunset Boulevards.12

Stars continued to go to clubs during the 1920s in towns like Vernon and Culver City to slum in the cabarets and speakeasies.13 However, by 1930, Hollywood had "more Neon lights than Broadway. . . . It is gayer, newer, brighter, and younger than anything in the history of man."14 The majority of the "in" places congregated along the Sunset Strip, a three-square-mile area that bordered Hollywood and Beverly Hills. The area remained outside the city of Los Angeles and was policed by the Los Angeles County sheriff. Many famous stars greeted the boys in the patrol cars by name in this unincorporated area of West Hollywood. Such familiar relationships reflected the power relationships of the city and the capacity of people from all walks of life to become star struck and led to a more relaxed attitude toward the enforcement of certain laws. The Sunset Strip gained notoriety as one of the most famous hot spots in the country. Of the nightclubs in the area, The Barn, La Bohème, the Club New Yorker, and the Back Yard Café all featured cross-dressing performers and clientele. Despite the protests of religious figures and other citizens that the bars and nightclubs, gambling houses, and houses of ill repute invaded the best residential districts, the Strip drew the stars, the aristocracy, and the politicians. Hollywood, the industry, and the newspapers and magazines that covered it promoted these locations to maintain fan interest and boost the sales of its products.15

One of the most famous night spots in Hollywood served its customers in a building shaped like a man's hat. The Brown Derby restaurant attracted actors, directors, producers, and screenwriters of the industry from noon until the early morning hours. The Vine Street location reserved its booths and the north wall front tables for stars and executives, while others sat in the center. All hoped to get noticed.16 One of the earliest scenes in the movie What Price Hollywood? occurred inside this restaurant: Drunken motion picture director Max Carey walks in throwing gardenias he bought from an old woman outside. Smiling, he greets the people he knows. He briefly exits the screen. (The viewer sees a section of the restaurant as the shot switches from a medium to a long shot.) Carey continues walking around the restaurant and bumps into the mannishly attired woman as she rises from her table. His mouth drops as he steps back and says, "I beg your pardon, old man." As she straightens her suit jacket, Max slowly looks down then up her torso and rolls his eyes back in his head. Reaches out his hand and taps her elbow. "Pardon me, who's your tailor?" She turns her back and strides out as he smirks then carries on giving out the flowers.17

The creative team behind What Price Hollywood? (RKO, 1932) attempted to "tell the truth about Hollywood."18 Producer David O. Selznick thought the "trouble with most films about Hollywood was that they gave a false picture, that they burlesqued it, or they oversentimentalized [sic] it. . . . And my notion . . . dialogue was actually straight out of life and was straight 'reportage.'" Evidently, Selznick and the movie-making personnel at RKO purposely included an image of a woman in men's attire in their movie because they thought it captured the essence of what occurred in Hollywood.

The movie places its audience inside the most famous Hollywood eatery in downtown Hollywood. The scene puts a variety of Hollywood types on display, including a lecherous agent, an egotistical actor, and a producer with his sycophant dining in a booth. The presence of the mannishly dressed woman indicates that these women are part of Hollywood nightlife. Her introduction differs from the presentation of other Hollywood types. Carey briefly exits before returning into view and immediately bumping into the woman in a man's suit. Of all the Hollywood types presented in this scene, the movie tries to surprise its viewers only when it introduces the Hollywood player.

The separation of this woman's image from the other industry types illustrates the significance of the role of Hollywood players in Hollywood nightlife. The image makes the restaurant seem like a wild and fantastic place. The woman's mannish dress hints that she had lesbian interests. The difference in her introduction indicates that the image represents a unique type of person and spurs the belief that Hollywood nightlife is wild because it contains special places where people who act on taboo interests dine. The player image provides audiences with the perception of Hollywood nightlife as fantastic by giving them the experience of seeing a person who pushes the culture's sexual boundaries beyond their everyday experience.

The scene at the Brown Derby and the image of the mannishly-dressed, presumptively lesbian enhanced the picture's reputation for RKO. The scene corroborated the perception of Hollywood held by many people around the world. As critics for the trade magazine Motion Picture Herald informed theater owners, What Price Hollywood? was a serio-burlesque load of inside dope on what folks everywhere thought Hollywood was. The box office returns from most U.S. cities validated the trade reviewers' perceptions that the motion picture would fulfill audience expectations.19

The image sacrifices truth for entertainment value. The mannish female character's tailored suit is too large for her, prompting Carey's quip about wanting to know about her tailor. Among the Hollywood women wearing masculine tailored suits during the era, actress Marlene Dietrich, director Dorothy Arzner, and screen writer Mercedes de Acosta wore suits with impeccably sharp lines and style. Certainly producer David Selznick, director George Cukor, and the four screenwriters knew about the sharp style affected by women in men's clothing. But the production team, wanting to add humor to the scene, chose to make her the object of the joke. Still, the mannish woman in the movie had more positive attributes than depictions of lesbians in the popular culture of the era: she had an attractive face and a torso that was neither overly boyish nor overweight; she treated herself well, dining at a hot spot; and she had a place within the motion picture industry community.

