"CRAZY HOLLYWOOD"

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 21049, 28 December 1933, Page 11

"CRAZY HOLLYWOOD"

GERMAN UIOGRAPHER'S VIEWS NO SENSE OF PROPORTION LONDON, November 16. Dr. Emil Ludwig, the famous biographer, lias just returned from Hollywood. He went there to assist a film company with the scenario of the film it is making of his life of Napoleon, writes the film correspondent cf the "Morning Post." As Dr. Ludwig passed through London yesterday on his way to his home in Locarno he made some amusing comments on life and work in the film city. "They are all quite crazy in Hollywood,'' he told me. "They are a lot of very clever people, but they live their lives in a mad fashion. "f received an urgent cablegram rushing me 5000 miles immediately to make the scenario of Napoleon," lie continued. "When I arrived, nobody seemed to want to worry about the actual work. I could have done it just as well at home in Locarno, and taken my time over it. "But that is just part oi their natural arrogance. They don't mean it. they can't help it. They seem to me to be always thinking in cocktails. They seem continually shaken up. They have no sense of proportion at all. Contrasts in Remuneration. "As we poor writers know too well, they will pay 2000 dollars a week for a good-looking actress, but not one-tenth of that sum for a writer. There wei'e six scenario writers on the script for which they rushed me to America. 'i went to California to see the CnJifornian sun," Dr. Ludwig continued. "Believe me, there is no such thing from the cinema point of view, at any rate. I thought they made films in Hollywood because of the climate there, but that is a mistake. Instead of the sun I found at least 10 Jupiter lamps on every external location. Only 15 per cent, of all pictures made there are free of artificial light. "I had never been in a film studio before." he went on, "and I found the technique of films supremely interesting. Especially the writing part of pictures. It is a sort of via media between the technique of writing books and writing plays. One result of my visit, however, is to make me write more films. I have already, on the way over, sketched out three. The first one I hope to make is a life of Beethoven." Dr. Ludwig was especially interesting when he spoke of his future literary plans. "When first I started writing biographies, there were few writers in that field. But to-day biography writing lias become an industry, and a mass production industry at that. It. is simply for this reason that I shall write far fewer biographies in the future. I shall devote far more attention to plays now."