Lillian Ross, a great writer for The New Yorker, has died at the age of 99. The magazine has posted links to some of her finest articles, including this 1948 skewering of Hollywood soon after the Hollywood 10: Come In, Lassie! Excerpt:
Some groups play it safe at parties by refusing to engage in any conversation at all. They just sit on the floor and listen to anyone who goes by with a late rumor. There are all sorts of rumors in Hollywood right now. One late rumor is that the newest black-market commodity in town is the labor of the ten writers, who are reported to be secretly turning out scripts for all the major studios. Another is that one producer is founding a film company and will have all ten of the blacklisted men on his staff.
Rumors that the F.B.I. is going to take over casting operations at the studios are discounted by those who have lived in Hollywood for more than fifteen years. The casting director at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, a fidgety, cynical, sharply dressed, red-cheeked man named Billy Grady, Sr., who has worked in Hollywood for nearly twenty years, thinks that it would serve J. Edgar Hoover right if the casting of actors were handed over to the F.B.I.
“Hoover thinks he’s got worries!” Grady shouted at me in a Hollywood restaurant. “What does a G-man do? A G-man sends guys to Alcatraz! Ha! I’d like to see a G-man find a script about Abraham Lincoln’s doctor in which we could work in a part for Lassie. What do you find inside of Alcatraz? Picture stars? Directors? Cameramen? No! The goddam place is full of doctor, lawyers, and politicians. This is the fourth biggest industry in the country, and only three men in this industry ever went to jail.
"There are fifty thousand people in this industry, and all they want is the right to take up hobbies. Spencer Tracy takes up painting. Clark Gable takes up Idaho. Dalton Trumbo, who got the sack, takes up deep thinking. Take away their hobbies and they’re unhappy. When they’re unhappy, I’m unhappy. For God’s sake, Tracy doesn’t paint when he’s acting. Gable doesn’t shoot ducks. Trumbo doesn’t think when he’s writing for pictures. I say let them keep their goddam hobbies. They’re all a bunch of capitalists anyway.”
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