Hollywood women in masculine attire appeared occasionally in newspaper and magazine gossip columns. While validating the image from What Price Hollywood? the gossip items exchanged information, fostered understandings of the conception of Hollywood, and created a community among its readers. With items such as "Director Dorothy Arzner, who favored 'man-tailored suits,' dined with actress friends at La Maze," "[Arzner] lunched with a variety of women friends, including actress Claudette Colbert, at the exclusive Vendomes," and "Director George Cukor and screenwriter Zoe Akins held a party for their friend actress Tallulah Bankhead [who frequently donned mannish attire] at a downtown French café"20 they placed women in men's clothing at a variety of Hollywood's eateries and watering holes. Like the character in What Price Hollywood?, the gossip items associated Hollywood nightlife with the thrill of seeing women who defied the norm for women's attire. Frequently, adoption of such clothing signaled a same-sex sexual interest, so that readers also received the titillation of encountering females who pursued taboo sexual interests.

Items like the three above benefited the movie industry and the media organizations. The publicity focused readers' attention on movie industry figures. The items seemed to present specific knowledge about the women's activities, providing readers with what they wanted and presumably keeping them reading the news outlet for more information. As Richard Schickel argued in Intimate Strangers, readers wanted knowledge about celebrities in their daily lives. This desire defined Hollywood publicity departments and the media's presentation of celebrity pieces. The items could not be too sensational, or readers would disbelieve it and would not get the experience that they sought from reading. The disappointment would presumably motivate them to seek another source of information and thus stop reading the original media source.21

Publicity items about the mannishly attired women in Hollywood nightclubs and restaurants portrayed them as successful people, Hollywood players who enjoyed fine lives in Hollywood. Important industry figures, the women worked for the major movie studios on big-budget pictures, earning large salaries that enabled them to dine at exclusive nightspots. They forged friendships, attended and hosted parties, and built a community of like-minded women in Hollywood.

The mannishly dressed woman in Hollywood nightlife reached its apex with the publicity featuring Marlene Dietrich. Certainly, people knew that Dietrich could cross-dress. In two other successful Hollywood movies, she wore tuxedos. As early as the fall of 1930, gossip columnist Louella Parsons noted Dietrich's preference for pants in her daily life. During those early years Paramount avoided discussing Dietrich's clothing preferences. However, in late 1932, Dietrich had a box office failure with her movie Blonde Venus. Paramount signed Dietrich to an expensive five-year contract and severed her relationship with the director, Josef Von Sternberg. The studio sought an image with which to promote their star, and the studio's publicity department launched a huge publicity campaign for Dietrich's new movie, Song of Songs (1933). The publicists featured her clothing, knowing that most successful publicity campaigns revolved around an aspect of the star's personality, because, as noted earlier, that was the information that the public sought. As one industry columnist stated, "The truth about that masculine attire which Marlene Dietrich affects these day is this. She liked wearing that sort of clothes-trousers. Paramount objected. Marlene insisted on trotting about in pants. Finally they gave up. 'Oh well,' sighed Paramount, 'then we'll make a cult of it-exploit Marlene in men's clothes.'"22

Paramount's publicity department staged their events in the same places in downtown Hollywood and along the Strip that the earlier depictions of women in men's clothing occurred. In January 1933, a few articles and several industry columnists chronicled Dietrich's attire. A tabloid piece provided abundant detail about Dietrich's apparel. "Marlene Dietrich gave the photo snappers and autograph hounds a real thrill yesterday by appearing at the Brown Derby with long gray flannel trousers, blue sweater, cap to match, dark gray mannish coat and her attorney, Ralph Blum."23 An item in the Los Angeles Times offered more context. "Lunching with Mamoulian [Dietrich was] still wearing trousers and coats and evidently having them made to order. It is said she has just ordered two or three Tuxedo suits to wear in the evening. It is also said that she ate considerable humble pie in coming back to Paramount."24 Another tabloid item suggested a reaction to readers as it informed them that Dietrich's Hollywood nightlife style caused heads to turn. "Marlene Dietrich created a mild sensation when she arrived at the El Mirador hotel in Palm Springs. . . . She wore masculine attire for all occasions at the desert resort."25 These items accomplished the studio's goal of having the star receive significant media coverage, and reporting the actress wearing men's clothing at Hollywood restaurants made Hollywood nightlife appear wild and decadent in a humorous manner.26

