HOLLYWOOD INSIDE OUT

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 112, 8 November 1930, Page 21

HOLLYWOOD INSIDE OUT

Mr. J. P. M'Evoy has already introduced Miss Duleie Dugan in his novel, "The Show Girl," but readers of that delightful descriptive work of . New York theatrical life will moot her again as a successful aspirant for fame in tho talkies, this time in "Hollywood Girl" (Geoffrey Bles). Duleie is a type, and probably a widely distributed type, of girl, common enough in the world of those lighter forms of musical entertainment which managements prescribed for the "tired business man," and which used to, be known as leg shows before the era *of the very short skirt. The species represented by Duleie Dugan has its habitat in the United States, and it will stop_ at nothing to achieve its end. Duleie's motto is "The end justifies the means," and she acts up to it with a loyalty and persistency that one cannot but admire. But it is not so much the affairs of Duleie Dugan that will grip the attention of ■ the reader of "Hollywood Girl" as the insight Mr. M'Evoy affords of life at Hollywood under talkie conditions, the kind of people who have become screen famous tho world over, and the details- that go "to the making of a talkie. He turns Hollywood inside out, and the inside is astonishingly rough and seamy. It is all 100 per cent. American, and yet diverting if unpleasant. Tragedy ob-: trudes. in the comedy, which Mr. M'Evoy handles with much skill. Life is depicted as utterly r.eposeless, with a peaceful tete-a-tete in a restaurant alternated by a braying loud speaker announcing terms for acquiring choice cemetery lots and snatches from an evangelistic discourse by "Ma" Amie M'Pherson. Further, Mr. M'Bvoy's description of life at Hollywood is no advertisement for the efficacy of Prohibition in the State of California. "Hollywood Girl" is a most entertaining book, and it reads like truth. Duleie's diary and her correspondence, thanks to the amplification if not en-ri-'unent of English through the talkies, can now be read by most people without the aid of a glossary.