The Big Laugh by John O'Hara

 This was my first O'Hara novel. I just finished reading it today.

I’ll likely read another soon.

I really liked it. He strips away the glitter shell of Hollywood to reveal the hollow reality within.

The novel is dialogue heavy with a kind of lack of commentary about what the characters are thinking, but ultimately that is fine. It kinda reads like a text screenplay. The dialogue is very good,

I bought it for $3 at the cheaper book outside rack at The Strand NYC. Good investment.

The movie business is an odd cultural/business/entertainment mashup. Without stating it directly, even back 60 years ago O’Hara sets up the question: Why are these people, this business, so honored and their “entertainment” products given so much attention. Why are the “stars” so revered and the products, more or less all produced to make money, demanding of so much attention? Even now 120 years after the new technological wonder of moving pictures, it is somewhat troubling that this industry is so powerful and central in the minds and hearts of so many of us.
Is it part of the tragedy of centralization of big business, viral capitalism? Or just all in fun and don’t we love our “stars”. I kind of hate that moving image so easily became the dominant method of storytelling. I still love the novel over cinema/TV, hence I read this one and I’m on to the next one.

The Acrobat: Foregone Books review

 https://youtu.be/y3sRXzGPJjg

Girl 27 (2007)

 This documentary film by David Stenn tells the story of a 1937 Hollywood rape of a girl, only 17, who worked as a movie chorus dancer.

David Stenn is a movie star biographer and he was finishing up a book on Jean Harlow when he came across newspaper clippings about this rape at a convention of MGM national salesmen brought to Hollywood in celebration of a very successful profit year for MGM products in the middle of The Great Depression. But the old-time Hollywood writer and MGM expert was clueless about this particular case. He made this movie that chronicles his investigation and what he finds.

The result is a document that presents a rape victim still dealing with the horror of the attack 60 years after the fact. It is a film that clearly shows what trauma does to someone. Stenn tracks this victim down and Patricia Douglas (age 85) is interviewed on-camera eventually after he gently made her feel safe enough to let him in to talk. She had stopped letting people in because of the rape. She didn’t trust people after what happened to her so long ago.

She had a sort of a life after that. She even had a daughter, but was too traumatized to properly raise her and farmed her out to grandma. We see the daughter too, maybe it was better that she didn’t live with Patricia who spent her days in bed. Maybe by exiling the daughter she helped save her from the trauma getting passed on to her. (The daughter seems to have it together with a stylish appearance and a horse ranch in northern California. But looks can be deceiving and this movie is not about her.)

Stenn’s film also reveals the cover-up of the rape. Patricia Douglas attempted to get justice. But this was LA in the 30's it was a movie industry town and MGM was the big cat on the screens of the world. The more info I get on Louis B Mayer the more of a scum he turns out to be. I mean one only has to see Girl 27 and Mank with Mayer shown as a powerful negative Republican businessman.

So we are back to the tight headshot of the elderly Patricia Douglas video interview when she reveals all 60 years later. Her daughter has never heard about this at all. Her mother was just a little off all those years.

So in the year before she dies Patricia Douglas finally speaks, is heard, listened to, and believed.
60 years later.
Imagine all the Hollywood girls raped and silent.
A cast of THOUSANDS!
----------------

The documentary uses some 30s Hollywood movie scenes to illustrate the depiction of the treatment of women on the screen then in rape scenes in which of course the rape never occurs. Then he shows scene from a suppressed 1933 melodrama called The Story of Temple Drake in which a rape does happen and it is part of the drama.
This movie was, according to the documentary, unavailable in 2007 but it is available now and bootlegged on Youtube. It’s a pretty good movie. Miriam Hopkins is good as Temple and Jack La Rue at his sleaziest as the rapist thug. 
It’s the 30s so the rapist is a gangster thug not the guy next door, but an interesting little movie anyway.