The studio offered readers an interpretation of these images that did not promote the connection between Hollywood nightlife and the star's romantic life. Paramount's publicity department framed this "new" Dietrich image as the start of a fashion trend. Despite clothing that stretched gender conventions for women, the publicity department still linked Dietrichs image with a cultural understanding of woman as display object of consumer culture products. Some contemporaries writing on Dietrich's masculine attire interpreted the image similarly. " 'Will it be overalls next?' an industry columnist wondered. 'Depends probably on how much publicity Katharine Hepburn gets out of her favorite garb. Anyway, they seem to be organizing a publicity campaign on them. It's probably rivalry for Dietrich's trousers.'"27

Others perceived that the "new" Dietrich image offered hints about Dietrich's sexual activities. The images spurred readers to connect the star's romantic life with Hollywood nightlife, turning that nightlife into a site for fantasies. Dietrich's occasional beau and confidant Maurice Chevalier expressed the star's interest in heterosexual males. "I told Marlene myself that if she would wear men's clothes and women's garments even to the extent of fifty-fifty, I would find it the most attractive and charming idea. . . . [S]he looks wonderful in men's attire."28 Director Josef von Sternberg noted that Dietrich's adoption of masculine dress also appealed to another romantic interest. Von Sternberg described his motive for Dietrich in male tuxedos in two motion pictures. "The formal male finery fitted her with much charm, and I not only wished to touch lightly on a Lesbian accent, . . . but also to demonstrate that her sensual appeal was not entirely due to the classic formation of her legs."29 The Dietrich image positioned the Hollywood player in Hollywood nightlife but also gave that nightlife an appeal to those readers with player interests of their own.

The Dietrich images revealed that Paramount's publicity department devised a campaign around presenting one of the industry's biggest stars as a Hollywood player. The decision to promote their star's habit of wearing tailored suits and slacks in restaurants and other locations illustrated both the studio's intentional use of Hollywood player imagery and the promotional value of the imagery. The Dietrich campaign worked. People remembered the images.

Other creators used the Dietrich Hollywood player image and connected it to Hollywood nightlife. In mid-1933, the great songwriting team of Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart wrote "I'm One of the Boys" for the motion picture Hollywood Party. The song chronicled the activities of a woman "who was One of the Boys, girls. I go to the tailor that Marlene employs because no dresses from France are so modern as these. And under my pants are BVD's. . . . Now I take my brandy at the bar. Dice, cards, and tobacco are my favorite toys. . . ." The possibility that the song might appear in the movie caused the Studio Relations Committee's head to write to MGM executive Eddie Mannix. As the chief of the censorship organization for the industry, he advised Mannix not to play "I'm One of the Boys" in anyway that might be suggestive of lesbianism.30

The Dietrich campaign proved successful because audience members remembered it. When readers visited Hollywood a few years later, they regularly asked whether Miss Dietrich really wore trousers. Guides told visitors that the Brown Derby would be a good place to see the star for themselves. The guides' advice confirmed the accuracy of the Dietrich publicity campaign. They also gave the visitors the chance to experience the Hollywood nightlife fantasy themselves.31

The city government tried to halt the cross-dressing of women and men in the nightclubs. The Los Angeles City Council passed a law that prohibited the appearance of people in drag within a café, unless employed by the café. Contemporary observers and current scholars observed the numerous raids on female and male cross-dressing nightclubs in late 1933 and thought the law would close these locations, but the existence of Club International in the late 19305 proved this incorrect. The fans' enjoyment of the Dietrich image and the chumminess of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Office offered key reasons as to why the policing effort failed.32

Women in men's clothing dined and drank in restaurants and nightclubs in downtown Hollywood and along the Sunset Strip. These female industry people influenced the perception of Hollywood, the town and the cultural symbol. Their appearance made Hollywood a place where women who did not abide by the culture's gender and sexual norms had a public presence on the town and in the media. They formed an unmistakable addition to the mystique of Hollywood nightlife. Their presence helped the restaurants and nightclubs appear wild and decadent, allowing Hollywood nightlife to stand apart from all other depictions of city nightlife in the media.

HOUSES

Continued from page 3.

During the early 1920s, the growing movie industry and expanding city offered several women who worked in the other creative trades the opportunity to establish homes where they could be Hollywood players. Alla Nazimova, an accomplished violinist and Stanislavski-trained actress who became the leading interpreter of Ibsen on the Broadway stage before becoming known as a silent-film actress, ranked among the top stars in the annual Photoplay popularity poll in the late 1910s. The star moved west of downtown Hollywood, and her house at 8080 Sunset Boulevard made her a leader in the transformation of Sunset Boulevard into the Strip.33 She formed a development company and turned her homestead into a complex of twenty-five bungalows that lined the largest swimming pool in Hollywood. She named the place the "Garden of Allah," adding the "h" to her given name to associate it with the garden hostelry of sacred and profane love in Robert Hichens's 1904 novel, The Garden of Allah.34

Nazimova's homestead influenced the development of Hollywood as a town and its conception as a place of latitude for women. A group of Nazimova's friends who met regularly at the star's home and enjoyed ribald activities became known as the "8080 Club." After Nazimova left Hollywood in the mid-1920s, her homestead became an apartment complex for many of the workers who came to Hollywood during the first years of the talkies.

Media descriptions of Nazimova s home revealed that her house offered the star the opportunity to display her cross-gender clothing and other aspects of her Hollywood player personality. As the head of her own production company, Nazimova decided that this type of publicity was beneficial to her image and would make her movies successful. An interviewer for Photoplay described her masculine attire in the living room of Nazimova's house:

"She enters whistling," I observed aloud. Nazimova made a move and twirled into the corner of a divan, drawing her feet up after. The effect was boyish, shining black hair cropped very short and parted on one side, a white Eton collar over a dark blouse, a short plaid skirt and flat-heeled brogues, and an abnormally long cigarette holder properly functioning.35

Nazimova created a cross-gender look while she also appeared to be the "head of her castle." The interior décor of purple divans, crystal lights, and a mirror laced with gold reflected Nazimova's outsized personality. The reporter notes that within the house Nazimova revealed a dash of "diablerie" (wickedness) about her, so that one could not precisely say that heaven was her home.36

The star directed her publicity in a similar manner with newspapers. Newspaper coverage described Nazimova's home as a location where she could express another of her personality traits, a preference for the company of women. Nazimova brought a Hollywood player's defiance of gender norms to her friendships with young women, telling reporters that, "They call me Peter and sometimes Mimi." Nazimova's first nickname linked the actress to a male character, Peter Pan, while the latter nickname alluded to the tragic lover in La Bohème. One set of gossip items said that the star's swimming pool, crowded only with Hollywood ingénues, contained underwater lights that illuminated the water at night. The gossip united the physical display of female bodies around a swimming pool with a sensuous environment to suggest homosexuality at her Hollywood home.37

Nazimova used interviews at her home to publicly attack gender conventions. The movie star emphasized that a woman must live her own life: "A woman living a creative life is bound, necessarily, to do things sometimes defiant to convention. In order to fulfill herself, she should live freely." Nazimova's position regarding women's domestic role was unique even among women who identified themselves as feminists during the 1920s.38 Scholars have observed that a few second-generation New Woman writers used their feminist language to attack conventions. However, their efforts sparked representations that depicted them as unnatural followed by criticism and the full brunt of social ostracism and legal censorship. Nazimova and other Hollywood players issued stinging attacks on gender and romantic conventions of the era and received little criticism from the media, politicians, or other industry people.39

Nazimova was not the only woman in Hollywood to use her house as a location for the expression of Hollywood player behaviors. Women dominated the industry's screenwriting departments throughout the 1920s. As career women who earned significant incomes, screenwriters faced questions about their attitudes toward their careers, motherhood, and family. Indeed, the sexual and gender behavior of these women was questionable enough that twenty years later F. Scott Fitzgerald noted in his last novel, The Last Tycoon, that successful screenwriter Jane Meloney received numerous labels, many focused on the private world of her sexuality. "The little blonde of fifty," he wrote, "could hear the fifty assorted opinions of Hollywood . . . a sentimental dope, the smartest woman on the lot, and of course, nymphomaniac, virgin, pushover, a Lesbian."40 Most labels were generally not used by studio employees to attack but to understand the wealthy writer.

The extensive newspaper coverage of a bizarre love triangle in the late 1920s thrilled readers with revelations that some screenwriters pursued their Hollywood player interests in their homes. After the disclosure of her husband's death and his female biological sex, screenwriter Beth Rowland explained in the press that her marriage to Peter Stratford resulted from the love and respect that emerged during a two-year correspondence before Stratford declared "his" love for Rowland. The widow described her role as a platonic wife, nurse, and homemaker to a fastidious gentleman. However, the testimony of others, including Rowland's son, depicted Stratford as a healthy and active person, raising the suggestion that the pair shared a same-sex marriage. This appears more likely when one considers that Rowland used the term "infidelity" when she discovered Stratford wrote endearing letters to Rowland's screenwriter friend Alma Thompson.41

Alma Thompson appeared to live a player's existence in a ranch house in Hollywood. Thompson studied mysticism and claimed she wrote to Stratford out of sympathy for his affliction, but their letters contained appeals for a deeper love and carried the salutations "Dearest Lamb" and "Dear Pedar." Thompson sent Stratford secret rose petals and Stratford referred to Thompson as "my soul." The exchange of deeply emotional letters with a person she knew as the husband of her friend made Thompson the "other" woman. Whether Thompson knew herself to be part of a triangle of three females, the screenwriter actively engaged in an adulterous emotional affair with a person she believed to be a married man, or knew to be a woman living as a man. Fittingly, Alma Thompson's one screen credit came a few years later for the 1933 feature I Loved A Woman.42

Another screenwriter with few movie credits generated enough interest to appear in publicity pieces throughout the 1930s. The child of an aristocratic Spanish family from Cuba, Mercedes de Acosta's mother called her Rafael, dressed her in male clothes, and encouraged her to believe that she was a boy for several years. De Acosta married painter Abram Poole in 1921, but the pair led increasingly separate lives and were divorced in 1935. A novelist, playwright, poet, and Hollywood screenwriter, de Acosta achieved fame as a confidante and companion to several women in theatrical, artistic, and motion picture circles.43 During de Acosta's first year as a screenwriter, Hollywood reporter Alma Whitaker visited de Acosta's home and offered a description of de Acosta in terms that revealed her Hollywood player nature. Whitaker noted that de Acosta was in her dangerously attractive late thirties and "affects the strictly tailored idea, even unto a genuine walking shoe."44 The screenwriter crossed the culture's gender boundaries for clothing within her home.

After mentioning that de Acosta lived alone in Hollywood while her husband stayed in New York City, Whitaker noted, "Miss de Acosta has taken a delightful house at Brentwood Heights, where she is ensconced with her servants and her dogs and she says her stay is indefinite. She also owns a home in New York and an apartment in Paris."45 The screenwriter expected a long, comfortable stay in her new, charming residence without her husband, whom she soon divorced. Afterward, she established a "family" in her Hollywood home over which she ruled. The image highlighted de Acosta as a Hollywood player. Unlike other images of screenwriters and their homes, the piece neither describes de Acosta's house in feminine terms, nor does it define the screenwriter's relationship to her home in a manner that the culture associated with females.46 Readers discovered that the screenwriter created this life for herself in the hills of Los Angeles County, in an exclusive residential area north and east of Beverly Hills where stars like Gary Cooper and Shirley Temple lived.

De Acosta, like Nazimova, argued for the right to defy the culture's gender conventions. She told an interviewer, "Of course, I think matrimony is out of date. I don't approve of it at all. . . . Divorce . . . should be unnecessary. And if matrimony were abolished it would be." Then, de Acosta added that she had no children, noting that "she can imagine how some mothers will feel about me."47 The Hollywood player challenged the prevailing family structure of the home during a time when the culture strongly encouraged women to limit their aspirations to husband, family, and domesticity. Still, de Acosta faced no repercussions within or outside the industry as the result of expressing her opinions.48 She lived in Hollywood over the next decade, with Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich among her circle of friends.

For two decades Hollywood actresses and screenwriters used their homes to pursue their Hollywood player interests. They wore men's clothing as they relaxed in their private space, creating memorable images for reporters to share with the public. Nazimova held all-female pool parties in their expansive back yards, and Thompson engaged in sexual mysticism with their girlfriend's female husband in their small Hollywood bungalow, both notable examples of pervasive player activity. They used their porches to offer opinions to the press that challenged the culture's limits on the woman gender. Their presence made the Hollywood town a place where women owned and ruled large homes. Their appearance associated the Hollywood celebrity home with outsized personalities that carried overtones of the taboo, unique among the depictions of large homes in the media.

PARTIES

Private parties provided another Hollywood location where female Hollywood players acted upon their interests. A journalist of the era described these galas as "the last word in American social relaxation, rich with the super costly meats and drinks, alive with the unrestrained wit, whoopee and love-making of the Republic's most romantic characters."49 During the 1920s, disclosures such as those from the trials of Fatty Arbuckle gave Hollywood parties a reputation as wild affairs.

A famous movie comedian, Fatty Arbuckle attended a large, exciting party in a San Francisco hotel during which former actress Virginia Rappe died under mysterious circumstances. Accused of causing her death, Arbuckle underwent three trials that received detailed coverage in metropolitan dailies from late 1921 through 1922. Despite an acquittal, the negative publicity ended Arbuckle's career. Scholars have used the Arbuckle affair to demonstrate that the industry strove to control scandal and the publicizing of unorthodox behavior.

The coverage of the Arbuckle incident illustrated the important difference between the Arbuckle image and the Hollywood player images. In the Arbuckle case, the industry struggled to control the dissemination of information and perspectives on the incident because the trial grabbed the nation's attention and granted opponents of the industry a weapon with which to advance their view that Hollywood was a pernicious influence upon American morals and values. Furthermore, Arbuckle's story did not allow for a humorous perspective that could put a spin on the matter that might benefit the industry. Other groups successfully argued that the Arbuckle affair was symptomatic of social problems that required collective legal action against the motion picture industry. Arbuckle might be a murderer, or at least, a menace to other people. This potential threat motivated the Hollywood industry to work to remove negative images from media and public attention as soon as possible and to placate opponents.50 In contrast, the Hollywood player image represented Hollywood insider or semi-independent perspectives and did not create sparks that threatened the movie industry or the conception of Hollywood. The Hollywood players made Hollywood locations look fun and playfully decadent, but certainly not violent or harmful.

Two novels, one by Nina Putnam and another by Jim Tully, featured Hollywood private parties within five years of the Arbuckle affair. Each included depictions of Hollywood players that the editors and publishers deemed acceptable to present to readers. As observers of the Hollywood industry and its world, both authors sought to describe to the readers of their novels what each saw as the truth about Hollywood.

Author Nina Putnam included a Hollywood private party in Laughter Limited, her book about a young woman's attempt to become a movie star. Bonnie and her friend Anita meet a writer, who takes them to a famous director's house on Malibu Beach for a party. All kinds of pawing occurs after enormous amounts of great food and drink. "[When] Bonnie ran away as Tom Muro himself put a hand on her shoulder [publicity director Greg] Strickland tells Bonnie to come across and she'll get into pictures."51

The author depicts Hollywood private parties as a place of intense revelry. After sating their eating and drinking desires, all the partiers begin acting to satisfy their libidos. Hollywood private parties offered industry people and their guests locations where they could meet the upper echelon of the movie industry. They also served as places where the guests could engage in any sexual activity they desired. Many enjoyed these Hollywood player activities. Others, like the lead character in the novel, perceived the experience as a potential source of extortion. While this image suggested that some might see Hollywood player activities as coercive, it also suggested that other women enjoyed the revelry. In addition, none of the revelers at the party hurt their professional or social lives through participation in the party activities.

The novel received only a few reviews. Most respected Putnam's writing and thought the book entertaining. One reviewer concentrated on the experience of the main character and believed that the "age-old story" of the "job party" was beneath Putnam's capabilities. This reviewer likened the women at the party to the forty-niners going west to stake their claim at striking it rich and having as likely a chance at success. She saw no reason to doubt the party's realism but suggested that a focus upon the producers and directors who received the women's favors would prove as truthful and more interesting.52

In 1926, Jim Tully, one of the founders of the naturalist "proletarian" school of writers in the U.S. and former publicist for Charlie Chaplin, released his Hollywood novel, Jarnegan. The publisher promoted Jarnegan as the first honestly written novel about Hollywood. Tully's book sold well in its first printing but never went into a second printing. Over the remaining two decades of his life, Tully wrote novels and articles about Hollywood stars for magazines ranging from Vanity Fair to The New Movie Magazine.53

Near the end of the novel, the main characters set off to crash a large party. Jarnegan, his assistant director Jimmy, and two female friends drive into the Hollywood Hills. Fueled by a strong anger over a fellow directors misbehavior with a female extra for whom he cared, Jarnegan goes to find the man. He walks into the petting party of a movie producer to see "women at the party were semi-nude, not in happy abandon, but in middle-class vulgarity."54 The director's Hollywood private party offers guests splendid costly food, drinks, and the most beautiful people in the movie colony. Despite Jarnegan's jaundiced view of the affair, the private party provides the best of everything. Hollywood women can enjoy the lavish environment and also use the Hollywood party as a place to engage in a variety of sexual activities with other guests, regardless of marital status or sexual interests.55

Critics enjoyed the novel. They viewed the book as a vivid picture of life out of the commonplace and written directly from material observed at first hand. A story about a rough customer, the novel struck critics as part of the expansion of the scope and intensity that changed the formerly polite American novel. The reviewers saw the party as part of the depiction of a feverish populace's pursuit of wine, women, and song-and they cared little about missing the singing. While not addressing the truth of the presentation, reviewers noted that Tully's experience meant he should know of what he wrote.56

Both Putnam and Tully thought that describing Hollywood-the town and concept-required a scene featuring the lavish private parties thrown by the industry's creative people. The novels placed these private parties in the large homes along Malibu Beach and in the Hollywood Hills, exclusive residential areas in distinctive natural environments. Top movie people competed to own homes in these locations. Industry people who owned the limited number of places along Malibu Beach included a small percentage of the studio heads, directors, and top actors.57 The homes were far away from everyday life and received little police surveillance, and an invitation to a private party there offered the guest the chance to escape. Both authors showed that in such an environment people established their own rules and provided male and female guests a place where they could engage in a variety of sexual activities with any other guest. According to both authors, the guests could partake in these activities without negative repercussions in their personal or professional lives. The party scenes mixed morality, titillation, and coercion. Some readers might have enjoyed the hint of sexual excitement and absorbed a moral lesson. Others could have felt titillation from the sexuality and a charge from the sense of coercive nature to the sexual exchanges. The party images offered the first set of readers a tonic to purify their excitement, while the latter set of readers received excitement and the fulfillment of potential fantasies.

When Clark Gable separated from his wife, Maria Langham, gossip columnists noted that he and actress Carole Lombard attended public affairs and places together. Knowing the media coverage and the stars' continued appearance together, MGM invited its star Gable to the movie premiere and party for the movie 1938 Marie Antoinette at a famous nightclub on the Sunset Strip. Lombard accompanied Gable, despite his status as a married man. A huge photograph in Life magazine showed the pair smiling as they sat at a table. The caption noted, "Carole Lombard and Clark Gable had the best time at the Trocadero. Always full of fun and careless of dignity, they are one of Hollywood's delightful couples. They can not marry because Gable's wife has refused to divorce him."58 The style in which the information about the stars appeared and the positive presentation of Gable and Lombard's behavior encouraged readers to approve of the couple and their nonconformist sexual activity. The image also offered readers the opportunity to imagine themselves in this type of relationship.

A major media entity taking a photograph inside a studio party would most likely have occurred with studio cooperation. Usually, studios encouraged publicity when they believed that the image benefited the star and the industry. As noted earlier, the studios strove to link publicity images to either a real or imagined personality trait of the star. They also hoped to make the image something with which fans could identify so that they would feel closer to the star and continue coming to their movies.

MGM and Life proved to be correct, for both stars remained very popular. Gable went on to his biggest role in Gone with the Wind. Lombard made a few more successful movies with Paramount studios. Readers accepted Gable's image as a rogue, but what enabled them to accept Lombard's status as the other woman? Carole Lombard developed her popular screen persona based on several screwball comedies during the 1930s. After her short marriage to actor William Powell, Lombard forged an off-screen personality as a single woman-quirky, feminine, and independent. The actress was also well known for her big parties. Her party across the entire Venice Pier Amusement Park late in 1937 was a big hit with industry people. The party generated some racy publicity images, including photographs of Dietrich, Claudette Colbert, and Lombard showing their legs. After Lombard cut back on these affairs because of her relationship with Gable, many Hollywood insiders missed them. A fan magazine reporter summed up the attitude of some in Hollywood in an article entitled, "What ever happened to Carole Lombard?" Like Hollywood insiders who enjoyed her personality, many of her fans enjoyed Lombard's antics and lifestyle and presumably thought her an appropriate match for the rogue Gable.59

The image of the pair at the movie premiere party illustrated the degree of acceptance of Hollywood players. The studios invited Hollywood players to their premiere parties and did not force them to hide their nonconformist behaviors. In this instance, the studio featured the Hollywood players in their publicity about the studio party. The industry party offered Lombard a place to enjoy herself with her paramour and their friends. Lombard maintained her position as a movie star and as an admired person within and outside the movie community. Studios did not extend the same invitations to same-sex couples.

STUDIO LOTS

Female Hollywood players did not have to confine their pursuit of their gender bending, adultery, or same-sex interests to their leisure time. The studio grounds also provided times and places where the women could behave as they wished. While the public could not often walk behind the studio gates, studio publicity departments, newspaper reporters and gossip columnists, and Hollywood novelists provided a public view of the lots and the women who defied gender and sexual norms.

Gossip columns about the movie industry devoted a significant amount of space to glimpses behind the scenes. Some of the earliest columns noted the presence of stars who crossed gender boundaries. Alla Nazimova, during the height of her popularity, appeared so comfortable around the studio that she wore her masculine attire. This prompted one columnist to report that " [There were] rumors around that Nazimova has adopted trousers while lounging at the studio." A decade later, another star with Metro studios made her private space on the lot reflect her defiance of gender norms: A magazine article characterized Greta Garbo's large dressing room, where the reclusive actress frequently rested between takes, as so lacking in decorations that the environment suffered from a masculine severity. The fan magazines ran a two-part piece a year earlier on Garbo's private life that included gender-bending decorations and actions. Indeed, MGM released a few publicity items regarding the star's cross-dressing, featuring a beret and tailored suits that she wore.60

MGM's Bombshell a 1933 movie about the industry, argued that the producers went further than providing female Hollywood players space to be themselves on the lot; they helped to manufacture a player image for its female stars. The movie depicted the life of fictitious star Lola Burns, played by Jean Harlow. Burns, known to her fans as the "Blonde Bombshell," had an image as a wanton woman who loved and left all sorts of men. Jean Harlow was known for her platinum blonde hair and alluring figure, and the movie was based loosely on her real-life experiences.

In the movie, Burns dislikes her image and the daily demands she faces, and she wants to change everything. At work, the actress needs to shoot retakes of her last movie, because the Hays Office and the production codes deem some scenes too risqué. At home, she copes with a free-loading family and her two jealous suitors. In the media, she faces questions stemming from false stories about her liaisons. She seeks to change her public image, despite being told by the studio publicist, Space Hanlon (Lee Tracy) that romantic scandal is what her adoring public wants. Burns tries unsuccessfully over the course of the movie to replace the image of herself from that of a sexually aggressive woman to the picture of the girl next door. Hanlon does everything he can to undermine Burns's efforts and to continue promoting her image as a free-spirited woman.61

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Bombshell offered a revelation about the activities within the studio and in the life of a movie star. The movie made fun of the creation of star images and the assumed link between a star's image in the movies and her or his off-screen life. Most strikingly, the movie depicted a female movie star whose studio wanted her to lead a Hollywood player existence. In its opening montage, the movie shows how a woman with this image can remain a popular star. Young and old commuters, housewives, and other people appear, eagerly reading a series of newspaper headlines that catalogue Burns's crossing the boundaries of sexual propriety. In the view of the director Victor Fleming and screenwriters John Lee Mahin and Jules Furthman, a spectrum of audience members enjoyed the Hollywood player antics and wanted to know the details about their favorite star's activities in Hollywood. The movie industry insiders behind Bombshell portrayed the studio publicity department actively promoting a star image of an actress as an unmarried woman having sex, sometimes with married men.

Critics generally praised the movie. Calling it adroit, markedly clever, and one of the best comedies of life in Hollywood, reviewers praised the cast's performances as well. The reviewers considered Burns a temperamental star who dabbled in everything, including relationships. They enjoyed the publicist character and relished the way he humorously used Burns's pseudorelationships and his imagination to grab any front-page headlines that he could. The public expressed mixed reactions. Although the movie did well in the big cities on the first week, it did not prove to have the box office power to last there for long. The movie grossed excellent box office receipts in midsized and smaller cities across the country.62 It allowed audiences to view Lola Burns as a sexy, wild woman, yet having her attempt to change this image made it easier for audiences to like and accept her. Burns became the good bad woman, an obvious fantasy figure for many men but also one for those women who wanted to play this part.

By the early 1940s, the depiction of Hollywood players behind the scenes became much more infrequent. This change occurred because the industry as well as the U.S. Government sought to diminish its focus upon Hollywood as a separate community during World War II. They established a branch of the Office of War Information to oversee the motion picture industry's output and located it in the center of Hollywood. The local government increased its policing activities. The Los Angeles Police Commission began reviewing nightclub performances before issuing the licenses that allowed the shows to appear. The first act they stopped was by Julian Eltinge, a popular female impersonator who had a great following among Hollywood movie stars. In addition, the understanding of the definition of homosexuals changed by the early 1940s, making this large group of Hollywood players less humorous and thus less useful to the entertainment industry.63

One of the last female Hollywood player images of the era appeared in Ann Bells 1940 novel Lady's Lady. Lotus, a female star who finds the studio lot conducive to her sexual interests, falls deeply in love with Bunny, a woman she has picked from among the hundreds of extras while filming a scene in a movie. Bunny sleeps with Lotus but the extras coolness causes the star to plead for renewed affection.

My heart is aching. Whenever I close my eyes, I can see you in my imagination with other girls. I had planned and hoped never to have any more heartaches, but the way I feel about you is pitiable. I would give my life to be with you this very moment, just to feel you near me, to drift in the dreamland of heavenly bliss for only a few minutes. I would be happy if you would allow me to be with you once again . . . but regardless of anything and everything, I wish and am longing to hear your voice again. Darling, may I?64

This novel presented the sound stage as a place for performers to fulfill their romantic interests. Readers learned that a star could walk around the stage and exchange glances with hundreds of extra girls to decipher their level of interest to her and in her. The representation indicated that a star expressed little concern about engaging in this activity and exhibited little fear that one of these extra women or other studio workers might object to her Hollywood player activities. While Bunny might not have wanted to pursue the relationship beyond one night, her response to Lotus's letter makes it clear that Lotus could have chosen a different girl to fulfill her romantic desires. Lotus may fail to retain Bunny's love, but she maintains her position as a movie star and continues to receive the income and adulation associated with her status. Lotus has free reign of the studio to pursue her homosexual interests and faces no overt condemnation for this activity. The story also suggests that an unheralded extra could find romance with a wealthy, popular star, adding a Cinderella promise to romance behind the scenes in Hollywood.

Cross-dressing, free-spirited, and homosexual women appeared on the movie studio lots in downtown Hollywood, Culver City, and other neighboring areas. They lounged in their men's clothing, decorated their dressing rooms in masculine severity, and sought liaisons and potential relationships on studio stage sets. These women and their activities received a public presence through their appearance in the media. These depictions added to the mystique of Hollywood behind the scenes by bringing the taboo and forbidden pleasures to the mystery and glamour that dominated depictions of the studios as a workplace.

The Hollywood players had an extraordinary run of two decades. The depictions illustrated that the phenomenon's mass-produced cultural capital offered women who defied gender and sexual norms many places where they could act upon those interests. The Hollywood movie industry, its observers, and the organizations that reported on this world presented Hollywood players to the public, positioning media sources as places where the women also had a public presence. Media sources, as shapers of Hollywood's cultural image, used these images to add the taboo and forbidden pleasures to the mystique associated with these Hollywood locations.

The female Hollywood players appeared as successfully integrated into the Los Angeles-Hollywood world. They drank and dined in the restaurants and nightclubs in downtown Hollywood an